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Use of Flocked Head Decoys?

5K views 45 replies 12 participants last post by  Elvis Kiwi 
#1 ·
I just purchased a doz. Dakota X-treme Decoys. They come with 7 drake floater bodies, 7 flocked drake heads, and 7 painted drake heads.

Is there a "rule of thumb" to govern whether to use the flocked or painted heads, or is it all a matter of preference?

I was attracted to these decoys by the way they sit and activate in the water, more than the flocked heads.

I plan to store these decoys in a slot bag.

Thanks for sharing your opinions.
 
#2 ·
I've used Dakotas the past three seasons and am a fan, but I doubt the flocked heads are any more attractive to ducks than the painted. Might even be that brightly painted ones are more attractive to the birds than the muted flocking. I've been running some of each.
 
#11 ·
At some point in your duck hunting career you will come to the realization that most of these "new and improved" ideas for gear in general is based on you thinking like a human and not a duck. Consider that the bird you're trying to fool has a brain the size of half a walnut, is flying by your spread at 30 to 40 mph and is looking things over with one eye (no depth perception). Ocer the years I've hunted over stuffers, some very good commercially available decoys, some pretty beat up decoys and some I carved myself. If you are in a place the birds want to be and you set your spread in a realistic manner, it doesn't matter at all.

There's a video on the NYSDEC website about a fellow upstate NY that carves some very nice birds. They still look like wooden carvings, but nice wooden carvings. His point is that when you're duck hunting you spend a lot of time looking at your decoys, so you can look at nice decoys or not so nice decoys. Both will work. And I can personally vouch for the fact that the not so nice birds will work about as well as any. Any resemblance by some of my original carvings to a duck was purely coincidental. But they tolled birds.

If the flocked heads, or anything else make you feel better or more confidant, get them. It can't hurt. But I seriously doubt if they'll really help.

Frank
 
#12 ·
Frank Lopez said:
At some point in your duck hunting career you will come to the realization that most of these "new and improved" ideas for gear in general is based on you thinking like a human and not a duck. Consider that the bird you're trying to fool has a brain the size of half a walnut, is flying by your spread at 30 to 40 mph and is looking things over with one eye (no depth perception). Ocer the years I've hunted over stuffers, some very good commercially available decoys, some pretty beat up decoys and some I carved myself. If you are in a place the birds want to be and you set your spread in a realistic manner, it doesn't matter at all.
I didn't have to be very far into my duck hunting career to come to the realization that I could all too infrequently set up right where the birds wanted to be or that it wasn't nearly so hard to fool birds flying by a spread at 30 to 40mph as the ones hanging up giving it a hard look. Or to see birds flaring off decoys and over guns, for that matter.

Suggesting decoy quality doesn't matter because some birds will toll to most anything is akin to saying concealment doesn't matter because some birds have tolled while you're standing in the spread taking a whiz.
 
#13 ·
I have to disagree, Rick. The birds just don't see all that well as some might give them credit for. Without binocular vision, all that detail is lost. And the subject at hand, flocking, is just too detailed to notice even by humans.

As far as concealment, I've sat on a stool on a barren beach in a tan canvas jacket with my decoys 15 t0 35 yards in front of me on a very pressured public marsh and not had issues. Movement, or lack of it, is the key.

Far too often, hunters tend to attribute human qualities to their quarry. The fact is that game does not think, nor does game have the ability to reason. What game does do is to react to its environment. If something looks unnatural, they'll avoid the area. And the fact is that they aren't all that good at determining what looks perfectly natural. On a bet, Ted Trueblood once painted bright red stripes on the backs of his decoys and still brought in ducks.

Like I said, if it makes you feel better, have at it. But it really isn't necessary.

Frank
 
#15 ·
Ted Trueblood once painted bright red stripes on the backs of his decoys and still brought in ducks.
If you're exactly where they want to be you can get away with alot...if you are competing with others in heavy pressure areas you can not. Personally, I will try and get every advantage I can, and that includes using the best looking decoys I can. There is no comparison to a fully flocked, nicely airbrushed decoy as opposed to cheap plastics with shiny paint. :thumbsup:
 
#16 ·
Mean Gene said:
There is no comparison to a fully flocked, nicely airbrushed decoy as opposed to cheap plastics with shiny paint. :thumbsup:
Perhaps in your eyes. But it doesn't matter to the ducks. No matter how much you anthropomorphisize it, they are still not equipped with the ocular or cranial capacity to descern that much detail. He11, I've seen turkeys try and mount a decoy that looked more like a decoy than a real hen! At that was up close and personal and not moving!

