Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Katie Burke: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. This is your host, Katie Burke. And today on the show, I have John Fandry. John is a Wisconsin decoy collector, as well as I'm sure other Midwest area decoys. But welcome to the show, John.

John Fandry: Thank you, Katie. It's a pleasure to be here.

Katie Burke: So I'm excited to talk to you. Again, we're talking about our mutual friend Nels today, and I got a little more information about you. I also joined the Wisconsin Decoy Collectors Facebook group, so I could look at all your posts.

John Fandry: I believe just about every decoy area in the country, I think, has its own Facebook page. It's just amazing. It seems like they sprung up in the last couple of years or so.

Katie Burke: Well, it's a nice, easy way to get out a lot of information and connect people. I mean, they do kind of have their pitfalls as well, but it is kind of a good entry point for a lot of people, which is nice. So kind of how we'll do this, John, is what I normally do is I like to kind of start from the beginning and then kind of work into what you collect now and what that looks for you now that you've been collecting for so many years. So if you could, tell me what your introduction to the outdoors was like as a kid and that sort of thing.

John Fandry: okay, it seems like I would follow my father since I can even remember he was a Big duck hunter. It didn't run in the family. My grandfather didn't duck hunt, but when my father got all the service it he just went crazy for it and all his friends did So my earliest memories are out in the marsh We used to hunt near Horicon quite a bit and he was a big goose hunter and like the lease farms yearly or bi-yearly and It was always a different place, and we'd go throughout the year, make blinds, check the place out. And I think I remember from the age of eight even dragging bags of decoys out in the field and helping and sitting there. But I didn't actually hunt until I was 11. I believe that was the legal age at that time. But I had shot the gun plenty of times in non-hunting situations, and had the safety training, so it wasn't a complete surprise to me. It seems like I've been doing it all my life, basically. I think around that age, my father got a longer lease on a farm, I think about 15 years, just north of Horicon Marsh. And we did a lot of goose hunting, pheasant hunting, and there was surprisingly good duck hunting on it also. And I think I hunted every possible moment I could.

Katie Burke: Okay, so I have a question about Horicon Marsh. We're working on a book about goose hunting and goose decoys and just all things Canada geese, basically. Do you… And Horicon Marsh plays a big part in that history of the giant Canada goose. So- Sure. I'm guessing, can you remember when it was slap full? And then can you remember when it was one goose a year?

John Fandry: Yes, I can remember all of that. Way back, it was one goose a day, I think when I started. But the seasons, or the quota that had to be met, and was often met within a week sometimes. I think it was a couple of days as the years went by. But we weren't zones around Horicon, and as you progressed away from the refuge, the limits were a little bit more lenient, the seasons were more lenient, and we were a ways a little bit, enough to get good shooting, but far enough away where you could still, you know, enjoy the shooting for a longer time, and not be confined, end of the zone, you had to be in a blind, and so forth, and out where we were, you made your own blind, wherever you felt like, could walk around and shoot if you felt like it, but I do remember all that I remember tags that they gave you for a time it was a a contentious situation, I think the You know the federal People that ran the refuge they were being pulled by quite a few directions. They didn't They didn't want geese to get disease. They wanted to spread out the flock The farmers were having their crops depleted and then on the other side the local people Wanted the bird watchers and hunters up there for business and the hunters of course and I can remember the hunters At least the groups that I hung around what they were constantly blaming. I Illinois people, actually, Wisconsin people. Illinois people don't always get along, but they were blaming me for wanting the geese, you know, and where we would shoot one a day. I don't know what they were all about down there, but the rumors ran rampant that, you know, they were shooting right and left. But I can sympathize with the refuge managers. They were being pulled in. many directions at one time. They even resorted to hazing with airplanes to try to get the geese to move out.

Katie Burke: What was that population change like? Could you tell how they were concentrating? Was it noticeable?

John Fandry: Well, I hunted with an older guy not too long ago, actually, one of my neighbors that lived near the marsh. And he got his picture and name in the paper. He lived in Mayville, Wisconsin, for shooting a goose. That's how rare it was. And when I, as far as I can remember, back when I was 8 or 10 or whatever, there was thousands of geese. They were all over. If you went into the marsh itself, you just wouldn't believe. There was a road that ran across the marsh, and it was just black with geese. People would also line up as far as you could see just to watch them. It was a big thing, and it seemed to come all at once as far as I know, and with that came kind of a wild west, I think you might say, as far as hunting. People were, you know, could hunt on railroad tracks and were doing it and lined up, and it had to be controlled, I think, and they did. And it all turned out for the best, I guess, in the long run.

Katie Burke: Yeah, it's interesting to think what a huge shift in population that was. I think in the book we have, we talk about how putting Horicon Marsh there was such a big… Obviously, it helped the geese, but then on the flip side, it kind of did too much. Like, it allowed for hunters to be able to kind of get to them a little easier because it concentrated them into one section instead of spreading them out. But yeah, it's really… It's a cool… Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting story.

John Fandry: Well, one thing you did mention was the giant Canada geese. And when I was young, we really didn't shoot those at all. Those weren't the geese we shot at Horicon. They were eight, nine pound goose was about average. And that, of course, has all changed, too. Now it's the big Canadians all over the place living in the middle of the city. So, yeah, it's always changing, I guess. I don't know what the, like the winter we had, this last winter, we had very few geese leave here. Even, I live on, now I live on the Mississippi River, far west, and we had geese and ducks throughout the whole winter, and very big numbers. Didn't bother to leave at all, I don't think. So, yeah, it changes.

Katie Burke: Yeah, we knew about that down here in Mississippi. We had barely any ducks at all this year, so they didn't come down here really.

John Fandry: Well, and just one thing here, the ice went out quite early. I think from yesterday to today, it seems like thousands of bluebills are here. Yesterday, there was a couple hundred you'd see around, and now they're just black. The water out here is black with them everywhere you look.

Katie Burke: And that's an early migration for you, right?

John Fandry: I think it is. It would be, because normally I think there'd be ice here. It may be just about leaving pretty soon, but there would be ice. So I've expected to see different birds here. sense of migration is just as skewed up as the birds because I expected to see birds, you know, certain birds weeks ago and because the weather was warm and yet they haven't come yet. So, yeah, a constant change.

Katie Burke: Yeah, it's been a weird year, too. I also turkey hunt, and the turkeys are kind of… The spring was so early down here, so it's kind of a little crazy here, too. Sure. Yeah. Sure. Sorry, I got us off topic with Horicon, but I was just really interested because I haven't talked to really… We've done all this research with the book, but we haven't really talked to anybody that was hunting there then and what that was like. So, when did you… You talk about hunting with decoys and helping your dad with decoys. So, when did you get the idea to collect decoys?

