Secret Weapon for next year...

[catman529]

That is all hot glued, no tail meat. Cut each feather off the tail and kept them in order by sticking them to a pice of duct tape. Then glued them to a piece of felt backed by a piece of cardboard. I will water seal the cardboard. This will be for a decoy - saved the 3.5" beard too. Probably won't use it on public land though. So I need a private spot to try it out next year. I'd love to have an old tom come in and beat up a jake decoy. It's tempting to just make a wall mount for this jake, but I have the tails of all 3 longbeards and am running out of wall space, and want this jake for a decoy.

 

[ROUGH COUNTRY HUNTER]

looks good

 

[Buck Assassin]

That would look good on a deke!

 

[VolDoug]

How are you going to attach it to the decoy?

 

[Andy S.]

 

[Wrangler95]

Nice!

 

[easy45]

cool

 

[RUGER]

Looks good.
He was BARELY a jake looks like.

 

[catman529]

he was a little jake_ 13 pounds, but had a 3.5" beard and 1/3" nubs.

 

[bigasports]

If you buy a tube of shoe goo and put it in place of the felt etc, you can mold it and it will harden to your liking.

 

[Winchester]

A Jake fan has worked well for me on my pretty boy over the years, good luck with it!

 

[Polecat]

I killed my second heaviest bird this year using a Flambeau King Strut decoy, a shaker style gobble call and a Dave Smith Hardcore hen. The real bird gobbled one time, in response I hen called and then using the shaker call gobbled at my own hen calling. The gobbler came in quiet, saw the strutter decoy and hen and immediately dropped his wings and went into full strut walking within 15' feet of me not paying a bit of attention to anything but the hen and strutter decoy. It was one of those hunts where I'd given anything to have had it on film. The bird weighed 24lbs 10 ounces, had 1 3/8 spurs, and a 10 1/2" beard.

 

[catman529]

Nice bird! Just looked up Dave Smith decoys. Dang those are very nice looking decoys.