I will be doing my annual south Texas turkey hunt next week in Atascosa, Live Oak and McMullen counties. Anybody know what the birds are doing in that area?

I can tell you around poteet they seem to have split up and not want to get in front of a cam...lol. from what landowner has told me is that they have been gobbling pretty good over the last 3 weeks. I know a week ago there would be Turkey pics on cam pretty much all day. Now very few. Seems they are more focused on breeding than eating. I am more worried about hunting in the rain than anything else. I have never hunted south Texas in the rain. I'm sure it's just like anywhere else but may affect these birds more being they dont see rain near as much.

South Texas wants me to come turkey hunting. Just about every time I come it rains some. It really never had much affect on the birds unless it was a heavy rain. South Texas desperately needs rain, so the rain is not a bad thing. I'm leaving next Wednesday. The forecast calls for no rain then. Good luck on your hunt.

Same to you buddy. Yeah my buddy place is super dry this year. The river/creek that runs through there is dry all besides a couple deep holes. I leave Friday am to hunt sat, sun, and mon if needed. Hes got a couple studs on cam. Hopefully they want to play the game. I have always loved running a strutting deke there. Them groups of 2-3 gobblers that come in will straight up go to town on a strutting Jake. A lot of other places I wont use it but there they go crazy.

Last year I had my full strutter and 5 hen decoys out across the field from the roost. They were all coming until those toms saw that strutter and they put the brakes on. All the hens came in and eventually moved off into the creek bottom and the toms headed back the direction they came. They have never once not come in to the full stutter before. I drove around on the back side of those toms, called one time and they were in front of me in 5 minutes...go figure.

That is crazy. Are you running a regular strutter or jake? I run the DSD jake strutter and it is a lot smaller than others. Before that I had the redhead reality series jake and it was also smaller. If you are running a full size deke that may be why. It also may be the time of year as well and where they are at in the breeding cycle. Last year I had a group of two come in that initially acted a little skeptical. They hung up around 60 yards looking at decoy then one of them broke camp and headed straight for it. When he did that other followed suit. Now I have used it in big open fields in Georgia and Bama and have the same thing happen you mentioned above.

I have also set up where a bird could see the decoy (got to close to roost) while they were on the limb. They hit the ground and went opposite direction. I dont believe there is a definite in turkey hunting. I have been successful with strutting dekes but have probably killed more birds without any dekes out.