Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Katie Burke: On this episode of the Duck's Luna podcast, I have Marty Hanson, master decoy carver, and Jodi Marler, Fish Camp creative, and we talk about decoy carving and the documentary, The Craft, they did together. Stick around.

Katie Burke: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Ducks Lemon podcast. I'm your host, Katie Burke. And today on this show, I have Marty Hanson, decoy carver. Welcome to the show, Marty.

Marty Hanson: Thank you. It's great to be here.

Katie Burke: Well, this is your second time on the podcast. You're actually my first interview.

Marty Hanson: Interview, yeah.

Katie Burke: So people do go back and listen to that one because we'll kind of skip over some of your stuff today. So make sure you go back and listen to that one. And then also I have Jodi Marler here from Fish Camp Creative. Welcome.

Jodi Marler: Thank you, Katie. Great to be here.

Katie Burke: It's been fun.

Jodi Marler: Yeah, it's been pretty incredible, you opening up your place to us. And your family. It was fun.

Katie Burke: Yeah, we've been hunting for the last three days. And now we're here in Memphis. So we'll do this and then we'll go to the museum.

Jodi Marler: Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. My first time being here.

Katie Burke: This is your first time here too, right? Yeah. And you've worked with DU for… Since the early 80s. Yeah. It's been a long time.

Marty Hanson: The local chapters and stuff.

Katie Burke: Yeah, and then I was talking to my boss Doug Barnes about the magazine cover, and he thinks you might be the only decoy.

Marty Hanson: It's one of few. Well, there was two that were made. One of them had mallards on it, one had a pair of pintails, and Lee Jost did both of those photographs.

Katie Burke: But he thinks you might be the only cover that has a decoy for DU Magazine.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, I know they had some type of criteria for those covers, and Lee somehow got

Katie Burke: He got around.

Marty Hanson: Got it in there.

Katie Burke: Well, he knows a guy.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, he knows somebody. Lee knows lots of people.

Katie Burke: But, yeah, because the only other thing Doug could think of was they did an article on Masons, but that didn't make the cover.

Marty Hanson: Right.

Katie Burke: Yeah. So I think you might be the only.

Marty Hanson: Pretty special.

Katie Burke: And carved decoy on the cover, yeah.

Marty Hanson: If I was thinking, I would have brought, I have those two covers. Oh, really? I should have brought them, but just completely forgot.

Katie Burke: Oh, that's cool.

Marty Hanson: What year was that?

Katie Burke: That was in the 90, or no, 2000, early 2000s. Early 2000s, from what I recall, yeah.

Marty Hanson: Yeah.

Katie Burke: That's a cool cover. I actually pulled it up. I'll have to pull it up for, like, Instagram for this.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, there's one with the, uh, there's a rig of mallards that we hunted over this week.

Katie Burke: Okay.

Marty Hanson: Um, that, that's in there, and Lee's got a boat motor and other things in there.

Katie Burke: Okay, that's the one I'm forgetting. And the other one's the pintails in the shop.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, there's next to a gunpowder barrel and a couple duck calls and a shotgun, yeah. Yeah, that's a cool, yeah, that's the one I'm thinking of.

Katie Burke: That's a really cool cover.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, I should have brought those birds.

Katie Burke: It's a really unique Ducks Unlimited cover.

Marty Hanson: We don't do many like that. That's Lee. I mean, he's just real good at stretching the boundaries and doing what he can.

Katie Burke: He's good. We don't have many covers like that. Most of them are, you know, outside habitat.

Marty Hanson: Dogs.

Katie Burke: Dogs, yeah. Nothing really in a shop or anything. Alright, so in our first interview, you know, we talk about, let's say, like, go back because we kind of talk about how you get into carving and that whole starting, you know, evolution of becoming a carver and everything. But one of the things when I was, I listened back to it today and the kind of thing I really wanted to talk to you about was, which we have decoys right here. Especially for contemporary carvers, we talk a little bit about how you have a unique style, but I kind of want to hear more about… I know you kind of developed your own style on your own, kind of tried to make sure you had a unique style, but I know you were inspired by old carvers and old decoys. And I'd like to hear a little more about that part of your evolution, a little bit more.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, a lot of influences, but I think my earliest influences were contemporary carvers. There was a guy that lived in our state named Richard Scheibel. And, uh, I was young and they didn't have a driver's license and stuff. And I was able to go to his shop and use his bandsaw and stuff. And he was building a large rig for a guy by the name of Bob Lindstrom at the time. And, um, Dick would have his carvings there and he'd have some Ben Schmidt, old Ben Schmidt decoys there in his shop. And I always took an admiration of those, you know, while visiting him. Dick was working for Bob making these large gunning rigs, diver rigs, but he kind of slowed down and kind of went the wayside, so I kind of took over Dick's situation with Bob. But that, you know, in 1979-80, roughly, There was, it was, you were like in a vacuum. There was no social media. There was, Bruce Burke had the carving book, I think it was printed in 1976. So, you know, that's only three years into when I was starting and that was the book, Bruce Burke's book, you know, and it was about decorative carving. It wasn't about hunting decoys. I was fortunate, I think, to not have a lot of exposure to the outside because I didn't collect then. I didn't know anything at that time. I was a teenager and it was a job. The influence factor of it, Bob Lindstrom might have been more the owner of these decoys, more of an influence in anything because he wanted things built a certain way. And that was the function that he wanted. And if I didn't do that, he didn't like it and he didn't want them. So I think that influenced a lot of how these turned out versus other carvers. modern day today, there's all kinds of carvers that influence… All carvers are influenced by… You're influenced by what you see, what you see in your experiences.

Katie Burke: I guess my question with that is, how much do you think the region fed into your… Oh, the region is huge.

Marty Hanson: The Minnesota-style decoy is a flat-bottomed bird, very similar to a Michigan bird. And this is post-1950. 1940, 50 herders was in Minnesota at the time, and old carvers like Marv Burnett, they made a very similar decoy. Flat bottom, nice and wide, rolled the water good. They liked keels on everything, and that's a taste. If you like that, that's great. I made this group of birds for Jodi, and we didn't put keels on them because they move a little bit better in the wind and in the river, if they're in a river. My carvings are definitely a Midwestern-style carving, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin.

Katie Burke: Yeah, I mean, there are contemporary carvers in that area, but there's definitely fewer than there is because the East Coast is where the majority are. So you're kind of off on your own a little bit.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, there's not a lot in the Midwest. There's a few guys.

