Using Silhouette Decoys with Darrel Wise
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Helping You Get the Most From Your Hunting Dogs


Using Silhouette Decoys with Darrel Wise





by Matt Wettish


[Introduction]

 0:24 Matt: Darrel

 0:24 Darrel: Matt

 0:25 Matt: Good to see you, buddy. How's things?

 0:27 Darrel: Good seeing you.

 0:28 Matt: You have a good season this year?

 0:29 Darrel: Yeah. The thing I liked about it the most was that it was my last one.

 0:34 Matt: It's your last one

 [laughter]

 0:38 Darrel: I'm retired, man.

 0:39 Matt: Oh, come on. You don't look it.

 0:40 Darrel: Twenty years. Twenty years of doing anything is enough.

 0:44 Matt: Awesome.

 0:45 Darrel: I'm not going to stop hunting geese.

 0:48 Matt: Right.

 0:49 Darrel: But I'm going to stop doing it on a professional level or I'm taking other hunters.

 0:53 Matt: Gotcha.

 0:54 Darrel: Now, I can take who I choose to take, not who chooses me because of the checks.

 1:01 Matt: [laughter]

 1:04 Darrel: Hunt with your buddies. That's what hunting is all about.

 1:05 Matt: That's, you know what, that's the enjoyment. That's the enjoyment. If you're in love with a sport, then you enjoy it. It's a passion. We live it. And I mean, you've taken it to the nth degree. You've taken it and you've actually created Real Geese, which is your baby. And you know I'm a silhouette fanatic. And there are so many misconceptions of, oh, you know you've gotta use the full bodies. You can't attract birds as much as full bodies with a silhouette.

I know that's not true. We gotta tell everybody else. What are the effective traits and the benefits of being able to utilize silhouettes?

 1:42 Darrel: One of the things that I think, an advantage that you get, that you can only get with silhouettes is you don't have one body mold and three head molds.

 1:56 Matt: Sure.

 1:57 Darrel: Or in the case of the new, nicer ones, two body molds and three head molds, which contributes to a kind of a wooden soldier effect. I like to call it the flock, “the flock” look where we've got 30 different poses with this Pro Series I, Pro Series II, the sitting geese, whereby you get a different shape with each bird.

 2:27 Matt: Sure, there's a different body posture position.

 2:29 Darrel: Yeah. Everyone's different. And I used to spend a lot of time with binoculars studying flocks of geese to see how I could emulate a flock.

 2:37 Matt: Right.

 2:38 Darrel: Because the goose is flying along up there, looking down on the ground for a friendly place to go get with his buddies. He isn't studying the details of a given bird or a given decoy. He's looking at the overview of the flock.

 2:52 Matt: Right. What is the attitude? Are they heads up getting ready to leave? Are they resting?

 2:58 Darrel: Just the overall look. Just the overall look. Guess what? They all look different.

 3:02 Matt: Sure.

 3:03 Darrel: They all look different. So you can't emulate, that, with one or two times a couple hundred. Now they're starting to look like...frozen decoys.

 3:20 Matt: Stale. Stagnant.

 3:21 Darrel: Decoys. They look like decoys all the time.

 3:23 Matt: Exactly.

 3:24 Darrel: And it's that glance that they make that says, okay, boogeyman or no, these are my friends.

 3:29 Matt: So what creates that motion. Not the motion, but the stagnantness. What gets away from that being stagnant?

 3:35 Darrel: All the different shapes.

3:37 Matt: Okay.

 3:39 Darrel: All the different postures. What you get with silhouettes that you can't get with full bodies, I'm not knocking full bodies, I'm just saying there are some advantages here.

 3:47 Matt: Sure.

 3:49 Darrel: What you get is, when, like I'm going to aim this, like the goose is looking out like so. This one he doesn't see. But thankfully he can't count and you've got more than one like you said. But when he comes around, that comes into view.

 4:04 Matt: Right.

 4:05 Darrel: And so you've got all these different ones coming into view as he's changing angles. And all at once you've got an illusion of movement that you can't get with a full body or a shell.

