When specks settle down after the opening few days,they always seem to line up on the sound and for me,it is like they don't even care about the decoys

HOWEVER,I did an experiment to see if we really even needed speck decoys after 4 seasons of using a redbone,and oh yes,even though it seems like they are ignoring the decoys, WE NEED THEM

I got cocky,thought,oh I have world titles,we don't need decoys---WRONG ANSWER--JOHN

I have and am in the process of painting all our goose decoys,nothing fancy,super flat paint

And as mentioned---make the white stand out

You can put out wood carved dekes that cost $400 each.. if you dont have the two different types of motion that are present in a natural spread of birds youre just wasting money. Ive witnessed birds choose a spread of milk jugs over another high dollar spread because the two types of motion were present, and the hunters might not have been the best callers but they knew when to call which is just as important.

My opinion is there's a place for cheap decoys and a place for expensive ultra-realistic looking decoys. If I'm hunting over a spread of 4+dozen decoys I don't think the expensive decoys make a difference. But if I'm hunting a small pothole targeting mallards, and mottled ducks with less than 2 dozen decoys I believe it could make a difference.

Coke bottles are great if your hunting over 100+ decoys and leave them out all season.

A buddy of mine kind of new to hunting said last year, man don't throw out those old nasty decoys. (These nasty decoys have worked great and will continue to work) but I was hunting his place so I played along and bit my lip. The point is, opinions are not always generated from sound experience and I'm sure he's not the only one who think ugly decoys don't kill ducks.

What about this scenario

I have a mixed spread

newer full bodies in goods shape and older repaints

My thought is to put the best looking stuff toward the periphery of the spread and the older stuff closer to the blind

I strongly believe in concealment and reading birds

Do others on here place the best looking or newer decoys toward the periphery,or just mix and not worry so much with decoy placement?

like previously stated i think it depends on situation... if you are hunting late season potholing ducks, then yea grab your best dozen you can.. same thing with geese, if you are trying to put the old sneak attack on some specks and plan on using half dozen, then yea grab your fully flocked fancy shmancy.

if you are hunting a big pond/large field cuts and are planning to use the most decoys you can then i really dont think it matters. mix in the old with new.

I, too try to incorporate that theory. When I guided, I used 400 duck decoys in the marsh. I would always put the "prettiest" ones on the edge of the hole that I wanted to them to decoy to. In the marsh that I hunted, SE or E was the predominant wind and the best for my blind, so, I'd also put some more "pretty" ones so they could bank and see those first. Not saying that it mattered. I'll never know, cause that's what I did every time I set them for the splits....

Flat black coke bottles are legit!! Takes little to no wind to move them and they do some good dancing. Once that flat black gets wet, it makes one hell of a shine on them.

Sooo what Wal-Mart is selling the $35.00 a dozen Flambeaus?

Saw some 1 liter parade pineapple pops on sale 10 for a buck. I'ma holla

Cop dat.. My pops has had a big water marsh blind for the past 8 seasons or so, and we have the best success on the entire property aside from a few pot holes on the far edge of the lease. There are about 6 blinds that basically all shoot the same birds, as in, they generally stay in the same flyway and break off that to check stuff out. No one is really directly in the flyway so I've always felt that everyone as far as blind locations go, have the same opportunities to kill these birds as we do. We share a huge body of water with 1 other blind. This blind gets dropped every year, and a new group gets on it. Sometimes they'll put out 2 dozen, but occasionally they'll have a group put out a mondo spread. Our only goal is to have at least three times as many dekes than they do. So we've been going the coke bottle route for a while now, and it works. Usually about a 20/80 bottle/decoy ratio. All we do is paint them like a scaup and throw actual nice scaup dekes around the edges of them to kind of hide them. The only downfall is when the waves get bad they flip all kinds of stupid ways, although this might actually help us out with the motion, but it looks awful. Also, if there's any paint chipping and the plastic is showing, it shines like a diamond. I've heard of people coating them with tar, and I'm sure that works better than the paint, but have never tried it. Just don't expect to finish birds in your dekes. Better stone em first pass. Besides the scaup.. they f'n LOVE it lol. On another note I just purchased all the stuff to flock decoys instead of just touch up paint.

Where is Bigizzle aka Bounce DA HEN....
I would really like his input on this....lol

x2

He couldn't be here but he sent this message....

Attachment 95741


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not ducks, but geese, but I've had specks land next to full body specks in a rag spread, and on top of rags before. There is no one right answer. All situation specific.

Probably still staking out dat Lacassine Flyway.......:shaking:

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Borden don't make no good stickers, I aint using no milk jugs. What you going to do peel the sticker off the milk carton and put it on your back glass of your F-250 or on your yeti? I'm sponsored by Borden Baw, back up off me!



















































































J/K

Insulting! I have you know I drive ONLY Chevys and use K2s! Kleinpeters jugs are better....I use local!;)

Dude I almost forgot about the Lacassine Flyway, that was an epic thread.

Can't forget bout the lacassine flyway dude. That's the honey.