[GitRDonePaul]

do type of decoys make a difference such as mallard teal pintail ect. in what duck will land?

will the paint scheme is bad or paint has rubbed off will that make a difference?

does the placement of my decoys make a big difference? I.E. Patterns pond placement, direction

what kinds of decoys are good I.E. feeders, sleepers and what not.

off subject but does total concealment of guns face and body have a huge impact or just enough that you get some and lose some?

 

[DUKHTR]

YES - on all questions!

I believe each subject has been discussed in detail on this forum - you can search accordingly and get specific answers.

 

[mallardhunter]

:withstupid:

 

[donell67]

:withstupid:

 

[SCoutdoorsman]

:withstupid:

Iknew that was coming before i opened the post :laughing:

Just search around the topics and see what you can find, let us know if you still got questions. :thumbsup:

 

[huntmq1]

:withstupid:

 

[thaner]

:withstupid: but,

To some point decoy types are important, but I have killed all kinds of ducks using mallards. I do like a few wood ducks when I am hunting in wood duck feeding areas like timber.

I don't think paint is that critical unless it is really bad or your getting glare off the decoys.

Placement is critical if you want to control where the birds land.

If they see you or your gun they are out of there. I used to think you could be a little lax on this, but one day a couple of guys came out on the other side of the marsh area I was hunting and they had shinny guns and no camo on their faces. I could see their face and flash of their guns from over 300 yards with the sun on them.

I have mostly standard duck decoys, but I always throw in a couple of feeders and sleepers. I think it is important go give the perception of movement even when they are still as the duck move around them they see different positions. My small setup consists of 12 standards with 2 feeders and 2 sleepers. Works just fine, but I killed ducks over all standard also.

Just my personal experience

 

[Bigmal]

:withstupid:

Just make sure you have some out there for the ducks to see.

Placement if you are hunting in open water is critical, flooded timber not that critical

 

[SwampHunter]

I will answer the questions from what I have seen in 30 something years of hunting my area.

When I first started hunting up until the age of 10 all I had was 5 old styrofoam decoys that were painted black. These decoys had patches of the white foam showing through the paint. I used these when I hunted behind my house on the flood water and killed alot of birds over them.
Everyone else I know had nothing but rigs of Mallard decoys and black jugs. That's all we ever hunted over until I was about 15. I then started painting decoys up as other species, but it didn't seem to help any better.
We always killed other species over Mallard decoys and the black decoys.

The only time that placement helps is to put the birds exactly where you want them in the decoy spread. Decoys are used for leverage as well as attraction. Leverage meaning you put the decoys in a certain way to get the ducks to land in the kill zone.

We never saw sleeper and feeder decoys until way late in the game. Never knew they existed until I was about 18 years old. The store bought decoys all had upright heads so that's all we knew. Couldn't tell that it hurt us any at all.

With all of that being said, you should see the spread I run now. Everything I run in my spread has to be realistic looking and the more different poses the better. I have to have species that match the area too.
Now please note that none of this matters. I do this 100% for myself. 99.8% of what we as hunters do is for ourselves. The only things that matters is: 1. Scouting..... being in the right spot. 2. Concelment..... being hid from the birds. Everything else is just fluff. :thumbsup: