Hey Fellas - Thinking about painting some mallards into divers this weekend. Does anyone have any pics, tipS, advice, etc? Thinking about doing some redheads or bluebills. Thanks in advance for the help!

Go use the working decoys forum. Quick google search will get you there. The whole forum is dedicated to making decoys including the painting process. Tons of great info. by far more than you will get here. Carved a few by hand myself, very fun.

DAve Speer is the decoy guy

Beat me to it.

Im really new to duck hunting but I hear redhead divers are pretty dumb and will decoy to about anything. ..

Yes sir - they will! I just have some old mallards laying around and want to freshen them up. Since I rarely hunt north of i-10 I thought I'd paint up some divers.

Last year my dad and I were hunting a mudflat point with 2 layout blinds and had 6 redheads decoy. First, they tried to land between the dekes and the bank, about 10yd shots. Second, when we sat up to shoot they just kept coming at us, and one hit the deck and scurried in between our layouts in the brush. We each hit 1 duck with our first shot and the flock got behind us fast so only 2 shots fired. The one between the layouts was fine, not shot, just hiding. I stood up and kicked it out like a pheasant and watched it fly away.


... not the sharpest tools in the shed are redheads

Dave Speer is on working decoys lol... Your crazy if you don't check it out

I would make them redheads. Are redheads dumb, yeah kinda like teal are, let's say they're forgiving. I have noticed on many hunts that they will land with the redhead decoys if you have them, so you can kind of control the kill zone. I would go redhead because the body shape is much closer to a mallard than a bluebill is.

The whole process. Skip what is too much for you.

- Wire wheel (angle grinder or dremel) or sandblast the plastics to scuff to help hold paint. If neither of those are at your disposal use 150 grit sandpaper. You don't have to spend a lot of time on this step, but you do want "full coverage."

- wearing latex gloves, wash them with liquid dish soap. Do not touch the decoys with your bare hands during or after washing. (keep your skin oil off the plastic)

- get three rattle cans of krylon fusion. grey, black, red (to match the head, not fire engine red, more of a rust color)

- paint the heads red first. so you don't get red on the rest of the bird later.
- paint most of the body grey
- paint the tail section and breast section black

by painting in this order, if you get a little overspray of black on the grey, it'll look like you did a blend on purpose. getting grey overspray on the black won't look as good.

now you are left with the bill and eyes, if you want to go to that much detail. if you don't want to brush the bill, paint it grey before painting the head red. for the bill and eyes use either cheap acrylic paint (it will wear off over time) or get testor's hobby enamel from michaels, hobby lobby, etc. If you don't find a match or don't want to buy an extra color for the blue on the bill, mix black and white, the right ratios of that will give you the blue-grey of the bill.

this is not how you would paint hand carved decoys but it will give you a quick and rewarding diver rig.

be careful, messing with decoys is addictive. this is how i got my start 5 years ago (paint is still shiny wet):



recent work:

My .02. Reds and several other divers are dumb as a box of rocks and will decoy into milk jugs painted black and white. However, puddlers like pins are smart as they come. I'd rather err on the side of doing as good of a job as possible so those wary birds will still come into your spread.

I'm cool with low IQ ducks.

The ones with PhD's, old birds and hella lot smarter than I am.

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks dave!your work is awesome btw. Keep the pics of your new blocks coming!

Post up some pix when you're done! There's a few guys on here that get tired of seeing decoy pix but most of us like em.

I'll keep you posted if you promise not to laugh. Should be putting the paint to em on wed morning.

There has to be some satisfaction to see a bunch of ducks cupped in on top of home carved decoys