It was a cold, snowy morning, and the diver hunting had been slow. I decided to walk around a bit and get some blood flowing to my toes, but I hadn’t gone far before my buddy Tim hissed, “Ducks!”
I turned to see a pair of goldeneyes buzzing up one of our longlines, locked onto the floating bluebill spinner we had anchored 25 yards from our hide. I quickly took cover, and Tim folded the drake with one clean shot. Not long after we retrieved the whistler, a flock of scaup materialized out of the snowflakes and strafed low over the spread, allowing each of us to add a drake bluebill to the bag. As the morning progressed, a half-dozen more flights of divers bombed into our rig. Most lined up directly on the spinner like it was a homing beacon. Given the low visibility that morning, we might not have fired a shot without it.
A key objective for waterfowlers in many areas is to get noticed by as many passing birds as possible in hopes of coaxing some of them into the decoys. Spinners are perfect for this purpose, as the bright, strobe-like flashing produced by their wings can grab the attention of distant birds that otherwise wouldn’t have seen your decoys or heard your calls. Once a source of controversy—and still prohibited in some states—spinners have been around for almost 30 years, and I’d guess that today more duck hunters use them than not.
I don’t use spinning-wing decoys on every hunt, but I do believe they’re an asset in most situations. They are perhaps most effective early in the season when ducks have yet to encounter many hunters. Be sure to bring at least one spinner with you if you’re planning to hunt the Dakotas or Prairie Canada. Place your spinners where you want the birds to decoy, and they will often try to land right next to them. By bringing ducks in close, spinners will not only help you bag more birds, but also aid in identifying drakes in flocks of birds that have yet to develop full plumage.
The same goes for September teal and wood ducks down South. (Dove spinners are deadly for both teal and woodies, and they’re quite a bit cheaper than duck versions.) Later in the fall, spinners remain particularly effective when you’re hunting migrating ducks in wide-open areas like major rivers and lakes, broad coastal waters, and agricultural fields—especially on bright, sunny days, when spinning-wing decoys are most visible.
By the end of the season, however, ducks have seen dozens of spinning-wing decoys and will often shy away from them. A couple of winters ago, while hunting flooded timber in Oklahoma with Mojo Outdoors founder Terry Denmon, we had our best luck by tucking a single spinner back in the buck brush off to the side of the hole. It worked like a charm. That’s a good trick to consider anytime you’re hunting in areas with flooded cover. You don’t lose the flash altogether, but the birds can’t get a good look at the decoy until they are in range.
Another option is to use a remote control to turn spinning-wing decoys off when birds approach your spread—100 yards is often a good rule of thumb. Ducks get particularly wary of spinners on heavily hunted public areas where the average spread consists of two or three dozen decoys with a spinner in the middle. In these situations, it might be best to use spinning-wing decoys sparingly—if at all.
The bottom line: Ducks are naturally attracted to certain types of motion, and spinning-wing decoys are among the most convenient and effective ways to add that motion to your spread. They are useful tools, but they certainly don’t guarantee success, and it’s important to deploy them in the ways that will work best when and where you hunt.