Katie Burke: Do you find, though, this is kind of a funny question, but because they are such Midwest decoys, but because you've got this notoriety as one of the better contemporary carvers out there now, that people, even though everyone's on the East Coast and they're mainly doing East Coast style, do you find that you see people that may not be in your region starting to pick up on your style? That you're like, huh, that's not where you hunt those?

Marty Hanson: I think what happens is they use little bits and you can see little influences in it. And if it's something that they really like, they'll stick with it. those influences seem to come in one or two birds that they'll make, and then it'll disappear, because your style is your style. You know, when you're copying something else, that's not you, you know, and that was my whole thing. And I was, like I said, I was fortunate. I kind of lived in a vacuum. I had no access to any of this stuff, so you had to kind of create what you had to make.

Katie Burke: And function's a big part of that.

Marty Hanson: Function was the main thing when I started, was function, because, I mean, I made 7-800 birds a year for this guy. For 10 years. A long time.

Jodi Marler: I gotta ask, were they hollow?

Marty Hanson: No. None of them were. They were just heavy clunks. All diving ducks. The guys had 20-foot boats and they left the decoys in the boats. They never took them out. You know, so, and, and they wanted wood and they shot into it, you know, they wanted stuff that would last and they wanted wood. I mean, they'd set six to 700 birds out at a time.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

Marty Hanson: You know, Western Minnesota. Oh yeah. He was like, he ran that Bob ran that boat, like a military operation. When you were in there, you had to. dropped at the right time. Everything had to be perfect. Right. To get that line right. He went crazy. Yeah. Yeah. He'd just go nuts. Yeah. He was a piece of work.

Katie Burke: So with that, because you're doing so, okay, this is my, I have two questions. So, and it may be one or the other, but, okay, so you're making that many decoys, right? They're not hollow. They're solid. Are you, I'm guessing at that time, seeing what is sturdy at that, like, okay, this stays, this I don't have to fix it, this I have to fix.

Marty Hanson: Oh, I made a lot of mistakes, you know, and not, you know, I always used wooden decoys with my father and stuff, but that was old junk, you know, it was, nobody cared about it, old worn out masons and whatnot. Um, yeah, you definitely have to, uh, I just lost my thought train. Adapt.

Katie Burke: Adapt.

Marty Hanson: Yeah. Yeah.

Katie Burke: Cause I was thinking, yeah, like if you're doing that many and you're like, oh, I don't want to build a whole nother one.

Marty Hanson: Right. Well, this thing lasts longer. Right. You must remember too, I was probably 14, 13, 14 years old and you got a 40 year old guy telling you what to do. You just do it. You just do it. Whether you want to or not, you just do it.

Katie Burke: Okay, so when did you start to hollow out birds?

Marty Hanson: Probably in the 90s, when the shows became prevalent. See, I didn't really do shows until 1981 or 2. There was no shows that I knew of. There was shows, obviously, that I didn't know about them. And I started doing shows when the intrinsic value was more to the person buying the decoy than the decoy. They wanted something that was light when they got it, or nicely painted, which the ducks could care less about. The hollowing is a time-consuming aspect of it, but like these birds, when they're hollow, they'll never crack. A solid bird, you see the great old Joe Lincolns and stuff, they'll always have a crack down the back. Or the Elmer Crowls, big-bodied Elmer Crowls, always got a big crack. Masons. Masons that were solid, they always got a crack. Why is that? Well, that wood, if you have a center core, of the heart of the wood, as that wood contracts, it's got to go somewhere. So that crack is going to develop somewhere. What I do to circumvent a lot of that, if I do need to make a solid bird, is that when I put my wood up, I let it crack wherever it's going to crack, and then I know. So when I make that bandsaw cut, the log would crack in half in a spot, but I know where it was. So I make that bandsaw cut, I cut that crack out. So that's never going to happen.

Katie Burke: I never thought about… I just thought you hollowed them to make them lighter.

Marty Hanson: That's one of the things, too.

Katie Burke: To be honest with you… But I think there was actually a structural reason.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, it's to stop from splitting ever, and it keeps the wood stable. But there's a definite aspect of solid birds that they ride better. They do look better on the water. They're harder to deal with unless you have a big boat, then it doesn't matter what you got. or like the type of hunting that we did this week, you wouldn't know, unless you left him out there. And that's what they did. He did that a lot. He'd have a stash out by the lake there.

Katie Burke: Yeah, we did that when I was a kid.

Marty Hanson: Oh, sure.

Katie Burke: I had to ride the boat around in the air and pick them all up.

Marty Hanson: Yep, yep.

Katie Burke: So, yeah, and that makes sense, like if you're on the Chesapeake Bay, obviously they're all solid body birds, there's waves.

Marty Hanson: And they're not carrying that stuff. No. They've got a big, nice boat, and they bring them in the boat, they leave them at the dock there, and then they go out.

Katie Burke: Yeah, but these are, you know, puddle ducks along the Mississippi River, yeah, you're gonna get a little different situation.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, the hollowing is an important thing, and it's time-consuming, but people nowadays, if they're gonna spend this kind of money, they want it hollow.

Jodi Marler: So I want to ask, at what point when you were younger did you start feeling like your style? When did you first come up with that?

Marty Hanson: It's a hard question to ask because I don't really, you know, you think you were just doing what you were doing, but I could start seeing it after three, four years.

Jodi Marler: Yeah.

Marty Hanson: Probably 79, 80. Okay. You know.

Jodi Marler: Because when you're first doing it, it's a job. You just want to make these things.

Marty Hanson: Right. I was making 30 birds a week. Right. Which was a lot. Yeah. You know, back then. I got $30 a piece for them. You know, 30 bucks a piece, 30 a week, and you just kept doing it. You know, it beats working, that's for sure. You know.

Katie Burke: All right, so thinking of that, when did this head style right here, do you know when that started happening?

Marty Hanson: Because it's very Marty. Probably in the last 15 years. That's an evolution of many, hundreds of birds between now, but it's where I'm comfortable now. And when I make something, that's kind of what I do, unless somebody wants something else. But for the most part, this is what the people are looking for. If they're going to use them, they want what is the carver's They don't want something that's copied after something else. I mean, they can, but they want what the carver is. And when I collect even contemporary stuff I collect, I want that carver. I don't want a remake of something else by that carver. I want his work. Their style. Yeah, their style. Because it means more to me. It's more personal to me, I guess.