John Fandry: Well, that's a complete… That's my other half family. My mother was from Vermont and all her relatives were out there. And when I was young, we in the city and they thought it would be a good idea if I spent the summers in the country, I thought it would be a good idea too. So they would take me out there shortly after school and come and get me just before school would start again. That went on for quite a few years and I'd stay with my aunts and uncles and cousins and I had two aunts that were school teachers and they tried to instill a little culture into all the cousins and they would take us to the Shelburne Museum, which is a if you don't want to collect a giant collection of folk art and a big piece of property and each category of folk art is kind of in its own building. And one of the buildings is called the Dorset House and it houses The collection of joel barber who was the father of decoy collecting so I was about 10 years old. I think when I first walked into the Dorset house and I was still interested in hunting So this rang a bell with me and I remember I think the whole group had to drag me out of there after an hour or so As I got older, I believe they left me there and told me to meet them someplace else. But I'd look at all the old decoys. And then those, I'm not sure if it's still the case, but you could touch, actually touch some of the decoys. Like I can remember a big Joel Lincoln, Massachusetts, flat goose that was there. It was just laying on the floor like a kid's toy or something that you could touch. And then they had bolts, they had punt guns and skiffs and whatnot. So I took that all in and I got back to Wisconsin in September and I asked my father why we didn't have any old wood decoys. Well, his father didn't hunt and there was none in the family, but he said he'd ask his buddies and every one of his buddies were big time hunters. So amazingly, I think over a couple of years, we accumulated 15 or so decoys that were given to us. And very nice ones, I'd say at least a dozen of those are still in my collection. And he kept looking, you know, after that initial rush of people giving him stuff, they'd still trickle in, you know, one a year or so until I actually had a job and had money where I could afford to go out and look in antique shops or, you know, estate sales or whatever and buy a few on my own. And it just skyrocketed from there. So it was a, I guess it was a perfect storm of Shelburne Museum and a duck hunting background that got me going at the age of 10, mind you.

Katie Burke: Yeah. I guess also at 10, you wouldn't even think, okay, you saw these at Shelburne, which is the East Coast. You wouldn't even think to not realize that you may or may not have them at home either, like that there'd be decoys everywhere there's duck hunting.

John Fandry: I can remember a thought that I think I used to have back then that just about all the decoys you could possibly find were at Shelburne. So when people, my father would say, well, so-and-so is going to give us a decoy, I'd look through their little booklet that they had, and I'd think, oh, I wonder if it's going to be a Shane Wheeler or a Ward Brothers or something. It never was, and none of them, really none of them I knew the makers of, and not till later. That's really funny.

Katie Burke: That is such a kid's way of thinking, like, oh, they must just be coming from this place that I saw them that one time.

John Fandry: Yeah. I thought every decoy had to be in Shelburne, and everything else was just overflow of that. I did, one time I did get from a couple good friends of my parents, two pair of Gus Smoke decoys, which is one of the top Wisconsin makers. And these people dabbled in antiques and the birds were overpainted, which is not a great thing for a decoy collector, but I wouldn't have cared at 10 years old. But instead of stripping them like a lot of people did in those days, they took the overpaint down to the original, did a pretty good job of it. And I looked back for many years and commended them for that because that was a big thing to take all the paint off of the decoy at that time.

Katie Burke: And it's a lot of work just to strip it down to the original. It's easier just to strip the whole thing.

John Fandry: Yeah. Like I say, they dabble in antiques and I think they might've done some of that with furniture too. They were pretty adept at whatever techniques they used to do it. They didn't know who had made them, and I didn't know who had made them. It took me another 10 years to figure out Gus Moke from the Lake Poigon. That he did them. Yeah.

Katie Burke: So when did you start, I guess, so you're kind of just acquiring when you're younger, just like everything and anything. And then, so when did you start becoming interested in the carver of the decoy and start doing the research side of it?

John Fandry: Well, we had moved out 30 miles west of Milwaukee by that time. I was probably 17, 18. And some friends of mine, I started trap shooting. And one or two guys, they weren't much older than I were, they had collections of a sort, and they gave me two names of dealers that did nothing but dealing, well, not exclusively, but mostly decoys. And I would go up to see one, there was a Lee Sanborn up in the center part of the state. I'd get there early in the morning, he had a big potbelly stove, and we'd sit there and he'd talk for, it seemed like hours. And he knew the makers, he knew the history, and luckily I have a good memory for things like that. I really can't remember what my wife says from one day to the next, but the decoy thing sticks in my mind forever. So he had many decoys, and he'd show them all, but he had a cork where he didn't like to sell them. Sometimes he trade but mostly just like to bring him out and talk to people which is not the ideal way to run a shop i guess but. And around that time, I had friends that is kind of an antique picker and is part-time and would keep finding Mason decoys for me. So I had quite a few of them and I decided to, after listening to Lee, to concentrate on Wisconsin birds. So I took just about every Mason and made a couple of humongous trades with them and I'm sure he really got the better of them because he was a wheeler dealer and I was just a rube, so to speak. That's how I started knowing carvers and really looking for different carvers, local carvers. And there was another person north of Milwaukee, roughly the same way he do his decoys, and I spent time talking with him quite a bit. So it was basically these two antique dealers. My work schedule kind of precluded me from going to shows, although I did make the Wisconsin decoy show a number of times way back then, and that helped also.

Katie Burke: So how did you meet those guys? How did you come across them?

John Fandry: Well, like I say, the trap shooting friends of mine told me about them. I just drove up. They each had shops, actually. The one guy north of Milwaukee, I wasn't quite sure where he was, and I happened to be driving that direction one day, and way off in the side of the road, the interstate road, I could see a farm, an outbuilding. where the shingles were a different color to spell out the word decoys on top of the roof of this building. And I just about slammed my brakes on in the middle of the interstate, got off on the next exit and doubled back. And this guy was extremely interesting. Elroy Pick was his name. And he had birds that I had just only dreamed about. At that time, I think some of the first decoy books were coming out. And if I was lucky, they'd have a couple pages on Wisconsin stuff. And Elroy actually had the decoys that were in these books, which was just fascinating to me. So I was able, he did sell, I was able to buy quite a bit from him. And then other antique shops, you know, back in the day, antique shops were a little bit different than they are today. And they actually had, you know, things you were looking for, for, you know, one in particular always had decoys for me. So that's, and then, you know, much later that picked up on a few more shows and then the internet was big also.

