Doug Gradin
Member
These two decoys were also hunted on our trip to Manitoba this year. They are not carved by me so I will let there owner chime in on them.
The story of the Can and the Teal is really kinda neat but since they are not my decoys I will let him tell it.
Thanks for posting those, Brandon. I still haven't figured out how to post pictures.... I decided that the first working decoys I made should be Canvasbacks. My great-grandfather was a market hunter, and when I was a little boy, his son (my grandpa) would tell me stories of his dad bringing home Canvasbacks for dinner. Those stories have always stuck with me and even though I don't get a chance to hunt them much, I've got a thing for cans . I made the two decoys in the pictures for this trip, and it was really cool that the first duck shot over them was the eclipse Canvasback drake in the picture - Brandon got it.
The second duck to get taken over them was the teal I'm holding in the picture. Strange to get a teal in open water over a diver rig, but even stranger is that we're pretty sure it's a Cinnamon Teal hen. If so it's my first Cinnamon, and I guess that species is even somewhat rare in Manitoba. We confirmed it with a bill match in the LeMaster book. The bill is just way too long to be a Blue Wing, so it pretty much has to be a Cinnamon.
The decoy bodys are made from a piece of driftwood cedar timber that I found in Lake Superior last fall. The heads are from blanks I got from Paul Rutgers a couple of years back. I think they turned out pretty good for a first attempt, and I think it's kind of a neat natural affirmation that the first bird shot over them should be a Canvasback.