Mr.Robo

First & foremost..this topic is not intended to start a war..but to get a feel of what direction waterfowling is going.
My opinion on Robo and all the other mechanical contraptions is that they are putting a hurt on the juvenile population ..no matter what species it is.I will admit I am set in my ways and after duck hunting for the last 43 years out of 53..I'm starting to question the "numbers" that are being put out every year by the USFW & Du..
What's your view ? I still use a Jerkcord.

I think jerk cords are too deadly.






Like live bait in a BASS tourny; ban it!!!!

I do not believe an all out ban on mechanical decoys is prudent or necessary. I do believe that on some public lands the robo has been a major detriment to the quality of hunting and the ability for areas to hold birds consistently.

1554 ,
I agree 100% with that statement!!

Why do you question the "numbers"? Have you hunted any where other than TX?

X2 hunt north of the Red in late season and its eye opening when you have open water

Barney,

I have duck hunted for the last 43 years,out of those 43 years I have been hunting for 30 years..the decline in numbers is remarkable,especially Teal.

No...nowhere outside of Texas.

Pretty much my point. If I only hunted in TX, I wouldn't believe the numbers either. Fly ways and crop rotations have changed over the last 43 years.

Very true..so has climate..I love hunting in Dec in a T-shirt..

Freakin Al Gore !!

I am glad people use robo. It makes my job easier. They came out strong and effective. Now, not so much. I had 6 at one time. Now I have 6 broken ones. I hate jacking with them anyway. Thump Thump Thump Thump, Knock Knock Knock Knock.

I don't have any reason to not believe the numbers. I've never flown the potholes or been a part of the census.

What I have seen is specific fields holding 100k plus ducks while the area within a 5 mile radius of that field was nearly completely void of ducks. Everyone in that area was running around griping about how this is the worst they've ever seen it. All the while a few miles away was a concentration of birds that just blew your mind.

In my experience this is often the case. If you're not killin em, someone else is.

I myself have never flown over them either..I'm just basing my opinion on what I see and observe in my area.

I believe that in my hands, a duck call is deadly weapon...

So that's what I'm missing..

How in the world can a mojo in another cove/ across a cove/ different portion of a lake or wherever affect your hunting? It doesn't; not negatively anyway.

The only way it can impact your hunting is if you are using them and are hunting birds that are shy from them. As for the birds that are mojo shy go they simply find another area to be in. Usually in someones spread that was in the right area and one that isn't using a mojo.

The same argument could be said against decoys in general. Birds see decoy spreads, get shot over them and get wise to them and land where they aren't. I guess decoys keep birds from holding on a lake consistently. Hunting pressure moves birds. Not what decoys people are using.

I use both jerk strings and robo's. They both have a place and time. If your hunting a public spot where thers one spinning every 300 hundred yards than leave them at home. Hunted public last winter and didn't use them and we killed our fair share on a regular basis. The jerk string was much more effective on public water.

On our private spot we used both depending on the time of season. Over all the jerk string was much more effective on private/public than a robo when used correctly.

On the numbers side of things, we are in the hay day of the last 40 years. Thats why this sport is so popular right now. Weather & food are the major factors that affect what we see at the end of the flyway. When Kansas & Oklahoma have mild winters & food there is no need for them to come down. This past fall when those states were getting weather earlier in the winter we were picking up new ducks regularly. When the patterns stablized late in the winter and those locations had milder weather there were a lot of ducks north of us.

You answered it. The Mojo has polarized birds in some areas. They either love it, and get killed, or hate it, and leave.

Yes, the answer is pressure impacts birds. Pressure being an impact of something added to a natural setting that is not natural and generally disrupts normal behavior. The argument against the mojo in this case is that it has a higher impact than just a normal decoy spread. Mainly, that you can see it and know of its presence from a greater distance than just your average spread. So it creates more of an impact and increases pressure.

Basically a lake full of hunters with mojos disrupts normal bird behavior more than a lake full of hunters without.

In areas of flooded timber, or decreased visibility, the motorized motion attracts birds, but only until they figure out what it actually is. The argument there is that ducks are drawn to the motion but won't commit into the trees, they dip. When people shoot at the dipping birds it increases the pressure further. When every hole in the trees has a mojo in it, the birds get hole shy faster. Then they leave or seek out areas of thicker timber thus disrupting the normal behavior and decreasing overall hunting success.

And the exact same thing can be said for ANY decoy. Birds come in, get shot at and learn to avoid that particular look.

I don't believe mojos burn out entire areas any more than any other decoy. Just my opinion.

My view is that I only use the dove spinners for early teal, jerk cord the rest of the season.

A few years ago when they were more effective I did use duck mojos during big duck season and I never noticed a relatively high proportion of juveniles. We took the same "age demographic" so to speak with jerk cords.

Its no different than the all mallard spread. They get shot at all the way down here from all mallard spreads and learn to avoid that. That's why this year the guy just down the shoreline was watching ducks drop into my mixed spread and flare over his all mallard.

There are times to use it, I usually have good success with on opening day and then put it up. I will use a mojo if I am in thick stumps or a timber hole for visibility. Teal season definitely.

Yupp and the invention of the Ice Eater has changed up the patterns up north imo. Not as many birds are making it down here to us in Texas

Try and follow along, this might be over your head.

Game management 101:
Manage the population and set limits accordingly. . . ACCORDING TO THE POPULATION.
Set other regulations so as to protect the population from non-hunting influences.
Such as: Steel shot to prevent lead poisoning of all types of wildlife. Shooting times to encourage proper identification of species. Magazine limits to reduce the numbers of cripples.

