The Core Sound Waterfowl Museum celebrates the heritage of people with “one foot on the ground and one foot in the water.” Photo by Jack Repass

"I counted my own decoys several years ago," Roy Willis says, "and I came up with around 2,000." Willis, age 72, carves and collects decoys of waterfowl, a hobby or profession shared by generations of other men and women living on the Atlantic coast. Here along the Outer Banks of North Carolina,Willis is lounging in the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center (www.CoreSound.com), a 20,000-square-foot facility which sits adjacent to the Cape Lookout National Seashore’s visitor’s center. The museum’s mission is to preserve the history of the hunters, fishermen, boat builders, and decoy carvers of the area.

While the 1859 Cape Lookout lighthouse, patterned in black and white checkers, is an arresting sight across the water, this museum is the real jewel of Harkers Island.There are about 600 decoys in the museum’s collection, although many are on loan from local carvers or collectors.They’re on rotational display—sometimes organized by carver, sometimes by community.Willis’s collection is on loan, rotating in and out.The exhibits are “home grown”and change with the seasons.Winter exhibits, for example, highlight commercial fishing and waterfowling.

The decoys on sale widely range in price and value depending on the age and maker. A new carved miniature teal might go for $25; A life-sized contemporary can reach $500. Some of the old birds are very valuable, especially when they can be identified as creations of certain individual carvers. At the high end, these can range from $150,000 to $250,000.The most valuable bird in this museum, a Mitchell Fulcher pintail, is worth about $25,000.

Carvers like to use tupelo wood because it’s light and tightgrained. The fowl shown are typically indigenous to the area, with at least fifteen featured species regional to North Carolina. Each waterfowling area has its own style, and these are “Core Sound” Style. As an art museum of hand-carved decoys, you’ll find no fiberglass or composite wood imitations here.

Many of the antique decoys have visibly stood the test of time. Photo by Jack Repass

Meeting Willis is fortunate, but not unusual.The museum is alive with experienced waterfowl experts who volunteer their time to help teach and preserve skills: Near Willis, a carver sits ankledeep in wood shavings as he addresses serious students as well as casual passersby.

Willis explains the history of making decoys—realistically painted images positioned to lure real ducks close to waiting hunters—goes back centuries. Even though antique decoys are made of biodegradable materials, lucky collectors have examples from the Civil War-era. Native Americans reportedly also used decoys. Willis’s own collection includes beautiful old ducks created for his great-grandfather, his grandfather, and his dad.

The Waterfowl Museum’s exhibits are largely comprised of private collections that otherwise would overflow the garages, sheds, and spare rooms of hobbyists.

Expert carvers teach their craft to members of a new generation. Photo by Jack Repass

Ducks may be bird brains, but they don’t fall for just any old decoy. It takes a well-painted and weighted decoy to mimic a species enough to lure in feathered kinfolk anxious to nest, feed, or rest. Even so, the detail on many of the museum’s decoys is amazing.Yet many of these great carvers are humble about their talents, putting their craft in the category of “just something to do during the winter months.”

Many of the examples on display were once real working decoys and still trail the long cords that kept them in place back when they floated in water instead of glass cases.They haven’t been prettied up; instead, they wear their salt stains, nicks, and chips proudly as testimony to their own hard lives—and that of their makers.

The museum’s exterior is designed after the local hunt clubs and lifesaving stations using traditional coastal architecture.The interior is still under construction—and building funds are still being solicited—but it will eventually be 22,000 square feet (14,000 were completed at the time of this visit). The gallery area is currently open air, but plans are to turn it into a community room. What are now small cubicles will become classroom areas for teaching crafts. Even unfinished, the museum attracts upwards of 20,000 visitors annually.

In October 2004, the Waterfowl Museum hosted the International Wildfowl Carving Association’s Endangered Species Competition, which attracted a number of artists from outside the Outer Banks area. Many entries were later exhibited in the museum or sold in its gift shop.

The museum also hosts the annual Core Sound Waterfowl Weekend, a three-day event held the first weekend in December. In addition to demonstrations by artists and carvers, the event features food, music, storytelling, auctions, hiking, and other festivities and competitions.

Roy Willis shows off his personal collection of his family’s decoy treasures. Photo by Jack Repass

These activities have been long-awaited and hard-fought by those who first envisioned the museum. Back in 1987, a group of artisans formed the Decoy Carvers Guild.They saw the need for a permanent structure to preserve migratory waterfowl heritage; perpetuate carving, painting, and taxidermy; and tell the story of the waterfowler in these small historic coastal towns.

Early in 1992 a board was formed from 21 local busness people, government representatives, and carvers. A museum site was selected and approved by November 1993—a freshwater waterfowl habitat within the National Park at Shell Point that already featured hiking trails and viewing platforms the public uses throughout the year.

Fundraising and construction, however, were frequently hampered by hurricanes such as Fran in 1996, Floyd in 1999, and Isabel in 2003 and the subsequent flooding that battered the Outer Banks. But bankers are as patient and resilient as…well, as the artists whose work now finally fills the museum or the duck hunters who once used the decoys to coax birds out of the clouds.

Jerre Repass of Brinkley, Arkansas, does travel features on National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" for member station KASU 91.9 FM as well as print journalism for magazines and an Arkansas newspaper.

southernarts JOURNAL Issue 2 · Winter 2006, pp28-33