Flight pond decoys

[Holland 0]

I have a small pond which I will use for flighting next season.

 

All the advice I have read here has been most useful.

 

A friend has suggested permently floating a pair of decoys on the water so that ducks attracted to them will drop in and find food.

 

Has anyone else tried this and does it work, or should you only use decoys on shooting days?

 

Thanks H

[Spike01 0]

Holland,

I have only ever used decoys on a pond to give the ducks confidence on a flight night but if your pond does not usually get any duck on it in the winter then I think that popping a couple of 'coys on there to get them in and feeding is not a bad idea. I would not put them right in the feed area but to one side. Once you have a couple feeding I would remove the decoys and just start building up the numbers by feeding just enough. I usually start to see a few "home grown" mallard dropping in to our ponds around late august and then I start to feed and build it up to a good amount by mid/late September and then we "have a go" :gunsmilie:

[teknystoddy 0]

We use a single deek just to give the ducks a bit of extra confidence but we leave it there all the time. This probably isnt the best way to do it, but as we only shoot the pond as the finale in a walked up day, we would never remember to bring the deeks with us if they were removed each time. Good advice above, but the long and the short of it is, experiment, find out what works best on your pond and with your birds.

 

Best of luck,

 

TT.

[wildfowler-2007 0]

I dont use any decoy's on my pond's dont think it makes much differnce at all the way i see it is if the wild duck's are feeding on your pond they will come in with or with out decoy's

 

regards

[foxkiller1968 0]

the ponds i shoot we start to feed them around the second week of august not a lot of grain just half a bag once the ducks find it they come evry night as they build up you will have to put more grain in