Katie Burke: No, I just I wanted that because that's such like you see that and I'm like, oh, that's marty.

Marty Hanson: Yeah Yeah, well, and that's the best compliment I can have for the fact that the style is recognizable, you know And and that's that helps that helps a lot so um to kind of go back to like

Katie Burke: When did your paint… So I'm assuming those early birds, you were putting fairly minimal paint on there. They're diving birds too, so there's that. Yeah, they're minimal. So when did you start exploring doing this more detailed paint work?

Marty Hanson: Probably 83, 84. I graduated in 1983, so… Right around 18, 19 years old.

Katie Burke: You had a little more time?

Marty Hanson: Time, and I kind of was looking for work, and we were doing some carpentry and this and that, and I was still building these birds, and I just found out that I needed to supplement my income a little bit, so I'd make a couple of fancy birds, and there was a company called Wild Wings, which I'm sure you guys are familiar with. I did a lot of stuff with that gallery with Jerry Epple. I'd go in and he'd give me $100 for the bird, and he'd sell it for $300 or whatever they did. But he was a money source for me at that time. Because going full-time on a carving endeavor like this, and this is what you're gonna do, it's… The only reason I could do it is because I was young. I mean, to start it at 25 or 30, I don't know how you could do it. You know, it's tough.

Katie Burke: But it's okay, of course, early, you're trying to make money off these things. And then, of course, that influences what you do, because you need to make a living off of it. How much now, like, or kind of in those middle years, were you fighting, like, your style versus, like, selling decoys? Like, and having to fight that?

Marty Hanson: It's still kind of ongoing. Yeah. Finding that level that's good and what keeps you busy and you're doing work for people you want to do work for and you're doing the things you want to make.

SPEAKER_05: Right.

Marty Hanson: That's happened in the last 10 or 15 years. In the early 2000s, 2005-ish, I did all the masters for Final Approach when they first started. Our company bought from, I think it was Ron Latshaw, I think that's who started it. And when I was working for them, then that was a different thing, then it became a job. Because you have to get this done in this timeline, this then, you know. But all those things are in evolution and you learn from those things.

Katie Burke: Right. So I was talking to, which we talked about Jet Brunet this past weekend, and I interviewed him and you know his goal, his dad won five world championships, right? So his goal was to get those five worlds and um, he I was asked him which I was surprised he was honest about but he was I was like at what point did it become a chore to have to do those super realistic birds like you weren't into it anymore and you're just Doing a win and he was like, oh 100 it was a chore. I didn't want to do him anymore at all Oh, yeah, and now that you see his stuff. He doesn't do any of it

Marty Hanson: No, and I think he's gotten away from that. He doesn't think maybe one a year. I mean, he's saving himself from burnout. I've talked to him about that. We both have the same outlook on it. It's like the decorative stuff is beautiful, but Jesus just takes so much out of you. And he was having fun just doing smooth stuff. you know, maybe not so involved, and he was having fun with that. I know he does a lot of stuff with you guys at one point.

Katie Burke: He still does his, he does a decoy year for us, yeah.

Marty Hanson: He's enjoying that, and you know, I mean, that's what it's about. You gotta, if you're gonna do this for a living, you gotta make sure you don't get tired of it.

Katie Burke: Yeah.

Marty Hanson: Because a lot of people carve, and they're carving one year, and then you don't see them again.

Katie Burke: So how do you combat that?

Marty Hanson: I end up working for people I want to work for. I end up making what I want to make. It's hard to say no to anybody because you always want to try to help them out and please them, but some people you just can't. So you just try to pick your customers and do the best you can and try to learn something every time. I'm still at this point. When I did these for Jodi, the next six will be different. I'll be trying to change something else. Nothing is ever the same. And I think keeping your mind in that thing is always trying to improve will stop the burnout. Jody would probably be able to comment on something like that with his building of homes. He's picked his clientele. And you learn what you can do.

Katie Burke: want to work with, and you don't want to work with.

Jodi Marler: Because it's a process.

Marty Hanson: Yeah.

Katie Burke: No, it makes sense to me. I do that, too.

Marty Hanson: Oh, absolutely. I get it, yeah. Everybody does. You know, whatever it is, it's got to be sane for the person. Right. You know, so.

Katie Burke: Yeah. No, it makes perfect sense. So I know you're still doing some decorative stuff.

Marty Hanson: Yeah.

Katie Burke: So how much, like, percentage-wise, are you doing, like, something decorative, which takes up a lot more time, versus doing some working birds?

Jodi Marler: And how many flamingos?

Marty Hanson: I didn't think we were going to talk about that. He didn't want to talk about the plumbing. That was a close friend. That was a stretch to be able to do that. That was a real good friend. One and done. Yeah, one and done.

Katie Burke: You got to use all the colors that you never got to use before.

Marty Hanson: Now they're all gone. Nothing is pink. I forgot the question.

Katie Burke: Yeah. So, okay. So the decorative stuff, like the flamingo versus how much of that takes up your working time versus like working.

Marty Hanson: I use that. And it kind of answers your question too about burnout. I use those things for burnout when I'm doing this and okay, I got to go farther than this. I will create something. And what I'll do is I'll work on that while I'm doing other things. But when I need this time, I go and work on that, that better piece. Cause that's what my mindset on you lay in bed. thinking about it at night, and it's like you got to apply that the next day. And that keeps me from burnout also. You know, the duck calls were another thing that kept me interested in progressing forward because we got tired of building ducks, build duck calls. That's a completely different part of your brain. I mean, that's a machinist part of the brain. And that's not me.

Katie Burke: And they have to sound good.

Marty Hanson: Yeah. And that's the other thing. Not only do they have to be pretty. Yeah. And you know, when I started making them, you know, Howard Harlan's book or those, those books weren't even out. So you just had to find one and kind of copy it and figure out what worked and what didn't.

Katie Burke: And I've heard they can be like worse than decoy carvers sometimes with helping people.

Marty Hanson: Oh, once they get a tone and they've got a method, that's a trade secret. You know, I don't blame them because, you know, the carvers, the duck calls today are just unbelievable. The stuff that they create is incredible. You know, a lot of them have a machinist background, you know, very, very detailed and, you know.

Katie Burke: And we talked about Brian Byers, who's been on the podcast. He's like an engineer. You can tell he's an engineer. Exactly. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, so, okay, and I'm guessing, like, too, when you're doing those decoratives, like, you can almost, like, pick a new problem to try to figure out every time you're making up a form.

