My first instinct was not to reply to this thread. I think we all have seen too many of ones like this go south. I don't know why it is so many guys are willing to fight at the drop of the hat when it comes to carving or painting mediums, guns, dogs, etc, but at least it keeps it interesting.
While I do have my preferences just like everyone else, I really don't care how anyone else wants to carve or paint. Each person is going to be attracted to different mediums for different reasons. One thing that a lot of guys seem to forget is that if you are going to hunt the decoys you make, and make enough, sooner or later there are going to be failures on wood, cork, paint, glue etc. There are obviously a number of factors that determine what that rate of failure is going to be including but not limited to how the decoys stored and transported, how much use they get, who careful you are about maintenance and shooting them etc. Obviously we try to take steps to alleviate it, but it does happen. I think we also need to decide for ourselves how much of this is acceptable vs how much time you want to invest in preventing such failures. For example, maple heads would most certainly make a decoy more durable that cedar, pine or basswood, but the time and cost to make them and them make the decoy float right outweigh the benefits. If it takes me 4 times longer and I'm only going to have bill breakage on 5% of my decoys over 10 years, then for me, I'm time ahead just dealing with a broken bill once in a while and just making more.
For my answer on the original question, I carve out of cedar and for the past 4 years much of it has been the dreaded heartwood. Many blocks were checked to begin with but after properly dealing with the checks and hollowing out, I have had a very low (only 1 or 2%) rate of re-occurrence of checking.