Katie Burke: I'm guessing since listening to you talk, you have a really good eye for it. So was eBay, could you pick it out much easier than others on that? I'm guessing you could take advantage of it a little more than some could.

John Fandry: Well, yeah. They always say if you're new to decoys to watch out for eBay and I wasn't. And I could pick out decoys. I'm not sure why, but obscure makers, that's kind of what I like, that still made a good decoy. I mean, there's some makers, I think everybody's heard of, at least in Wisconsin they have. Some of the lesser ones made just as nice a decoy, but they just made a rig for themselves or maybe a friend. They didn't sell them. There wasn't that many of them out there. And like I say, I have a memory for things like that. And I was able to pick quite a few out. And you gotta keep, back in the day, they were right and left. You saw good decoys. But now you gotta look probably weeks before you see a decent thing. And those are the ones I like, the ones that hopefully nobody else notices. For one thing, they're cheaper.

Katie Burke: Yeah. I noticed when I was looking through your Facebook feed, some of the funkier ones you have and the obscure ones. And I like those too. I don't know why, but they just appeal to me.

John Fandry: I've always liked the folky aspect of it. I mean, Wisconsin's got some unbelievable artists that made decoys. you know, it looks like they're going to pick up and fly away. We had the trained art from Milwaukee, Owen Bromley and whatnot. And then the North region farmers who were just natural artists in Stoughton, Wisconsin that could paint like you can't believe. But I was like the, you know, the decoy that, you know, some guy didn't quite have that talent, but he had a lot of imagination. Maybe, I don't know. And sometimes they look funny, which doesn't bother me in the least.

Katie Burke: Same, yeah. I do, I like them too, yeah. I kind of prefer them, but not everybody does. Some people will say they're ugly, but I like them. I don't know why, they just have so much more character to me.

John Fandry: I think so too. Some people maybe aren't quite sure and need an exact reproduction of something to assure them that's a good bird. I'm not sure.

Katie Burke: That's a good way of thinking about it. I've never thought about it that way, especially if you're And I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, but if you're collecting for, I don't know, to have a valuable collection, that might be a way of looking to make sure you're getting that. I mean, it's not necessarily always the case either. Some of the folky ones can be valuable.

John Fandry: Yeah, that's definitely true. Yeah, if you're looking to not definitely not lose money and possibly make quite a bit of money. You have to go where the money is, I think. And I don't sell decoys, so I'm not really concerned about that. I don't want to grossly overpay for something, but that never really bothered me, the possibility of not being able to recoup what I pay for it. So that's one thing I think you need if you jump into obscure or folky-type decoys, is that kind of

Katie Burke: Right. Yeah. You just need to like it. That's really the only thing you have to be careful.

John Fandry: Yeah. That's what I've heard from day one. If you don't buy anything you don't like, and that's definitely true.

Katie Burke: I just never thought about that. And that's an interesting way to think about it. So you say you don't sell anything, but I'm guessing you've always just traded then for stuff.

John Fandry: I have traded. Recently, I've started to sell a little bit more, but I don't know. When I do go to shows, I don't set up to sell. I go on the anticipation of buying more. I don't know what that means. There are a lot of decoys. They come with a story of how I got them, and they're part of a collection, and everything seems to fit. And sometimes I have a hard time letting go of anything. Like I say, in the last few years, I've parted with a few. Some I really regret, but… Right.

Katie Burke: So did you part with them to get other things? Have you used your collection in that way?

John Fandry: I'll say the thing that I… got rid of that probably bothers me the most. I traded to a guy, it was a good trade, he gave me, it was an Evans decoy, Evans Mallard, an old time Evans, I'm not sure the terminology that Evans collectors use, loop painting or whatever. And he gave me a newer hen, and I think it was $1,000 cash to boot for this. And it still didn't want to trade it. It was a type of mallard that a lot of people call black ducks and still do, but I think they're mallards. But anyway, this guy that wanted it done, it sold a lot to me and considered me to sell before anybody else. I felt I owed him at least that, so I did trade it. And I kind of wish I had that one back, I think, of any.

Katie Burke: So, you made a comment a second ago about like how, you know, items have a story, they're part of a collection, which makes me curious. Did you, before you, like, even earlier as a kid, did you always collect things? Did you, or do you just tend to get, like, were you a collector from day one?

John Fandry: I guess, I'm trying to think of what baseball cards, like most kids. I think that was it. I can't remember collecting too much other stuff. Most of my, especially my relatives out east, they all collected things. I think antiques meant more to them than my parents. So I wasn't really, other than decoys, I wasn't really brought up in to accumulate quite a bit of this stuff. Over the years, you know, such as duck hunting guns. I never felt the same way about guns as I do decoys. I never liked to trade anything that I can't go right out and buy again. So I kept a lot of duck over the years. But that was all later. I had a job and could buy things on my own especially.

Katie Burke: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. I was just curious, because a lot of times these collectors have like always collected things or it's just something that's part of them. And I was just wondering, because yeah, but you started so young with decoys, so that's a little different. I mean, you're probably the, you might be the youngest like decoy collector I've talked to. That could be. Yeah, like a 10 is very young to have. I mean, I've heard of people having one decoy as a kid and then like, you know, when they got to be in their 20s, have a job that's different.

John Fandry: Yeah. I developed my philosophy of decoy collecting way back then. If one is nice, two is nicer and they just keep progressing. Yeah, that's the price it is. I look back at it because, you know, I did I had a normal childhood. I played sports and whatnot, and yet our living room had decoys all around. I think there was a plate rail up there, had decoys all around the plate rail. I can't say that there were hardly days where I wouldn't go up and look at them. So they did mean something to me.

Katie Burke: Yeah. I mean, you're also in Wisconsin and you're duck hunting. It's not that unusual. And you've stayed in Wisconsin. Have you stayed in Wisconsin your whole life?

John Fandry: I have lived in Wisconsin. I lived in, because I was born in Milwaukee, then moved off to Oklahoma, Milwaukee. and which is closer to the Rock River Valley where Horicon and everything is. And I hunted through that time. And then I think it was, right after I first got a fairly decent job, I bought a cabin on the Mississippi River, right on the backwaters. And I used that for hunting and fishing and just laying around for many years. And my wife and I remodeled it probably in the 90s, and it's where we still live today. So I have the Mississippi River right at my doorstep. There's nothing between me and the water, at least the backwaters, and I can look out across the bottom. a mile of those and see the Minnesota bluffs over there. It's this ideal place. Ducks just about every time of year, which I enjoy watching them probably more than I do hunting them nowadays.

