Decoy setup

Depends on where you are hunting. Some places you leave them out all season and never have to touch them, in which they'll leave a few landing spots throughout of a 100 or 2 decoys mostly in pods and with divers in a row. Other blinds that have a 360 view on large water may have 1000 decoys with landing areas all scattered through shooting range to the every angle and back. In the timber you may just need a dozen or two podded up and at an angle that reflects how they'd land into the wind.

Other situations might call for just a few and getting them out in the manner that will get them seen the best.

Motion is key though, for those non-windy (and even windy) days, that will be your best friend.

Then in the manner that looks like they landed face first in the wind that day. I mean everyone has their own little style to it but get a few of them on a jerk string or get a pulsator in a pod of dabblers and that usually helps a lot with them actually coming to check the decoys out.

Put decoys in the sun, hide in the shade, must have ducks for any of this shite to work though.

I used to hunt both sides of my blind and put one raft in front of each shooting porch. About a 100 per raft. About 4 or 5 ducks deep stretching about 50 yds N/S. direction. Now that I only hunt the west side, I put about 200 in a long raft with some spots on the inside. They usually just swing down the raft and land on the outside which is usually 20-25 yds from the blind.

I was able to witness the gauntlet as a kid hunting with the old folks mainly in the Blind River swamp (way back when mallards and wigeons visited). Lay out a line of decoys parallel to the blind 30 yards out, then lay another parallel line about 10 yards in from of blind. The ducks would light in the 20 yard opening between the lines. Preferably the wind would be blowing into your ears while facing the opening, but it seemed to work if blowing into your face or back too. I’ll change up to the standard J or hook, the double O, the V, the horseshoe and W just to see something different but the gauntlet seems to draw them in if birds are flying and have some interest in the calls. I was just curious what works for others.

Y’all need to get in Google earth and zoom into catahoula lake and check their spreads. See if you see any pattens on their clorox jug spreads

J worked for us last season.

Ron, I had the opportunity to hunt that crazy shite show a few years back. The guide had over 30 motion decoys and over 1000 decoys. maybe 100 decoys and 900 painted random bottles. Hunted until 1pm we did get a 4 man limit and had 13 different duck species.

It sure was an experience. lol

You guys still duck hunting? I gave up several years ago as it doesn't matter how you pattern your decoys if there is nothing to decoy. And I'm not talking public hunting.