My thought on Decoys

Decoys are not one of my favorite gimmicks.

On the advice of Peter Fiduccia's articles and book, I bought a Carry-lite full body decoy. It was a gorgeous piece of work-- Italian handpainted. It was incredibly life-like. I have credit to Fiduccia that his writing was so convincing.

I put it out in the front yard, and my dog went nuts. I've got a wonderful set of photos of the dog running out and trying to get the deer to run. It was a hoot.

We took it out to the nearest county park and had great results. We put up a ground blind, and stuck the deer out about 10 yards. At sundown, we had a herd of deer come in, and they interacted with the deer. First, they challenged it, then they examined it, then they just came over and dropped their heads and ate-- all this about 15 yards from our blind.

The problem was this: this decoy was bulky and heavy. Sure, it folds up into itself ingeniously, but you still have this big deer body to schlepp around. It was noisy-- like a hollow plastic barrel filled with tennis balls bouncing around. It has a bunch of small parts. In short, it is not a fieldworthy piece of equipment.

The last time I used it was last year. It was a warm afternoon, and I decided to carry the decoy out and hunt the edge of a cedar thicket. It was a good setup, but I totally misjudged the situation. When I went to pack up to go in, I found out my mistake.

When I went to climb out of the ravine with this thing on my back, the decoy started catching every branch. I was walking steeply uphill, and the cedars were. All I had with me was my bow, my ghillie suit in a sack and the decoy, but the drag on the decoy was so great I was getting worn out. It was also up over 80 degrees; I was getting overheated.

If you look at my picture, you'll notice that I am a walking landform. However, I'm a backpacker and a hiker, and this was not all that heavy a load. The problem was bulk and drag. About halfway up, I realized I was in trouble; I dropped the load, crawled out, went home and showered. Even when I got back there after dark, the decoy was very hard to get out.

Is it effective? Oh, I don't know. It may have brought a few deer in a bit closer. They really do like to come and check it out. Scent? If you give it a little smear of tarsal, it doesn't seem to be a problem. The human scent you leave coming in and setting up is probably more of a problem if you set it up so the deer will approach from a favorable wind direction.

When I use it, I want to be close to the truck, or close in a place where I can pre-position it. I've thought about just leaving it locked up in one of the ground blinds. This is also something you don't want to be close to during gun season, especially if you have it wearing its antler.

The problem I see is that it is a huge, bulky, noisy piece of equipment that really adds nothing. There really is no replacement for good scouting and good stand placement. Adding a tail twitcher is going make it just the more complicated.

When I build my Jon-E Handwarmer museum. This is one gimmick that will have a prominent place.