EP 544. A Classical Decoy Carving Family Tradition

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. What a great visit. I mean, a wonderful visit. I’m concluding my visit in the home of the McNairs. It’s a beautiful old home. We’ve got a little fire going, a lot of old wooden decoys around. And joining me today is Mark McNair and his son, my buddy, Ian McNair. How are you all doing this morning?

Mark McNair: Very well, thank you very much. And you?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, Mark. I’m always doing good, better than I deserve.

Mark McNair: Seems that way.

Ramsey Russell: I do the very best I can. This house is beautiful when you pull up. When was this house built?

Mark McNair: The room we’re sitting in was the original house, and it was built in about 1812 or 1813.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Mark McNair: Sounds a little more precise than maybe I need to be, but about that period of time. Then they expanded it over time, which is very much an Eastern Shore way of expanding houses as people prospered and families got large.

Ramsey Russell: I asked Ian about what time this house had been built. When you pull up and you see this shape and this style of a house, it’s got two chimneys. There’s just something about the chimney arrangement. I’m assuming there’s a fireplace upstairs too.

Mark McNair: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: That’s how they heated a house.

Mark McNair: A little one and what used to be a sleeping out.

Ramsey Russell: That dates it. It’s a very beautiful home. Got a lot of character, got a lot of history. I like a home that has history.

Mark McNair: We do too.

“I take a decoy on every road trip… parade it around the world and get folks to sign it.”

Ramsey Russell: Ian and I have been doing some duck hunting, and I have been looking forward to coming up here and doing this podcast about the father-son decoy carvers. This year’s travel decoy. Mark, every year when I do these big road trips around the world, about five years ago, I started taking a decoy. I had this idea. I actually wanted to use a plastic decoy, just something somebody made, a smooth, nice little decoy, and I’d parade it around and get folks to sign it. I reached out to a decoy company, and they’re like, that didn’t sound like a great idea. So I took an old Styrofoam Herter’s decoy I had that meant a little something to me. Everybody I duck hunted with that year, I got to sign it. I realized that Styrofoam was terrible for getting people to sign. It’s just a terrible medium. Fortunately for me, a friend up in Connecticut reached out and said, “Man, I’d like to make that travel decoy.” Then the following year, another carver called, and then another carver called. This year, Ian called.

Mark McNair: Nice.

“We shot an Eastern Shore black duck over hand-carved decoys. That was the whole point.”

Ramsey Russell: It’s really interesting to me that I do these road tours around the United States. I had hunted 30-something states just by accident, just being a duck hunter traveling around. I hunted about 30-something states when the pandemic hit, and we all got sheltered in place, and I couldn’t go anywhere for a couple of years worldwide. I said, “There’s a lot of America to see, and I’m going to start traveling the United States.” It really shocked me how unbelievably, as compared to the rest of the world, unbelievably abundant in the resources and diversity and the species and everything else we have right here, from the Pacific Ocean to here. It just meant a little something. The last state, there are 49 states you can kill a duck in or goose hunt, waterfowl with, was Virginia. I hatched a plan with my High and Dry buddies, Ian and his old sidekick Brian. They put together one heck of an Eastern Shore deep dive. We have seen some country all up and down here. We have eaten some food. We have done some stuff. We could have gone out on the bay and shot some buffleheads. Nothing wrong at all with shooting buffleheads. But Ian and I had been talking forever that if I ever made it up here, we were gonna, by gosh, shoot a black duck over a wooden decoy. We were gonna take these hand-carved decoys we’re fixing to talk about and go out and shoot an Eastern Shore black duck. And we did. And to drive it home, we know that one day in the blind. We’re out there in the blind, and I break out my travel decoy, which is Ian’s, and get everybody to sign it. It’s just an Eastern Shore-style decoy, black duck. It kind of hit home, you know? It really did. But here we are. And I can tell you, I’m not going to start playing golf anytime soon. I’m not going to quit what I’m doing now that I hit that milestone. I’ve got to find something else to do. I’ll just keep diving deeper and deeper. But proud to be here and proud to finally, I think everybody listening kind of knows what the deal is. Ian told me this morning over coffee that, Mark, you actually started carving decoys before you became a duck hunter.

Mark McNair: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: How did that come about?

Mark McNair: I saw some old decoys, and it took a while for it to really click. But one day, I was just looking at a bird that was very similar to this I use as a model. I just thought they were absolutely wonderful and timeless.

Ramsey Russell: Where did you see an old decoy? You’re from Connecticut.