Katie Burke: Nicole Mastroianni. Yeah. That's pretty typical though. David Morgan.

John Fandry: Yeah. I guess as you get older, I think that's the case. Right up to I think the 2020, that was the year of COVID, I think I'd gone to Canada hunting for a week. probably 20 some years in a row, maybe 25 years, and we'd go to Manitoba, which DU has a tremendous presence where we were. Every farm had a DU project, and I believe there was a couple plots of land that DU owned entirely. Everywhere you'd turn, there was a DU sign. We had a great time up there. I had certain farms that We knew the farmers well, and it was just a great time. And then COVID came and I never did go back, and now I'm kind of on the downward slide of hunting. I go out a couple of times a year for divers, canvas bags mostly, and mostly to get the dog out and get her excited.

Katie Burke: Yeah, you have a golden, don't you? Is that why you have a little golden?

John Fandry: Over the years, we've had, I think, three labs at Chesapeake, four goldens. And English Cocker even thrown in.

Katie Burke: Do you have a favorite breed then since you've hunted with all those dogs?

John Fandry: I like them all. I would never criticize another dog, but I've grown up with them and I love Goldens. The four we've had have been great. They've all been great dogs. One was the, I suppose everybody says this, but the best hunter I'd ever seen. She was just obsessed with it. And she would go through those primaries up in Canada and boy, we just had a ball. She'd run those prairies up there, picking up ducks and shooting Hungarians, Hungarian partridge and sharptails, which they call big and little chickens up there. Yeah, I can still see her just tearing across us. She was in seventh heaven, I guess I was too.

Katie Burke: I just, we just lost our golden, which was my first dog as an adult that I had. She lived for 14 years, so I was pretty happy to have her, but yeah, I'm partial to them. I like them too. I like the goldens, but I grew up with labs and I mean, they're all good dogs, but I'm partial to the golden.

John Fandry: Steven Rutherford, MD, PhD Yeah, they're not a dog. Not a dog. I didn't like it and I look back and they're all, I think of them as all great. Some of them were definitely greater than others as far as hunting ability, but they were all good companions. The goldens I've had, all four of them, their noses are just unbelievable. I guess the only drawback is their coat. I do shark tail hunting up in Canada. They had these big red things like sand burs, and if I'd hunt an hour, it'd take me two hours to get them out, and I'd be bleeding. She'd be bleeding.

Katie Burke: Oh, the burs. Yeah, that's true. All right, well, John, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.

John Fandry: OK.

Katie Burke: Welcome back, everybody. I am still here with John Fandry, the Wisconsin decoy collector. So, I have a question, John. I know a good bit about Evans factory decoys. We had Terry Smart's collection in the museum, and I've had John Munson on. So, I've talked to a few people about Evans decoys in particular, but I don't know… And honestly, I kind of get them confused with Minnesota decoys. Is there anything in particular besides being from Wisconsin, of course, that is unique to Wisconsin decoys? Can you describe that a little bit for me?

John Fandry: I can. I think Wisconsin, probably like most states, I think has different areas that require a different bird or a different decoy. The first area that we collected was the big Lake Winnebago and the surrounding lake. And it's big, rough water, and they mostly were diver hunters, and they wanted high backs and high heads and big decoys to be seen in the waves.

Katie Burke: Okay. That's what comes to my brain, to my eye when I think of Wisconsin.

John Fandry: Okay. Sure. That's the area where they were used, and a little north of that is another big decoy area, which has been Green Bay, and roughly it's the same type of water, but the decoys weren't quite as big. I'm not sure the reason why, but again, canvasbacks and bluebills were the main birds. And then the area I'm in now, the Mississippi River, is kind of an extension of Illinois. I think the birds are smaller, thinner maybe, painted much nicer, sometimes even varnished to show up in maybe the backwater potholes, tree-lined potholes. Mostly puddle ducks, a lot of mallards, and even some black ducks, I believe. And then Milwaukee area would be another one. They're noted for the museum carvers. There is a group of taxidermists and artists led by Owen Grommey. And they're all extremely well done. These people knew what birds looked like. And most of them were laminated, horizontally laminated out of pieces of wood. And there is also another tool company in Milwaukee, Delta Tool, who put out plans to make a decoy kind of model after that. So you actually can see his final is just about anywhere. And another maker from Milwaukee, James Walton. He made, excuse me, made a similar decoy, again, laminated, very nicely done and painted.

Katie Burke: Why would it have been laminated?

John Fandry: What was the… Well, if you take the bottom piece, they had a pattern, so you could easily draw out a pattern on a piece of one by… whatever pine or cedar. And then each middle piece would be cut a little bit smaller size and the middle would be cut out. So it'd be an easy way to hollow a bird. Then the top would be solid again. So it'd be like making a sandwich where the inside of the sandwich, only the edges are shown.

Katie Burke: So it's just like a simpler way of hollowing a decoy.

John Fandry: Yeah, there's a pattern to follow. You don't have to… relies quite as much on your artistic ability, I guess. And James Walton actually conducted classes for many years in the high school or night classes or whatever. And so there are many, many people that made decoys that model after his. Some is nice, some not as nice. You'll find some that the person was so happy with what he made in class, it went right to his mantle. And some were used for many years and are pretty worn and beat. So it was all kinds that were making the decoys.

Katie Burke: So were they tacking all those laminations together? I just imagine if you X-ray that thing, it's full of… Yeah, I believe they would be glued.

John Fandry: Maybe the top and bottom might've been nailed in there. I actually when i'm going through this. I forgot two very important areas here. It's a kashkana Lake kashkana area, which is a whole story in itself That was featured in the I think last year's decoy north american decoy show Uh, the decoys are much older. Uh, some possibly some of the early ones came from chesapeake bay and after that the local carvers kind of followed that that pattern so they look like actually, like Upper Bay birds, a lot of them. And they're old. They can go back to 1870 and probably up to the 20s. And then, of course, not too far from that area would be the Stoughton School with the Nahami brothers and Enoch Rindle, probably considered the best of Wisconsin carvers, and rightfully so, probably. They're extremely talented guys. and simple people, that was the amazing thing about it. They were just Norwegian farmers and lived in a, you know, one with, Enoch Reindell was a bachelor farmer and you know what their houses probably would look like. And I guess that's what his did look like. But he was able to turn out these works of art and everything he did was a work of art. He made musical instruments, he did flat work. He was a photographer, just a kind of a genius in hiding, I guess you might say.

