Its about time someone sum it up about dove hunting.I didn't know how much you could talk about dove until looking at the THF.

And very nice work Dave.

Got the primer on the gaddies this morning, I like this stage, they look like they're all wearing tuxes

Dave you did a good job on the heads on those.

I thought that on foam decoys that the heads were seperate and made of something else?

Almost all decoys have the heads carved separately because it would be hard to work all the different angles on the head with the body getting in the way of the knife. Some people put wood heads on foam decoys, some people use pre-molded plastic heads.

My foam decoys have a sandwich head construction, which is 1/8" masonite. It ends in a deep tab that gets glued down into the body for strength.



The masonite also gives total support for the bill. With a hard bill and no through-head construction, the bill will just break off the soft foam.

You can see the paste expoxy that is used to set the eyes, form the bill, and fill up any gaps in the head-neck transition here after the head is glued on the body.

btw, since I'm sharing pictures, here's my dove stool:




and my dovemobile:



(I have no idea who the weirdo is posing by my lease truck)

Do the heads stay on good or do you have to baby them? The ones Ive seen have a bolt ran through them

Jeff, the bolt wouldn't do any better in this material because it is sort of soft. Imagine a 12" steel rod stuck down in some sand with 2" sticking up. Right next to it you have a piece of steel 12" long but it's 1.5" wide and stuck to the same depth. You could easily wiggle the steel rod out, but the piece with the greater contact is going to be a LOT harder to move around.

If I was carving wood I'd just put a bolt through them because it would be easier to install and more than strong enough.

Dave, do.the foam ones have a lot of action to them since they are so light.

Might be the perfect teal decoy

I haven't handled Dave's decoys, and I make mine a bit differently, but mine do move pretty well, the keel really has more to do with it than the weight of the decoy.

Here's some of my diver spread I made last year.

Bill that's your teal spread this year. Well, part of it.

Trying to get Garrett to finish his cans so we can have a trifecta of homegrowns on teal opener.

The foamers I ran last year really moved at LST when nothing else with a keel would.. Unfortunately, they were tall enough of a profile that in a strong wind they flipped over. I am going to convert last year's rig suc-duck style to try to keep them from flipping.

The gadwalls I am close to finishing are all actually keeled with composite (fake wood) so they are pretty heavily keeled.