Many years ago, when I first heard about using “confidence” decoys to help attract ducks and geese, the idea seemed to make a lot of sense. I mean, why wouldn’t it be advantageous for a waterfowler to enhance his traditional spreads of duck blocks, goose silhouettes, and the like with a smattering of something less “ducky” and “goosey?”

Anything, I thought, to provide more natural deception and legally tip the hunting scales more in my favor. With my shooting skills, or the lack thereof, I can use all the help I can get.

I’d noticed it before, after all, how waterfowl seemed much more comfortable and likely to come to my calls and targetspecies decoys when various species of nongame shorebirds, etc. were present at my shooting site. If they weren’t concerned, neither were the ducks. Then, upon learning there were actually decoys made for such a purpose, it just seemed like the wise thing to do.

So, I did it. I ordered myself some confidence dekes from a popular outdoor outfitter’s catalog. I bought a big old fake blue heron, a dozen plastic coots, three composite cormorants, and a few real-looking crows. I passed on a swan decoy, even though they were on sale. I’ve never seen a tundra swan in Southwest Georgia. However, I have seen a number of Southwest Georgia hunters who would dearly love to bag a giant white “goose” floating on a backwater slough. The possible consequences, for both decoy and Bob, weren’t exactly to my liking.

I employed my confidence decoys for but one season before giving up on the idea. This isn’t to say, mind you, that they didn’t work. On the contrary, they performed magnificently. Each variety reliably attracted the species it was designed to imitate. As a result, the waterfowl that showed up to check out my mallard, ringneck, and canvasback blocks were put more at ease, willingly and, uh, “confidently” pitching in with little or no thought given to my intrusive presence.

Alas, though, there were a number of negatives.

My blue heron decoy, for instance, was almost immediately set upon by a very real (and quite angry) great blue that resented the faux bird’s intrusion into its fishing and frogging hole. The ruckus that ensued drew a bevy of other animated herons, which resulted in a veritable shorebird melee. Never one to resist witnessing a gangfight, avian or otherwise, I paid no attention to incoming ducks while my expensive ersatz shorebird was rent into a million unsalvageable pieces.

The coot dekes caused no such uproar. Coots, you see, are peaceful, kinda cute little critters. Trouble is, they are peaceful, cute little critters that very closely resemble waterborne stumps in the morning fog. Or, should I say stumps look a lot like floating coots? Whichever the case, the resemblance never occurred to me until I motored through my coot-set in the wee hours one morning and hit one (A stump, not a coot.) The subsequent law-of-inertia demonstration would have made Isaac Newton proud. The “object in motion’s” subsequently extracting himself from the tangle and clutter in the bow of the boat would have made him double over with laughter, lacy britches, silk stockings, and all.

My cormorants (anhingas, water turkeys, whatever), including a really cool one with motorized wings, brought in more cormorants. They, in turn, consumed every bluegill and bullhead in the pond, which earned me a vociferous cussing from an irate landowner and the loss of my hunting privileges.

And the crows? Ah, the crows! They showed up in droves. Remember those Southwest Georgia hunters I mentioned? They like nothing better than a good crow shoot.

Ouch! Shoulda just bought the swan.

There’s a bright side to all this, though. Despite the preceding less-thanpleasant experiences, it seems I was fortunate enough to quit while ahead. I was surfing the internet recently and came across the confidence decoy to end all confidence decoys. For $79.95 I could have had a life-size fake cow! Perfect confidence deke for a goose field, they say. Thanks be to an ever-kind providence for my missing that one.

Can you say “bull,” boys and girls?

(Email Bob Kornegay at cletus@windstream.net)