2001 CCNDU Decoy

Hi All. This year's CCNDU dinner banquet was held April 7th at the Clarion
Hotel in South Burlington Vt. This year I decided to carve a reproduction
of
an old George Bacon Black Duck. I saw such a decoy in the book "Decoys of
Lake Champlain" by Loy Harrell. For those of you who have a copy of this
book, the picture of the decoy I copied is  on page 16. My version is solid
cedar with a pine keel and external lead weight. Those of you who are
inclined to make all decoys as anatomically correct as possible will note
that the face does not have the characteristic lighter shade that a live
black duck has. To that I answer that I was trying imitate a very old style
of decoy, not the real thing. I guy from North Hero (whose name I cannot
for
the life of me remember) bought he decoy at auction for $45. As far as I am
concerned, he got the steal of the dinner at that price.

As a side note, I think I will go back to something a little flashier for
next year's CCNDU decoy as I prefer to raise more than $45 for DU.

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                                           Ron Smith's donation to the CCNDU

Last year Ron Smith of Pembroke Pines Fla donated a very nice Bluewing Teal
to the DU chapter I belong to. If you scroll down a little ways you will
see
a picture of it. This year he was nice enough to donate another decoy to
the
CCNDU chapter. As you can see from the pcture it is a drop dead gorgeous
drake ringneck. Ron even went so far as to custom cast a lead weight for
the
bottom of the decoy that has the letters CCNDU 2001 cast into it. Ron
hollowed out the deke, and carved his name in the bottom. This exceptional
decoy brought $130 at auction and was taken home by Steve Benoit, an
officer
of the chapter and purchaser of the 1999 CCNDU decoys.

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that Ron took the time and effort
to
carve and send to me a decoy for the chapter I belong to. Thank you Ron.

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                                My Donation to The Hollywood Ted Foster Memorial Chapter of DU

When Ron proposed donating another decoy to the CCNDU chapter again this
year, I felt that I wanted to reciprocate and donate one to the chapter he
belongs to. As a result, I carved a green wing teal in what I call my
puddle
duck rig filler style. This style is characterized by my using construction
grade 2x and 1x material glued together and given minimal carving detail.
The
whole point is to carve and paint a decoy in less time than some of my
fancier dekes. In this case I glued a 1x6 to a hollowed out 2x6. I used a
piece of white cedar for the head and pine for the keel, with an external
lead weight. As usual I used oil paints.

I believe Ron said that his dinner is in August. After his dinner is done
and
the dust settles I will post the results of his dinner.

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Well folks, here are this year's CCN dekes. I call them my Browns River
series, after the river behind my house where I found a decent sized 2x8
floating that I used to make the first pair of these dekes. As you will
notice they are somewhat non-traditional in appearance due to their only
being the thickness of a 2x piece of lumber. I use these kinds of decoys as
"rig fillers". That is, I have mostly full bodied birds in my rig, but I
throw some of these in becuase they are much quicker to make than
traditional dekes.

How much quicker? Once the body is bandsawed to shape, I can go from
scratch to ready to paint in under 15 minutes per body. The heads take me
about an hour in themselves. Even that hour is much quicker than what it
normally takes me to carve ahead. The reason for that is that on a regular
head, I carve in all sorts of details, around the nostils, the egg cracker,
and under the lower jaw.

Since my original motivation in making this kind of decoy was speed and
ease of building, I only use 2 coats of paint on each area of the deke.
Even so, it still takes me about 1.5 man hours total to paint each decoy.

When I carved the first pair, I was really curious how they would float
without a keel. The answer? Really, really nicely. They are not self
righting, but in the times I have hunted them in rough nasty weather, they
have NEVER turned over, not once.

I realise that these decoys are not as fancy as some of the other ones I
have carved and donated over the years, but I was beginning to get a little
bored doing goldeneyes all the time, and I needed to try something new.

The dinner is April 8th, and like always I will let you know what they
bring.

See ya!

Hi All. I am very happy to mention that this year's CCNDU decoys, my rig
filler blue bills were bought at auction by none other than Tim Bombardier
of Richmond Vt.
The winning bid was $60, which I thought was very flattering, especially
coming from a fellow decoy carver.