Katie Burke: Yeah, do you think they were influenced by anybody? I was just saying, his Reyndall stuff is beautiful. And do you think they had seen other decoys? They were influenced by anything?

John Fandry: As far as going to school, I don't believe they were. Actually, Reyndall probably was an influencer of anything. I think he got his local friends to carve. And he also did an article in Field and Stream showing how he did carve. I think he pretty much developed the stuff. He was, like I say, he was a great photographer. And he probably knew pretty much what a bird looked like from his photography and he was able to get it.

Katie Burke: Kelly Cervantes. That makes sense. Yeah. And I wonder, he hunted as well too, right? So I'm sure he kept birds and figured out, yeah, I know what they look like. That'd be interesting. I'd like to know and go back to know why he did such detail in his decoys, because his are very detailed.

John Fandry: Jim Collins. Oh yeah, yeah. And he lived to be a ripe old age. There was a lot of active collectors hanging around him when he was still alive. So they could glean a lot of information, a lot is known about him and it's a good thing because he's worth knowing about for sure.

Katie Burke: No, he's special. He is special, that's for sure. Yeah, I was just looking at the Canada goose pair that's, I think it's in that big blue wild decoy book. I can't think of what it is. It's a huge- Yeah, yeah. I was just, it has the pair of his Canada geese in it. And yeah, they stick out compared to the rest of Wisconsin decoys by a lot.

John Fandry: They sure do. A lot of people think they're the best. I think one of those birds ended up in the McCleary Collection in Texas and was worth a lot of money. I think at some auctions, they were… A rindle goose brought more than a cob goose, Virginia cob island goose. They still don't bring the amount that crow geese would bring, but he's been collected for years. And I think the clientele is… A wider clientele, a lot of people know him.

Katie Burke: But there is- And Crowell just carries a name, right? It's not even just a goose, but his name is also worth something.

John Fandry: That too, yeah. But certainly, if you took a person that didn't know names or values or anything and showed them a rindle goose and a Elmer Crowell goose. Who's to say what he would think? You could go either way, which is best. That's my opinion, anyway.

Katie Burke: I agree. I agree. I mean, they're great decoys. Yeah, I definitely agree. So where was Moak from? Because you mentioned him, and I don't know. What area was he from? Because his stuff's so different.

John Fandry: Moak was from a little town called Tustin. Very few people in it. It's on the far western edge of Lake Poygon, which is part of the chain that ends, well, starts, there's two rivers that come through the state, the Wolf and the Fox, and they kind of meet and form these big lakes at Poygon, Winneconne, Buttermore, and then Lake Winnebago, which is huge. And then the Fox River leaves that for Green Bay. So it would be at the far western edge of these central Wisconsin lakes. And he was also a farmer. And the little town of Tustin not only had him, but Joe Seeger, I don't know if you're familiar with that name. His high back, high neck hands are probably the epitome of a Wisconsin decoy. I think they're extremely sought after. And he was from the same little town. I'm not sure the population can't be more than 100 or 200.

Katie Burke: I'm guessing, so, okay, when you say that, but all these guys are farmers and then they're also making decoys. So, and I think about, I'm from Mississippi, from the Delta, and here it's not quite the same, but a lot of people who farm, they lease their property out to hunters or some even have, they'll guide during the off season. So is that what is happening at that time in Wisconsin, like they're farming during the spring, summer, fall, and then switching over to waterfowl for their occupation?

John Fandry: I would say no. No? Okay. Around Horicon Marsh land was leased for goose hunting. Very seldom did leasees do anything like control water or plant crops just for geese or whatever. Most of Wisconsin hunting, I believe, would be public hunting, is my opinion. That's most of what I've done. I know of some clubs in the old days, and I'm sure there's clubs nowadays, but they're kind of low-key, nothing. to Lake Woodstone South, they're not even close. And nothing like what's in Illinois, I don't believe. Along the river where I've hunted for the last 40 years here is strictly public hunting. It's all public land owned by the government. And some of the bottoms are privately owned, not that many, and those are leased. But again, nothing nothing, so the hunters changed the landscape to attract ducks. They just wanted the access, the exclusive access to an area, I think is why anything would be leased up here. Over here is I hunted one type of club. My father had a friend that He and a group of guys had a so-called club on a lake near Horicon, Fox Lake it was called. And this was probably like an old, old Southern club. They had bunk houses like about eight or nine and a clubhouse with a kitchen in it. And I stayed there for, and permanent blinds. in the marsh that they controlled. And I stayed there for one weekend. It was kind of strange to stay in the blind and to have rules. You're kind of a freelancer, not that you're breaking law, but you're making your own rules or what you want to shoot at. They were good rules. I mean, you got to keep some sense of order there, but it was a fun new experience for me. And it was a fun trip. They had even had a caretaker that stayed out there to make sure nobody wandered in from off the lake when it was supposed to be.

Katie Burke: I'm sure you didn't have to get up nearly as early either.

John Fandry: That was the thing I liked about Canada. I hardly ever saw another hunter. Nowadays, out in the river here, you have to be up at three o'clock in the morning. If not, some guys stay overnight out there. And then I'm sitting here watching them because I can see them right from my front yard. And they can put a whole day in of not shooting anything. And then right back the next day, they're out at two o'clock. So they're hard.

Katie Burke: Because I work in the Pyramid and a lot of the guys who work at Bass Pro and the Waterfront, they all do the public land in Arkansas. And I'm spoiled. I grew up in Mississippi and on private land. And my mom and dad, well, now they currently live at our duck camp. They just retired there. But before that, they lived 10 minutes away from our duck camp. So I've never gotten up before five.

John Fandry: Yeah, yeah, you had it made, that's for sure. You read these books about the big leisurely breakfast. When I was hunting hard and heavy here, I'd be up at probably 4.30 or 5 and I don't know, grab a cookie or something and I'd be You're out there dogging the boat and heading out there. But yeah, you always have that to worry about. Someone coming in next to you, or you never know what you're liable to meet out there. Somebody's shooting at everybody who comes by. But that's, I guess, the price you pay for public.

Katie Burke: Okay, so back to these carvers. What would you say the percentages are making it for private use versus selling their decoys to hunters? Are the majority of Wisconsin carvers making them for private use or are they… I believe they do.