Mark McNair: Yeah. I was living in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and I had some friends that were interested in them. In particular, there was a guy named Chris Forres, and his father carved. He was quite well known for his whale carvings. I really admired the skill set that these guys had and a few decoys that they had collected, and it just connected with me. I said, “I want to give this, this is something I really want to try.” That was late in the evening, so I decided to try first thing in the morning. I went out and made a decoy and absolutely loved it. Other people did too.

Ramsey Russell: You showed me your first decoy. It’s a true Hairy Head red-breasted merganser. What is that hair on its back of his head?

Mark McNair: That came out of a paintbrush.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, okay.

Mark McNair: So I’m assuming it might be horsehair.

Ramsey Russell: Like a horse’s mane or something.

Mark McNair: Yeah. Didn’t have a horse nearby, but I had an old paintbrush. I just liked something. There was a timelessness about it. It’s not detailed, but it was there to represent a bird on the water. Because I was doing other things, I would do this in an afternoon or an evening and started pursuing it. People were interested in it. I met a really interesting man who took an interest in my birds. He said, “So where do you hunt?” I told him that I didn’t. He said, “We gotta rectify that.” He took me duck hunting off Sachem’s Head in Guilford, Connecticut, in a place that I knew very well because I sailed and fished there in the summertime. He picks me out in January, and it was bitter cold and foggy. It was like being in a Winslow Homer painting.

Ramsey Russell: What year would that have been?

Mark McNair: Probably 1974.

Ramsey Russell: Oh boy.

Mark McNair: Winter of 1974. It was wonderful. You could hear the white-winged scoters off in the distance, calling to each other. You couldn’t see them because of the fog, but when they’d get up and come into you, they would just appear, just like, am I seeing something? All of a sudden, it would come into focus and right into the decoy.

Ramsey Russell: I love that.

Mark McNair: Me too. I’d never seen it before. It was wonderful.

Ramsey Russell: I’m not surprised you came across some older decoys there in Connecticut because the Long Island Sound had a tremendous amount of waterfowling and decoy history. It goes way back, to the beginning of America, I guess.

Mark McNair: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Cradle of American duck hunting.

Mark McNair: Yes, which was unknown to me at the time, but as time went by, I certainly became aware of it. I’ve got a lot of decoys from Long Island in particular, and then up along the coast, into Massachusetts. Some of the best birds come out of Massachusetts. I don’t know whether it’s that Protestant work ethic or just a tradition that started somewhere, but just beautiful, well-crafted birds. Maybe it was the long winters, and people sat there by the fireplace and took the time to make something that was extraordinary. It went a little bit further than you see in other areas of the country.

Ramsey Russell: I think people that grow up in those marine environments like that are just tough. They’re just used to the wet and the cold and the bitter. I think sometimes, to go even further back in history, about people like the Vikings.

Mark McNair: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: They didn’t have anything, and they just got on those little wooden ships and sailed out blindly through the ocean. I’m like, man, those must have been some tough people.

Mark McNair: I certainly think so. They probably didn’t know better until they got to southern England and went, “Oh, this is pretty nice.”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Well, if you grew up in Connecticut and you didn’t duck hunt, what did a young Mark McNair do in Connecticut? How’d you spend your childhood or your teen years? How’d you have fun? What’d you do?

Mark McNair: I think growing up, I was outside a lot and usually came back slightly muddy from messing around in ponds and marshes and things like that. I loved to be out in boats. I think I always knew that I was an artist. That was sort of my core. Occasionally I figured out what I was going to do, how I was going to parlay this into a life. And as life unfolded, circumstances changed, doors opened and closed. I found myself going, “I have an opportunity,” and I took advantage of it.

Ramsey Russell: How did you find success as an artist before the decoys? Like, what are some of the stuff you were working on, and what was your medium?

Mark McNair: Well, I fancied that I perhaps might become a portrait painter, and I also fancied at one time that I might become an architect. But if you’re going to do anything and do it really well, you have to completely commit yourself to something like that. And just the way my life unfolded, I did a bit of this, and I did a bit of that, but I found myself sculpting. But I had a background in painting, too, so I had some good art teachers growing up, and I went to Rhode Island School of Design, so I had a good foundation to build on. I was coming into this, and it didn’t happen in a vacuum, shall we say?

Ramsey Russell: Right. So you made your first decoy, and people started liking it. You started making more. Is that when you just delved off into the world of decoys?

Mark McNair: Pretty much. I was thinking about committing yourself and hard work. I had some friends that I grew up with that were really avid duck hunters, and they hunted Broadville in Long Island Sound between Guilford and the Breakwater in New Haven, which is a famous place for this. They came to me and said, “We’d like for you to make us a rig of decoys.” I went, “Oh, yeah, sure, man. That’d be great, commission.” “How many do you want?” “We’d like a hundred.” Wow. They asked me how much it was going to cost. I figured out a price per decoy, and it just seemed so monumental. You could almost buy a Toyota pickup truck for that kind of money. It seemed awfully high. I talked myself down before I even threw out a number, which, I’ll tell you, was $600. And they went, “We’ll go for it.”

