Like everybody else has stated it is first & foremost a personal choice. I choose not to shoot Jakes - anymore. I have taken one jake, my fourth bird. He came in silent except for his footsteps in the leaves. When he popped his head up over the rise I could see he was all red-on-the-head and was in half strut. I assumed he was a gobbler and took him. Nice bird though: 15# with a 5" beard.
I have since let many jakes walk past my gun barrel. As a matter of fact I had six come in this morning at 15 yds. I really enjoyed the show watching them establish pecking order and listening to their teenage gobbles. They do love to gobble! Great morning! Oh, how I wish there had been a gobbler in the bunch!
I look at it this way: next year I could have six two-year-olds to hunt in addition to the three gobblers running up and down the creek bottom (hopefully there will be at least one less gobbler next year
).
Is this true? Does letting the jakes walk create better Tom hunting the next year? Who's to say if one of the jakes I have let walk in the past gave me the chance to harvest him the next year or the year after that? I hunt a private farm of ~1000 ac. and the birds there stand a better than average chance of making it to next year, but the biologists talk about "distribution of offspring" and "genetic dispersal". Of course these factors impact the chance that I will see the same birds year after year, but this is my decision and i decde to not shoot jakes, much like I now won't shoot a spike or a forky deer. It's kinda like the deer hunting philosophy: if you want to shoot big bucks you gotta let the little ones walk to grow-up.
Again, I see nothing wrong w/ taking any legal bird (well, I don't think I would shoot a bearded hen in the Spring) and if nothing else the jake I took was a bit more tender than some of those boss Toms!
just my .02 cents
