The Decoy Carvers of the Rappahannock

There’s an inherent tension at the very core of the striking duck decoys that skilled Northern Neck makers like Wade Johnson, Joe Biddlecomb, Willard Bowen, Brooks Ferguson and others carve out of wood.

The calling cards of these decoy carvers are keen eyes, sure hands, sharp knives and a delicate touch.

But then there’s that unmistakable tension of their craft. It’s the paradox of their artistic endeavor: Life—or should we say lifelike—impels death.

The best decoys are essentially works of art. Alluring, delicate, graceful, seemingly alive. You can’t take your eyes off them.

And that is precisely the point. They’re crafted so well and appear so lifelike, they fool the prey and draw them in.

These beautiful, lifelike replicas are designed to make the hunter’s job easier when it’s likely, just by the timing of Virginia’s duck hunting season arriving every fall and winter, the hunter is cold, wet, shivering, with hands shaking and near to freezing in the piercing cold.

Biddlecomb, a Reedville resident, avid waterfowl hunter and decoy carver, puts duck hunting like this: “Your waders always leaked, your boots wouldn’t keep your feet warm, you froze to death out there. But I could not wait to get out there. There’s just something special about hunting on your own decoys.”

So there it is. The thrill of the hunt, of course. Plus the satisfaction of creating the trap, so to speak. Creativity meets utility.

Duck decoys combine the creativity of carving and painting with the pride of craftsmanship. They also blend the utility of a well-aimed shotgun blast resulting in dinner on the table. Is there anything quite like it?

A Brief History of Decoys

Let’s go back to the beginning of what we know about domestically manufactured decoys. Head way west across the country to the sparsely populated desert of northwest Nevada, where 2,000 years ago a cave tucked into a rocky overhang near the top of a prominent cliff proved to be someone’s ideal spot to store some decoys. Think of it as an ancient primitive shed.

At the time, the cave overlooked an oasis that we call the Humboldt Sink. It was home to a vast, marshy lake that must have been paradise for waterfowl and hunters alike. 

The years and the climate have not been kind to the lake, which vanished long ago and left behind a lifeless, dun-colored plain stretching endlessly beneath an azure sky.

In 1911, two intrepid miners poked around the cave to haul out mounds of natural gold: bat guano, a prized and valuable fertilizer.  In their search of what would come to be called Lovelock Cave because of its proximity to Lovelock, Nevada, they found mummified remains, baskets, trays and other Native American artifacts. The miners alerted archaeologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who launched a formal dig years later.

The cave and the dry desert climate proved to be the perfect preserving agent for an extraordinary cache of items left behind by the Lovelock Culture. The Lovelock people inhabited the edges of the marshes and lakes of western Nevada, living off the abundant waterfowl, fish and marsh plants and creating from the available resources everyday items such as baskets, sandals, tools, beads and ornaments.

The 40 pits and caches that the archaeologists discovered in Lovelock yielded thousands of artifacts. Among them: a mat of tule—a native bulrush that grows in marshy areas—containing 11 canvasback duck decoys, some complete with feathers lashed to the bodies with tule or hemp string. Some of them were even painted.

Experts date the duck decoys to between 400 B.C. and A.D. 100. They are the oldest duck decoys found anywhere on Earth and are priceless. You can see them today at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

From Lovelock Cave to Chesapeake Bay

When you think about it, we’re not so different in some ways from the folks who lived off the land in Nevada 2,000 years ago. The marshes, shorelines and inlets of Chesapeake Bay are an extraordinary source of food and resources. 

Two thousand years ago Nevada craftsmen used the abundant tule to make decoys, while today locally sourced tupelo and cedar are favored woods. Many decoy makers are partial to tupelo, a tree that grows in swamps. It’s light in terms of color and weight. It’s good to work with, flexible and holds paint well. The best part of the tupelo for making duck decoys is the part of the trunk that’s in and out of the water. Above the waterline, the wood is just too hard to carve.

In the hands of someone like Wade Johnson, a block of wood almost comes alive. Johnson lives just outside Warsaw and grew up around the water, ducks and decoys. Johnson’s father carved decoys that he gave away.

Johnson came to carving duck decoys for a simple reason. “I couldn’t afford them, so I made them.”

A Competitive Carver

Johnson is well-known and beloved around the Northern Neck and the Middle Peninsula as a longtime carver and former teacher at Rappahannock Community College (RCC). For years he taught a duck decoy carving class at the college.

He’s also known for being the former RCC baseball coach. A former player in his youth, Johnson’s a baseball nut so he can rattle off numbers like nobody’s business. His coaching record at RCC was 548 wins, 178 losses (an amazing .754 winning percentage) from 1990-2009, with eight state titles. The number he likes best, though, is 325 young men who came through his program and ended up with college degrees.

“We had a reputation up and down the East Coast of being one of the stronger junior colleges,” Johnson says.

A competitive fire is second-nature to Johnson, and is, strangely enough, something he found in carving decoys. Sure, he likes the creativity of it. But he also likes the competition.