Birds are no smarter today than they were fifty years ago. Back then a lot of us were using the old Victor paper mache decoys. Those things barely resembled ducks in shape, had horrible paint and on top of all that, the eye color was yellow regardless of species! Half the time they were so beat up from being thrown in the bag or boat that they looked more like duck we'd already killed. But, they worked. And worked well.

According to some scientists and decoy manuracturers, birds see in the UV spectrum. If that's the case, why are they dropping in on any spread that isn't painted with UV paint? They tried that one on deer hunters about twenty years ago. Kind of fell by the wayside. Same with all these innovations in waterfowl decoys. It's all about advertizing and marketing and mostly about prying dead presidents from your wallet. Just like fishing lures. The ammo manufacturers are doing the same thing with the different gimmick loads. The bottom line is that you can't buy success. You might get lucky once or twice, but in the long run, you're selling yourself short because it's YOUR own skill that'skilling birds, not anything you buy.

Frank
 
#18 ·
Rick Hall said:
Mr. Wizard's still slaying 'em over mud clumps with his atlatl.
Rick, I've always thought you to be smarter than that!

Frank
 
#19 ·
I'm smart enough to know that just because some birds are tame as park pigeons, not all are. And I'm smart enough to know that no matter how small their brains are or how poor you think their vision is some birds flare off of even very good decoys, and when their flight then carries them over the blind, it's tough to conclude that it was something other than the decoy(s) that spooked them.

I am by no means smart enough to always know exactly what it was they didn't like. But I'm not too full of what I think I know to try to learn the answers to such riddles.
 
#20 ·
Frank Lopez said:
On a bet, Ted Trueblood once painted bright red stripes on the backs of his decoys and still brought in ducks.
Being old enough to recall the barber pole paint job story, but not connecting it to Trueblood, who I recall as a straight shooter, I just Googled it unsuccessfully.

But I did encounter this account of an experiment on the subject by the University of Michigan's School of Natural Reseources:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...S0aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4yMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4524,3630811
 
#21 ·
Rick Hall said:
But I'm not too full of what I think I know to try to learn the answers to such riddles.
That's debateable, as you seem narrow minded about this and bent on one train of thought. There's a whole bunch of hard science that points in another direction. Science that is founded in eliminating variables that might cloud the outcome.

Frank
 
#22 ·
Rick Hall said:
Frank Lopez said:
On a bet, Ted Trueblood once painted bright red stripes on the backs of his decoys and still brought in ducks.
Being old enough to recall the barber pole paint job story, but not connecting it to Trueblood, who I recall as a straight shooter, I just Googled it unsuccessfully.

But I did encounter this account of an experiment on the subject by the University of Michigan's School of Natural Reseources:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...S0aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=4yMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4524,3630811
Try Lamar Underwood's "The Duck Hunter's Book"!

Frank
 
#24 ·
To Frank Lopez, I'm actually in the market to buy decoys right now, and I'm curious, based on your beliefs, what kind of decoys make up the bulk of your spread right now? I'm also curious, if you're hunting a small waterhole where you will only use a handful of your decoys, do you even take the time to pick the best looking decoys you have, or the cleanest, or the ones with the least chipped paint, or do you just randomly grab a handful of decoys from the bulk of your spread. When I throw a handful of decoys out, I always try to pick the ones in the best condition, but maybe even that is a waste of time.
 
#25 ·
I'm afraid Frank is 100% correct on this: ducks have no ability to reason, they cannot apply logic to their situations, and we invariably view their world through human eyes.

Rick is also correct: as a human hunter, I want my decoys to be as perfect as they possibly can be....for my own sake as much as for the ducks. Good-looking (to the DUCKS!) decoys never hurt my chances.

Ultra-realistic decoys may not be necessary 98% of the time (and I believe they are not), but when that other 2% of the hunting situations comes around, I want ALL the details on MY side. This includes decoys, gun, camouflage, blinds/cover, etc.

I believe flocked decoys look a lot better to us than they do to the ducks. LIfe-like shapes and body/head positions are more important to their appeal. Placement of the blocks themselves is at least as important as the appearance of the individual decoys. That's my opinion, based on over 50 years of hunting waterfowl.
 
