Late mallards. I've fooled them. Not just a single that happened to wander past in the first shooting light, but flocks of 30, 40 birds on clear January mornings. And not just dropping down to take a look but hooked up over the spread, the lead birds reaching for the water, the whole bunch talking to the decoys.

I can describe every time it's happened right down to the direction of the wind and the slant of the light, just as I can describe the morning I was married, and for the same reason -- there are some things in this life that just don't happen very often. Those perfect flocks stand out against a thousand days of frustration, days when there was enough of a breeze to make the decoys swim, when the calling was perfect and my hide was invisible. And the birds are always there, materializing out of a perfect blue sky a hundred yards above the water, thirsty from a morning on the stubble, ready to drink and rest. There is never anything for them to see, but that makes no difference. Somehow, they feel my presence and just refuse to come that last 70 yards.

Opinions vary on this matter, but I've come to believe that those days are worse than the days with no ducks at all. When the ducks simply don't show up, I can always call the exercise a draw, but when a flock or two comes down to look and see through the deception, I've been beaten.

Like every other waterfowler I know, I've spent countless dollars and hours trying to improve the odds, and there are entrepreneurs out there who are doing their best to help with the problem. Some of their ideas strike me as fairly silly -- fake corn on the cob, for example -- but every now and then, they come up with an idea that really works. Take the spinning-wing decoy.

Spinners definitely are effective, especially in field hunting situations.

The idea came out of California in the late 1990s -- a duck body on a pole with wings spun by a battery-powered motor. It was one more way to add motion to a spread, an approach that began centuries ago with tolling dogs and, through the generations, proceeded to jerk lines, flags and kites. Early rumors about the spinners were enthusiastic. As one Dakota waterfowler said, "You pushed that button and it was like it was raining ducks."

In the years that have followed the introduction of these decoys, some hunters have said that ducks have learned to avoid them just as they have learned to be wary of many other waterfowling techniques. However, research on spinning-wing decoys suggests that they continue to make a significant difference.

The most recent study comes from father-and-son waterfowl biologists, Dale and Jason Caswell. The Caswells tested the efficiency of spinning-wing decoys in southern Manitoba, setting up 152 hunts over two years. The hunters in the study used two-dozen magnum mallard decoys and one spinner. They turned the spinner on for 15 minutes, then off for the same period. The Caswells kept track of the number of birds killed and crippled and also used range finders to measure how close each flock came to the spread.

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