Got in blind with water going in field

[Darren]

John,

what are the overall numbers like in your standing spread? You're leaving them standing throughout the season?

do you fight the weather with keeping them upright (thus having to fix a bunch of them before every hunt?)

Considering what we might be able to try next year given the snows/speck FB's we have

[Ericdc]

If you don’t mind me chiming in, we don’t have as many FB goose decoys as John, but we do have about 5 dozen. We leave ours out. As long as water levels stay where we want them, there’s not a lot of maintenance, but a good windy storm will knock some over and we always check before each hunt. Really doesn’t take much time.


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[Johnc]

60 specks. 120 blues/snows. 12 pintails. 4 mallards

If water level maintained well below undersurface of bird. No problem.

I must have at least 21 inch stake

Decoys placed in linear line parallel to blind. No landing lane. Decoys on highest part of cut. Specks on inside, blind side mainly on north/south ends. Why. Hunt any wind and if I need to swap for hard north or south wind this makes easy

[Johnc]

Purposely not many duck decoys

Specks are getting very shy to duck decoys in mixed spread

I use the call and big snow spread as duck attractant

Blind not set up for ducks anyway. Set up to hide strictly and shoot over the top close or over decoys close. Another reason specks set on inside of spread

Yes I don’t shoot teal early much because so covered

Most ducks I kill are big ducks worked and shot over the top

We hunt different then most. My main focus is too kill specks

[Darren]

Great info, thanks! We've a ways to go with regard to standing spread numbers, but gotta start somewhere. Could maybe get up to about what Eric's running and see from there. Did notice how you're deeper close to blind but it slopes up away from blind which is nice for the FBs.

You running stock GHG stakes or retrofit with some PVC?

Though I wonder if using small PVC instead of the stock motion stakes might be a bit more durable in weather? Obviously would sacrifice the motion of the stock stakes but I seem to rarely get much discernible motion out of them anyway

We've got 18 specks or so and some snows, might see what we can put together. One thing for sure is they've just been spending the season in the camp, and aren't killing anything like that, so may as well put them out, maybe nasty days/fog days we'd trip up a snow or three.

[Johnc]

The new stock ghg are longer then the old ones—-I can get away with

The newer ghg decoys sit higher too,that helps

I like the little motion of the ghg stakes. Conduit is what I would use in a deeper water situation.

If I had to go that route I would add floaters mixed in for movement

If using stock stake. Take the time to firmly place well into the ground to make sit as straight as possible. I see lot of people just barely put in mudd. Then your gonna spend time constantly resetting.

So if you feel you are not getting enough grab stock wise use conduit. Will save a lot of resetting in long run

[Johnc]

Snows are very vulnerable on the fog days. This is one of the reasons I run a big white spread. For those big fog days or pintail days.

[Johnc]

If you normally hunt 4 or so able bodied men. I would invest in some silo socks with the rigid spine to really add movement mixed in.

If you do weekend hunt. Deploy on Friday. Pick up on the Sunday

Deadly decoys makes a good one too

[SpinnerMan]

Deadly decoys makes a good one too

And Tracy Northup is a really nice guy. I've gone snow goose hunting with his operation about half dozen times now. He's the guy that makes Deadly Decoys.