I was talking with a few buddies over the weekend who hunt Oklahoma.

They were saying all they did was take their old GHGs and Flambeau's and painted them flat black. They use about 5-6 dozen black decoys and about 5-6 dozen regular GHG hot buy mallards.

Has anyone ever used decoys painted just straight black?

This is the first time I have heard of it and I think they are full of it.


I am currently repainting about 5 dozen G&H foam decoys and they told me I was wasting my time and to just paint them flat black and be done with it.

Seen it done lots of times.

Plenty of ducks have been killed over spreads of floating black jugs and nothing else. Old market hunters made a living doin it.

Not saying a duck would rather land next to a black jug than a brand new life like decoy... just sayin.

I was reading about this certain strategy a while back on TakeEm.com Black and white are supposed to be the 2 colors that are the most recognizable and can be seen the furthest away. Black being the color that can be seen from the furthest distances and white a close 2nd.

http://www.takeem.com/decoys/decoys4.php

i have several black dekes, i heard the same about they are able to be seen further away. i painted two mallards solid white last year, cant say that they made any ducks commit, sure didnt seem to make any flare, and they look good in the spread. add a little brightness to it, especially on an overcast day.

They are putting out 10-12 dozen decoys?

We hunt a prqetty big lake in Oklahoma and the bigger the spread the better results

Personally I think if most people put as much work/thought into location as they did their decoys, how many to use, hen to drake ratio, duck calls, shells, the type of waders they have, and the toilet paper they use they would probably be more succesful at bagging ducks.

nothing is more important than toilet paper...,,PERIOD.

Absolutely Location, location, location

When I went to LA last fall those some of the blinds over there had black 2 liter bottles painted black in their spreads. Those boys have a ton of ducks so not sure it would make any difference whether they had pink decoys or not to be honest with you.

I will have to say that painting the decoys solid black will make them look like a bunch of different ducks like ringnecks and coots, throw in some white in the middle and you've now covered bluebills, goldeneye, and bufflehead... at least in theory that is.

TDK, you just reminded me of a question I've been meaning to ask and have never got around to it. When I 1st started duck hunting, I was advised that the hen to drake ratio was 2:1. I've tried doing some research on it, but haven't found anything to support nor contradict this theory? I've found a lot of mixed stuff saying 3:1 and 1:1. But I've also seen something else saying 1:2. Can you, or anyone else, offer some insight on this?

depends on what month it is. By January many of the large groups of ducks will be drake only.

I painted some ole teal deks blk and use em . No problem . Seen ducks land by live ones many times . Where there's food there's gonna be birds is my opion

Now I am a decoy junkie, but it is location, I love to call, but is location, I love my pit blind, but it is location. The decoys my granddad used the Avery crowd would LAUGH AT!!! But guess what.... It was location!! The decoys my dad used the Avery crowd would turn their noses at.. But it was location!! LOCATION,LOCATION, LOCATION.............

Location can make a Mallard smart, then at another spot 2miles away seem like a diver duck.

I had a spot I could go to last year and I was almost guarenteed a straight green limit, that was until someone else found it. Judd got a little taste of this. So what im saying is location and pressure have a bigger impact on your success than anything else combined.

thanks for the secret, I guess I will stop trying to hunt the wal-mart parking lot.

Nobody would ever figure you out....

From a distance black decoys stand out more than white,or brown.