John Fandry: I think the majority made them for themselves. These are all little towns and maybe they helped friends, maybe they did it… in a communal way. A couple of cases I can think of, but there's an awful lot of them. Once I started posting on Facebook, I'd get some comments from out east that just about everybody in Wisconsin seemed to have made decoys. And a lot that nobody had ever heard of. I think that's the case. Gus Moak was a commercial maker. He sold decoys for, I think, $48 a dozen back in the day. And some of the Green Bay makers did a lot and sold a lot. Milwaukee Carvers, all those museum guys, I don't believe they sold birds at all. Just help people out. And Rindle, I don't think he ever sold a bird. I think he would give a few to friends and maybe replace a rig with a new rig. But that's probably one of the reasons that Wisconsin lags so far behind everybody else, that there wasn't the real commercial maker to put out a lot of people could see him. I think definitely it was that farmer that trying to earn, you know, make his own stuff, or maybe in Moke's case, earn a few extra bucks that did these things. And it seemed like just about every, a lot of the guys that hunted did do that. It's kind of amazing to me, and they did a good job. You would think that some of the Oshkosh carvers, I think Frank Stry made rigs, and you see a lot of different brands on them, and most of those are known by now who they are. And yeah, it's… I think Gus Neelow, that was another big name. I don't know if I mentioned him. He made an awful lot of birds, probably as many as anybody in Wisconsin. Typical big, high-headed, mostly diver ducks. And he would…birds too.

Katie Burke: looking through your Facebook post and you mentioned about, I can't remember what carver it was, but you posted that it was like a wood duck and a widgeon and maybe a gadwall. You said something about how they were rare to see, I don't know if it was just that carver or Wisconsin in general. But it was a really short post, so I was trying to figure out. So was there a lot of those species or no?

John Fandry: There was a lot of the species, but people didn't make decoys for them. It was kind of a no-frills thing. I think that a widgeon or a gadwall would come into a mallard just as fast.

Katie Burke: I mean, that's why we don't really use… We don't. I mean, we just use mallard decoys down here. We don't really… I mean, some people do. Some people put all the species out there, but I grew up… The only decoys we ever put out were maybe some teal decoys, but that was about it. Part of me was wondering if the reason they didn't make them as well was because maybe because y'all hunted earlier in the season and they weren't as colorful then maybe? Is that… What could that…

John Fandry: That's definitely true, although I think the makers, when they did make them, seemed to make them in full plumage. I'm not sure. I noticed throughout the years in my decoy rig, I always added a couple Drake Pintails, mainly for the white. The Wigeon would come in there faster than anything, and that's what I had them for. We very seldom saw a white, a full-plumaged drake pintail. But they drew other birds in just by being white, and I think that might have been the case in some. And speaking of that, while I'm thinking of it, Wisconsin carvers are known for coot decoys.

Katie Burke: Oh yeah, that's true. Forget about that.

John Fandry: Yeah. I was going to say they drew a lot of different words in too, but I'm sure that was the case in a lot of them. But Wisconsin though has a lot of German people, a lot of immigrants and they ate coots.

Katie Burke: Okay, that's what I was going to ask. I assumed they were just confidence decoys, but they're actually use them for both?

John Fandry: It would be my guess that as many people wanted to eat the coots as wanted to fool a duck with a coot decoy. I've eaten it and I've known many other people that have.

Katie Burke: I just find it so funny to think. I mean, we actually haven't seen that many coots in the last couple years. It's been weird, but we've always had, I mean, just rafts of them. I mean, they're everywhere. And my brother and I used to joke when we were growing up that, because I think they migrate at night, so you never see them flying. And we used to joke.

John Fandry: No, you don't.

Katie Burke: We used to joke they popped up from under the ground. That's why they were black. They came from underneath. They just popped up one day.

John Fandry: Yeah. There was a lot of decals on cars back in the days. Eat more coot, at least for duck hunters. Most people didn't put that on there, but duck hunters had that. Actually, a quick story here. A friend of my father's, his father was quite a bit older than he was. We call him a Dutchman. I think he was just an old German guy. He still spoke with an accent. But on a Monday, after a busy weekend of hunting, he would drive up to Lake Puckaway, which is also up to the north central part of the state, big hunting area. And he would rent a skiff and paddle around the lake. I don't think he even brought a gun. And he would pick up the dead coots that were shot during the week and take them home. I know the English used to hang birds till the bodies dropped away from the heads. They used to nail their heads to the wall. These were pre-aged, I think. I don't know if he picked the ones with the moss growing on them or not, if they were better. But- At least it's cold up there.

Katie Burke: I can't even imagine. Have you eaten a coot? I've never eaten a coot.

John Fandry: I have. Again, a friend to my father. These were all Depression-era guys, you know, and they would probably eat anything. And they would come up here to the river in later years, to Pierpont. And the one guy would bring a big kettle of coot stew. He thought he was treating everybody, but everybody else was kind of shaking their heads at it. But that I ate, and it was good. They disguised it in so many, or his wife did, in so many ways. ginger snaps, and I don't know what all else. And it was good. I can't say I'd go running to eat some today, but with everybody sitting around the table telling stories, it was edible for sure.

Katie Burke: So I have a funny story, and I want to admit to my wrongdoing as a child, but I've never told this. I don't even think my dad knows, but we always were told when we were kids, you shoot it, you eat it, and It was always like a big rule. So my cousin and I, we were probably, I don't know, 10, 11, maybe 11, 12. And it was youth day and the duck, we were putting this pit blind at my cousin's house with Arthur, their dads and his brother. And it was getting later in the morning. We just, the ducks stopped coming in and, but there was this, A bunch of ducks were down the ditch line from us, and we were getting ready to go, and we begged them if we could go sneak down the ditch and shoot the ducks down there. Let's get them up. He was like, yeah, whatever, y'all go do it. If you get anything, bring it back, because we were about to leave to go home. So we sneak down the ditch and it's really shallow water right there. So most of it is iced over and there's a little bit of open water where all the ducks are. There's a bunch of coots in there too. And we both lay on the ditch line, lay on the levee and shoot. And I don't know which one of us hit the coot, but one of us killed a coot. And one of us probably just shot straight over. We were so scared that they were going to make us eat it because we had heard that they were terrible that we took that coot and we hid out a little thing of ice and shoved it under the ice.

John Fandry: Oh, boy. There you go. Got on a real treat there.

Katie Burke: And told our dads that we just missed. And then they made fun of us for missing all those things. And we never told them that we killed that kid. I don't recommend doing that, kids, but I did it.

