Are premium turkey decoys worth the big bucks you pay for them? – Outdoor News
During the past half-decade or so, ultra-realistic decoys have taken over the turkey, deer, and waterfowl markets. This upper-end category of decoys comes with upper-end price tags, and a lot of folks might be wondering if they’re really worth the coin.
The answer to that really depends on a few things, the first of which is understanding why they are so much more expensive.
Lifelike paint jobs
Thirty years ago, turkey decoys were crude, foam cutouts that looked like silhouetted turkeys from a distance. They worked to draw in toms, at least in part because there was a lot less hunting pressure back then.
The birds have become more numerous, and also warier as hunting opportunities have increased. While you could probably stake down a black garbage bag and eventually kill a tom with it, it’s generally not enough to use really poor-looking decoys these days.
The higher-end options are often hand-painted, which is one of the main reasons they are so expensive. That paint job matters, though.
Real wild turkeys have a lot going on with appearance. If you don’t believe that, figure out a way to watch a tom strut in the morning sunlight. The iridescence is undeniable, along with all of the little highlights in their feathers, and their head color.
Aesthetics aren’t the only thing that generally separates the higher-end dekes from the rest of the pack, however.
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Body language
Humans forget how important body language is, because we are so adept at spoken language.
While turkeys certainly talk to one another, they’re always looking for body-language cues. The best decoy makers out there understand this game very well, and they use it to create decoys that trigger strong responses in real longbeards.
While you can kill plenty of birds with a standing decoy, or a strutter, understanding quarter- or half-strut options, or dekes built to look submissive, is important – just as it’s important to understand why you might want a feeding hen decoy or an upright hen decoy.
Your individual decoys signal to all nearby birds something, and that can be elevated by how you set up your flock.
One of the things that higher-end lines offer is the ability to customize flocks throughout the season to say something specific to the birds. That’s often the key to killing more pressured birds, or putting them right in the decoys for an easy bow or gun shot.
Of course, there is still the issue of whether spending way up for some decoys is really worth it over the long run.
Buy once, cry once
There are basically three types of decoy bodies out there. The cheapie foam kind mentioned in the intro, inflatable or pop-out styles, and then hard-bodied models. The latter is what will cost you the most money, and will be the most difficult to transport into the field.
But they also last much longer than the other two options. Anything inflatable is ripe for longevity issues, because they’ll have a valve that can leak over time. And they are made to fold over for transport, which means the integrity of their shape can suffer while also creating other wear points.
The decoy types other than the hard-body options will generally be cheaper (often much cheaper). But you should also not expect to get as many years of use out of them. This is the case with a lot of products; you can pay up initially, but not have to repair or replace them for a long, long time. Or, you can save money on the front end and buy more frequently.
It’s all up to the individual and his or her circumstances, but the truth is there is a reason the high-end options cost an arm and a leg. They tend to work really, really well and should last a long time.
Whether that’s worth the credit card swipe is another matter, but it’s important to at least understand why there is such an overall variance in the price of the turkey decoys available.
