Building a new spread for next season

[wlgorman]

Figured I'd share this with my long lost coastal brothers.

Since I moved up north I get a fair share of greenheads on most hunts. Starting with 8-10 mallards, then gonna build 20 or so coots, then start on the gadwall. Starting with 2 high head/alert mallard drakes and one HH/alert mallard hen, then going to start playing with different poses, like head underwater feeding and skimmer feeders. Maybe even a preener or two. These are foam bodies which are shaped, then burlapped.

Oh btw these are from scratch and all will be fully flocked. Not counting the tools I bought (around 200 bucks worth), each decoy will cost me around $3-4bucks to make. If even that.

[nokatchin]

Nice work

[GHSmacker]

Cool stuff, that will be a pretty cool thing to shoot some birds over your own blocks.

Keep us updated whenever you turn the poul deauxs and grey ducks.

[Milkjug]

GHS, that may be the first serious reply I've seen you post. I was waiting for you to tell him that he needs more scaup, merganser, and spoonie dekes to bring in the quality birds.

That is very cool wlgorman. I am going to repaint a bunch of end-of-season discount mallard drakes I have to look like scaup/redhead, and that is about as adventurous of a project as I want right now. Must be cool to shoot birds over dekes you built!

[GHSmacker]

GHS, that may be the first serious reply I've seen you post. I was waiting for you to tell him that he needs more scaup, merganser, and spoonie dekes to bring in the quality birds.

That is very cool wlgorman. I am going to repaint a bunch of end-of-season discount mallard drakes I have to look like scaup/redhead, and that is about as adventurous of a project as I want right now. Must be cool to shoot birds over dekes you built!

MJ(not to be confused with Michael Jordan)...i'm sorry, i'll continue back to my regularly scheduled sacrasm. Every now and again i slip over to the dark side.

If you want to kill more divers and add to your spread, do what you're talking about. Take all of those old, beat up dekes of yours that look like poop and give them a white/black paint job just like a bluebill. Don't worry too much about hens either, the more black/white you have sitting on that water the better those decoys will stick out. Those dumb ol' divers can't resist. And don't worry about making bluebills/redheads/jacks/cans...just do bluebills and any of those other birds will come to them. About the only divers that are particular are goldeneyes and buffleheads. Everything else doesn't mind, as long as it's black and white.

[Milkjug]

Or worse the late Michael Jackson...

I've heard that scaup are good diver dekes. The black/white is supposed to contrast well.

One of things I am going to try out this next season is open water hunting. Set up my yak like a lay-out blind, quick release anchor w/ float to go and retrieve birds, a few long lines of dekes.

It seemed like the birds were shying away from the bank last season on public. They would land ~75 yds out, then swim in while scruitinizing everything.

Plus there are way too many duck hunters out there now. There were a few times that other hunters would be less than 100yds away. Seems like you could get some space in the middle of the bay, sad it has to come to that.

I appreciate the advice, ya'll got some nice birds last season.

[GHSmacker]

MJ...

That's just the way public hunting is these days. It's every man for himself, and most others don't have the common courtesy to give a guy that beat them out there a wide berth(much like fishing). There are ways to beat them at their own game...maybe i will tell you one day if we ever hunt/fish together.

Another thing on divers. If you set a long line of decoys way out in the water(100+ yards), those birds will follow the decoys up 8/9 times out of ten. They can't help it. Set a long, lose scattered of dekes out in a broken up line that leads into your main pod of decoys. Try that one out and see if it works.