I'd also like to take this oppurtunity to relate to you yet another story
that shows that once again, duck hunters are some of the nicest most caring
folks I know. Longtime readers of my Decoy Doings column will recall from
my March 2000 column that I mentioned that Ron Smith from Pembroke Pines
Fla donated a drake bluewing teal deke to the CCNDU chapter for us to
auction off as a way of saying thank you to me for help in carving info.
Early in the evening I approached the auctioneer and told him about what
Ron had done in the way of donating that deke. The auctioneer, Warren Earle
from Eden Vt was kind enough to relate the whole story for the audience and
ask that the bidding start off at a respectable amount. Suffice to say, the
amount was met, and then raised, and then raised many more times till it
reached the selling price of $100, which is damn good for a single deke at
that dinner. How good? My first pair of goldeneye dekes brought $100, and
so did my first pair of cedar woodies.

The buyer was Germain Pellerin, and unfortunately I cannot remember what
town he is from. Thank you Germain.

As soon as I get the film developed, I will post a picture of Ron's teal
for all to see.

Blue Wing Teal by Ron Smith of Pembroke Pines Fla.

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These decoys were used but not excessively so. I would say that the paint
job on them was avg to good for used dekes. Being a detail freak that I am,
I figured I could repaint them and donate 2 and everybody would be happy.

After looking them over, I decided that in order to give them the paint job
I want to give them, I would have to patch a bunch of the spots where cork
flakes had fallen out. and even though the heads were designed to swivel
and therefore weren't firmly glued into place, I decided that I really
prefer to be able to pick the birds up by the heads. So I decided that I
would pin the heads in place with 1/8" dowel rods cross pinned across the
head dowel. Another thing I was not crazy about was the eyes. Normally LL
Bean uses glass eyes that have the little wire stub in back that pushes
into the wood. On these birds, the eyes did not seem to be in firm enough
to suit me. So I enlarged the eye holes with my favorite carving knife and
using a 2 part carvers epoxy, I epoxied them in place. The eyes I put in
were 10mm, which is a little bigger than the eyes LL Bean used.

Because many people see these decoys at the dinner and who ever buys them
is bound to show them to lots of other hunters, I really wanted the paint
job to come out first rate. That meant filling a lot of cork spots. I used
my standard method of mixing Titebong II glue with sawdust and troweling it
in with the edge of a straight screw driver. When this dries, it gives the
cork a hard shell like finish that (I think) helps bind the cork in place better.

After the glue/sawdust mix dried, I sanded all the high spots down with 50
grit paper and painted the whole bird with 2 coats of Rustoleum flat black.
After that the drake got an anatomically correct color coat that features
combing on the back and sides. In order to get the green on the head just
right, I used flat black mixed with green for the first color coat. After
that dried, I dry brushed green on on the cheeks and around the eyes. I
think it gives the head a truer shade of green, rather than just paint
light colored green on.

The hen got 2 color coats of the goldenish base color that hens have and
individually painted on feather markings all over it. I bet it took me 2
hours to paint all those feathers in.

The dinner is April 17th. As always I will follow up with a detailed
description of how they were recieved, the price they fetched, etc
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1999
CCNDU Dinner Update:   (Bold Face)

  This year the dinner was held at the Hampton Inn in Colchester Vt. As I
expected I saw many old friends there and met some real nice people who I didn't
know before the dinner. To make a long story short, the refurbished  LL Bean
decoys did not bring all that I had hoped for moneywise. Considering what they
brought at auction, they were the steal of the dinner. Steve Benoit, a gentleman
who I've hunted with and once sold a pair of cedar wood ducks to, was the high
bidder at $65 for the pair of them. Thank you Steve

1997 CCNDU Decoys

Hollow Cedar Seagull

This bird has a hollow cedar body with a pine head. I carved it for James
Staudacher of Wisconsin. He built a scull boat and is going to mount the
seagull on the bow of the boat.
 
 

CONTENTS OF WATERFOWLING DELMARVA