With a weekend off from duck hunting, I decided to look back on recent posts to see what duck hunters are discussing to fill this week’s blog. I found several posts discussing the d’s and don’ts of duck decoys, so I figured I would throw my opinion out there with the rest of them.
My hunting started with two or three trips a year with my dad’s oilfield customers on guided hunts, so we didn’t have to decide on decoy spreads. In all the years I hunted with that guide, I never saw him change or arrange decoys between hunts. The decoys would be out in the ponds before we got there and would stay long after we were gone. The only time he played with a decoy was when one of us mistook it for a duck and it was pulled out the pond to be sent to the grave. The guide put out decoys at the beginning of the season and left them in place until it closed, and he hunted probably 50 out of the 60 day season, with some success.
My current situation in my lease is that I have a certain pond that I am allowed to hunt. I can set up my blind on any bank on that pond, but I am not supposed to move around the lease. I prefer to hunt comfortably and safely, so we have set up a fixed blind in the grass with wood floor and a bench seat, which means I don’t move around the pond. We used to hunt from the boat, but the shifting, unstable boat with my son coming into hunting age was not a good thing so we went to the bank for safety and comfort. This means that I hunt a fixed location every hunt. When we first started with this lease, we put out about three dozen decoys. Each year, a few more were added, and we are now at about nine dozen.
I have found that more decoys have brought more ducks coming down to look at our ponds. Some don’t agree, but that is what I have found. Within our lease, our blind often gets more shots than others. We have good feed in my pond and plenty of decoys.
I do not repaint decoys, and don’t really care what the paint colors look like. I want them to float and look like the silhouette of a duck. Other than maybe a white patch on a wing, I really doubt that ducks can see much paint detail on decoys from 100 yards out on the fly. I am sure they can’t see that the greenhead has become a black head. I buy the least expensive decoys I can find, and generally buy one new dozen per year so that a few of them will have a bright white wing or tail paint to help catch a duck’s eye, but that’s about it. I don’t see the point in spending $80 per dozen on the super-nice painted decoys when I can get four dozen of the cheaper ones for the same price. If a duck is close enough to see the paint pattern on my decoy, he should be getting shot at already anyway. As long as the decoys float, I throw them out there each year.
I generally put them out at the beginning of the season and leave them in place. I will pick up a few that float away or start to sink, and maybe shuffle them a little in the split, but I really don’t mess with them much after I put them out until the season ends.
I put my large duck decoys to the sides of my blind, about three dozen to each side. I randomly place them with a few pairs and groups, but no set pattern or “J” or anything like that. I keep my teal separated and put them right in front of the blind, a little tighter to each other and a little closer to the blind than the big ducks. I find the teal tend to come right into or over the teal decoys when they are segregated, and it gives the best shots at passing teal to have them come right over the middle. When the teal do land, it is almost always right next to the group of teal decoys, not the big decoys. I leave a noticeable landing zone in between the teal and the big-duck groups. My closest decoys are the teal at 15 yards from the bank, and my farthest decoys are about 50 yards.
I don’t move my decoys during the season because I really believe that if I shot at a duck one day, he will remember that POND as a danger, not the fake plastic ducks. Whether I move the decoys around or take out half of them, I doubt that duck will come back to that pond. The ducks that will come by are ones who have just come down to the coast or have moved from another coastal area to mine. So, my belief is that new ducks to my area will come into the pond and ones that have been on my lease for tw0 weeks will not, no matter what I do to my decoys.
My position on electronic decoys is simple. I don’t use them. Tried them a few years back, they didn’t work, so I quit after the first season. I rely on a little breeze to put movement in my decoys. Some days I have it, some days I don’t.
A couple of little things that I always do:
• Never let two decoys touch each other. I move them so that they have at least a foot between the nearest decoy. That way they look more normal and don’t clank when a breeze blows them around.
• Tie a few decoys with the string attached at the rear end of the keel rather than the front. This way, in a strong wind, all of the decoys are not facing the same direction like a military formation. Some of them will be facing opposite the others and it looks better. It also gives them a different motion when the wind blows at them from the back end.
A few years back, I took the time at the end of the season to go out to different areas and look at wild ducks on a pond. I also look at pictures in magazines of real ducks on ponds. I found that they scatter randomly, not in a “J” or line or anything distinct. The different species generally mix up with each other, not segregate with their own. I challenge you to take a morning and check it out for yourself and go out to a pond or marsh or really look hard when you see an aerial picture or pond shot in a magazine to see what real ducks do. It is not rocket science. I try to re-create that scene, and I have good success with it. I don’t compare my hunts to others because I know there are other areas that always have more ducks than my lease. But, I do compare my blind to the others on my lease, and each year my blind gets more shots at ducks than the others. That tells me that the ducks that are looking at my spread and my pond like it better than the others they are looking at.
In a nutshell, here are my ideas on decoys:
• More is better.
• Teal decoys group separately from big duck decoys.
• Teal in the center of the spread tighter to each other and big ducks on the outside of the spread a little more spread out between each decoy.
• Generous landing areas between the groups of decoys.
• Big ducks on sides of my blind placed randomly, some in pairs/quads.
• Paint doesn’t matter, floating does.
• I don’t let them bang together or touch each other. Doesn’t sound or look right.
• Make them look like magazine pictures of big flocks of wild ducks.
Well guys, those are my thoughts on duck decoys. I would like to hear what you guys think, whether you agree or disagree.
I did see some new big ducks on the ponds yesterday when I went out to the lease. This weekend should be a good one. Hope you shoot straight and shoot often!