Ribbons adorn many of the ducks he has on display in his upstairs studio. One of the ribbons is from 2014, when he won Grand Champion Best in Show for a Chesapeake Working Decoy at the Rappahannock Decoy Carvers and Collectors Guild.

Johnson’s favorite bird to carve is the ruddy duck. It’s a small, compact duck, noted for a stout, scoop-shaped bill that’s sky blue in males. The bird also has a long, stiff tail that it holds up when it’s in the water.

It’s these details about the birds that Johnson strives to recreate. For example, he says, the lower the head on a bird the more relaxed it is. “The higher the head the more alert it is,” he says.

For the tail, if it’s down that means it’s starting to fly. “You want to present a bird that’s relaxed,” he says.

Carving as Relaxation

Biddlecomb joined Johnson in his studio on a recent afternoon, toting along a couple of decoys he’s made. Biddlecomb hails from a family of commercial watermen and was always amazed by wooden boat building, he says. Plus he loves to hunt waterfowl so carving decoys came naturally.

A former student of Johnson, he finds carving decoys to be creative and therapeutic.

“It’s a big release for me,” he says. After a tough day of work he can get out the tools and start carving. “I lose track of time when I’m doing it,” he says.

But there’s also the practical side of it for Johnson and Biddlecomb: how the decoys they carve with their hands are so useful for the hunt.

“That utility part is what we both enjoy,” Biddlecomb says.

Johnson can see the end of his carving days ahead. He thinks about that last bird he’ll carve and a thought comes to mind.

“When I do leave,” Johnson says, “I want people to say, ‘I got a Wade Johnson bird.’ ”

A Prolific Carver

Willard Bowen is a semi-retired minister who carves in his 1,100-square- foot shop behind his house near Warsaw. He carved his first decoy in 1985 and when he was really rolling, he could turn out decoys or decorative birds in bulk, like a human assembly line. Sometimes he spent eight hours a day at it.

He recalls, for example, the time he produced 100 cardinals between October and Christmas. And he has carved all sorts of birds, rattling them off by the dozens.

Ibis, blue heron, stork, bobwhite quail, dove, Virginia rail, woodpecker, sora, hummingbird, seagull and the list goes on. He’s even carved rockfish.

He loves working with wood, being creative and the entertainment aspect of his hobby. He can spend an hour, he can spend all day or however long he wants to carve, sand and paint. He says carving is really a simple pursuit.

“Good wood, sharp tools, a pattern to go by, but you’ve got to know what you’re doing,” Bowen says. “I like the idea of doing it in wood. We can do like the old-timers did. If it doesn’t work you can throw it in the fire.”

Over the years Bowen has had requests to carve all sorts of birds—ones he’s never tried carving before. Bowen’s wife of 69 years, Marian, says that’s never stopped him.

“Don’t tell him he can’t do it,” she says. Then she looks at Willard with a smile. “Right, honey? You get that from your mom.”

When someone makes a request for a bird he hasn’t carved, Bowen has a stock answer: “Bring me a picture,” he says.

After almost 40 years of carving, Bowen still has the fire for it, but he’s not getting any younger, as his body attests.

“My hands are cramping up now so I don’t know how much longer I’ll carve,” he says.

Bowen might be best known in the local carving scene for his canvasback duck decoys. He won awards for them from the Rappahannock Decoy Carvers and Collectors Guild in 1999, 2003 and 2005. While he likes winning ribbons, he likes even more giving his work as gifts to people.

“It’s a lot of joy to be doing something you can enjoy doing and to give it away and make someone happy,” Bowen says.

The Legends of Decoy Carving

All the local carvers can rattle off the legends of duck decoy carving. For example the Ward brothers, Lem and Steve, of Crisfield, Maryland. They started carving in 1918 while in their early 20s to help out the family after their dad died. They were barbers who lived a simple life—never owned an auto and biked around town—who carved wood when they weren’t cutting hair. Steve Ward carved and Lem Ward painted. In 2006, one of their goldeneyes sold for $109,250.

From South Carolina’s Low Country came the Caines brothers, who carved from the latter part of the 19th century into the 1900s. Decoys attributed to the five carvers are rare and highly sought after, with low five figures being a typical auction price.

Up in Massachusetts, Elmer Crowell is considered one of the true legends of duck decoys. Born in 1862, he established his carving studio in 1912 in a converted chicken coop. Many of the all-time prices for decoys sold at auction are for Crowell birds, including a feeding “dust jacket” plover that fetched a record $860,000 in November 2006.

The Pupil Who Took to it Fast

Another carver who took a class from Johnson is Brooks Ferguson. He grew up in Warsaw and is 64 now, living about 5 miles outside Tappahannock. Ferguson remembers first starting to carve duck decoys to hunt over them.

But he put that first one in a show and won a blue ribbon. Turns out, Ferguson was pretty good at carving decoys.

Ferguson was a forester before he had a stroke last November. While it didn’t affect him physically, he does have trouble remembering things. But, good news about his memory: “The wife said it’s coming back,” he says.

He’s no longer working as a forester because of the stroke, which takes some getting used to. “I’m just not used to sitting at home,” Ferguson says. “I’m used to going to work at 4 in the morning and coming back at 12:30 or 1 and going out to the shop.”

