Has the $30, $40, and sometimes $100 price tag kept you from calling with decoys on your predator stands?  Here’s a how-to guide on building an effective visual enticement, with wind powered motion, for all types of predators, and it can be done on the cheap.  We’ve included a complete parts list on this post. 

The Budget Bird Decoy w/ Goose Feather Attractor

Like most do-it-yourself projects, the Budget Bird idea started as a solution to a problem.  My brother, Mike Healy, lives near Boise, Idaho and likes to hit a few coyote stands in the afternoon near his home.  Most of the area around Boise is rolling grass prairie covered with lava rock, grass, and short/small stands of sage brush.  There is plenty of hunting pressure and there are plenty of predator callers in Boise. 

There were lots of coyotes everywhere he went, and he wasn’t having any problems getting the coyotes fired up.  However, once he had them all hot & bothered, he’d hit the prey distress and the coyotes would come just close enough to see the area/source of the sound and stop.  Some would work their way downwind, but many would just look for a few seconds and leave.  Very few would commit themselves to anything closer than 250-400 yards. 

Sound familiar?

His first stand with the Budget Bird was in a place that he’d called before and had coyotes hang up.  He and his son Carl called in two hard charging coyotes to under 30 yards and both were fixated on the Budget Bird decoy.  One even came running in from the downwind side! 

Here’s how he cured the hang-up problem:

Mike is far too cheap (uh…I mean budget minded) to just go and buy a decoy.  So, armed with a hot glue gun, some leftover paint in his garage, a horse pasture full of Canadian goose feathers, and a dove decoy from  Wal Mart, he built the Budget Bird. 

• He started with a standard gray colored dove decoy.  With left over paint he gave it a red head and an off-white body with black specks.  This coloration sufficiently matched the woodpeckers near his house. 

• So it can be mounted on a dowel rod, he hot glued a 3-inch piece of 1/2 inch PVC pipe on the bottom of the bird.  An empty shotgun shell will work here too – just glue the brass end to the decoy so the open end can fit over the dowel.

• To give the decoy some motion he drilled a hole in the tail of the decoy and added a short piece of 15lb fishing line with a clip swivel at the end (the swivel is VERY important  to avoid tangles and allow for quick feather replacement).  He then tied a short piece of fishing line to a goose feather, tied a loop on end and attached it to the swivel.  Any large feather will work. 

Because the feathers get beat up pretty easy Mike is trying a strip of material from a Tyvek envelope to see if the decoy gets the same good response from coyotes. Tyvek is tough as nails, light like a feather, and impervious to rain – it should work well, but is untested at this time. 

NOTE:  Mike told me that a guy needs to have a few different lengths of dowel rod in the truck, so the decoy can always be set up above the grass or other ground cover.  In places that have very little cover he uses a 2-foot piece.  In areas that have bushes about 2 and 3-feet high, he uses a 4 or 5-foot piece. 

ANOTHER NOTE:  The feather moves and flutters in the slightest breeze.  If the string is too long, it wraps around the dowel rod.  Also, if you don’t have the swivel in the line, the line twists right up the tail of the decoy up and will eventually cause the line to break.

Good luck to everyone with this decoy-on-the-cheap tip.  If you build one and it works for you too, we’d like to know.  Please send us the pictures!!

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Comments are always appreciated. 

Good hunting,

Mark Healy

mark@wildlifecallers.com