Ramsey Russell: $600 would make a monthly note now on a Toyota truck.

Mark McNair: I remember my neighbour had one, he paid $1,800 for it, so I was thinking of charging them $1,500, but it just seemed like a lot of money. I know it sounds kind of funny and quaint today, but that was the case. Anyhow, I’m glad I took the commission because I went to a local sawmill where this man had been cutting some white cedar logs and bought the logs from him. He delivered them to me, and I cut them to length and split them with a froe. Then I learned to use a hatchet, chopping these blocks out, because I’d read about that in a decoy book. I said, “Oh, yeah, I chop these up with hatchets and whittle the heads and all this.” If you’re going to chop them out with a hatchet, you better have the right hatchet, and you better make sure that it’s really sharp. So I learned, and I built up the muscles to do it, and I made the birds for them.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be darned.

Mark McNair: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve been making decorative decoys. How was your first hunting rig different than the more decorative decoy?

Mark McNair: You say my decoys are decorative because people put them on a mantle, because I’ve got paint that goes beyond what would be necessary to decoy a bird. But those early birds would decoy them, as my new ones would. I feel like if I carve something and it wouldn’t decoy a bird or function as a decoy, well, it’s not really a decoy, and you’ve entered into something else. I’ve always kept that in mind, that I really want it to be true to decoys.

Speaker_G: Here’s an example. He’s got the weight on the bottom and the lever.

Ramsey Russell: She’s showing me a little ruddy duck with how you did the weight on the bottom and everything else. I say.

Mark McNair: Oh, yeah. I rig all my birds so that if the crops go bad, you can always go duck hunting. You could take these, stand on the end of the dock, throw them over your shoulder, toss them out of the boat in the dark, and they should right themselves. If they don’t, they’re not a decoy, because a decoy is a little boat. I felt that was important to honor the craft.

Ramsey Russell: Sure. You started making hunting decoys. You took that first commission. You made your first set.

Mark McNair: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: So now I guess you’re in the decoy carving business. More people wanted some of these decoys.

Mark McNair: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Did you go up in price?

Mark McNair: From $6, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you went up.

Mark McNair: Yeah. But it was a different world then. In the early 1970s, people were just really starting to collect decoys. When I say a few people, a guy told me one time, “Mark, you got to understand something.” He said, “There weren’t enough people collecting decoys to get together and have a softball game.” But it exploded in the late 1970s. There was this whole movement of American folk art appreciation.

Ramsey Russell: I can’t remember his name, but the guy that was up from your neck of the woods, the guy that really kind of brought decoy collecting into the mainstream, was himself an architect.

Mark McNair: That was Joel Barber.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right, Joel Barber.

Mark McNair: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: He is the one that popularized this concept of collecting decoys.

Mark McNair: He set the stage for it, and he did it decades before it really caught on. If you really want to understand something about decoys, read his book because it’s very pure and very clean. There’s nothing in there about the value of things or the importance of this particular maker because the stuff is worth so much. It’s all basically about the intrinsic beauty and simplicity. Looking at those pictures on the cover of how simple those birds are, Nicole, was this made 100 years ago or a thousand years ago?

Ramsey Russell: Who inspired your style of decoy? Who or what inspired the way your decoys look?

Mark McNair: I’ll take, for example, my puddle ducks. In general, they’re mostly inspired by Shang Wheeler, who is from Stratford, Connecticut. Then I was introduced to birds from the Delaware River. The two carvers, painters from that area that most influenced me were John English and John Blair, who was a magnificent painter. The level of craftsmanship and the quality of the paint really elevated my horizon. Those are the three big influences in my puddle ducks. I’m going to look at this bird here today, and I can show you all of those that are still there after 50 years.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve got the artistic background and discipline for a craft. As you started hunting more, did it change how your decoys evolved?

Mark McNair: Yes.

Ramsey Russell: What about the species?

