DIY goose decoys?

zebra26

zebra26

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First off I'm not a goose hunter but I will give it a try this year.

I've been looking at commercial decoys. I've look at DIY decoys (on the net) made from blocks of foam.
Then there are the shell decoys.

Has anyone tried this:

Take a shell decoy body, spray the inside with a release agent, silicone perhaps, and fill the cavity with home style insulation foam from a spray can.

For the head, cut the decoy head in half, spray the cavity with release agent, tape the 2 halves together and fill with foam.

Level out the bottom of the foam bodies so they sit right. Weigh them so they don't blow away and ,if needed, float right. Give em a coat of sealer and then paint the bodies. Same with the heads.

Sounds like a winter project or am I just out to lunch on this one?
 
zebra26 said:
First off I'm not a goose hunter but I will give it a try this year.

I've been looking at commercial decoys. I've look at DIY decoys (on the net) made from blocks of foam.
Then there are the shell decoys.

Has anyone tried this:

Take a shell decoy body, spray the inside with a release agent, silicone perhaps, and fill the cavity with home style insulation foam from a spray can.

For the head, cut the decoy head in half, spray the cavity with release agent, tape the 2 halves together and fill with foam.

Level out the bottom of the foam bodies so they sit right. Weigh them so they don't blow away and ,if needed, float right. Give em a coat of sealer and then paint the bodies. Same with the heads.

Sounds like a winter project or am I just out to lunch on this one?
Click to expand...

It sounds like a good idea. Store bought decoys are expensive. I was in at Sail the other day and they had 6 for $399.

I bought 8 really nice ones on ebay for $150 shipped.

You would have to figure out your costs to make sure your foam doesn't throw you over what a new one would cost.

Let me know what materials you go with and if it works. If so, maybe I'll make my own.

Only downside is mine are stackable, so I can stack quite a few in my decoy bag.
 
i'm sure it's possible, but i'm thinking painting them so they are realistic is gong to be rather difficult. i'm also not sure how the monofoam is going to hold up to abuse, i can for see alot of heads breaking off. if you do try it though i'd be intrested on how it works of course.
 
thebaron said:
It sounds like a good idea. Store bought decoys are expensive. I was in at Sail the other day and they had 6 for $399.

I bought 8 really nice ones on ebay for $150 shipped.

You would have to figure out your costs to make sure your foam doesn't throw you over what a new one would cost.

Let me know what materials you go with and if it works. If so, maybe I'll make my own.

Only downside is mine are stackable, so I can stack quite a few in my decoy bag.
Click to expand...

I too was at SAIL in LAVAL. We bought 3 boxes of decoy shells for a total of 36 decoys. Its a start.
The next concern for now is some kind of bag(s) to move this all around.
 
LOL I have trouble opening a picture let alone posting one. You cut the tube in half and then shape the body and then cut out the heads and necks from plywood. The body then sits of the ground with a wire stake through it to hold it down and you stake the head neck in front of it. They stack up neat when you move them.
Paint them with black and grey paint to match a store bought one and your away. You can also cut the heads so some are down and some up it to look like a real flock. Being the original cheap skate they worked great for me and a buddy and we actually got tired of shooting geese using them.
 
this might be a revelation to some of you, but you can use real geese as decoys:D
In all seriousness, when I was younger (before decoys became widespread here) we would use a Y-shaped branch to prop the head up.
 
Raton57 said:
I was wondering the same thing.How to get the first ones in order to get the rest.
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Well his info shows he lives in Nunavut! I mean anyone can build a decoy spread from real birds when you blast birds that are 12 weeks old and just learned to fly! They would decoy to mud clumps with a stick and toilet paper for a cheek piece just like up on the James Bay Coast when the goose camps were in business. It isn't hard to decoy uneducated birds!!!:p
 
Save up as best you can and get some full body decoys if you are serious about hunting geese. You are better off with a dozen really good decoys than 100 pieces of crap that scare and educate the birds. We have done tests with full bodies compared to the top of the line shells and the full bodies win every time. This is in the same spread with one arm of the U as full bodies and the other with shells. Every bird tried to land in the full bodies. We are slowly phasing out shells and replacing them with Avery motion full bodies and Bigfoots.
 