John Fandry: No, no. I got the same eat what you shoot lecture. Right when I started Hunt, you don't shoot anything without eating it. And before the duck season, we would go up to the farm and some of the other farms and shoot barnyard pigeons, which we had to eat. And those, I'd recommend a coot before that. Maybe the way it was prepared, they didn't taste that terrible. It was kind of like chewing on a tennis ball, if that. I mean, these things were tough. I imagine you could have disguised that a little bit, but I don't think my mother had the skills to do it.

Katie Burke: That's funny. Yeah, I've never told anyone that story. So yep, we just shoved it under the ice and lied.

John Fandry: Yeah. Yeah.

Katie Burke: That's a good way to put it. Yeah. We were probably like fifth, sixth grade. I think this will help. We were young. Okay. So I have a question before we go, which I've never gotten anyone to really… I've read a few articles about it, but this is really off topic. But you're from Wisconsin and you grew up hunting public land. All right. Tell me about marsh skis. What are marsh skis? Do people actually use them? Do you fall in the water?

John Fandry: Again, a friend of mine, after we started goose hunting, I got a little older and I had this urge to convince my father to go out in a boat in Horicon, which is the way we hunted for many years. And a friend of mine had marsh geese and that's the only way he would hunt. And he would go out there before the season and he would make trails through the cattails. And then for maybe three or four times during the year, I would go with him. And once the trails are made, it's not that hard. I don't know if you're familiar with them, but they're like cross-country skis on steroids, quite a bit wider and longer.

Katie Burke: We have a pair in the museum, yeah.

John Fandry: And the bindings are just a loop of fire hose or something or whatever. And your feet aren't in there permanently. So you shuffle along, you don't really ski, you just kind of shuffle. And if you come to a pothole and something jumps, you shoot. If you come to a pothole and want to hunt it, you just stop there and you can put your two skis together kind of, and you're basically standing on a piece of board.

Katie Burke: Okay, so you still you continue to stand on the board if you stop there. Okay, I did that was one thing I was trying to figure out like did you get to the pothole and it wasn't it was like the water wasn't that deep so you just got down.

John Fandry: Well, in Horicon there was no such thing as very rare to wade. Once you got got away from those skis you were going down God knows how far anywhere from the top of your waders to over your head in muck. So, you didn't want to get out and wait at all. There was spots that you could, but mostly you stayed on that, used it as a solid platform. The dogs would actually sit on them, on the back part of them.

Katie Burke: I was assuming you had to have a dog if you're hunting in these things. Yeah. Because how else would you get cripples?

John Fandry: Definitely the dog, Horicon marsh was a cattail marsh and the potholes were nice and open, but once you left there, There was no little pockets of water, it was just about solid, and you definitely needed a dog. We had dogs our whole lives. You needed a tough dog, a big, strong, tough dog, or a wiry, at least wiry and strong. When I went with this guy, we always went with his dog. I never took ours, just the one. And he always had, he liked to mix Goldens and Black Labs. That was his thing. Always good. A fabulous dog. And your shooting was easy. You had jump shooting, which is never really difficult. And then the birds were always coming back into the pot also. We didn't use decoys, but you could have, but that was easy too. And this guy, I don't know what he'd end up the season with, but I don't think he probably missed more than four or five times through the whole season. He had all these shots. And it was kind of funny because we brought him up to the goose hunting farm one time. It was a whole different thing. And I think he went through a box of shells without getting a goose. You could see him coming and they were up there a little bit higher and he had time to think about it and he just threw his momentum completely off. But jump shooting on skis is instinctive and hard work.

Katie Burke: How far would you go in those skis on a morning?

John Fandry: Oh gosh, quite a ways. I think a whole circuit would probably take you at least a mile maybe. You're just shuffling along? Yeah, you shuffle along. It was nice to stop every once in a while and hunt a pothole instead of just jump shooting it, because they give you rest and they extend your hunt a little bit. But he had a couple areas where he had made the trails. That was hard work. I mean, extremely hard work. And following up those trails made it a lot easier, but I was in my 20s. There's been many, many years where I wouldn't even attempt doing anything like that. No, it's definitely a young man's game, I think. I'm not even sure if people do that that much anymore, to tell you the truth. That is the Wisconsin thing. We have makers up there that were known for that. I mean, people can identify certain skis by their maker and collect those. And I've had a number of pairs over the years.

Katie Burke: Kelly Nelson Yeah. We have a pair in the museum, but they've always just kind of… I don't know. The way you just described it then, I feel more confident with it. Because it's like, how did they do this and not get wet? It just seems… But yeah, those cattails just hold you up, right? They just hold you up.

John Fandry: Yeah, they hold you up. You're in the bent over cattails. Sometimes you got to go through channels where you can see your skis are being held tight or holding you up from the muck like a thinking through that stuff. Or if you fell off, you'd get wet. You'd have to do some acrobatics to get yourself back going again. But it ain't anybody's fault. But I have to admit, it was always… It's nice to get back to the boat, get to sleep in the boat and then have a nice dry seat. It probably keeps you from getting cold. Oh, definitely you wouldn't get cold. And you never see other hunters. I don't know if it was an unwritten law that people didn't use other people's trails or what, but all the time I'd hunted, I'd never seen another person doing that. And you're so far back there that you're hunting spots that nobody'd see. Black ducks are crying out loud. They'd be sitting back there in bunches where they'd be scared to death to come near people while it was in the open.

Katie Burke: So it was fun. And that's the point of them, right? The point is to be able to get to these spots and these potholes that you can't reach by boat and whatnot, right?

John Fandry: So this guy knew where they were by experience. I imagine nowadays your Google Earth or GPS or drones or whatever can pick out every pothole for you back there. So there's no hiding for a duck anymore, kind of.

Katie Burke: Yeah, I don't hear of anyone doing it though. I don't know if it's just, no one's taught anyone how to do it. I'm not sure. You know, because you think by now they'd start making, if people were doing it, there'd be some manufacturer making them. But yeah, I don't think they are.

John Fandry: That area you skied and if you wanted to go back into a puddle with a boat, you pulled and you were quiet. I don't want to criticize anything, but I guess I am. Mud motors will take you back any place you want to go and sound like a Harley getting in there and scare everything out of its wits. Not that if I was young, I'd probably have one myself, but being an old guy, I can complain about those things, I guess. It makes it I think it really does affect the ducks. I think it makes them more wary sends them deeper into spots where they aren't going to see anybody or like a refuge and stay there and

Katie Burke: But it's a way of life now, so like I said, my- And it's different too, because again, you're thinking public land, this isn't… You're not hunting private land where you've put ag on it or anything like that. Sure, sure. Yeah, so that's different. There's not like they're coming back to that same food source over and over. It's a different game, different strategy, right?

