Other than the mallards, are there any recommendations on what type of duck decoys to use on a Stephenville area stock tank? We are trying to attract more than what we believe are shovelers.

Add Gadwalls, and pintails. A few teal and you should be good to go.

Wigeon are popular in your area as well. The white of canvasback decoys can help your spread standout as well.

Mallard, pintiail, gadwall, and teal will be plenty but adding a few widgeon would be nice as well.

Depending on the size of your tank you might not need a lot. Maybe look into a puddler pack. In Carbon I typically use some teal and pintail dekes. I've shot mallards, pintails, greys, widgeon, spoonies, woodies, scaup, ringnecks all over those teal and pintail dekes. I don't think it matters much based on my experience. If they want in that tank they are coming in no matter what dekes I have out there. Late season I will even cut way back in my limited "spread". Depending on the rain/weather my main spot can be 2-4 acres.

Small tanks I use about a dozen decoys, sometimes only 8-10. Normal mixture for me is ringnecks, gadwall and wigeon. Sometimes I'll also mix a few mallards, pintail and teal. But overall running small mixed specieces spreads.

it doesn't matter, the paint is to attract buyers

I do t even use mallards anymore..

Gaddies, wigeon, pintail and a couple Cans..

Take some decoys,,, put them out in your front yard ------ get 100 yards away and drive by at 30 MPH. See if you can tell the difference between the mallards or wigeon. (especially the first 30 minutes of hunting when there is little light)

Hayraker said the same thing with different words.

Yup.

And I'll add - it's either a pond they're coming to or a pond they aren't. Decoys won't change that.

this, and match birds in area lakes/ ponds

9

True, but when new birds come in on a front you will typically get more lookers that will work the spread.

I think some ducks prefer their own species of deeks, like pintails. I never shot pintails untill I got pintail deeks, same with canvasback. Ponds/tanks could be different, ducks that hit ponds/tanks will probably land there no matter what deeks you got, even if no deeks. Ponds/tanks you are probably better off putting the deeks where you don't want them to land.

I've had luck doing that on a few smaller tanks, if there is one spot that I can't shoot them I have loaded deeks up there so the only landing room is in my shooting range.

OP, like others said in different ways... if you are seeing shovelers you will be shooting mostly shovelers. Adding a spread of a lot of other species won't change much. On the other hand, if you're basing that statement on what you've seen so far this season, I'd also say you haven't seen all that you will come November.

IMO based on the area you should get (in order of numbers) gadwall, wigeon, spoonies, teal, ring necks, redheads (through November), pintail, mallards, and occasional cans. We gets mostly wigeon and gadwall NW of you. All those ducks will decoy into any spread as long as it is in a pond they want. Pintail may be the exception since they do tend to like their own kind. Without pintal dekes they'll often land way out of range. With them they'll circle for 5 minutes and commit to the pintail dekes. On a small pond I'd start with some gadwall and wigeon. Add a few pintail on the edge of range and a couple of mallards cuz one in a blue moon you'll get them, too. On a larger pond I'd upscale the numbers and add a couple of cans on the deep edge of the spread at the edge of range, but I wouldn't go out of my way to buy any diver dekes at first.

But it bares repeating, ideally you want to match what you are seeing. Match the hatch as is said both in terms of species and numbers. And what you see likely will change week to week. I've personally never had to use blockers. I setup a typical J, V, or something along those lines with a jerk rig right where I want them to land. Has been working well.