If the limits are set correctly and adjusted each year to be appropriate to that years population, it does not matter what "technique" you use to kill them. In fact, hunters are encouraged to use techniques that will improve their success. If hunters are restricted in the techniques they can use (i.e. don't use Robos), thus making it more difficult for hunters to be successful, the result will be fewer hunters purchasing license and stamps each year.

Take for example allowing deer hunters to use feeders. Good game managers want hunters to be successful within the limits they have established by understanding the population. If waiving a pink ribbon over your head resulted in an instant limit of green, game managers would be all for it. If they see a population impact, the limits would be adjusted.

None of the supporting regulations are in place to make your hunting more difficult.

That's a great response littledog..

Only thing I can say is the "Hunter" numbers are not down...it is now "cool" to be a duck hunter.. Thanks to Duck Dynasty.

It's easier for me to catch more Reds if I use 4 hooks...but I won't .

I personally don't use mojos because I don't think they are a big enough advantage to justify carrying the extra weight. I do use a jerk line anytime the wind is slack. I have hunted in Washington State and New Zealand where they used pull string spinners. They use them because motorized decoys are banned. Point is making motorized decoys illegal won't stop people from using other types of motion decoys.

I've watched the use of these things since day one. The 3rd year after watching "my ducks" veer off to another spread a few hundred yards away to other hunters finally convinced me to buy a couple. Old school mentality succumbed to...."I gotta have one of those things!" I've gone through about a dozen motorized types, and still have 3 working ones in the garage. Some have sounded like old pump-jacks but the bird never seemed to mind.

I learned that I can't use them here in WA after just moving here about a year ago. They served a purpose whether the switch was turned on or off in the spread while hunting in TX and LA. I'm just tickled that me and my hunting buddies never accidently shot one over the years.

From what I gather there is ongoing debate about motorized decoys every year here in WA Fish & Game. Maybe I need to attend those meetings to figure out the state's justification. Will probably get stopped at the door of the meeting since it takes a Master's degree to figure out the hunting or fishing regs fully around these parts. Sigh...

Its the same here..just about getting to where we will need a legal aide to interpret the digest book.Wish like hell they would set the rules and then leave them alone.
When I buy my wife's license and mine. Its like sitting on a telephone book..loll
My opionion is that the motorized contraptions are doing in the Juvenile birds...unless someone can convenience me other wise.. I will not ever own one.

It's very unfortunate when hunting and fishing regulations are based on emotions, attitudes and opinions instead of science.
Texas comes the closest I've seen to getting it right.

If regulations are put in place restricting "how" I hunt with no "game management" justification; there is no end to where it would stop. It becomes very easy at that point for the anti-hunting crowd to inflict their influence and ultimately achieve their goals - regulations so arbitrary and cumbersome that no one wants to hunt.
If motorized decoys are outlawed, why not limit the total number or decoys ? why not outlaw game calls ? maybe your camo pattern is to good and we should all have to wear red shirts and hats ? sending a dog into cold water seems inhumane to some .. lets outlaw that also. Don't start that snow ball rolling.

Since the Robo was invented the population of ducks has gone up, not declined. Nearly every species is above the LTA, some at the highest numbers since data was first collected in 1955.

Please don't promote regulations that prevent others from hunting in a way that's different than you choose to hunt.
If there is a method or tool being used that puts the population at risk, is a safety issue, or threatens non-target species, then a restriction may be justified.
Otherwise, keep to the science of game management.

Probably the best points made on this topic that I've seen. Well said.

I'm trying to find out if anyone agrees with me that its the juvenile birds that are falling for the robo etc..regulations can be set by the Feds or State and the average Joe is not going to have any say in the matter.

I myself would love to see duck season in Texas be from 2 Sunday of Nov - to 2nd Sunday of Feb.But I know they will never do it.

For what it's worth , we killed 1 bluewing teal the entire season.

I guess when we get put back on the point system then we will understand the effects of a the mechanical contraptions.

I have not seen a large percentage of young birds falling for it. I'd be curious to see what others have to say. But more importantly like was already said regulations are set based on science not on speculation. Since numbers are up even in the age of the spinner there won't be any change restricting its use. If we have big decline in population I'm sure that will be one of the things up for debate whether rightfully so or not. How often have you used them? What percentage of juveniles have you shot over them?


So would most folks but the framework is set by the feds, the state's hands are tied. It's based on the theory that hunting later in the year has an affect on pair bonding which would have a substantial negative impact on next year's numbers.


If you are talking about early teal it was rough for most folks. The big push didn't show up until after it was over thanks to the late spring last year. During the youth season in late October in North TX and all the way up to the Dakotas they were as thick as you'd normally see in September.


We would understand the effects of spinners before a point system was reintroduced. Counts and conditions are released continually, nothing is gonna be a surprise. Nesting conditions are a much bigger part of the equation compared to the use of spinners.

We hunted in South Dakota for 5 days in Mid-October and more than half of the ducks we killed were blue wing teal.

I use them when I think they are effective, and worth the trouble. They are not always effective, and normally not worth the trouble to mess with. For you guys that have the old ones, you should throw them in the garbage can and get the new ones with magnetic wings, they are sweet, and when they run it sounds just like a duck hovering over a spread.

I think they are most effective at first light, and also when new birds move into a new area. Juvenile birds decoy easier, whether you are using a mojo or not. But I have seen mojo work on greenheads late season, late morning and blue bird day.

My thoughts exactly

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