The shop is where Ferguson takes tupelo wood—he and Johnson used to drive down to North Carolina to get it—and turns it into decorative decoys. He loves the product, not necessarily the process.

“My favorite part is not carving, it’s painting,” he says. “I like to paint. I paint just about every feather on mine. I love it when the duck is finished. That’s just the bottom line.”

Ferguson’s duck decoys don’t go in the water. “Nobody ever bought one for hunting,” he says. “Every one was for the mantlepiece.”

He said he doesn’t do but three or four ducks a year. “It takes me a while to do them,” he says.

His preference is to carve mallards and redhead blue bills. He’s got orders for six ducks, so there’s no shortage of work for him. And while he reckons he’s carved 50 or 60 over the years, he has only two of them in his house.

“I did those for the wife,” he says.

The Thrill of the Hunt

Other Northern Neck residents such as Larry Sisson love the hunt—of finding decoys. Sisson—part decoy collector, part decoy historian, full-time storyteller—lives just outside Tappahannock. He got hooked on collecting decoys almost 50 years ago. At first, it was a simple pursuit.

“I started out with one decoy, like you always do,” he said.

Born in Washington, D.C., in 1944, Sisson moved with his family to a Westmoreland County farm when he was a kid. He learned how to work on the farm and duck hunted some, but it wasn’t a driving passion.

Regardless, he came to be quite fond of decoys. He worked for the phone company and would find himself scuffling around under buildings where he would come across decoys. He’d also see them for sale down at the Kinsale Arnest Marina, but all he could do was look because he couldn’t afford them—yet.

“They just fascinated me because they came in so many sizes and colors and the carvers did things differently,” he says. 

Soon, he was hooked on them.

“I didn’t play golf and I didn’t smoke or drink,” Sisson says. “I used my money for something that was a good investment.” Which brings us to Sisson’s one rule of thumb for his decoy pursuits: “I like to buy high and sell low,” he says, laughing.

He built a spacious second-story room for his remarkable collection of decoys and other collectibles. Sisson can’t rightly tell you how many decoys he has. It’s a lot.

His wife, Becky, is a good sport about all this collecting. Mostly. But there are times when Becky has had enough. Sisson will show up after a trip to a decoy sale or antique store with more “collectibles” and she meets him at the front door.

“She says, ‘Nope. Stop right there,’ ” Sisson says with a grin. Becky points behind him in the direction of a small building at the edge of their spacious front yard. “Take it to the shed.”

Stories to Tell

The stories of his collecting spill out of Sisson in rapid fire, the amount of stories outpaced only by the sheer volume of his collectibles he’s accumulated over the years. One of his favorite stories is the time he made a trade for some highfalutin decoys. Sisson had a decent bird dog but he wasn’t hunting much. 

Work, family, kids, you know how it goes. An acquaintance—we won’t name names and you’ll see why shortly—traded him six Madison Mitchell decoys, worth about $12 apiece at the time, for the bird dog.

Now, Madison Mitchell is a renowned carver from up in Havre de Grace, Maryland. He made a living at first as a funeral director, his carving studio sitting out back of his funeral parlor. He took up carving when folks weren’t dying, and he turned out to be pretty good at it.

“When he wasn’t burying people he was carving decoys,” Sisson says.

His carving career spanned 60 years of the 20th century, his stylized decoys distinctively featuring finely detailed feathers and painting. Mitchell decoys now go for hundreds or even thousands of dollars apiece, all the way up to $10,000. So six Madison Mitchell decoys is a real nice haul.

More Than Decoys

You likely aren’t shocked to learn that Sisson collects books, too. Well, books about waterfowl, and carving, and decoys.

For example:

—R. Madison Mitchell: His Life and Decoys

—Waterfowl Studies

—Waterfowl Heritage

—A Gallery of Waterfowl and Upland Birds

We could go on. But you get the idea. 

One thing that Sisson doesn’t collect in his repository is dust. He dusts his treasures frequently and on a recent tour points out the various kinds of decoys, the old ones, the newer ones, the ones carved by well-known artisans. Every decoy seems to have a story.

Admittedly, some of these decoys are shall we say “rustic.” That may be too kind. They actually look like a semi-talented middle schooler got ahold of a block of cedar for a wood shop class project and out came an odd-looking painted “decoy.” But nowadays, Sisson says, these decoys are called folk art.

“What’s going now is the cruder the better,” he says.

Which brings us to one of his favorite decoys. It’s a sizable, unpainted, dented and scratched Lloyd Tyler cedar goose. Tyler lived from 1898-1971 and carved out of Crisfield, Maryland.

The Tyler goose resting on Sisson’s table has an age to it. Well-worn would be an understatement. But something about it is striking.

“It’s just like me,” Sisson says. “Old. Decrepit. It’s got holes and cracks in it. The head ain’t on straight.”

He smiles, studying his treasure, his favorite decoy that he dates to around the 1950s or ’60s. He sure likes that Lloyd Tyler goose decoy.

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If you’re interested in learning to carve decoys, email Wade Johnson at wadejohnson22572@yahoo.com.