Marty Hanson: That's a great question. I did that goose that is in the documentary for Ken Cole. We put his hunting dog's ashes in it, which was, his name was Goose also. We did a full-size piece, standing goose, that was, it took, you know, it was a two years project. But I always had problems with feet on my standing birds, and I said, you know, I'm going to take this time to fix this foot problem I've got, that I've, you know, I've got to start paying attention to the feet, because it's the first thing somebody looks at.

SPEAKER_00: Really?

Marty Hanson: And that goose was that time. So that is a great question. It was like, okay, I proved on the feet. That's what I got out of that whole goose. The feet are the way I want them, now I know how to do it.

Jodi Marler: And not only that, you had the footsteps.

Marty Hanson: The footsteps, yeah.

Katie Burke: Yeah, it's a walking goose. It's not a standing goose. It's a walking goose.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, we put the little foot imprints in the base. Yeah, it's incredible. And that was a fun project, and I'm about ready to do something again like that, whether it's a dead hang. project or big piece, you know. I don't know if I've seen a dead hang of yours. I've done about a half a dozen of them. Okay.

Katie Burke: Yeah, I don't, I love a dead hang. But I mean, and I'm guessing even that, you know, you're not, won't want to talk about the flamingo, but that thing has a crazy neck on it.

Marty Hanson: It was fun.

Katie Burke: Yeah. So I'm sure that's, yeah.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, it was fun. It was totally out of my wheelhouse, you know, but sometimes you need to do that too, you know, opens your mind up a little bit. Keep it fun. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Katie Burke: Yeah, and I'm guessing too when you do that and you like kind of open your mind up that it kind of then leads to another kind of starting to another thing.

Marty Hanson: Absolutely, you know. Yeah, I think one thing feeds on the other.

Katie Burke: Right.

Marty Hanson: You know, if I'm out of the shop for a week, it takes me about two days to get my mind back in that role of what the deal is. Right. You know, just makes sense. Sometimes it happens immediately, but there's times where it's a couple of days. It's like, yeah, just do it. Yeah.

Katie Burke: Do you just do like little things until you get there? Um, sometimes I would put around, you know,

Marty Hanson: Yeah, I do miniatures. I'll do a lot of miniatures to clear my head with stuff because it's scrap wood and something simple and it's not physical. Making these decoys, it's surprisingly physical. You're working a draw knife. Everything I do is by hand. You're working a draw knife and spokeshave all day long in its upper body. And one time when I wore a Fitbit, I haven't worn them in years. You know, I'd go out walking and the Fitbit would say, you know, 120 beats a minute or whatever. So I put it on while I was carving and it was getting to like 150, 160, just standing there. You know, so it is somewhat… And you don't sit down, really? I don't sit. No, I stand pretty much… You paint when you sit? 50-50. I have a higher, you know, bar stool type chair that I do sit when I'm, you know, really getting into something. When you paint something, you got to have it, you know, attached to your body in several points so it doesn't move. You know what I mean? So I will sit during some of that, but I'm pretty much on my feet all day.

Katie Burke: How would you paint those standing things, like that big goose? I mean, this obviously you can put it in your lap and you're like, yeah, you can wedge it down, but that's a huge- Yeah, if it's got a base, it's kind of good.

Marty Hanson: It's good, but I will put a fixture on the bottom and I'll put it in a vice so it's always secure and I can spin it and move it. The vice has the rotational factor in the front and the back and I'll do it that way, but I'll make sure that thing is really locked in there so it doesn't fall out. And you walk around it, you paint around it. Sometimes you rub into it, and your sleeve will rub off what you just did.

Jodi Marler: You got pink flamingo on you.

Marty Hanson: Well, we didn't get any pink on me. We made sure the pink wasn't, yeah, it was gone.

Katie Burke: Yeah, because you're working with such wet and thin paint.

Marty Hanson: All wet.

Katie Burke: You touch it, and yeah.

Marty Hanson: It's all wet. Everything I do is pretty much wet on wet. When I went over to China to do the masters for Final Approach, they'd laugh at me because all the Workers there had black pants, black patent leather shoes, and a perfectly white press shirt. Perfect. And then I'm in there painting and I'm wiping brushes on my clothes and my pants and they're all laughing at me. I mean, there's 40 people staring at and just laughing. Like, look at that. Look at that guy. What's he doing? And then when they left that factory at the end of that day, their clothes were as clean as when they came. And they painted too. It was amazing how they could do it and not get paint all over. I have paint all over my mouth. I'll have paint all over when I'm into it.

Katie Burke: Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, that's how I know about painting. It's everywhere. But like, where do they put the paint when they wipe?

Marty Hanson: They just have like a little… I need to know how this works. Yeah, and you know, they're shooting most of it, you know, but there's the ladies, the ladies will seem to be better at it, but they'll do the detail work with the brushes and stuff. You know, they have their little tray and just like we do it, but I mean, they don't, they don't drip nothing. Everything's perfect.

Katie Burke: When did you do the final approach?

Marty Hanson: 2000, 2000 to about 2012. Okay. And that's, yeah, they sold it during that time. I designed that whole, the duck line. And then we used that for, I don't know, four or five, six years and Bushnell bought us. And then I think ATK, ATK Federal bought Bought it from Bush, no. So we lost it after a couple years, and that was the intent, to build the line and then move it.

Katie Burke: Yeah, they don't still use yours, do they?

Marty Hanson: No, Tom Christie, I think, is a new carver. Yeah, he's done it before, I think. Pat, I think, is another one, and there's a couple more.

Katie Burke: Okay, there's more decorative guys.

Marty Hanson: Yeah.

Katie Burke: Yeah, I was talking to them about that too like it's I was talking to you about this like yes about Chicago we're talking about like That inability to like reproduce stuff like this like it kind of goes against yeah, and it's kind of it's it's hard to like tell people who aren't into this, like, you know, you have to buy, like, you're not going to get a reproduction of something like this. You can't buy a cheaper version of something like this, because that goes against the art of what this is. Right. And can you kind of, I guess, if you can, like, speak on that for just a second, just to kind of, in your words, explain why that is, so that people who don't understand why you can't, like why it has to be done, why it needs to be done this way versus like a cheaper method to make it more mass produced?

