Minnesota Duck Decoys

Let's say you have acquired an old, hand-made, wooden decoy painted as a drake canvasback and used by your great grandfather to hunt ducks on Lake Christina in Northwest Minnesota. Though your great granddad's name is on the bottom of the bird, you know he didn't make it but instead bought it from a carver close to the town of Ashby. Who could that carver be? Or, let's say, you're at an auction in Minneapolis where you have the chance to buy a decoy made from canvas stuffed with cedar shavings and hand painted to look like a hen mallard. Is this bird a rare and valuable collector's item? Or, let's conjecture that you're at a flea market in Rochester and find a cedar body mallard duck decoy with protruding canvas wings made to look like a bird in flight. Is this a unique and important creation of a Minnesota decoy maker? With any of these Minnesota decoys, how can you learn who might have carved these birds, when they were created, in what tradition they were made, and how they may fit into Minnesota's waterfowl hunting history? Minnesota Duck Decoys by Doug Lodermeier is a book designed to help anyone asking these and related questions. This 700 plus page book provides a comprehensive history of more than 300 Minnesota decoy makers with information on their lives, with thousands of pictures of the birds they carved, and with perspectives on their artistic accomplishments. This is a must-have document for all decoy collectors, and anyone else interested in a unique and important facet of Minnesota waterfowling craftsmanship in the past, the present, and the future (by Jerry Thorns).