These Decoys Fit the Artistic Bill

Who could blame the ducks?

Try putting your beak within a few inches of an elegantly crafted decoy, with feathers so fine and skillfully painted it’s hard to believe it’s actually made of wood. How can wildfowl on the fly a hundred feet in the air tell the difference?

They can’t, of course, and that’s the point. For thousands of years, hunters have floated flocks of phony fowl with the hope of luring their prey into range. But in the last half-century, the current has shifted.

Now the decoys are the hunted.

Since the late 1950s and early ‘60s, interest has grown among collectors for what Kenneth Trapp of the Smithsonian American Art Museum says is truly an American art form. The oldest known decoys are about 2,000 years old, constructed out of tule reeds and colored with natural dyes by Native Americans. A dozen of them were discovered in a Nevada cave in 1924. Today, antique decoys are greatly valued; a wood decoy made in a factory in Detroit in the 1920s, which would have sold at the time for about $10, sold recently for $354,000.

Trapp, curator of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., landed a rig--a set of tethered decoys--two years ago for the museum’s permanent collection. The set was made by Del Herbert of Chula Vista, one of the top U.S. woodcarvers. While looking through a magazine, Trapp came across some of Herbert’s carvings, which won the 1998 Ward World Championship, the top carving competition in the country, and recognized them as “a particular genre in American craft

Herbert, 59, who took up woodcarving as a hobby, has trouble seeing himself as an artist. “I’m an engineer by education,” he says modestly. “I worked for the Navy for 37 years.” He took classes as a beginning carver but concedes that he does have talent. “I was reluctant to attribute any of my success to talent. I thought I was a technician that worked hard.... But, nowadays, the competition is so great, you have to be artistic, you have to be technically accurate and you have to have a flair.”

It was about 20 years ago when Herbert turned a hunk of scrap wood into a decoy for his wife, Judy. She wanted a duck for the mantel. Since then, woodcarving has become a passion for Herbert, who is now retired. He’s known to his neighbors as “the duck man” and to the wildlife-art world as one of its most talented.

He spends 60 to 70 hours a week in his studio, an upstairs loft that was once their two kids’ bedrooms, in the home he and Judy have shared for 33 years. The couple’s vacations always include wildlife art shows and speaking engagements around the country. In 1999, Herbert published a how-to book, “Championship Service Class Shore Birds.”

“Del is part of a whole phenomenon in our culture where people retire and they start to work with their hands, whether it’s turning wood [on a lathe] or carving waterfowl or what have you, and they find a new meaning in their life,” says Trapp. He counts Herbert’s birds among the most meaningful pieces in the collection.

“It’s the genre, the fact that they’re beautiful birds. I know the tradition they come out of and that they reveal to our public what people can do with their hands,” Trapp says. “They’re such a beautiful part of the creativity and of the human spirit in creativity.”

Herbert belongs to the Pacific Southwest Wildlife Arts organization, which does count many retirees among its members. This weekend, the club will host the 29th annual California Open 2002 Wildlife Arts Festival in San Diego. About 150 woodcarvers and two dozen wildlife painters will compete, demonstrate or exhibit their work.

It may not be the best place for hunters to buy decoys, with prices likely to range from about $800 to $20,000, says Mike Dowell, the show chairman. But it’s one of the best places to see the top works--four championship winners are expected to attend.

And who would get such valuable birds wet?

“I’ll go down right now and throw them in the pool,” says Herbert, explaining that floating the decoys in a water tank is part of the judging at the shows. They are thrown in upside-down and scored on how well they right themselves. “They have to pop over, and they have to float right,” as real ducks might get suspicious of a “duck” floating on its side, says Herbert.

Of the dozen or so decoy categories, the decorative category draws in the most lifelike pieces. A decorative bird can take 200 hours to carve and paint. “You carve the bird, you grind all the little feathers with a high-speed grinder, and then we go back and burn it with a wood burner so they really look like feathers,” Herbert says.

He prefers, however, to carve service-class birds, such as the pintail hen and others that are used for hunting rather than decoration. It takes about 20 hours to carve and twice that to paint. “I can sell them all day long, for $1,000 or $1,200.”

Herbert is already booked with commissions through the end of 2002. Occasionally, he carves a decoy rig for a hunter, who will actually put the decoys to use. “Plastic is so much more practical,” Herbert says. “If you get a dozen of these, they weigh you down. If a plastic one floats away, who cares?”

But there’s something special about using handcrafted decoys, which can last for decades. “You’re building a heritage if you hunt over handmade decoys,” Herbert says. “Someday someone’s going to say, ‘Grandpa hunted over these birds.’ And if they’re plastic birds, nobody’s going to care.”

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California Open 2002, Saturday and Sunday. Al Bahr Shrine Auditorium, 5440 Kearny Mesa Road, San Diego. $5; under 12, free. Information: (760) 945-8442.