goose decoys

Cantab.

Given that the wildfowling season is over, I'd like to add to my collection of decoys by hopefully, making my own.

I've tried making sillouhets out of marine ply and I have a fair few Texas rags. I find goose decoys extremely expensive at €20 a pop and you need a shed load to attract any descent amount of geese. has any one any ideas on some material to use and their effectiveness?

There's a guy on the internet who make them out of paper mache and water-proofs them with boat farnish. I've actually tried this method and the ducks come out fine but the geese, but that's a different story.
(or possibly fibre glass, but that stuff makes one hell of a mess)

Grizzly 45

Geese are generally smarter than ducks and have very keen eyesight.So it's possible that the boat varnish MIGHT be catching sunlight and reflecting,which real geese dont do.Anything out of the ordinary and geese wont come near it.Check your decoy pattern,found that was always what screwed me.

foxshooter243

Cantab, grizz is right about the varnish, any glare and the geese are gone,
remember that when decoying geese on land , the flighting geese are looking for food and when they spot geese on the ground they look for the dominant goose cos he is where the grub is, if your decoys have no motion and are all static decoys then this sends the message that the boys on the ground are not feeding cos theres no grub, so its neccessary to get some movement into your pattern to draw them down.
sillouettes will give the impression of movement to flying geese as they fly round them cos they appear to be changing direction but the addition of some motion sticks under the decoys and anything else you can do to make them appear more realistic will pay dividends.