Post-Season Preparations

by Field-Staffer Mike Reed

The one idea that most water fowlers share is; the season is over, put the dekes in the shed, cover the boat or hang the calls in the closet...

For the guys at Zink Calls, the season never ends. Instead, when February comes, time starts to run-out for preparation of the up-coming season. In this article you will learn tips and tricks from the guys that have been through it all and have come to understand and respect the inevitability of, "Trial and Error."

Hunting Gear and Clothing: Depending on where you live, different factors are going to play a role in putting un-necessary wear-and-tear on your hunting equipment. For example; if you pack your hunting gear in a shed, closet or box for the post-season and you live in a damp or humid climate, you will most un-doubt ably see some sort of mold. If you live in a dry, hotter climate you will most likely find insects and spiders will find anyway to escape the heat and can be found living it up inside your gear.

Solution: Now days there are vacuum sealed storage bags that you can vacuum out the air and seal what is inside in about 1/3 of its original size, sealing out crawling critters, moisture and just about everything else that can harm your things. Now, this is the ideal solution for coats, shirts, bibs, etc. However, these bags are more expensive. If you don't want to spend the money, there are other alternatives. Garbage bags, zippered, duffel style bags will work in place of the more expensive solutions. As far as gear goes; blind bags, gloves, or headwear - plastic bins with a sealable lid will keep the critters out but are not as effective against moisture. Also, if you own a layout-style boat, the manufacture usually makes a lid that will seal to the lip of the cockpit. After you seal all your goods, put what you can in your boat and seal the top. This will have added protection to the cherished items you love and work hard to buy.

Preventative decoy care: Now days there are many different ways water fowlers choose to rig, transport, use, or store their decoys. Duck and Goose decoys are better than ever and keep getting better as the seasons pass, however along with quality comes a price; decoys are more expensive than ever. Even with the ways we rig our decoys has transformed from cord with a nut/bolt on the end to high priced molded led weights with bungee straps to secure the weight to the keel to prevent paint damage. The following tips will help pro-long the life and quality of your decoys through the season and after. This will, in-turn, help bring more reason to justify the prices we pay for our block.

Solution: Paint: When it comes to paint, any manufacture will tell you what you already know; paint just doesn't bond that well to the polyethylene. But you can buy some decoys that are made of different materials and have better paint durability but are very expensive.

WATER: Try to avoid literally throwing your decoys into the water, especially from the beach, bank, boat or blind. Instead, when you can, walk out with the bag around your neck and place each decoy into the water. This concept is very important if you hunt salt or alkali water. There is nothing that will kill your decoys faster than Salinity in the water.

Land: Many of us hunt fields one time or another during the season. The most common way to transport them to and from your blind is a covered trailer. If you take a look at different forum sites on the internet you will learn of many different configurations people use to stack, hang or pile their decoys into the trailer. One thing that protects your dekes over all is; Bags, Bags and more Bags; particularly if you have FFD's from Avery. Decoys that rub directly against one another create un-necessary "in-idol" wear. You can purchase individual bags to put your decoys in at just about all the major sporting goods retailers for $4.00 to $6.00 dollars per bag, which is pretty expensive for some people. One thing you can tryout is pillow cases. Smaller pillow cases will serve a suitable means to protecting the flocking or paint on the decoy. A duck or goose decoy in a pillow-case inside a slotted bag sounds pretty secure to me.

When you're done using your decoys, wash them as much as possible with soapy warm water. I try to take my FFD's to the car-wash and clean them with warm soapy water. This does cost money but will be quicker and more thorough. Keep in mind, most of our seasons are during the colder part of the year and most car-wash's will operate with warm water to keep the pipes from freezing. Just make sure you don't get to close with the spray gun, it could take off the paint and or flocking all together. I usually stay about 2ft away and I also don't pull the trigger on the spray gun. The pressure that naturally comes out of most spray guns without pulling the trigger is enough to clean the dirtiest of decoys; I will let you be the judge of that.

One thing I don't recommend is; using spray type cleaner on any decoy. Although this is a quick fix, this will cause the decoy to be shiny and most type of cleaners contains alcohol or an ingredient that will damage the paint and or decoy itself. I carry a 6 inch soft paint brush with me just incase I need to brush off some dried up mud or dirt. Attention to detail will go a long way...

Also, if you use bungee-strap weights on your floaters, try un-wrapping them when your season is over. When the temperatures drop the elastic material does not stretch and retract normally. I didn't do that when I first rigged all my dekes with this style decoy weight and when it came time to get ready to go, all my straps were stretched out and wouldn't hold to the keel anymore. The overall durability was out the window for these riggings. In my opinion, that is too much money to waste on a simple over-sight like this.