#26 ·
Frank Lopez said:
Rick Hall said:
But I'm not too full of what I think I know to try to learn the answers to such riddles.
That's debateable, as you seem narrow minded about this and bent on one train of thought. There's a whole bunch of hard science that points in another direction. Science that is founded in eliminating variables that might cloud the outcome.

Frank
I somehow missed that gem last evening. And while I've posted a link to a University of Michigan study speaking to the birds' preference for good decoys, I think it fair to share the "Science that is founded in eliminating variables that might cloud the outcome." behind my "narrow minded...train of thought".

Never mind how long I might claim to have duck hunted (by some on these boards' reckoning my 13yr-old grandson has 9 years "experience") or, perhaps, even that I've been charged with filling pay hunter straps virtually every open season day since 1984. I know plenty of old waterfowlers, some of whom have guided much longer than I, who've failed to turn experience into much knowledge. Experience is wasted on those who don't pay attention, experiment accordingly and continue to grow from those practices.

In our part of the country, specklebelly geese present what I believe the toughest litmus test for decoys. No, they're not ducks, but they are equipped with similar vision limitations and advantages. And much of my current decoying beliefs with regard to most waterfowl comes from what the specks have taught us.

Having been an Ohio Valley Canada hunter who'd enjoyed great success over a mix of shell decoy makes and homemade silhouettes, I was surprised to discover a great many Louisiana specks turned up their noses at such mixes. And, through experimentation, I learned that any mix of differing speck shell makes was apt to be less successful than just using even the worst looking of those alone. My conclusion being that a mix gave birds that were looking for trouble opportunities for troubling comparison.

When Big Foot made their first run of specklebelly decoys, several years before they became a permanent offering, I thought they'd blow the socks off the G&H standard speck shells that had been our decoy gold standard and ponied up the then princely sum of $36 each for a spread of them that proved disappointing, no matter how badly I wanted that serious investment to pay off. Specks simply wouldn't finish as well to the BFs as they did to standard G&H shells, something also independently confirmed by a professional carver friend with a permit to keep live specks who'd repainted BFs to match them as well as humanly possible and the widely considered specklebelly guru who bought up most of the early BF specks to be found in our area. I couldn't help but conclude, after giving them much more chance to pay off than a less stubborn soul might, that the BF's greater size made it easier for wary specks to conclude they were trouble.

When better and smaller fullbodies became available, experimentation made it clear that the early Hardcore FBs more readily finished specks than than much easier to transport G&H shells. And when Dave Smith Decoys introduced what most today consider the gold standard of fullbodies, experimentation with both they and '04/05 Hardcores in the same field but widely separated showed the specks favored the Hardcores, likely because the HCs of that period included several more body postures than DSDs, or perhaps because the HCs were a bit closer to the specks' true color, or both. (The bummer being that those HCs didn't hold paint worth a flip.) Along similar lines, the "speck guru" friend mentioned above experimented for a couple seasons with a large five dozen DSD and five dozen fully flocked GHG fullbody spread, before concluding he could finish far more birds by ditching the GHGs. Whether because of the differences between those makes and/or simply fewer chances to spot the manikin being something we still enjoy knocking around.

The speck's susceptibility to calling and scrutiny of decoys has led many of us to frequently hunt over very small spreads or none at, particularly in the late season. If ground conditions are such that it's difficult for specks to see that there are not birds down there, they'll often come low trying to find the source of a well concealed hunter's circumspect calling when they'd likely have circled high studying his decoys in the same location. While decoyless hunting is not an uncommon ploy among veteran speck hunters, I know just one guide bold enough to take advantage of that phenomenon when hunting paying guns who don't know and trust him. And I'm not that guide.

When I'm guiding for late season birds and not needing decoys to bolster our concealment, I stick with small spreads, even when we might well be ahead with none. But I try to "hide" those decoys on rough ground or near small weed clumps or such to make them difficult for the birds to see well. And the most challenging late season speck hunts are over open water where the decoys stand out plain as day. In that situation it's quite common to see specks bump hard off even a single decoy, sometimes crossing the guns in doing so.

All of which being a long-winded way of saying I believe it behooves me to play to the most worried birds out there and not settle for what's good enough for others. And I try to do so by experimenting and paying attention.
 
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