the spank said:
Well his info shows he lives in Nunavut! I mean anyone can build a decoy spread from real birds when you blast birds that are 12 weeks old and just learned to fly! They would decoy to mud clumps with a stick and toilet paper for a cheek piece just like up on the James Bay Coast when the goose camps were in business. It isn't hard to decoy uneducated birds!!!:p
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:confused:
Here in Kugluktuk, not that it matters but we are about as far away from James Bay as nunavutmiut can be. We are situated 40 miles south of where the canada geese like to have their nesting grounds.
The only time we actively hunt geese is in early spring, which should go without saying but I'll say it anyways. They have just arrived from the south and they are all full grown.
Last spring my Brother in-law and I caught about 8 geese in a span of about 9hours in a blind. This is when they have split from the groups and paired up. I'm quite comfortable with saying that we earned those geese.
Now I will say we (my family including my parents and grandparents) have over the years taken a "12 week" old goose on occasion. Never needing decoys of course. Ya never know, if we get stormed in at camp we'd like to have food on hand.
My father harvests about 30-35 geese a year. 25 in the freezer was plenty last year on top of the 5-10 eaten during the hunt. These are typical numbers for him. I'll take less than that.
We also harvest the eggs. But when we do we typically leave 1 or 2 in a nest and always when the parents are not around. We can't get more sustainable than that with the eggs. When there is an egg left usually within a week there is another egg layed replacing a lost egg and sometimes a week later another egg layed on top of that. Full nests typically contain 3 or 4 eggs, 1&2 being low and 5 being high numbers. By the time the early eggs begin developing (a delicacy among the older generation) its time to call it a season due to unfavourable ice conditions.

He may not always speak for someone. But when he does, he shows his true colours!
 
HA! plywood decoys. I have a funny story about that from a friend of mine.

I'm from Norway House MB, a reservation. On a spring goose hunt, my friends uncle was setting up and saw a large gathering of geese on the ice at the point of a small island about 300m+ from his position; he decided to high tail it around the island to get the drop on them... after a trek, sneaking, through wet snow, he came around the point to see... nothing. The profile of plywood decoys was not visible edge wise. He had a good laugh about it the hunters in the blind close by. :D
 
Raton57 said:
I was wondering the same thing.How to get the first ones in order to get the rest.
Click to expand...

:shotgun:shoot the first ones so that you may shoot the rest:D

seriously though, we are in the nesting area. 9 out of 10 times they fly low enough to shoot at, Then its a matter of picking a spot so that you are close enough. You learn of high traffic areas with experience, ponds are great spots to setup so are edges of mudflats.

early on they fly in groups while later on they spilt and fly in pairs. Two sides to the coin being, in groups when they do fly by which will be less often there are alot of them. When they fly in pairs they are more widespread with more fly bys but with less to shoot at.
 
Vugee_AOD said:
:confused:
Here in Kugluktuk, not that it matters but we are about as far away from James Bay as nunavutmiut can be. We are situated 40 miles south of where the canada geese like to have their nesting grounds.
The only time we actively hunt geese is in early spring, which should go without saying but I'll say it anyways. They have just arrived from the south and they are all full grown.
Last spring my Brother in-law and I caught about 8 geese in a span of about 9hours in a blind. This is when they have split from the groups and paired up. I'm quite comfortable with saying that we earned those geese.
Now I will say we (my family including my parents and grandparents) have over the years taken a "12 week" old goose on occasion. Never needing decoys of course. Ya never know, if we get stormed in at camp we'd like to have food on hand.
My father harvests about 30-35 geese a year. 25 in the freezer was plenty last year on top of the 5-10 eaten during the hunt. These are typical numbers for him. I'll take less than that.
We also harvest the eggs. But when we do we typically leave 1 or 2 in a nest and always when the parents are not around. We can't get more sustainable than that with the eggs. When there is an egg left usually within a week there is another egg layed replacing a lost egg and sometimes a week later another egg layed on top of that. Full nests typically contain 3 or 4 eggs, 1&2 being low and 5 being high numbers. By the time the early eggs begin developing (a delicacy among the older generation) its time to call it a season due to unfavourable ice conditions.

He may not always speak for someone. But when he does, he shows his true colours!
Click to expand...

Sounds reasonable enough to me.

Re an earlier post, yes I have heard of using a stick to prop up the heads. I even made a few to try out. Same with what some fellow wrote about mud and grass. I always wondered iif that works, suppose it can't hurt.

A couple weeks ago I was in Ontario, on a farm. There were thousands. Spent a couple days there last week, saw 3 birds. Ended up doing a shotgun pattern on paper (new shotgun) Those 3.5" give some kind of kick.

That said a fellow who works with my brother hunts in Lac St Pierre. He is up to 52 birds. He too said nothing if flying right now.

About building foam in a shell, tried it. You need a lot of release agent and the foam is too delicate. SO much for that idea.
 
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