Hunting Washington Forum
Other Hunting => Turkey Hunting => Topic started by: HoofsandWings on April 16, 2013, 06:56:31 PM
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Have you encountered scrawny jakes? I mean skin and bones.
A few years ago one walked by me and I took one look at him and passed. He had no feathers on his entire neck, but it was blue.
Last year on the opener, I saw this turkey fanning and was with 6 or 8 hens.
I set up near the roost tree and set up a pretty boy decoy. The gobbler flew off his roost and landed in front of the decoy.
He was the scrawnist gobbler you ever saw. Sure he was a jake, but the decoy was three times his size.
I let him go and he returned to his harem and fanned and danced.
Now it is a year later and I plan to see if he has grown any.
I think I could have gotten more breast meat off a duck or a grouse.
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We seen a flock of jakes. 20 birds total last week. You would have had to shoot 10 of them to equal the weight of a long beard! They were scrony for sure!
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The only Jake I have seen like that I ended up shooting because I wanted to put it out of its misery. It crossed a drag road in front of me really slow and was limping I walked into the brush after it and shot it 20 yards later. He had a busted leg and there was literally no meat on him. Well there was about 1/8 inch of breast meat on him other than that skin, bone, and feathers.
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Jakes often tend to be scrawny this time of year. Finding Jakes that are scrawny only means that they have been strutting a lot. Allready starting out on the small side, then strutting, which includes not a lot of time for eating, burns up the little fat supply they may have. Another thing you may find, if you are seeing scrawny jakes is, either no big tom around, thus allowing the jakes to feel comfortable enough to strut without gettin the crap beat out of them from the tom. Or an over abundance of hens, and not enough big toms to keep track of all of them. Either way, best to move on to another area, or consider taking the jake and headin home and having a beer.
