Silhouette Tactics That Kill

In grade school, I helped my dad and grandad make silhouette goose decoys. I can still smell the freshly cut plywood and paint. Painting them all black was my job. That was in the early 1970s.

I recall helping them set the flat decoys in fields and having geese flock to them at first light. I was too young to hunt, so I was our retriever- I loved it.

It amazed me how we could create our own skinny decoys and have geese come to them. I remember having trouble sleeping at night because the constant calling of geese rang so loudly in my head.

Three seasons ago, I started using more silhouette decoys in my duck spreads. I began with five dozen wigeon decoys. Today, I have over seventy-five dozen wigeon, mallard, and pintail silhouettes.

I first used Big Al’s brant silhouette decoys in Alaska and loved their true-life look and how flock after flock of the little geese came to them. I like the quality photo finishes of these decoys and how well they hold their color, not throwing unnatural hues on dull or bright days.

Last season I added two dozen Higdon Outdoors’ mallard FLATS Motion Silhouettes to my Big Al’s silo’ spreads. Higdon’s Motion Silhouettes rotate in the wind. They don’t spin in circles, they turn, stop and turn the other way thanks to the strategic positioning of a tiny post. The movements look natural, and they work.

Late last season, as was the case for many of us throughout the country, I was hunting stale birds. Early in the season, floating decoys pulled in ducks. Then, as ducks became harder to fool, I added five dozen Big Al’s silhouettes and routinely killed birds. Then ducks grew leery and wouldn’t commit. Enter Higdon’s FLATS Motion Silhouettes.

The first time I used them they blew me away. Amid five dozen Big Al’s mallard silhouettes I mixed-in a dozen FLATS Motion Silhouettes. I tried putting the Big Al’s decoys on the stakes, but they didn’t freely spin. I stuck to Higdon’s decoys and their lighter color added contrast when mixed in with my go-to silos’ which seemed to help capture the attention of ducks.

Within an hour, three of us had limits of mallards, wigeon, and a pintail each. Every bird banked into the silhouettes positioned on the shoreline of a pond next to the floating decoys. I strung the silhouettes down to the water’s edge and brought the floating decoys tight to shore to simulate ducks landing in the water and going ashore to graze on fresh sprouting green grass. I also put some silhouettes next to Final Approach Live Mallard floaters on the shoreline, to emulate resting birds. The setup looked identical to what I’d seen when scouting and worked wonders for bringing in ducks.

The next day, a buddy and I hunted the edge of a flooded slough off a river. The public waters had been getting hammered and while we shot ducks, many avoided us, banking into thicker cover a couple hundred yards away. Mallards and wigeon dumped into a tight corner where a giant cottonwood had toppled. The birds were so relaxed, they were perching on the limbs of the fallen tree. That’s when the lightbulb went off in my head.

Two days later we were back. We carried MoMarsh Invisi-Man blinds on our backs. My buddy toted a half-dozen floating duck decoys and I carried a dozen Big Al’s mallard silhouettes. I’d stopped by a local home supply shop the day prior and picked up some 12” long fabric stakes which I painted flat black and inserted into the Big Al’s decoys. It took me only a few minutes with a little hammer to pound the now standing silhouette decoys into various parts of the fallen tree where the ducks had been roosting. Immediately, ducks were dropping into the setup, and it didn’t take long until we were packing out limits.

A few days later, four of us hunted another flooded field on the edge of a river. The public shooting was intense that day and birds, though thick and interested in our spread, just wouldn’t commit. After one too many fly-bys I hiked to my truck, grabbed two dozen of the mallard Higdon Motion Silhouettes and we sprinkled them amid the 15 dozen Big Al’s silhouettes we already had set out.

A five mile per hour breeze was all it took to get the Higdon silhouettes moving, and birds liked it. The motion FLATS were set on the outer edges and scattered throughout the already existing spread so the movement didn’t appear too concentrated. It looked natural and made two of the hunters who’d never seen the Motion FLATS, believers. We got all our ducks that morning.

Not long after that, I was hunting with my good buddy, Austin Crowson. We were targeting wigeon along a flooded creek and only had room for a couple dozen floater decoys and two dozen Big Al’s wigeon silhouettes that sat on a skinny strip of land. Ducks were flying, but when they banked to the west of our spread and lost interest. “Let’s put out a couple dozen mallard silhouettes and a dozen of those Motion FLATS on the far end, where the birds are bailing out,” Crowson suggested. We did, and instantly saw a difference. The wall of silhouettes, complete with a bit of movement, blocked the ducks from filtering away, and we shot limits of plump cotton tops along with two whopper pintails.

Toward the end of the year, I went on what I thought would be a promising solo hunt. The fog was as thick as I’d ever seen. Birds came in before shooting light and seemed to like the floating decoys along with the two dozen Big Al’s silhouettes and a dozen of the Higdon moving FLATS that were situated on the edge of a tiny pond. Then the wind picked up and I figured I’d be done in minutes. The frustrating part was the dense fog wasn’t leaving, just moving around with the changing wind directions, and birds weren’t committing. The ducks weren’t flaring, they just weren’t dropping into the spread. I decided to pull the moving silhouette decoys. In heavy fog I almost always pull my wing decoys because I think the sudden flash of white and black alerts birds, especially late season ducks. I went to minimal calling and gently tugging on my Motion Decoys spreader. The changes paid off.

Silhouettes have impacted my duck hunting success like I never imagined. My 83-year-old dad who’s hunted dozens of times over the photo-finish silhouettes has even been amazed by them. On our last hunt of the year Dad smiled as we picked up our flats, “Wouldn’t grandpa have loved hunting over these decoys?” 

---