Summary: If you've ever had the opportunity to watch ducks at a park or in the wild, one of the first things you may have noticed was how much time they spend cleaning and preening themselves. Ducks are clean freaks.
If you want to create a realistic decoy spread your decoys should always be as bright and clean as possible. Duck decoys that are covered with mud, dull or missing paint simply don't look real. It's true that you may be able to kill uneducated birds with duck decoys like these, but once these birds have been hunted for any period of time they'll be on the lookout for everything that could possibly be wrong in your spread, especially your decoys.
There are three simple steps you can take to make sure your duck decoys look their best.
Step 1: Wash your duck decoys before the start of each season or whenever they get extremely dirty.
Just spraying your decoys off with water is not enough. Instead, wash your decoys with a combination of water, cleaner (i.e. Simple Green) and a good scrub brush or scouring pad. Cleaning your decoys in this manner will lift the dirt and grime that has accumulated in the creases and you'll be amazed at how different your decoys will look after this step.
Step 2: Repaint the key areas of your decoys and touch up any areas missing paint.
Ducks have great eyesight and there are two colors that they can see better than any other colors. Those two colors are black and white. Therefore, It is important that you repaint or touch up any of the areas on your decoys that contain either of these colors. Additionally, if your duck decoys are missing paint, find the color that most closely matches the area where the paint is missing and touch the area up. You don't need to order special paint. We buy all of our decoy paint from Wal-Mart or our local paint or hardware store.
Step 3: Wipe your duck decoys down with non-glare Armour-All.
After you've washed and touched up the paint on your decoys, rub a light coat of non-glare Armour-All (or a similar product) on your decoys. The Armour-All will bring the colors to life and it will create a sheen that real ducks have when they are on the water.