I'm not exactly an expert, but my belief is that if a Tom comes in to a hen he will try to mount it from the rear, therefore if you are using a lone hen it should face away from you. When you have a jake in the spread, the tom will try to pick a fight with it, especially if it thinks the hen is about to submit to the jake. You never really know which way the tom is going to come in from after you set up initially. Life is great when they come in on a string from the direction you think they're going to come from, but I find many times they circle around, and end up coming from a direction you never expected them to. One expert I spoke with at a seminar once told me that if you only use one decoy, make it a jake. His reasoning was the tom can hear the hen (i.e. your calls) but the jake will bring him in to square off for mating rights. I never tried that but it does make sense... I don't know if there is reallya wrong way to set up dekes. Sometimes no decoy is best. I have had them hang up out of range but did they see the decoys at all? or was there something else that made them nervous?? If the area I'm hunting is a small clearing surrounded by thick stuff, I leave the decoys in my vest, I figure if the tom comes looking for the hen and I can see him, he'll be in range...