QUESTION: My grandfather was an avid duck hunter. To help him catch his prey, he used decoys. Some of them were rather plain but one was fancier than the rest, painted in full color and detail. Since I always admired them, he left them to me when he passed away last year. I still admire them and would like to know a bit about decoy history. Also, I’d like to possibly add to the ones he left me.
ANSWER: Collectible decoys run the gamut from fancy ones made by famous carvers to plainer ones made by hunters, themselves. It all depends on how much you can afford to spend and what type of decoy—there are several—you want to add to those from your grandfather. But before you consider purchasing any, it’s a good idea to consider their history.
Long before English colonists arrived in America, Native Americans used natural materials like mud, fowl carcasses, and bulrushes to create imitations of birds for hunting. Later, colonists began to copy this technique. These imitations, or decoys, successfully attracted live birds, which the hunters would then kill or capture.
But the decoys used by Native Americans weren’t the detailed ones known today. Instead, they were approximations of the form and plumage of the type of birds being hunted. Hunters would weave bullrush into the shape of a bird or form a duck out of clay and stretch the skins of previous kills over the form. Often, they would weave feathers into the decoy and painted the heads and necks to match the colors of type of birds being hunted.
When Europeans first colonized North America, wildfowl filled the skies. Unfortunately, early settlers watched the birds fly over but didn’t know how to get them. In Europe, fowling was a sport for the landed gentry. Since ordinary people didn't own land for hunting, they never learned how to do it. Their guns didn't have the range or accuracy to bag high-flying birds, plus they had no bird-dogs to fetch their kill.
Colonists copied the Native American's hunting technique, placing groups of decoys, called "rigs," in estuaries and marshes to attract birds. They made their decoys in two basic forms—floaters and stickups. Floating decoys attracted swimming gamebirds, such as ducks, gulls, and swans.
Typically, they carved the bodies from a solid piece of pine or cedar, then hollowed them out to make them lighter to carry. They carved the heads separately and attached them with wooden dowels. Once assembled, they painted the decoys to match the hunted fowl. They added weights to the bottom of each decoy so they would sit low in the water without flipping over. Hunters made stickups in similar fashion, but made them to represent shorebirds such as sandpiper with legs added and pushed into the muddy shore.
During the second half of the 19th century, demand for game birds and their feathers exploded. Railroads enabled the fowl to be shipped quickly to markets. Victorian millinery fashions made heavy use of decorative bird plumage. Manufacturers produced decoys by the thousands to meet the demand. There were no restrictions on hunting, and market hunters collectively killed thousands of birds a day.
The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, between the United States and Great Britain, acting on behalf of Canada, specifically protected migratory birds being decimated by over-hunting. It made it illegal to pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill, or sell migratory birds. Plus the statute didn’t discriminate between live or dead birds and/or bird parts including feathers, eggs and nests.
Consequently, hunters had little need for thousands of decoys. In 1928, the U.S. Congress banned the hunting of shorebirds Decoy carvers could still make and sell their products anywhere, but there was little need for them. By the 1950s, mass-produced plastic decoys eliminated the need for hand-carved decoys. And by 1960, hand-carved hunting decoys had become a tool of the past. Decoy carving had instead become a folk art. Many hunters discarded or burned their wooden decoys, which at the time seemed worthless.
To make a decoy, a carver would form the general shape of the decoy’s body using a hatchet and then fine-tune it with a long drawknife. He or she—a few carvers enlisted the help of their wives—would create the head separately from a smaller block of wood using an axe, rather than a hatchet. Then the carver would whittle the head down with a jackknife and attach it to the body using nails or long spikes.
Finally, the carver would sand, prime, and paint the finished decoy in natural colors to lure fowl effectively. By the time of the Civil War, this technique had matured almost to an art form.
While carvers produced different species of decoys—duck, geese, shorebirds, and more, shorebird decoys tend to be more scarce.
Commercial hunters often owned hundreds of decoys, which they would set out in large numbers to attract as many birds as possible. As sport hunting became more prominent among the wealthy, some carvers began making fewer decoys but of higher quality for this new clientele. Sport hunters wanted decoys that were beautiful, not just useful. Eventually, some carvers began making decoys for purely decorative reasons.
Decoys varied in style from region to region, as the environment and species of a given area dictated their design. Decoys in Maine, for example, were often tougher and more rugged in order to withstand the rough waters of the area. Even within regions, decoy designs varied. Some makers built theirs to float, which would attract large fowl like ducks and geese.
Another group of decoys included stationary “stickups,” which stood on legs in the ground. Still others were two-dimensional profiles also designed as stickups. Some of these stickups stood nearly four feet tall, and floating decoys could be just as long.
Duck decoys weren’t seen as collectors’ items until the 1960s. The market first started with small, niche groups of enthusiasts throughout the United States in the 1950s and 1960s who began collecting antique duck decoys. When Hal Sorenson of Burlington, Iowa, published a magazine called “The Decoy Collector’s Guide,” everything began to change.
Unusual poses (sleeping, swimming, and feeding) are more difficult to render. Such decoys are generally more valuable.
The list of carvers seemed endless, but some names stood out above the rest. Perhaps the most famous practitioner was Elmer Crowel, a masterful carver and painter who lived in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. His decoys generally had carved wings and glass eyes, and he often used a rasp to imitate feathers on the back of his decoys’ heads and on their breasts. In 2000, a preening Canada goose that he carved sold at an auction for $684,500, the current world record for a decoy.
Other notable carvers included Lathrop T. Holmes, who used a limited but expressive palette of colors. “Gus” Wilson’s attention to detail was almost unrivaled, while many of the approximately 10,000 decoys in 50 years made by the Ward Brothers of Maryland were purely decorative. Charles Perdew and his wife, Edna, were a team—he carved and she painted. And Ken Anger perfected the technique of using a rasp to make his decoys look soft and realistic.
In addition to hand-carved decoys, some of the high-quality decoys produced in late-19th-century factories are also highly collectible. The main factories included Mason, Victor, Dodge, Stevens, Peterson, Evans, and Reynolds. Most of these factories used either a duplicating lathe, an assembly line, or both.
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