This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 26, 2012 - Bill Meyer is not a duck hunter. But he is a duck decoy collector.
The love started, for him, after learning of the history of the craft and seeing for himself the artistry involved. “And I just sort of got hooked.”
Julie Schnuck isn’t a hunter either, though her sons are. She loves to watch birds, however, and also loves the tradition and craft of duck hunting culture.
It’s something that joins together conservationists, she says, hunters and lovers of folk art.
“We like the decoys as art,” she says, “and they like them as their history.”
All those interests merge in an exhibit this weekend at The Audubon Center at Riverlands. “Working Wildfowl: Decoys, Carvings and the Waterfowl Tradition,” celebrates the tradition of duck hunting, the art that’s come out of it, and the shared interests that protect the flyways and habitats of the birds themselves.
People don’t often make the connection, says Patricia Hagan, executive director of The Audubon Center at Riverlands, but private duck clubs along the Missouri River are key to the conservation of the area.
“If the duck clubs weren’t there, the buffer to the confluence area, to the river and the wetlands would have been breached by developers a long time ago,” she says.
Every year, millions of birds migrate along the Mississippi Flyway, she says, and the public/private partnership between conservation groups and private duck clubs makes that possible.
Schnuck, chair of the center’s advisory committee, says it's a love of the birds and keen attention to them that helps create the decoys, some which go for $100,000.
The exhibition and festival comes just in time for The Audubon Center at Riverlands’ first birthday, says Hagan. It features antique carvings that were used as working decoys, contemporary collections, as well as duck calls, carvers and photography.
All together, she says, it’s a unique American tradition.
Ducks from private collections, including the Schnuck family’s and Meyer’s, are included in the exhibit, which continues through the end of the year at Audubon Center at Riverlands, in West Alton, Mo. It also includes a duck stamp collection and a display paying tribute to hunting dogs.
Whether people are hunters, bird lovers or care about folk art and history, Schnuck says she thinks people from many backgrounds can find beauty in the birds.
For more information, go to www.riverlands.audubon.org.