50 years on, decoy carver still inspired by waterfowl
Posted on Thursday, November 20, 2008
Bill Kennedy grew up in the primordial ooze of East Coast waterfowling. He was raised close enough to smell the marshes of Chesapeake Bay, off the eastern shore of Virginia, and often spent raw, blustery days hunting with his father over decoys made by the region’s renowned carvers.
Kennedy, 61, moved to Texas for business purposes and lives in Dallas. He still feels the emotional stir caused by a north wind as waterfowl season approaches and maintains an emotional link to his stamping grounds by carving wild fowl decoys in the Chesapeake style. It’s an art he's mastered through sheer talent and a hard-work apprenticeship.
“When I was 12, my dad came home from a duck hunt one day and dumped his decoys out of the burlap sack that he carried them in, breaking the head off one of the decoys in the process,” Kennedy recalled. “I had already shown some talent as an artist, and I was interested in decoys and duck hunting. Dad asked me to carve a new head to replace the broken one.”
Two days later, the youngster had finished the replacement head. His father studied it with an appraising eye.
“That’s not bad,” he said. “If you can make a head, surely you can make a duck.”
Using an ax to rough out the shape from a block of wood, the young Kennedy made two swan decoys. His father was not the artistic type, but he encouraged the talent that he recognized in his son.
He took the boy to a local shop owned by Paul Gibson, who turned out waterfowl decoys in great volume. Kennedy, who grew to be a tall, rangy man with a great recall for details, remembers everything in the shop as being coated in 6 inches of sawdust.
Lee Kennedy introduced his son to Gibson. “The boy will be here to help you once in a while,” said the father, matter of factly. “He’ll do any work you want him to do.”
Thus began a lifetime passion for the fine art of decoy carving. Kennedy figures he has carved and painted about 2, 000 decoys.
Kennedy favors the Charlestown style of carving, which varies slightly from the Eastern Shore style, mostly in the subtle shape of the birds. He uses a razor-sharp drawing knife that’s used as the name implies, drawn toward the carver so the wood can be removed with judicious care.
The decoy is held securely by a homemade device called a shaving horse. It’s adjustable to accommodate any decoy size, from a tiny shorebird to a greater Canada goose.
Kennedy painstakingly paints each decoy with techniques he learned nearly half a century ago. He used to hunt with 24 handmade decoys, but he met a couple of hunters last season who thought more of his custom spread than he did. They bought him out.
“My 9-year-old son thinks I should carve us another spread to hunt with,” Kennedy said, “but I’m thinking a trip to Cabela’s might be more practical.”
Are handmade decoys more effective than mass-produced plastic decoys ? Kennedy thinks they make a difference when ducks are heavily pressured.
“Ducks are accustomed to seeing their own kind,” he said. “Late in the season, I can see a difference. The key, though, is motion. Real ducks don’t sit absolutely still on the water.”
Kennedy said a Chesapeake Bay hunter named Charlie Gunther was credited with the idea of motion decoys.
“In about 1970,” Kennedy said, “Charlie was hunting geese on a dead calm day, and he got so frustrated because thousands of geese were ignoring his spread that he picked up two silhouette decoys and started waving them around. He immediately attracted a flock that was passing in the distance. Of course, nowadays it’s common practice to flag geese, but Charlie may have been the first guy to do it.”
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