favored water-resistant juniper. A 

 quartered log yielded blocks for four 

 bodies. For economy's sake, the heads 

 were whittled separately - a whole duck 

 required a much bigger block of wood. 

 And decoys were subject to decapitation 

 as hunters sometimes kicked the wooden 

 waterfowl as they moved about their 

 small boats. Replacement heads were 

 sold by the bucket. 



The decoys of the old days were 

 simple, intended only to fool a flock 

 flying far overhead. 



"They didn't have to be fancy to do 

 the work," Salter says. 



The carver chopped the shape out 



with a hatchet, contoured it with a 

 pocketknife and a rasp, and smoothed the 

 surface with broken glass in earlier years, 

 sandpaper in later ones. A head was 

 nailed on, the bird was painted with the 

 basic markings of its species and a weight 

 was attached to the bottom to keep it 

 "swimming" upright. 



Many of today's craftsmen, working 

 largely for the home-decor market, are 

 better described as wildlife carvers than 

 decoy makers. Sophisticated texturing 

 and painting techniques have brought a 

 new level of realism. Soft tupelo is now 

 the preferred medium, and carvers have 

 an array of tools - many similar to 

 surgical instruments - to sculpt such 

 minute details as the spines and indi- 

 vidual hairs of each feather. Salter has 

 won carving contests for his exquisite 

 bird-head carvings. He etches even the 

 underside of a duck bill with all the tiny 

 lines and indentations found on the real 

 bird. 



Modem-day prices reflect the skill 

 and time involved. Depending on the size 

 of the bird and the amount of detailing, 

 Salter's work sells for $75 to $300 a bird. 

 Other area carvers ask from $30 to more 

 than $3,000. 



Carvers say the evolution to finer 

 artistry was inspired by their own interest 

 and that of collectors. 



"It just seemed natural to make them 

 prettier," says Carl Huff of Harkers 

 Island, known for his way with color and 

 texture. His green-winged teal hen looks 

 as if she could quack. It comes almost as 

 a surprise that her feathers, shingled into 

 the wood by hundreds of blade strokes 

 and tinged dozens of subtle shades of 

 brown, are not soft to the touch. The hen 

 is priced at $3,000. 



Huff, 61, grew up in Henderson and 

 hunted in another waterfowl-rich area, 

 Currituck County. His first carvings were 

 working decoys. Eventually he found he 

 was more interested in creating the 

 wooden critters than in shooting their live 

 counterparts. 



"I got tired of killing, but I loved 

 carving," he says. 



Like many carvers, Huff crafts 

 shorebirds and songbirds as well as game 



birds. His work includes intricate 

 tableaus, such as hummingbirds sus- 

 pended from azalea blossoms and a green 

 heron poised in a leaf-lined pond. 



But there remains plenty of interest 

 in the "gunning" decoys that Roy H. 

 Willis creates in his Stacy workshop, 

 much as his late father did for 60 years. 

 His essential tools: a small hatchet, a 

 chopping block and an X-acto knife. 



"I don't do much detail," he says. 

 "I make them just like I always made 

 them to hunt with." Still, the smooth 

 contours and fundamental color patterns 

 combine for a striking scaup or redhead. 

 Roy's only concession to the decorative 

 trend is the eyes he puts on his birds. Old- 

 time decoys were made without this 

 feature because a flock in flight wouldn't 

 notice. 



Roy, 64, made his first decoy in 1955 

 out of a cypress rail torn down from the 

 Harkers Island bridge. A truckload of 

 discarded rails were transformed into 

 decoys at the hands of his father, Eldon 

 Willis, and Elmer Salter. 



Well-known partners Down East, the 

 two started carving together as young 

 men in the 1920s. Their first birds were 

 for their own rig; then came an order from 

 visiting hunters. What followed was 40 

 years of carving and friendship. When 

 Salter died in 1 964, Roy took up working 

 at his father's side. 



"He'd chop them out, and I'd finish 

 them up, sand and paint them," he says. 



They turned out at least 200 full- 

 sized decoys a year, he estimates, and 

 that many again in miniatures, working 

 part-time. The elder Willis was a com- 

 mercial fisher and a shingle maker. Roy 

 worked at the Cherry Point Marine Corps 

 Air Station in Havelock after he left the 

 Coast Guard. 



When Roy began carving with his 

 father in the mid-1960s, manufactured 

 decoys were replacing handmade ones. 

 Their craft had became something of an 

 anachronism. 



"It was a lost art back in the '50s 

 and '60s," Roy says. The two charged 

 $1.25 for a duck decoy when he started 

 working with his father. 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 13 



