Dove Decoys....

[surfcock]

Went real economical last year and spray painted a bunch of small gatoraide bottles with gray primer. could not beleive how well they worked. Since I leased the field from the land owner I left them out in the same area and the birds seemed to concentrate to that area the next weekend when we had another hunt.

Probably only works if you're wearing your HECS suit.

[Mergie Master]

I typically wont use one unless I am hunting by myself or if there are few shooters in a field.

This.

They work great if you are hunting alone or in a field with too few people. I've used them in a clear cuts that had doves feeding on weed seed and they were like a magnet. I assume the Mojo dove would work the same.

For putting them on a telephone wire/power line just put a wire on the bottom and add an egg sinker. That will make them sit upright on the wire.

[surfcock]

For putting them on a telephone wire/power line just put a wire on the bottom and add an egg sinker. That will make them sit upright on the wire.

Pro tip right there.

[Mergie Master]

Went real economical last year and spray painted a bunch of small gatoraide bottles with gray primer. could not beleive how well they worked.

I made my own years ago before I'd ever heard of or seen a mass produced a dove decoy on the market. I should have patented them.

I had been trying to hunt large clear-cuts that held doves but the bird were so scattered it was a hit or miss proposition every hunt.

I had noticed how when one or two birds were sitting in a leafless scraggly tree other bird gravitated to them. So I picked up the thinnest (and cheapest) sheet of plywood I could find, seems like it was an 8th inch or something like that.

I drew a dove silhouette on it with a lead pencil, cut it out with a jigsaw, used it for a pattern and drew and cut 15 more. Once I had them cut out I painted them gray and added a black dot for the eye on each side. Only took a couple of hours and I had 16 thin silhouette dove decoys. I used a small wood screw to attach an electrical gator clip to the bottom and I was good to go.

I clipped them onto limbs on a dead snag in the clear-cut. I positioned them in a way to make sure that no matter which direction a bird came in he would be able to see the silhouetted shape of several doves on the tree.

Those things worked better that I ever could have imagined. The el-cheapo decoys I built made a believe out of me.

[Mergie Master]

As for putting them on a telephone wire I've seen them rigged with two stiff steel wires (about like clothes hanger wire) around 6" to 8" long coming out of the underside of the decoy. The wires are added so that they form an upside down "V" under the decoy. On the end of each wire is an egg sinker that's about ¾ to 1 ounce in weight. When you flip them onto the telephone wire the V straddles the wire and the egg sinkers keep them balanced on the telephone wire in an upright position. The ones I saw stayed put, even though they wobbled some, even if a fairly good breeze.