Marty Hanson: Well, my main intention is to keep the tradition in making the decoys. You know, I come from the collector side. That's where I met Jodi many years ago. And collectors have a different brain. You know, I know a lot of people duck hunt and a lot of people don't collect. Yeah. Duck hunt. And they wouldn't even think of it, you know. But the collector's a different deal. And the main thing with me was doing everything handmade, no power tools. I use a pantsaw and a drill. But I mean, everything else is done the old world way.

Jodi Marler: And for these, this is hunting season all year long. It's our work in your home. definitely using these, obviously. We've used them the last three days, but end of the season, they're on the shelf.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, a good friend of mine, Ken Cole, has probably the most of mine. And what he does, you know, he gets them at the end of the season, he'll clean them all up, take the weights off, you know, snap the weights off, and he has his house displayed with them. And it looks great.

Katie Burke: What's he do in the hunting season? It's just empty.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, he pulls them off and what he's going to use, yeah, and it shows us there was nothing.

Katie Burke: Puts Christmas decorations on.

Marty Hanson: Well, even to stray from your question a little bit, sitting out and just watching the decoys is maybe you realize, I don't know if you've hunted over, what I think you did with John and those guys that time, but it gives you something else to do while you're out there when it's slow, you know, to see, okay, I changed this, I don't like that, I like that, you know. Right.

Katie Burke: Yeah.

Marty Hanson: It's interesting, you get to see them, like, we hunted different holes and stuff, so you get to see what they're doing in different… Yeah, and they act different every… Yeah, that last place we shot, what was that, last night? Yeah.

Katie Burke: Yeah.

Marty Hanson: Oh, yeah, where they were… They were moving, yeah, that was cool.

Katie Burke: Yeah, that's also, like, something I noticed, like, with just, I mean, hunting over the ones we hunted with John and them, and they have, like, such a specific style of decoy, too, like that New Jersey style, it's a pretty… It's either a feeder or just straight ahead. It's not really… Your decoys have so much motion in them. They definitely look like they're doing.

Marty Hanson: That's by design. Like I said before about some people like keels, some people don't. The keels will stop a lot of that motion. So the Midwestern thing is to have a keel and make it stable. You're usually hunting in foot and a half waters that are white capping. So that's not a big deal. Now, what we did the other day, You need the motion, you know, so there's keels versus non-keels. That's also a Midwest thing is the keel aspect of it.

Katie Burke: Yeah, that's cool.

Marty Hanson: And a regional style. I mean, I'm trying to think just offhand. I'm sure there's some California birds or something that got keels, but you know, you look at masons, they didn't have keels. Any of the Wells? Joe Lincoln didn't have keels. St. Clair Flats? None of the Flats guys had keels. A few of them did, but yeah. It's definitely a Midwestern thing. It's definitely Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan.

Katie Burke: Illinois birds don't have gills really either.

Marty Hanson: No.

Katie Burke: Michigan was probably… They do have a little rounded bottom, but they aren't as rounded as like a holly or something on the East Coast. They're a little bit… They just kind of rock a little bit.

Marty Hanson: Well, and that was a river. That was a river, so…

Katie Burke: Yeah, I kind of did want to talk about it because you are kind of unique in that you are doing the very Midwest versus… Because there's just not as many carvers around your area anymore.

Marty Hanson: No, there isn't. There's a few guys, but full-time guys, there's not a lot. There's a couple. In the United States, I don't think there's that many. I'd probably count them on two hands. Yeah, for the most part, I think. I mean, I could be mistaken.

Katie Burke: There's probably a dozen or something. Yeah, that does the whole thing by hand. There's not that many. All right, well, let's go to break and we'll come right back.

Katie Burke: Hi everybody, welcome back. Again, I have Marty Hanson and Jodi Marler here. And I forgot to introduce our little puppy friends. This is Cedar and Cracker down here below us. These are Marty's labs and they're just chilling out because they've hunted with us for the last three days. They've worked hard. So they got to pick up a couple of ducks. And swim a lot and run through around a lot. They didn't get to hunt that much this year, did they?

Marty Hanson: No, no. I think this is the first few pheasant trips.

Katie Burke: Yeah. First time in cold water.

Marty Hanson: This year. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Katie Burke: Well, they've been good. I'm surprised they didn't get up when I just saw them.

Marty Hanson: They lived through it. They're not going to freeze in Mississippi.

Katie Burke: No, they will not. All right. So I kind of want to go back now that why Jody's here because he's, well, he came on the trip and everything as well. But the one thing I want to talk about for the second half is the doc you guys did together. But before we get into that, let's kind of talk about how you know each other and how you met and how that whole relationship started.

Jodi Marler: Jody can take that. So I went to, I'm originally from Chicago, and went to my first decoy show, Midwest decoy collector show, in early 90s. And I saw Marty there, but I never talked to him, kind of walked by, see what he's got, and I was up in the Milwaukee show, my wife and I were up there, and him and his buddy Mike Valley were, Having a good old time. A Marty party.

Katie Burke: You were at that hotel room party party?

Jodi Marler: Yeah. And it was late night. It was the only room open and we've been friends ever since. And, you know, we've been to the auction several times and have bid against each other on a couple of fish. You bid against me. I saw you back there.

Marty Hanson: I turn around and there's Martin. There's no friends at an auction. We have similar interests, too. The lacrosse fish is a big thing. Jody fishes a lot, so he's into the fish decoys and the decoys, too.

Katie Burke: So did you start off with fish decoys?

Jodi Marler: No. Well, how I got into collecting is a neighbor of mine Uh, older woman, they were having a garage sale, uh, that weekend and, you know, weekends here, I'm going out fishing or hunting, whatever. Come back on Sunday and there's a Mason in my door. blue bill. I'm like, where the heck did this come from? And I was young at the time. So, um, her son came over and said, Oh, we had a bunch of decoys that, uh, we sold in the auction or in the, uh, garage sale. And then we just found this one. I'm like, Oh my God, I should have stayed home that week.

Marty Hanson: You know?

Jodi Marler: I mean, my immediate neighbor had an interest in it then. Um, I knew about them because another good friend of mine, uh, from the town I grew up in, uh, his mom was a carver, uh, Nanette Roson.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, Roson. I remember her.

Jodi Marler: Yeah. So, um, and Hank had a bunch of Purdue's and, uh, a lot of calls. Yeah. So I definitely learned from him and, uh, getting that first mace and just kind of pushed me into it. And I'm a home builder cabinet maker. I mean, I appreciate things that are made by hand. So it's kind of a full circle. I mean, plastic is plastic. It's amazing what starts a person, you know, something like that. Exactly.

