Well in brief, they work and work well! I deployed the pretty cow face a handful of times to hide my draw during my early WA hunt with good success. It was during the later Idaho hunt that I realized just how well this innovative little decoy works. Ed and I had plopped down on a flat ridge between two taller, alder choked ridges. This little ridge has been like a magnet for elk to feed, and, to do their evening/night time/early morning wapiti rut thing for a handful of years. I get there around 4:30 to 5:00 PM and really, just sit and wait. The elk will come in from any of three directions so ears and eyeballs are on full alert until their arrival. We heard a distant bugle from the right/Northern ridge as the elk started making their way from feed to bed. As the small bull and handful of cows got close enough to needle, we set up and decided that we’d try to call the bull away from his girls. I started with some whiny cow cows which solicited an immediate response (chuckling) from the bull. Due to the location of the elk on the other side of the 10’ tall alder patch, I had no choice but to light him up with various challenging elk sounds in an attempt to whizz in his wheaties and pull him in. I fully expected the bull to come unglued (have been here before) and come in to stomp me but he wasn’t really interested in confrontation (probably a smaller bull who had herded up early and was not tweaking enough to be defensive). It was during this encounter that I chuckled at some point and caught movement up to my right. A darn calf was coming in and had pinpointed me! Up went the Poison Arrow decoy; down went the calf’s head to feed. Here comes mama right behind the calf. Same thing occurred… she looked right at me and I slightly wiggled the cow face left/right and she dropped her head to feed. It was almost comical the way I was screaming insults at the bull, raking brush, and each time the cow/calf would look at me I’d wiggle the cow face and they’d go back to feeding.. Yep, this innovative little decoy works and works well. Just wanted to share my observations of the PA Decoy.. Thanks James for putting out such a great product. It’ll be in my quiver for every archery hunt for years to come. RJ
