I bought a dozen factory-burlapped Herter's 63s early in the summer. The guy included a headless and very damaged wigeon body (out of guilt for how much I paid). I sold two in the parking lot so I ended up with 11 decoys to work with. Here's the before picture...



I did my usual by adding after market heads (Autumn Wings on the ringneck and bufflehead and Homer's on the shoveler and merganser) and stainless steel hardware. I originally planned to do all of them as ringneck but was intrigued with the Homer shoveler and hoodie heads and wanted to replace the cork bufflehead that I use on "oyster" hunts.

I have been using a dozen old G&H ringnecks in the middle of black water creeks when I hunt wood ducks. I still believe that ringnecks make the best wood duck decoys but that's for another time...

Other than home-painted eclipse bluewings, the G&H ringnecks were the last of the plastic decoys that I used regularly. I think the 6 solid-body replacements will be fine. Autumn Wings only makes ringneck heads in 72-size so I bought a couple of 67-sized bluebill and four 63-sized bluebill heads and painted them for ringnecks. I actually like the 67 sized heads better - I'll put those two on the deepest part of the long-line and use the four smaller headed decoys closer to where I'm hunting.

Here's the semi-final results...I really like the hoodie and will probably post a picture of him during the season. The shovelers bill are not pointed down enough but I think I'm the only one that will notice. The Homer heads are hard plastic and seem to be somewhat hollow in the middle so I didn't want to try to cut the bases of the shoveler heads and end up with a big hole in the middle with nothing to attach to so I'll put up with it for a while.



I'll probably never ever try to carve my own decoys but, for now anyway, the painting and little bit of body work I do is enough to satisfy this particular duck hunting itch.