I guess it must be all in where you are at, too many assume that ducks behave the same everywhere you find them and that's just not true. We hunt the snake river in Idaho and I guess it would be a moderate sized river, not big like the mississippi or missouri maybe, but probably 150 yards across where we are. Generally we run 3 super mag drake goldeneye decoys, I make no attempt to compete with the massive rafts of live birds. They have lots of movement and always seem to do the trick unless the wind is in our face. We land ducks consistently as long as the wind direction is right. Divers don't seem to like having to cross land in our stretch of the river to get to our decoys, but if the wind is at our back or a cross wind we do very well. We tend to decoy mostly hens and immature drakes early in the day and by 9 or 10 we start getting drake singles as they trade back and forth from the big rafts. Year in year out for the past 10 years we have had a 5 bird average per hunter per day, but we pick the days to hunt when the wind is right. I've never seen the number of hens matter with goldeneye and I've tried all kinds of set ups, but with bufflehead, hens are necessary here to be consistent and I run spreads of 7 buffie hens and 2 drakes, but I just don't see that with goldeneye even though they are generally hen and immature heavy in their flight groups. Goldeneye are the most dynamic duck we hunt, they probably should come with a tail drag and cable because they are going so fast, like a fighter jet landing on an aircraft carrier. It's just not duck hunting unless you can get the bird to skip a couple of times when it hits the water. I would pass on mallard drakes every time to get to shoot goldeneye.
