Mottled duck, I need HELP.

D

Don Mintz

Active member
I've never had one in hand, can't find any good picture reference hens online that I trust and they all vary widely. Some photos labelled as hen mottled show a greenish bill like a hen black, some are orange like a hen mallard. I see so many references on line that are obviously mislabeled. Can someone point me in the right direction for a mottled hen. I don't want to get started on the head detail until I have the bill locked down.

This is where I'm at.
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oh man Jason, you saved my life. I used to have the e j Peiker site on my favorites bar and had a computer meltdown and lost nearly everything. I think I'll roll a little more on the orange side and noticed a few things I need to change on the feathering. Thank you. you're the man.
 
It was like finding an old friend. It's back on my favorites bar where it belongs, I've no doubt spent 100's of hours looking through references on this page and as soon as I saw the picture from the link I knew I was home. It's a great resource for birds and many other things. I'll put the link to the bird page here. https://www.ejphoto.com/Birds.htm
 
Let me see if I have a photo of one in my old hunting photos. Shot quite a few back in Mobile.
The myFWC site may have an article with photos too. Let me look.
 
Don Mintz said:
oh man Jason, you saved my life. I used to have the e j Peiker site on my favorites bar and had a computer meltdown and lost nearly everything. I think I'll roll a little more on the orange side and noticed a few things I need to change on the feathering. Thank you. you're the man.
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I'll be honest I had never heard of that site until a week or two ago. Someone on the fuge posted a link to it for some reason I can't remember. I've looked at quite a few pictures since while painting decoys.
 
it's a great site. I had it on my favorites bar under the heading Birds. When our computer turned red during and update it was adios bird references and 13,000 pictures of black bears which distressed me more than the bird site at the time. Maybe I had too many photos on my computer, ya think.
 
Don, the rear mottled duck in the photo on the 3rd page of the PDF I posted is a hen. As you can see, her bill is more orange.
 
Thanks for the help. I did end up on the orange end of things. From what I was seeing if you had a hundred pictures of mottled hens you'd have a hundred different bill layouts. This is what I came up with, I think I had green, yellow, black, orange and a carmel mix color on the bill. I'm fairly satisfied with it. I'm calling it done, I spent an hour on each head this morning, not counting the bills, about 4 hours yesterday in the booth with the airbrush. No profit in these two, but they were a good experience. I had only made two mottled ducks, these make four.

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