Doug Steinke
03-30-2007, 09:07 AM
Avery Website Photography Committee
Weekly Product Spotlight
Name: Doug Steinke
Date: April 1, 2007
Product Name: Greenhead Gear® Pro Grade Over-Sized Sleeper Shell Decoy
Product Features and Benefits:
- Versatility in the field and water.
- One person can easily carry 30 shell decoys
- Are great in high winds
- Absolutely deadly in the frozen terrain
- Less calling on average
Practical Product Uses:
Anywhere you have resting birds; you need to have a few of these.
Tips for Using the Product:
If you are hunting isolated flocks of geese or late season big birds that usually fly in smaller 10-20 bird flocks, try to mimic exactly they way the look on the edge of the ponds or fields. I use small spreads of 30 sleepers and one looker. If you are hunting migrating birds or traffic birds that fly in the upper hundreds or thousands, then get as many as you can handle.
These decoys are also great to use in fields during the dead of the winter, when birds will leave their roost and stay in the fields all day. Cloudy or snowy days are best in this type of situation.
Always have their chest facing into the sun until the wind is greater than 20 mph, and then face them into the wind.
Additional Notes:
I remember my first email conversations with Tom and Mueller back in July of 2003 and they surrounded our Greenhead Gear Over-Sized Sleeper shell. At that time they weren’t even on the market yet, they were just photos that were on the web site. I asked him if they would sell me some shell decoys with just the sleeper style of head. He said basically, “possibly... How many?” When I typed back 25-30 dozen, I don’t think they were quite prepared for that.
Sleepers or converting to an all sleeping spread in general is something I’ve been working on since I first seen them in mass in the winter of 1993. Two guys from Lexington, NE used to make concrete decoys out of shell moldings and for heads they just cut out semi circle wood sleeper heads. I was blown away. The next time it was blown away was seeing our sleeper shell decoys on the website.
We hunt a traffic area where we get huge masses of wintering birds, mostly lessers. And for most of the year it is a numbers game when it comes to decoy spreads, sometimes into the thousands. What we have found over the years is that we could run as little as 300 sleepers and compete with other spreads that were twice the size or larger. The basis to my thinking back then was the birds would leave the major roosting area and fly a 20 mile stretch of river to the next roosting area. As they would fly, they would see “200 decoys, 600 decoys, 1500 decoys… Huh 300 sleepers! Must be a roost” and they would suck right in with very little calling. We have ran as little as 200 and as many as 1200 sleepers and found that 300 is the magic number. Out of those 300 decoys less than 50 are actives, feeders or lookers. Now over the past few years there are sleeper spreads popping up all along the river.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/st10.jpg
Actual birds.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl7.jpg
The most important detail in a sleeper spread. Notice the real birds
in the picture above. First time I really saw our fullbodies\lookers on the ground
was a picture Brett Beinke had of an early season MN hunt a few years back.
Brett - great tip!
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl3.jpg
Spead we use for late season bigger birds.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl1.jpg
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl5.jpg
Spread we used the last day of the season.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl2.jpg
What we call the early season "oreo" spread. Dark on the outside with a white center.
Big spread for the little birds (lessers, specs, snows). The darker decoys are silos.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl.jpg
Weekly Product Spotlight
Name: Doug Steinke
Date: April 1, 2007
Product Name: Greenhead Gear® Pro Grade Over-Sized Sleeper Shell Decoy
Product Features and Benefits:
- Versatility in the field and water.
- One person can easily carry 30 shell decoys
- Are great in high winds
- Absolutely deadly in the frozen terrain
- Less calling on average
Practical Product Uses:
Anywhere you have resting birds; you need to have a few of these.
Tips for Using the Product:
If you are hunting isolated flocks of geese or late season big birds that usually fly in smaller 10-20 bird flocks, try to mimic exactly they way the look on the edge of the ponds or fields. I use small spreads of 30 sleepers and one looker. If you are hunting migrating birds or traffic birds that fly in the upper hundreds or thousands, then get as many as you can handle.
These decoys are also great to use in fields during the dead of the winter, when birds will leave their roost and stay in the fields all day. Cloudy or snowy days are best in this type of situation.
Always have their chest facing into the sun until the wind is greater than 20 mph, and then face them into the wind.
Additional Notes:
I remember my first email conversations with Tom and Mueller back in July of 2003 and they surrounded our Greenhead Gear Over-Sized Sleeper shell. At that time they weren’t even on the market yet, they were just photos that were on the web site. I asked him if they would sell me some shell decoys with just the sleeper style of head. He said basically, “possibly... How many?” When I typed back 25-30 dozen, I don’t think they were quite prepared for that.
Sleepers or converting to an all sleeping spread in general is something I’ve been working on since I first seen them in mass in the winter of 1993. Two guys from Lexington, NE used to make concrete decoys out of shell moldings and for heads they just cut out semi circle wood sleeper heads. I was blown away. The next time it was blown away was seeing our sleeper shell decoys on the website.
We hunt a traffic area where we get huge masses of wintering birds, mostly lessers. And for most of the year it is a numbers game when it comes to decoy spreads, sometimes into the thousands. What we have found over the years is that we could run as little as 300 sleepers and compete with other spreads that were twice the size or larger. The basis to my thinking back then was the birds would leave the major roosting area and fly a 20 mile stretch of river to the next roosting area. As they would fly, they would see “200 decoys, 600 decoys, 1500 decoys… Huh 300 sleepers! Must be a roost” and they would suck right in with very little calling. We have ran as little as 200 and as many as 1200 sleepers and found that 300 is the magic number. Out of those 300 decoys less than 50 are actives, feeders or lookers. Now over the past few years there are sleeper spreads popping up all along the river.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/st10.jpg
Actual birds.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl7.jpg
The most important detail in a sleeper spread. Notice the real birds
in the picture above. First time I really saw our fullbodies\lookers on the ground
was a picture Brett Beinke had of an early season MN hunt a few years back.
Brett - great tip!
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl3.jpg
Spead we use for late season bigger birds.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl1.jpg
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl5.jpg
Spread we used the last day of the season.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl2.jpg
What we call the early season "oreo" spread. Dark on the outside with a white center.
Big spread for the little birds (lessers, specs, snows). The darker decoys are silos.
http://webpages.charter.net/silverbellies/sl.jpg