John Fandry: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Katie Burke: Before we go, because I haven't talked about it at all, and that's kind of why you're here. I know you don't go to the show. You haven't been going to the show recently, because we're here to talk about the Chicago show, but you used to go to Pheasant Run, right? A lot.

John Fandry: I did. I went there quite a few years, and I do go to the local shows, and I can't recommend them highly enough for a beginning collector. You know, if they have something they want ID'd, they have experts in any kind of a field. Or if you want to see things again, you can see just about anything you can think of at the… the Lombard show, which is the one coming up. It's like the soup bowl of duck show or decoy shows. And sometimes it's overwhelming a little bit, maybe for a newcomer, but everybody makes you feel welcome. They have seminars that can teach seasoned collectors down to brand new collectors. It's a wonderful resource for any type of collector. They have other things besides decoys even nowadays. You can find it all. It's kind of mind boggling. You just gotta settle yourself down.

Katie Burke: I still have a question. Since you've been going to shows for a very long time, do you have a strategy about how you approach a show when you're looking for something?

John Fandry: Actually, my strategy is to contact the collectors that I know ahead of time and have things all lined up. That's the easy way to do it.

Katie Burke: What about when you were young and you didn't know the collectors?

John Fandry: Oh, way back when I would go and, yeah, it's just the hit and miss thing. I would walk around. I remember the first show I went to was in the Wisconsin show in the Pioneer 10. And that's why I saw two decoys that were just jumped out at me. They were Frank Reesop, which is still one of my favorite makers, canvas backs. And I forgot the price was a pittance compared to what they are now, but I think at the time I could only afford one. So I took it and I was walking out. There was a collector, I think I'd even heard of him, a guy from Milwaukee. He says, I think you've got one of the best decoys for sale here. He said, I was eyeing that for the last couple of days. So that made me feel good that I knew what looked, still one of my favorite birds actually. That way, I had no idea. I wasn't looking for a particular thing. It just was something that would catch my eye. I knew I wanted Wisconsin. Canvas backs always seemed to catch my eye. So either it's going to be a nice big can. Once I got into it, I knew the collectors. I knew what they had for sale, and I'd kind of arrange it ahead of time. But I'd still go room to room, and you never know. I found some amazing stuff in there. You never know what you're going to find. Like I say, I don't set up a table to sell, so I got plenty of time to look to buy. I don't think I've ever been to a show where I didn't come away with a couple prizes that I was really happy with.

Katie Burke: Do you have one in particular, one decoy you found that you were surprised by?

John Fandry: Well, actually, that first reef op, oh, yes, there is one. It's an embarrassing story here, but this last Minnesota show, I was picking up some birds that I won at an auction. They were being delivered. And I erected it there, actually, from Terry's Smart Collection. And I recognized one as being one of my favorite makers from near Horicon, George Stofflett, his name was. And the auction had it with three other decoys. It didn't look like much unless you knew what you're looking for. And so I had to buy four decoys to get to one. And it had it listed as a seagull decoy. And I picked it up, and at first glance, it looked like a seagull. It was that size, maybe like a big duck, maybe. And brought it back to the room, and I was rooming with Nils once, and he said, I think that's a snow goose. And I was so blinded by the auction uh description and I know it was in my mind it was a seagull I said no that's a seagull Well, I made the mistake of putting it on the Facebook page where I was politely reminded by about a hundred people that it was a snow goose. And I didn't know the difference between a seagull and a snow goose. Well, it was kind of embarrassing, but not bad. Not bad. I took it well. I was actually happy with the snow goose. But that was a surprise.

Katie Burke: Well, you paid him back today with your April Fool's, with your April Fool's curse.

John Fandry: Oh, gosh, yeah. Yeah, he fell for that one. I was happy it was a snow goose. It's still a very rare bird, and I guess you gotta stop and think of what you got instead of going at first glimpse of it. But yeah, this Illinois show is, like I say, for any collector, it's just an amazing thing. The room-to-room is so much fun. you get to talk to these people at uh, you know, not with You know a dozen people looking at but maybe one or two and they're talking and uh, it's just uh, you can see everything from classic burke to to beginning junkers, um And then and the auction that they hold there. They have a preview the night before and you can actually Get the coast, you know with these classic birds clad birds worth, you know, two hundred thousand dollars apiece maybe and I've always enjoyed that, seeing things that you'd never in a million years have a chance to own, but to get right up. Yeah. It's an interesting show.

Katie Burke: Yeah. It's a good collection this year, too, that's being sold.

John Fandry: Yeah. The Alan Haid collection. He was collecting probably right when I started. I think he wrote one of the first books that even had a semblance of Wisconsin stuff in it. He was quite a collector, had a great eye, and he made his life as a dealer and collector, knew exactly what he was looking for, and there's some classics that are finally hitting the market. I'm sure they'll bring a… fair amount. Something I could totally dream about.

Katie Burke: Beth Dombkowski I did get to see, and I've already mentioned it on here in another interview, but I was at John Dieter's house in the fall, and he had that black duck corral preening bird there, and I got to hang out with it for a little bit, which is nice.

John Fandry: John Dieterich Yeah, and I've read Deep White Magazine since it came out, and there are stories on that that makes it even nicer to get the back end of it. Yeah, classic birds. It'll be interesting to see who's shelling out the money. I think there is quite a bit of a resurgence in decoys here.

Katie Burke: Yeah, it has. It's really gone up and steadily been going up, which has been, along with flat art as well, which has been nice to see. Like Rami's stuff has really jumped since COVID as well. We talked about him a little bit, but yeah, it's really jumped. Well, John, thank you so much for coming on. Before we go, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like our listeners to know about?

John Fandry: Well, actually, I thought it would be hard for me to talk for this period of time, but I'm thinking of other things, but nothing earth shattering, but it was a pleasure talking to you. Yes, you too. And you made it extremely, extremely easy to do this. Yeah.

Katie Burke: You'd probably do this prop and all, I would imagine, but… And this is the best thing about my job, is getting to hear y'all's stories and talk to you and get to meet all these new people, and I love it so much. Yeah. So thank you so much for sharing your time.

John Fandry: Well, thank you.

Katie Burke: Thank you, John, for coming on the show. Thank you, Chris, our producer, and thanks to you, our listeners, supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.