DECOYS

I can't say for sure.  I used a doe decoy this year for the first time.  Had 2 encounters with legal bucks.  One was in a field near dark where he did not really care it was there at all.  Then he spooked on it all of a sudden when he got about 10 yards away.  The other encounter cost me a buck Monday evening.  I wanted to get the decoy in a place where they could see it once got into bow range to keep the heat off me in a wide open ladder stand that's only 15' off the ground.  Well it worked too good.  Buck stopped at 45 yards stomped and snorted at the decoy about a dozen times then ran off.  I had a perfect broadside 45 yarder but decided wasn't worth the potential for error.  Had he been a bigger buck I may have taken the chance because I was sure of the distance.  Anyway I got even yesterday morning on a nice 2.5 yr old that came in to my soft grunts at about 10:00 AM.  Did not use the decoy on this occasion.  Done for the year now.

I been doing alot of reding about using decoys.They claim that if you add a tail the decoy it would help you 100 percent.I cut me 2 tails out of a unscented whit garbage bag.I sprayed them down with scent killer and now there hanging out on the front porch.I will try tonight with the tail using a buck decoy with rutting buck scent on the tail if no response i will take the head gear off and put vs-1 one on the other tail i made.Clay do you wear rubber gloves when your touching your decoy?

Nope, don't use rubber gloves.  But I rarely touch anything with my hunting gloves on if I can help it.  My decoy is only a 2D view of a doe feeding.  You can see her full rear and the tail is the dominating feature.  I put one of my VS-1 bombs behind her.  I think the issue I had is that the bucks spooked when expecting some movement.  The one stomped a couple times and got noticeably confused when it don't move.

I had 2 reasons for trying the decoy.  One to keep the heat off me while in stand due to being generally low in trees and sometimes limited cover.  The other is b/c in years past I was able to grunt up some bucks but they would look around then turn and walk away or skirt around the edge, just out of range.

My days of decoy hunting may not be over, but I was successful without it this year.