How to Call Fall Jakes

If your area has a fall season you may get a chance at a short beard or jake if there is a flock of them in your turkey woods.

Jakes are like high school boys walking home together, grabbing hats, tripping each other, and dragging each other around by their back packs. Jakes can hardly go an hour without brawling or abusing the weakest member. They’ve got a lot of exuberance and little experience. They should be easy to call in but this isn’t so because they have the attention span of gnats. They’ll start coming to your call then get into a scrap among themselves, forget where they were going and run off fighting in another direction. But if a gang of raucous jakes ever focuses on your calls long enough to swarm you it’ll boost your heart rate just as nicely as a big tom sneaking up behind you and gobbling down your neck.

Call to jakes with clucks, hoarse jake yelps and kee kee runs that end with a couple of jake yelps. Some jakes are trying to gobble by the fall. Their half gobble will attract other jakes looking for company or a scrap.

Jakes are hyped up on the adventure of being away from mother hen so use excited calling. Raspy multiple reed mouth calls make good jake yelps. On box calls use less pressure than when making a hen yelp and you will get the lower jake yelp. Slow down the rhythm a little compared to hen yelps.  A glass pot call with a carbon striker makes good jake kee kee runs. Make the three note whistle or kee sound with heavy pressure near the outer edge of the call where the tone is higher. Then slide the striker to the middle of the call to make a two yelps with lighter pressure. The jake half gobble sounds like a strangled gobble. You may be able to duplicate it on a mouth call or with a jake gobble shaker