Ok, I have been touching up the decoys over the last several months and putting on a coat of Krylon 1311 (matte finish). Every group came out just fine with the exception of the last set. I am not sure what was different, but the decoys have a bit of a sheen/shine to them now.
I have heard any shine is bad, some other folks have said that it is ok...like wet feathers. So two questions:

--What is your opinion on shine/sheen?
--If I need to dull it down, then how?

Thanks in advance....can't wait for it to get started this weekend.

I have seen posts where people clear coat them to make them shine and posts to clear coat them with matte to make them not shine. And then there are people flocking duck decoys now. And I have seen posts where people oil their decoys to make them shiney. I know looking at a wild drake mallard or other brightly colored ducks I see a distinct irridescent shine on them. Others I do not. And then UV seems to be a big deal with some people.

So I don't know. I do nothing to my duck decoys other than wash the mud off. If I have ever painted one with clear coat it was to seal or stop paint from peeling/chipping. If they came from the factory shiny, several days or hunts in the sun and it seems a lot of that goes away.

With geese now, I do know the decoys in my spread with flocking look a 100 times more real than those goose decoys in the spread with shiney unpainted black plastic heads.

Thanks for confirming that I am not the only one who hears multiple 'right' ways. My lack of experience tends to heighten the confusion.

So, if I am understanding this correctly, I should not worry about it and let nature take it's course to reduce the shine over time?

as long as it's a "natural" shine you should be ok think about how often you have seen ducks sitting on a pond/lake sometimes when the sun hits one just right it looks shiny, but on the other hand if its looking like you put high gloss on it you might want to dull it down with some super super fine sand paper something like 800+ grit rubbed super soft to just get the surface rubbed off
Quick charts-fast reference
this can help you decide what you want in terms of what you really want the finish to look like, now finding the paper, cant help you on that some of them seem to be special use stuff that would come from a specialty store i guess check your local hobby shops or the good old net. I tend to be kinda lazy with mine, use them till you cant tell if its a hen or drake then toss it and get new ones.

Thanks and thanks for the link as well.......printed that page out for future reference beyond duck hunting!

Wow, that's a great link!

Yeah when it comes to shine,IMO its not a good thing because for one its hard to create a natural shine.Like Sniper said sometimes you may see a flicker or two on live ducks in the water but thats at our eye level Im sure from a birds eye view it's different.
But to sum it all up when it comes to shine or no shine on decoys the rule in Duck hunting is the word "SHINE" is a bad thing.
YOU DONT WANT SHINE ON
FACE
DOG
BOAT
CAMO
GUN
ECT. AND DECOYS.

Good topic. I had a good testrun on crows, our old decoys are too shiny on a sunny day, i bought some velour,yes, french word, crowdecoys from cabellas, and they look much better, but the velour, kind of a suede look gets scratche off easely, but it works

I tend to worry more about color and profile and less about shine.

If I want more attention brought to my spread I'll use magnum decoys or make sure I throw in some extra pintails with strong white on them. Or better yet a family group or two of geese.

Another attention getter would be a flag or a robo. And just like a robo, I think that extra attention getting shine can help or hurt you depending on the sittuation.

It's what we call "flocking". GHG makes the flocked crow decoys.
http://www.fowlflocker.com/index.php?pr=Flocking_Fibers

On the DU website they say to make ur old dekes to look new spray them with tire cleaner or armorall. This link has some cools things check it out.



http://www.ducks.org/hunting/hunting-tips/30-helpful-hints-for-waterfowlers

When I lived in LA and flew over Catahoula Lake at 2000ft, the only way to really tell where birds were was to look for the flashes. I purchased 4 dzn GHG's 5 years ago and put 2 light coats of poly on all of them. It has helped to protect them and I have never had a problem getting birds in tight.

Men looking for birds and birds looking for birds is two totally different things.I have seen birds hit a group of birds on water going diver duck speed,what they see and what we see are not the same.But this is hunting and you have two do what works for you and if one feels like decoys that bling is the way to go then hunt'em up.

I have heard of using Vaseline to make them shiny. Waiting for sick comments now!

I just hit all of my blocks with tire foam then sprayed them off with a water hose. It makes the color "pop" but there isn't much shine. Just my .02$

Well, it seems a good size group wants some level of shine and another group wants it flat with no shine.

Out of the 56, only 14 came out with any 'shine'...guess I am just going to let nature take its course on those dekes. At the very least, it might present an opportunity to test the shine vs no shine argument by pulling or adding to spread during the hunt.

Well ill be happy to post some pictures from this weekend showing what I killed over shiny deaks.