March Workbench

After an unhealthy obsession I completed my repaint.

I don’t want to try to come off as an oldsquaw expert. My experience has been what it is. As soon as we started putting 6 off by themselves they started coming in feet down instead of buzzing the decoys. Singles and flocks alike. We always used plastics and all drakes when we went. I’m doing 4 drakes to 2 hens. That is not based on any real science, I just like the drakes. When I see flocks of more than 6 there tends to only be 1 or 2 mature drakes in the group.

I’m planning to go to cape cod this fall. I have not harvested a wall worthy drake. So I wanted to do mine home grown.
 

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Kevin Puls said:
After an unhealthy obsession I completed my repaint.

I don’t want to try to come off as an oldsquaw expert. My experience has been what it is. As soon as we started putting 6 off by themselves they started coming in feet down instead of buzzing the decoys. Singles and flocks alike. We always used plastics and all drakes when we went. I’m doing 4 drakes to 2 hens. That is not based on any real science, I just like the drakes. When I see flocks of more than 6 there tends to only be 1 or 2 mature drakes in the group.

I’m planning to go to cape cod this fall. I have not harvested a wall worthy drake. So I wanted to do mine home grown.
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And yes, I painted the tail on the butt too. However in taking this picture I see that it is crooked. Now I need to fix it.
 

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Kevin Puls said:
And yes, I painted the tail on the butt too. However in taking this picture I see that it is crooked. Now I need to fix it.
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Those are nice drake Old Squaw. I think those will work just fine, a little mistake just adds character. Somebody will pepper one when a nice drake buzzes them, and that will add more character. (y)
 
Carl said:
I'm still mystified by redheads, some days they land right in the decoys and some days they could care less.

YEP!! Saw that in coastal Alabama as well.
Sometimes half a flock would land and the other half disappeared over the horizon.
Singles seemed to land with any species.
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Having had a drake redhead on my bucket list for a long long time I’m not actually sure they exist.
 
SJ Fairbank said:
Those are nice drake Old Squaw. I think those will work just fine, a little mistake just adds character. Somebody will pepper one when a nice drake buzzes them, and that will add more character. (y)
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Thanks. Blue ribbon patterns met Steve Sanford paint scheme. Oldsquaw are not the brightest ducks so I have resisted the urge to go crazy over the tails by adding long thin pieces of plastic. Though a couple of black zipties…..
 
Those are some nice looking squaws. It will be nice to lay a nice drake across them for a photo some day. With your description for the make up of a group of birds, sounds like the same old hen heavy look. That said, the only species I've noticed that keys in on hen heavy spreads is bufflehead, I never noticed it making much difference on goldeneye. Maybe when I make a few I'll just go half and half.

most pictures I've looked at for reference for Oldsquaw the tails are going everywhere, crooked looks pretty natural if you asked me.
 
Don Mintz said:
Those are some nice looking squaws. It will be nice to lay a nice drake across them for a photo some day. With your description for the make up of a group of birds, sounds like the same old hen heavy look. That said, the only species I've noticed that keys in on hen heavy spreads is bufflehead, I never noticed it making much difference on goldeneye. Maybe when I make a few I'll just go half and half.

most pictures I've looked at for reference for Oldsquaw the tails are going everywhere, crooked looks pretty natural if you asked me.
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You are very kind Don. Means a lot given your skill level. I am really enjoying getting back into it.
 
Kevin, I was looking at your foamer squaws today and it got me thinking when I was starting to make foam decoys. It was 23 years ago and your squaws are way ahead of where I was for several months. Of course I had no one to ask, no way to shorten the learning curve. My first ones were primitive in both sculpting and in durability. Foam is a very difficult medium. Figuring out how to dummy proof foam decoys from the average joe hunter is a challenge. I still see the same mistakes being taught online that I had to struggle through with no guidance. William and I have collaborated on a lot of stuff over the past year. It's gone from helping him learn airbrush to him prodding me along to come up with some new strategies. About a year ago he was asking me about sending him an original to mold and now we have gone all kinds of crazy with stuff. Between the two of us we have figured out some pretty cool ways to make decoys. I quit making my decoy process DVDs because we are changing the way we do things when we find something better. I joke with William about the new tip of the day, because new ideas and revelations come at a rapid pace. Always looking for durability, accuracy, and reducing weight, making decoys more hunt able.

I like what you said about seeing a perceived imperfection in your decoys and your plan to change them. I've come to the point that when I see something I'm not happy with I just usually correct it on the next and keep improving. A lot of people suggest I'm obsessed, but I like to think of it as focused. In my way of thinking, the worst place you can be is failing to improve.

I've made lots of wood and cork decoys and they all float right side up. Hunting wise I like my composite decoys, I can do all kinds of customization and there are no rules.
 
It's a lot about the make up of brood groups and a three year maturity that makes the bufflehead seem like there are very few drakes.

Took me a while to figure out but over the years I realized that about 1/2 the '"hen" buffies I shot were immature drakes.
As you note, male buffies (and GEs) don't mature until 2-3 years old, so they don't have their mating colors their first or even second year.
Once you have a hen, immature drake and a mature drake in hand, the size difference is very apparent, with even the immature the males being larger than a hen.
Remember, never put out an even number of buffie or GE decoys, 3, 5 or 7, but never 2, 4 or 8.
They can count and it makes a difference.
;)
Can't remember who pointed that out on this forum, but I stuck to the rule for years!!
 
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Beautiful tribute Michael.

Carl, my son Caleb had a real hard time getting his first drake bufflehead. Partly due to few drakes in the groups that came in and his inability to manage the lead on crossing shots. I started telling him to try to shoot the hen in front of the drake because I knew he wasn't leading them enough. On one such hunt he shot what we thought was a boone and crocket hen bufflehead, it was huge compared to other hens, that's when we started paying attention and studied up a bit about diver biology and behavior. He had shot a second year drake, but no drake colors yet. The light bulb went off in my head, that's why the groups of buffleheads seemed so hen heavy all the time.

Caleb finally got his drake bufflehead after he was out of college and married. He shot it over one of my old hollow wood decoys and yes, I flocked the wood decoy, that will make some people cringe. And no, ice and frost don't seem to matter, not even icicles hanging off the bill. You may also notice that the head is not painted over the flocking, just straight up black, which is common for my personal decoys, even mallards.

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I'm usually not in a big hurry to limit on a duck hunt. I figure the two hours it takes to make the drive and get set up doesn't need to end in 30 minutes just to turn around and pick up and go home. On those occasions that we limit early we just stick around decoying birds and this photo is one of those days. It taught me a lot, there are at least two live drakes in this group that landed with my flocked tanglefree designs. Certainly the one to the right and the one to the left. Another thing I noticed was my hen head on the decoy was flocked way too light, I flock them straight up black just like the drakes. I go darker on the backs now too, I think we greatly underestimate the power of dark colors. Observe and learn is very important to being successful.

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I usually stop shooting with one spot left on my limit, just in case that oldsquaw drifting down the river in front of me decides to get stupid.

I designed Tanglefree a hen, but they shelved it.

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My second cork decoy. I wanted to carve in the wing pockets and tips. I’ll be honest I don’t think I’ll do that again until I get more experience. It restricted the way I painted it which I thought I would like but didn’t since I didn’t put the shapes in the right spaces. Will do the rest of them more rounded.
 

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