 4:17 Matt: Now you've got a different posture.

 4:20 Darrel: And then you've got all the different postures. And you get these things that seem to be changing and you're fooling them.

 4:25 Matt: So, as they lose one, they pick up another.

 4:27 Darrel: Yeah.

 4:28 Matt: And as they're circling around...

 4:31 Darrel: The one they lost, now is, because they're not parked, they're not parked right in my binoculars; they're gonna dive 45 miles an hour. So things are changing. Things are coming into view that weren't in view.

 4:42 Matt: Right.

 4:43 Darrel: And it does a good job.

 4:45 Matt: Now what about the benefits, as far as, obviously that right there is a lot smaller than full body. Now, what can you pack

 4:56 Darrel: The benefits from a guide's standpoint or from a goose hunter's standpoint... a lot of times, you're hunting on your own and you get your own stuff, and the farmer or the landowner says, yeah, Matt, I'll let you go back there but you can't rob.

 5:13 Matt: [laughter] I've had that. And it's three, four hundred yards out.

 5:19 Darrel: Or half, maybe a mile. Maybe more. So now, a light weight, practicability, all those things, becomes an issue. But I mean, first and foremost in your mind is you want to be successful. So you want decoys that really work. You don't care what you gotta go through. But it's nice if you don't have to go through quite so much.

5:37 Matt: With the cost of gas, I don't want to pull a trailer.

 5:39 Darrel: Yeah.

 5:40 Matt: [laughter] I don't want to pull a trailer.

 5:43 Darrel: One bag and we've got the bags over there,

5:46 Matt: You've got the bags. How many decoys can fit in one

 5:49 Darrel: You can get four dozen in a bag. But it's more comfortable with three.

 5:53 Matt: Okay.

 5:54 Darrel: Three dozen's real nice.

 5:55 Matt: So you figure one guy can put three dozen on each shoulder and walk out?

 5:58 Darrel: No, you're not going to hunt with, you don't need that many decoys. If there's two of you and you've got three dozen each, you're fine.

 6:07 Matt: Sure.

 6:08 Darrel: You'll do fine.

 6:09 Matt: Yeah. Grab your gear in one hand and the decoys in the other and walk out. You get it out in one shot.

 6:14 Matt: Now one thing. I live on a coastal area. And I get fluctuations where we have exposure to sand bars and stuff like that. I'll tell you what. They show up incredible when you start getting them around water. You can actually make them walk out of the water and stuff.

 6:29 Darrel: Yeah, they look so cool next to water. I love them next to water.

 6:33 Matt: I think the diversity. They don't fall over.

 6:39 Darrel: In high wind.

 6:40 Matt: In high wind or it coming out of water. You're in a pond where you end up with that contour of the land. You can't stack any other type of decoy up on a 45 degree angle.

 6:50 Darrel: Yeah, on an angle.

 [laughter]

 6:51 Matt: They just stand there like this. And for some reason it just doesn't look real when they're doing this.

 6:57 Darrel: It looks so good on the edge next to some floaters, don't they?

 6:59 Matt: It's unbelievable.

 7:00 Darrel: Yeah.

 7:01 Matt: And they don't float away.

 7:02 Darrel: [laughter]

 7:03 Matt: They don't float away on you. What an incredible decoy, man.         

 7:07 Darrel: They do the job. They do the job. They don't hurt your pocketbook.

 7:12 Matt: That's it. That's enough reason.

 7:14 Darrel: Back to, they do the job. And they do a really good job at their job.

 7:18 Matt: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, cool. We're going to have to get out there and do that job sometime.

 7:24 Darrel: [laughter]

 7:25 Matt: Darrel, I appreciate your time. I gotta hit it.

 7:27 Darrel: Not a problem.

 7:28 Matt: And we'll catch up with you.

 7:29 Darrel: Thanks for stopping by, Matt.

 7:30 Matt: You got it, man.

 7:31 Darrel: Take care, buddy.

  7:31 [Closing]







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