Braxton Taylor
I started duck hunting with a few friends, and back in the beginning, we didn’t have much. We’d piece together our small decoy collections to make a spread, haul them out in a couple of old canoes, and tuck ourselves into a panel blind. Since then, we’ve gotten more advanced. Two members of the group picked up a big duck boat with enough room for four of us. We’ve also got a dog now. And the decoy spread has really blown up.
But on a recent trip, we found our massive spread wasn’t bringing in the birds. Many mornings, we found that fewer decoys were doing a better job. That’s why I wanted to ask Dave Smith of Dave Smith Decoys for a bit of insight. Smith’s company makes some of the most realistic decoys on the market today. On top of that, he’s a dedicated waterfowler with loads of experience. Here are a few times he recommends running a small spread and why Dave thinks it works so well.
First, How Small is Small?
Running a small decoy spread depends a lot on what you’re used to and where you are. To a goose hunter running 10 dozen silhouettes, 24 decoys might seem tiny, but to a duck hunter on a farm pond, their small spread might be closer to six. “Everyone has their magic number,” Dave said. “For ducks and geese, mine is seven or eight.”
A big part of how Smith settled on his number has to do with movement on the water. “With duck floaters, seven or eight decoys can still be sold as real without any movement. Any more decoys, and you really need them to have some motion. This is one of the beautiful things about a small spread.”
When is the Right Time to Shrink Things Down?
According to Smith, one of the most obvious times to scale back your spread is when birds are under a ton of pressure and starting to get stale. “If you’re getting the finger from birds, and you’re sure your hide is solid and no one is moving, it might be time to pull a few decoys,” he said.
Other hunters tend to show birds a lot of the same things. Down the flyway, birds get used to seeing a blob of five- to seven-dozen decoys, a spinner, and a jerk rig, and they know they’re going to get shot at if they land. “In my opinion, a small spread looks less like the boogeyman and more natural,” Dave said.
“You could be different than everyone else and use 20 dozen decoys, but it’s way more fun and a lot easier to run less than a dozen. Seven or eight decoys are also a lot more mobile, so you can pick up and move quickly if you’re not on the right spot.”
Decoy Rig Size Also Has a Lot to Do With Where You’re Hunting
On small water, small spreads can really work. But they can be less effective on larger bodies of water and big fields. As mentioned above, Dave only likes to use fewer decoys in bigger areas when he’s feeling hunting pressure and watching birds react negatively. The more pressure—and the more you do your part to find the X—the more you can lean on just a handful of decoys to bring birds in.
As important as setting up where birds want to be is, your hide plays a bigger role when you’re just running a few dekes. “Small rigs are only effective when there’s a really good hide,” he said. “Your hide has to have zero mass, so the few decoys you have are still the most obvious thing for ducks to see.”
How to Run a Small Rig of Decoys
With fewer decoys to distract birds, you really need to be on your A-game while running a tiny spread. “People don’t hold still nearly enough,” Dave said. “Through murmuration, all it takes is one duck to spot the tiniest movement and steer the flock away.”
Hunters should also be aware of how they set a spinning wing decoy. “If you can have spinning wing decoys in and around grass, trees, or corn, that helps a ton,” he said. “Try to match the basic colors of a wing in your area, and work things out so the darker color is facing up when you stop it.”
When it comes to choosing the right birds for a small spread, Smith doesn’t feel like it’s something to obsess over. “Here in the Pacific Flyway on the west side of Oregon, we’ll see six or more species in a day, so we do a lot of mixed spreads. I regularly see each species key in on its specific decoy, but I’m not convinced it’s all that important. Dabbling ducks are usually just glad to see there’s a safe place to land, and they’ll land with lots of other species.”
And if you still can’t quit running a larger spread, Dave suggests trying to break things up a bit. “You can make a large spread read like a small spread by letting ducks discover your decoys a few at a time while circling. In this case, I’d put multiple groups of three or four decoys in fairly tall grass or even under branches. With geese, I still want at least some kind of footprint, so I might have the majority of them together and a few stragglers not far away.”
The smaller groups of ducks can come in handy on still days with little movement on the water, and a more natural presentation goes a long way toward separating your rig from the competition when the pressure is on.
Feature image via Ben Matthews.
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