Katie Burke: Did you keep it?

Jodi Marler: I still have it. You still have it? Yeah. I like it when people keep their first ones. I haven't, you know, I go to, we go to all these auctions and shows and people are like, you know, that one comes up for auction. God, I own that. And it was, I sold it for $3,000. It's just sold for 40 grand, something like that. I haven't sold a thing. Really? Yeah. But I'm also, I collect, my wife and I, she loves shorebirds, you know, but it's not like, oh, New Jersey is, it's nothing. We just, We like what we like. That's perfect. Yeah. I mean, sporting art, I love old advertising, um, fish decoys. And the thing for me about fish decoys, like it has to feel good in your hand. It's just, there's something about it, but it's also these decoys, you know, I love Those St. Clair flats. And I love these. I mean, you can still smell the paint. I mean, yeah, that's pretty serious.

Marty Hanson: About six months of that.

Katie Burke: Enjoy it while you can.

Marty Hanson: It'll last that long. It'll be six months.

Jodi Marler: Well, we're definitely going to put these to work in Montana. Yeah, yeah.

Katie Burke: So why did you decide to do the doc? Like what brought upon that whole, where'd y'all get to that point?

Jodi Marler: Well, so it's knowing Marty and, you know, Marty and Barb and, you know, and then Marty's world. So, you know, I would see him at the shows and for years you would say, stop by because I've got to live in Montana now and I've got to camp in the upper peninsula of Michigan. And, you know, being in Chicago, you grow up going to Wisconsin, of course. Uh, but I've never been to Hayward and Marty's like, Hey, you're coming through. Why don't you stop by? And I was up ice fishing with a buddy and I'm driving back to Montana and it was like minus 20 or something. So I stopped by Marty's and I was blown away. I mean, I know this, his carvings, but then to go in a shop.

Katie Burke: Yeah.

Jodi Marler: And their house. And I mean, what you guys have done there. So for me, as a creative person, for me, it was, this is a whole package. And after that trip, I was like, I, I want to capture this. I want to capture it personally, but I, this is bigger. And if, if any of you know, Marty Hanson, Marty and Barb, um, They are the most gracious people, super sincere, so it was very easy to do this. I remember rolling in that January when we started filming, you were a little uptight, you know, because we come in, cameras, the whole deal set up, and you were totally on board with it. So it was super fun. And Marty and I have talked about it. When it was done, You know, it's kind of sad after we, it was awesome, man. It was just like, you know, I, I produce this, I paid for all of this. Um, right. And I didn't want it to end because for me, when you're telling a story, um, you know, the person is still alive and that story continues. And now here we are, you know, year and a half, two years after shooting, still doing it. still doing it, and here we are. It's over, but we're still doing it. And I have my first, you know, matched set. So, it's awesome.

Marty Hanson: Yeah. And Jody, when, you know, when we started this, he pitched the idea, and he was doing these documentaries on people that have a craft.

SPEAKER_05: Right.

Marty Hanson: Whether you're a drift boat builder, which you have a gun engraver, Um, you know, anybody that did something that's not normal, you know, I shouldn't say not normal, but it's a craft and there's only one way to do it. You can't mass produce, you can't do it.

Jodi Marler: It's what you do every day from doing it, you know, as a youngster, basically, and continue. For me, it would be very difficult to do this on somebody who's upper 20s. I mean, you know what I mean? It's like, this is a lifelong craft.

Katie Burke: They don't want to be called an artist, but like a seasoned artist has been doing this for a long time and developed their style. So how was that for you? Okay, I know you Carvers, y'all don't like, you don't like to be called artists. You don't like, I don't know, you like attention, but you don't really like attention. So how was it when you were told that you had to do a documentary? Like, was your initial thoughts like, I should do it? I don't know if I want to do it. He's my friend, so maybe I'll do it.

Marty Hanson: I wanted to do it because I knew who I was doing it with. I knew what Jody's intentions were, and I've known him for a long time. And that, you know, that's the big, would be the biggest factor of doing any of these things. is really knowing that, and no, we had a great time. And you have to know the person. Absolutely, yeah. It's hard to do something on something you don't know about, you know? I mean, we kind of talked about that a little bit. One of the crew maybe didn't hunt or anything. It just didn't, yeah.

Jodi Marler: You have to have that connection. Right, right.

Katie Burke: Well, especially with this doc, because it has a lot of emotion to it.

Marty Hanson: And I would see that would be kind of hard if you didn't connect to the emotion that… Well, and they created that, you know, they created that, you know, I mean, I don't think he was… With the questions and… I don't think you were trying to do a documentary on a how-to video. That's what we didn't want it, you know, and that's what we didn't want it.

Jodi Marler: Go on YouTube, you can find those. Yeah. Find them, yeah.

Katie Burke: They're all over the place.

Jodi Marler: Right.

Katie Burke: No, that makes sense. All right, so in that, you did the Brant decoys for that.

Marty Hanson: Yes.

Katie Burke: Can you speak on why did you do the Brants for that dock, and what is the role with that part?

Marty Hanson: One of the main things is we have a trip to Washington every year, and sometimes it's eastern Washington, sometimes it's west. And the Brant thing, I had a lot of interest in. I'd shot a few Brant on the east coast, but not on the west coast, which is a different species of Brant. And whenever we were there, the timing wasn't the best. And, you know, the season wasn't, you know, sometimes it was completely closed. So I kind of went in there with the brand. It'd be nice to have a rigor brand. put them out there in the Bay there and with our friends, Gary and John and whatnot. And, and we used them a couple of days. We had birds come into them. We didn't shoot, shoot any Brent cause it was out of season that time, but I mean, it was part of the process.

Jodi Marler: And there were a couple of Brent out there that came into them, which was super cool.

Marty Hanson: Yeah. You know, and, and I was going to Mexico with Ken, uh, that February, January after that. So I took those, some of those to Mexico and, and we floated them and, uh, and shot a lot of brand over them. It was fun. You know, so that it was a dual fold purpose, I guess.

Katie Burke: Yeah. And then those, you sold them, right?

Marty Hanson: I kept, I kept three and I sold the rest of them. Yeah. So I know a lot of people were interested in it. So I said, well, here's, I'm going to put them up for sale now. Here's what I have.

Katie Burke: So did that part of that go to, what is it, the Brandt Foundation, or what is it called?

