# Decoy weights- How heavy?



## Chaser (Sep 28, 2007)

Just curious what your opinions are concerning decoy weights and how heavy they should be for different applications/types of dekes.

I have all of my duck floaters rigged up with 6 feet (or so) of Tanglefree, with a 4oz mushroom weight at the end. This has worked great. Even last winter on the shores of the GSL when the water was pretty choppy, they stayed put. 

I just bought some GHG Canada Goose floaters, and I am concerned that the 4oz weights won't be enough to hold them in place (being that they have a much higher profile and all) in a stiff wind. 

Thoughts or suggestions?


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## Duurty1 (Sep 10, 2007)

i run 4 oz. ACE's on my ducks and 8 oz. ACE's on my geese and only had a problem once. that was last year on the last day or second to last day of the swan season when we had like 50 mph winds. so we just stomped the weight down into the mud and they stayed put


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## Nor-tah (Dec 16, 2007)

Depends on if the keels are weighted or not... I always drill out the keels on my GHGs. They stay put a lot better. You should be good with what you got.


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## 1BandMan (Nov 2, 2007)

Depends on how deep the water is. 
You can get away with not very much weight if you use longer lines even in fairly high winds. If you hunt deep water with short lines, you better have some weight on the end.


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## Chaser (Sep 28, 2007)

Ok, cool. So how about this drilling out the keels idea? It seems like it would reduce quite a bit of weight (especially on the goose dekes) to empty out the sand or whatever is in there, but I don't want them tipping over in waves/wind. Is this a common problem with floater dekes without weight in the keels? 

RiverRat mentioned in a post a while back that he uses water keels. Does that just mean he drills out the keels so when they're in the water, the keel fills with water and this helps to anchor them upright?


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## Riverrat77 (Sep 7, 2007)

Chaser said:


> RiverRat mentioned in a post a while back that he uses water keels. Does that just mean he drills out the keels so when they're in the water, the keel fills with water and this helps to anchor them upright?


I don't even drill them.... I've tried just making a small hole to take out the sand and it takes forever to empty and when you toss them out, they take forever to fill and seem to be a lot more prone to tipping. What I do is just take a utility knife, cut the keel past the glue plug so you have a hole the size of the actual keel. Sand pours right out, they fill very quickly when tossed out and so far (knock on wooden decoy) I haven't had any tipping issues, even in the pretty heavy winds some of the places I hunted had me dealing with. They actually seem to "swim" a bit better in just a little breeze type wind than my weighted keels used to as well. Biggest bonus is if you walk to all your spots, it saves a TON of weight on your back. On the original topic, I run 4oz mushrooms on all my dekes. I do need some longer cords though.... since I had to chase dekes a couple times last year in deeper water.


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## deadduck (Jul 21, 2009)

I have the GHG Hot Buy decoys, and was thinking about cutting open the keels (I hunt on foot) just to make it lighter. Has anyone tried this "emptying the keel" method on the hot buys?


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## Riverrat77 (Sep 7, 2007)

deadduck said:


> I have the GHG Hot Buy decoys, and was thinking about cutting open the keels (I hunt on foot) just to make it lighter. Has anyone tried this "emptying the keel" method on the hot buys?


Should work just fine, just make sure you don't cut off your line attachement hole in the front of the keel. It'll make a huge difference in your pack for sure.


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