[Springspan]

My brother and I decided at the end of last snow goose season that we wanted to build a rig. We spent the better part of the year doing just that. My brother was able to source hundreds of white tyvek suits and also sheets of coroplast for free from his work. We made patterns, cut, sewed and are still working on painting all the details on the 1000 dekes we made. We recently had the opportunity to christen our spread. We had a flock of snows hitting one of our fields and we decided to hunt. We got busted first thing in the morning still setting up and thought the day was shot. I am glad we stuck it out because about an hour later we had a flock work us and about 5 juvies dropped in to about 15yrds. We dropped two. Our shooting could have been better, but we were pretty excited! It was such an awesome feeling after all the hard work of making the dekes! I got out again with a couple of buddies and we got a few more. This time all adults. The pup got to do some work and I got in some steady training with all the decoying swans.
Pics:

 

[Double Shorthair]

Congrats , glad all the hard work paid off.

 

[JMMBONES]

Awesome!! The hard work paid off!!!

 

[BOOTOXEN]

Way to go!

 

[djknyork]

Congrats guys!

 

[kadd]

Pretty cool making your own decoys and shooting some snows -nice job

 

[Big Rich]

Very nice!

 

[The Rakist]

Awesome! Much respect for the entirely hand made rig. Did you guys build your own speaker systems as well or did you just buy them?

 

[Beavman]

Neat story. Congrats to you and your brother!

 

[DUguy]

Nice job! That's awesome! Good for you guys. Any close up pics of the dekes? they look good in the background.

 

[bigt557]

Nice

 

[Pigger]

Very nice!

 

[Trout 2003]

Ya man.....that gets a HARCORE award for sure. I've heard of guys making their own but not to that scale. That a lot of hours invested there but if all or most the materials are essentially free.....then good thjnking! They look good too! Congrats.

 

[Honkers51]

Congrats great job fellers!!!

 

[Springspan]

Awesome! Much respect for the entirely hand made rig. Did you guys build your own speaker systems as well or did you just buy them?

A buddy of mine built an e-caller out of some old speakers, a 4 channel amp and deep cycle battery that he had laying around. It works great.

Nice job! That's awesome! Good for you guys. Any close up pics of the dekes? they look good in the background.

Here are a few pics. We made our own templates to spray over for blues and regular snows. I will have to get a few pics of some that are completely done this weekend.

Most of the ones in this pic are not quite finished yet. They still need the beaks painted, eyes drawn on and black wing tips sprayed onto the back of them. That will most likely happen during the off season.

You can see some of the wing details and beak/ eye details here.

A finished juvie blue. The head was painted gray to match.

An adult blue.

I will have to get some pics of them in action. We lined all of them with plastic grocery bags to give them more body. We probably used over 6000 staples to put everything together. I can't even remember how many spools of thread we used to sew them all up either.

One of the many deke parties in my basement (sweatshop)

 

[LabandBirdman]

Excellent! Great job.

 

[lockedup]

Sweet! I love the putting them together party. Great way to get them done. Glad to see the success with them too. Well done.

 

[JMMBONES]

Dedication!!!

 

[Trout 2003]

I see no beer at the putting together party!?? You throw a crappy party lol.

 

[Springspan]

There was plenty of beer, just none on top of the table. It would have been knocked off!