Marty Hanson: Yeah, the one we did, yes. The one that John Dieter sold for us. The Brandt Foundation got some money off of that. Washington Brandt. Yeah, Washington Brandt Foundation. Maynard and Kurt and those guys. I try to go out there every year and do stuff with them. They raise money for student programs, for biologists, for kids. If I can get this right, last year, I think it was, they had one person became the dean of some, I mean, you saw when they were 18, 19, they got the scholarship and now they're through graduate school and done and they're big shots now, you know, it's really cool. And they're young, you know, 25, 26 years old. So, they really do a good program and Maynard has an aviary there. I don't know if that's in, I can't remember if we have a little, just a little blurb. There's a shot of Maynard. But he goes to schools and teaches kids about Brant and ducks and, you know, it's really, really great program. Great guys out there. And that's just become, you know, Jody was just out there a week or two ago and it's just become a great thing knowing those people.

Katie Burke: What area is that in Washington that they do that?

Marty Hanson: Well, it's Skagit Valley. Skagit Valley. And like Cindy, who's in the documentary, that's her house. Jay, her husband, was a noted Serious decoy collector and character. Beautiful.

Katie Burke: Yeah, I was going to ask you about putting the coochies in there and what that was like for you to get to have them there.

Marty Hanson: Oh, it was important. That was the other factor of going to Washington because Jay had passed and we had hunted out there a lot and it was just kind of, I wish we could get a little piece of that that's going to be around forever so people know about it, you know? Because not everybody was fortunate enough to go there, you know? Jay had his group of people that went and if you're lucky enough like I was, you went.

Katie Burke: So I know that she has his collection there. Is it open to people?

Marty Hanson: How does that work? It's not open. It's more of a private. It's like a private. If you called her, I'm sure she'd be more than happy. Yeah. It's something to see.

Katie Burke: I mean, Howard Harlan's original duck call collection.

Marty Hanson: He was there every day I was there in the early days. Every day I'd go there and Howard would be sitting there. He enjoyed his collection from there. They had to come a long ways. I mean, that's a long ways from here to there.

Jodi Marler: No. That was incredible. I mean, for us, you know, Marty, of course, told us about it, but, and we met Dieter there, John Dieter, and, uh, to walk into that space and see all of the, I mean. It's overwhelming. The, the Mason wood ducks alone. I mean, just incredible.

Marty Hanson: And Cindy, Jay's wife, has also been really a big part of keeping this branch. She holds a little event there and she's supporting it. And I mean, she's keeping this going for Jay and her. Not just for Jay, it's for her too. And they're so grateful to her that she's still doing this. And we hold the event there, a little social event, and then part of the interview and the doc, where Cindy's in it, that's her living room. The background, yeah. The museum. And Barb as well.

Jodi Marler: We had to blur out all the decoys so nobody could see. Made for a great backdrop. Yeah, great backdrop.

Katie Burke: You had to blur out the decoys so people couldn't tell which ones.

Jodi Marler: It was the lens that did that.

Katie Burke: We don't need to know which ones exactly are here.

Jodi Marler: Yeah, it was incredible. But when we were filming, Um, you know, Marty was working on, um, that Ken Cole's, uh, goose, that Canada goose. And I mean, it was on the bench and, you know, kind of got a couple of shots of it. After we got back and we're in post, I'm looking like. why aren't we focused on this incredible goose, you know, and then to see how it developed. And we have shots of it in the film. Um, but that goose is incredible. Like why don't we just make a bunch of those geese?

Katie Burke: And I guess, yeah, you chose cause you were going to go out to Washington. You knew you were going to go out to Washington and, and that.

Marty Hanson: Yeah. And the brand thing, I was wondering about the time the stock was going to take. So, I mean, to paint a Mallard or something, you're way more involved and we, you know, I, I didn't know we were gonna work a year and a half, two years into it. I thought something was gonna have to be quick. So I wanted to show them the process of making a rig was my thing. And Brandt are pretty easy to paint. They're black and white and gray.

Jodi Marler: Right, and we came out, I think we shot two days in January. Then we came back in May for a couple days. And then we went to Washington. Then we went, yeah. And, uh, yeah.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, the brand was just an easy project to show the production of 12 things.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah.

Marty Hanson: In various forms, you know, some of them had the spline bill, some of them had redheads, you know, just to try to show everything. And the eelgrass, just try to show everything.

Jodi Marler: One of them had a band on it.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, yeah, had a band made, yeah.

Katie Burke: You had a band made for the… Did you have it made or did you use one for… I made it, I made it.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, it's got some initials on it. and a year, 2020. People can do the math.

Jodi Marler: When we shot the hunting, Marty and I both talked about this, it has never been our objective to shoot the killing. That is not about it.

Katie Burke: Well, it's not about the hunt, it's about the making of the decoys.

Jodi Marler: And the whole package. Yeah, obviously the ducks are there, but You know, and I do have to talk about my cinematographer on this, James Williams, that shot this. He did an incredible job. Yes, he did. I mean, he's a super creative person. Had insights that we didn't.

Marty Hanson: For sure.

Jodi Marler: And he just devoured. We talked about certain things, certain shots, and he killed it. Yeah, he did. Yeah, so well done.

Katie Burke: Well it's awesome and I recommend people watch it. Can you tell people how they can watch it?

Jodi Marler: So if you look up YouTube Fish Camp.

Katie Burke: And what else do you have on there just in general?

Jodi Marler: So we're working on a couple of things now. I mean, so this is kind of an outlet. It's somewhat how this got our YouTube channel got started is for my home building. And I mean, we live in Paradise Valley, Montana, Livingston, and the homes we build are, I have to say, we're incredible. We're great. The best. I mean, we're cabinet makers and, you know, in that backdrop of Montana, And I wanted to capture that. One of my cousin's daughters said during a trip, she's like, you build beautiful homes, you should start a YouTube channel. And I'm like, I hate YouTube. But, you know, here we are. And it's interesting because… So is the rest of the world. I've had so many of my home building clients that go to our website and see that. And then they see the hunting and fishing side and. I mean, they know who they're getting, you know, I mean, I'm super authentic. This is who you get. And these are the homes we build. And, um, you know, so that's how that started.

Katie Burke: Okay. And then what made you progress into doing stuff like this?

Jodi Marler: Because I, I feel it's very important. I mean, again, as somebody who builds these, I didn't go to college, you know, I didn't even finish high school, but I know. building homes and cabinetry. That is what I am here for. Right. Marty, this is what you do. This is a gift. I mean, and yeah, some days exactly, but some days it's work for sure. But everything is, and it's our legacy, right? I mean, that's, that's important. And you don't know that when you're young. It takes a lifetime of doing things like this. Exactly. No, I think that's well said.

