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[Salmo]

Started today making Canada goose silhouettes cost is only pain as got 10 sheets of plastic for nothing  

[harrycatcat1]

4 minutes ago, Salmo said:

Started today making Canada goose silhouettes cost is only pain as got 10 sheets of plastic for nothing  

Looking good 👍 👌 did you have a template or did you guess the shape 🤔

[Salmo]

Guessed but have a template now 

[steve_b_wales]

I made Crow decoys a few years ago using the same type of material - Proplex floor protector (Wickes) and it worked well.

[Docleo]

14 hours ago, Salmo said:

Started today making Canada goose silhouettes cost is only pain as got 10 sheets of plastic for nothing  

Are you getting ready for Friday?? They look nice, well done! 👍👍👍

[derbyduck]

can I suggest that you use 2 holding down stakes, just incase the wind direction changes which would buckle them ,

I've used similar many years ago and they work ! I used brazing rods to stake em down with a bend on the end .

[marsh man]

In the early part of the season all this years hatched off Canada geese and possibly Greylag geese are not very street wise and would come into decoys a treat , as the season wear on then you might have space them out with one or two in the standing and feeding positions , this can easily be altered by cutting the neck and re joining them with small nut and bolt so you can put the neck in any position .

Going back a bit we used to cut a load of Curlew decoys out of thin ply , these were just given a couple of coats of creo with no other painting , these were put out on the last bit of salting that was covered by water on an evening flight , we would pick the first Spring tide in September when the top of the tide was around 8 pm , the decoys were put out at all different angles so the Curlew could see some sideways whatever angle they in from , the punts were concealed in the small drains so you had a fair bit of cover with the long grass that grew either side of these narrow drains , with the Curlew having nowhere else to go it wasn't that hard to bring them into range and a double figure bag was normally on the cards , we ate a few and off loaded the rest at Pettits the game dealers at Reedham but after September nobody wanted them and they were left alone for another year .

Would I ever wanted to shoot them again ? , No I wouldn't and I can never see them coming back on the list , although we enjoyed it at the time this is another part of wildfowling that is locked away in the history books . MM     GOOD LUCK

[London Best]

20 minutes ago, marsh man said:

In the early part of the season all this years hatched off Canada geese and possibly Greylag geese are not very street wise and would come into decoys a treat , as the season wear on then you might have space them out with one or two in the standing and feeding positions , this can easily be altered by cutting the neck and re joining them with small nut and bolt so you can put the neck in any position .

Going back a bit we used to cut a load of Curlew decoys out of thin ply , these were just given a couple of coats of creo with no other painting , these were put out on the last bit of salting that was covered by water on an evening flight , we would pick the first Spring tide in September when the top of the tide was around 8 pm , the decoys were put out at all different angles so the Curlew could see some sideways whatever angle they in from , the punts were concealed in the small drains so you had a fair bit of cover with the long grass that grew either side of these narrow drains , with the Curlew having nowhere else to go it wasn't that hard to bring them into range and a double figure bag was normally on the cards , we ate a few and off loaded the rest at Pettits the game dealers at Reedham but after September nobody wanted them and they were left alone for another year .

Would I ever wanted to shoot them again ? , No I wouldn't and I can never see them coming back on the list , although we enjoyed it at the time this is another part of wildfowling that is locked away in the history books . MM     GOOD LUCK

Back in the late 1960’s I used exactly this set up quite a few times to shoot Curlew in September. 
They were not bad eating in a curry. 
I agree with your last paragraph, but have to say that, despite how tame they seem today, when they were on the quarry list they were the only bird with sharper eyes than a crow.

[Salmo]

Guessed but have a template now .We only have canadas till the end of sept then it’s onto the pinks 

[marsh man]

10 hours ago, London Best said:

Back in the late 1960’s I used exactly this set up quite a few times to shoot Curlew in September. 
They were not bad eating in a curry. 
I agree with your last paragraph, but have to say that, despite how tame they seem today, when they were on the quarry list they were the only bird with sharper eyes than a crow.

They certainly had good eye sight , we also had a few shanks and of course the Whimbel , with duck being in limited supply in the early part of the season on the estuary the waders were your early days apprenticeship into wild fowling , if you could get amongst the waders then the fowl started to go into your bag a bit later on .

We have heard the ole saying with the brick in the oven taste better than the lew when cooked 100s of time , but I can honestly say the only bird my mother ever dumped after baking it in the oven was a Curlew , this had a whole onion inside and a few rashes of bacon on the outside and after all that it was still chucked in the bin , and believe you me we never wasted anything we shot .

I have still got one of the ( modern ) Curlew decoys from possibly the late 60s or the early 70s , now it had been retired a lot longer than it ever worked for a living