Turkey Decoy Setup: The Hazel Creek Love Triangle

World champion turkey taxidermist Cally Morris specializes in capturing close, over-the-shoulder turkey hunts on video. His ultra-realistic Hazel Creek turkey decoys certainly help, but over the years, Cally has learned that the placement of those decoys is often the critical difference between a bird hung up at 40 yards and a bird flogging the decoys at 15 steps.

Done right, these decoy tips can help you, regardless of the brand of decoy you're using (although the more realistic, the better). Check out the video above of the Love Triangle in action (that's Cally's wife, Annetta, hunting Merriam's gobblers at the Vermejo Ranch), and then read Cally's advice below for setting this spread.

In the field, the Hazel Creek Love Triangle includes three decoys: a strutting tom, a standing hen and a hen on her belly. Set the gobbler decoy about 15 steps from your location, and put the hen on her belly about four steps in front of him. That gives a gobbler ample room to strut between the hen on her belly and the strutting decoy. Off to the side, but still in your shooting lane, set the standing confidence decoy that's feeding or preening.

When you have a group of toms or a single aggressive tom, they see the decoy trio — the hen on her belly acting like she wants to be bred, the standing confidence decoy and the fanned out tom — and they'll run up, attack him and try to run him off. This decoy set is designed to give you easy shot placement. So long as that gobbler believes those decoys are real turkeys, he'll strut around, beat the gobbler decoy, maybe breed the hens, and it'll give you the exact shot angle you need. It's especially deadly for bowhunters.