Katie Burke: And sometimes you don't know where you'll be when you're there.

Jodi Marler: Exactly. Well, that's why when you said, do you guys really want to hunt tomorrow morning? I'm like, I may never be here again. Yeah. Heck yeah.

Katie Burke: You're invited back. Awesome. Y'all are nice guests. You can come back. Well, is there anything, Marty or Jody, that we haven't talked about that y'all want to touch on before we go? We didn't talk about hunting really that much.

Jodi Marler: No.

Katie Burke: We probably should talk about that a little bit. The first day was ridiculously windy.

Jodi Marler: It was incredible.

Katie Burke: And windy, windy, windy.

Jodi Marler: Man, the ducks. I mean, first time hunting Mississippi and, I mean, you guys and your family.

Marty Hanson: Beautiful properties.

Jodi Marler: Family was…

Marty Hanson: I mean, it was unbelievable. It was like we knew them for… Exactly. You know, for years. Yeah.

Katie Burke: Oh, that makes us feel good.

Jodi Marler: I'm happy to tell them that. Yeah. It was beautiful. Yeah, it was good. Yeah, thank you.

Katie Burke: You're welcome.

Jodi Marler: It was fun. It was a terrible shooting.

Katie Burke: Yeah.

Jodi Marler: Let's just leave it there.

Katie Burke: Yeah, let's just leave it there. I mean, the dogs picked up ducks.

Jodi Marler: Katie shot the best shot ever. And we ate a bunch of ducks last night. Yeah, they were delicious.

Katie Burke: No, it was fun. But yeah, that was fun and getting to just, you know, I met you before at decoy shows, you and Barb, but it's, it's not the same. No, no.

Jodi Marler: Living with somebody. Yeah.

Marty Hanson: Yeah. And you know, the decoy stuff is, that's my business. You know, that's, that's your board meeting.

Katie Burke: I'm there for work and you're there for work.

Marty Hanson: It's just like you are here now. Yeah. That's when I'm at the, you know, everybody, It's a hobby for most people, a leisurely thing. That's where I make my living. Yeah. So it's a different aspect.

Katie Burke: No, we're in a different mode.

Marty Hanson: Yeah. Yeah.

Katie Burke: No, definitely. And then it's nice to kind of get to hang out with somebody.

SPEAKER_05: Oh, absolutely.

Katie Burke: Yeah. Like, I guess it was two years ago, you know, we're both friends with John Dieter and we've talked about him, but you know, I always knew him through that and he's helped me so much through the years. I can't. Thank him enough, but I've started last two years after Easton. I stay with him for like three or four days, like a couple days. I'm like, I'm going to do this every year because I get to hang out with you for like two to three days. Well, you can't have my room. But it's so nice because I finally get to, yeah, we get to be relaxed in our normal selves around each other. That's why I really enjoyed having y'all here.

Jodi Marler: Thank you very much. Thank y'all for coming.

Katie Burke: All right. How do they, like, find out about Fish Camp and all your other films and that sort of thing?

Jodi Marler: So, Fish Camp Creative on Instagram. FishCampCreative.com home building site is FishCamp Custom if you wanted to look at that. So that's not very creative. It's FishCamp, FishCamp, FishCamp. Yeah.

Katie Burke: Well, it's easy to find.

Jodi Marler: Yeah, exactly. Unique name.

Katie Burke: Like when I went to search for the decoy for his doc, it was like, Marty Hanson decoy. And I got like a bunch of stuff, but then I put FishCamp in.

Jodi Marler: There you go. Went straight there.

Katie Burke: Yeah, you're, you have more of a, you're randomly throughout the internet.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, I had a website, you know, when they became the thing to do and it was good, but it's just not pretty active on this Facebook and Instagram some stuff on but yeah, I'm not come to a show don't have a website anymore. Go to a show.

Katie Burke: Also, I meant to mention this earlier, and I kind of want to talk on it because it's coming up, but the Minnesota Decoy Show, which you're very involved in, can you kind of let people know about that event and when it's going on?

Marty Hanson: Yeah, it's the first full weekend in February, which the dates I think are the 26th, 28th, Yeah, well, it's the last week of January, first full weekend of February, every year. It's the same time every year, but it depends on how it falls. But yeah, we have, it's one of the oldest shows. I think it's as old or older than the Midwest show. Dick Bruss founded it in 1963 with a handful of other guys, three executive type guys, and they were meeting in a garage or a living room, and it wasn't formally organized then, but they were doing that. And I think they formally organized in the late 60s, early 70s or whatever, but we've been around a long time. It's a good show. It's in Bloomington at the Marriott, which now I think is a Hilton, which they just switched. It's the Airport Marriott Bloomington, 2020 American Boulevard, I think is the address.

Katie Burke: Yeah, I wouldn't have gotten that.

Marty Hanson: Our show is, it'll run Wednesday through Saturday.

Katie Burke: And it'll be just open floor?

Marty Hanson: There'll be antiques, there'll be the whole gamut of what the Midwest show has. Just everything. We have a couple small category contests. There'll be contemporary Minnesota makers there, decorative and hunting decoy makers. There'll be antique vendors. There'll be just about everything. We have an auction, great auction. There'll be like 100 birds, 125 birds for sale at the auction. It does well every year. John Southworth is our head man on that, and I think he talked to you at some point. So if you need to contact anybody, let's contact John Southworth.

Katie Burke: Well, thank you for that. Well, thanks for coming on the show, guys.

Jodi Marler: Thanks for coming to hang out with me this week. Yeah, and thanks to you and Ducks Unlimited for, you know, promoting this.

Marty Hanson: For doing all this.

Jodi Marler: This is just incredible.

Marty Hanson: Being able to get together on this was really the cherry on top. Oh, for sure. It was.

Katie Burke: You know, you were supposed to come when your decoys were in the museum, but I'm glad we waited.

Marty Hanson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. That was nice.

Katie Burke: And now you get to come back again and we'll install some stuff, put some more decoys in the museum.

Marty Hanson: Love to. Another reason to be here.

Katie Burke: All right, well, thank you, Jodi and Marty, for coming on the show. Thanks to our producer, Chris Isaac, and thanks to you, our listener, for swimming wetlands and waterfowl conservation.