Mark McNair: Yeah. When I moved down here, I met a guy named Grayson Chesser and another man named George Rieger. Both of these guys are just born to hunt. Wonderful sportsmen, great gentlemen, and wonderful guys to spend the day in a blind with. I started making more decoys geared toward hunting because I was in a blind, watching the decoys and birds reacting to them and thinking about how I would change something, make something behave differently, or sit in the water differently, just like a boat builder would. You’re always trying to tweak it. One of the things, for example, is that you don’t see much detail on a bird in the water, whether it’s a bird or a decoy. At 25 or 30 yards, you see a shape, a silhouette, and depending on the light, differentiations in the colors and patterns. It helped me really simplify. That was a big change. I suppose I’ve made maybe a hundred hunting decoys since I’ve been down here. A friend of mine has maybe three dozen, and I made some for a man out in the Midwest. We have some of our own around here. Ian and I collaborated on some stuff, and Ian is the real decoy carver. I do my thing, and they are decoys. But he’s the guy that really likes to hunt and has created his own niche there.

Ramsey Russell: I agree with that. Ian, we drove over today to your mom and dad’s house, and we walked into the old shop. You pointed and said, “That’s where I started.” Tell me about getting started with your dad. I guess every kid shadows his dad, wants to be like dad at some point. But your mama showed me a picture in the photo album. She was just a baby, and you’re two years old, I’m guessing, or younger, handling these decoys and floating them. Talk about your progression, how you came on the scene.

Ian McNair: Yes, some of my earliest memories are being out in my dad’s shop, sitting on his workbench, and going through all the different odds and ends, fishing lures, tools, and things like that. Like you said, you want to hang out with your dad and do what he does. That was my little play area, the workshop. So when I was two or three, I was given a spokeshave because it’s a fun tool to use, it’s easy to use, and it’s safe enough for a small child. They can actually start working with wood.

Ramsey Russell: Is that what you showed me a little while ago?

Ian McNair: That was a draw knife.

Ramsey Russell: A draw knife?

Ian McNair: Yeah, a spokeshave is kind of like a plane with handles on it.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.

Ian McNair: It shaves wood. I’ve given one to both of my daughters at about the same age, and they picked it up naturally. They’ll come out and spend half an hour just shaving down a piece of wood. It’s really enjoyable.

Ramsey Russell: I couldn’t believe how quickly you gave me a demonstration of shaping a block of wood with that drawknife. I asked you how old that drawknife was, and you said probably about a hundred years old. Where do you come across 100-year-old tools like this? I’m guessing you don’t go to Home Depot. They don’t have a hundred-year-old section.

Mark McNair: No, I used to find them at auctions. When I was starting and then restarting again, my father was great at finding good tools. He lived up in Pennsylvania, north of Philly, and there were lots of flea markets there. A lot of guys specialized in tools, and there were a lot of German craftsmen who knew good steel. My father did too, and he’d find these things. That was the beginning of my new tool collection.

Ramsey Russell: Where did you learn to use them? How did you learn woodworking as a medium? Did your dad do it? Did your granddad use those kinds of tools?

Mark McNair: Well, it’s sort of like what Ian was saying. He watched me do it, so he would mimic it. If he needed a little help, I would guide him.

Ramsey Russell: Who did you watch, your dad?

“I learned to carve by watching my dad. He had a natural skill with wood.”

Mark McNair: Yeah, my father. When I was a little kid, my father just had a way with wood. I remember he was building a set of stairs in a house off a porch where we lived, when I was a year and a half to five years old. He just had a natural skill, using a framing square and a saw. That was back in the days when people didn’t use power saws. I remember the sound of the saw cutting wood and the hammer, and I’d watch what he was doing. Watching him work gave me permission to try it myself. He built the house we moved into. He wasn’t a carver per se, but he built things. Watching him made it seem possible for me. And again, it’s very much like what Ian was saying. He watched me. When he needed a tip, I’d tell him, “Hold that spokeshave a little more askew, and it’ll cut easier.” Bingo. He picked it up. Some people are more adept at certain things than others. Fortunately, we both found something we had a skill set for.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Do you remember those early days when you were just playing around with those knives on a block of wood? I’m guessing you were just playing around with the tools on a block of wood, Ian.

Ian McNair: Yeah, essentially, I wasn’t carving decoys at age three. I was just shaping a block of wood.

Mark McNair: Making curlies, as I recall.

Ian McNair: That’s right. And, Papa, there’s a shorebird around here somewhere that you essentially let me carve. But I think I just kind of knocked the edges off the square.

Mark McNair: But he did something wonderful to it. You know, everything comes off as a block when you cut the profile out, and he knocked the corners out of it. And I really liked it. It just had a really good feel to it.

Ramsey Russell: Playing around and starting to develop your own.

Ian McNair: Yeah. When I was about ten years old, I was really into fish. Everything was just fish, fish, fish. He had made some fish decoys, and I was like, “I want to make some.” So that’s how I got my start, just because it was what I wanted to do. Then, a few years later, when I was about 14, I saw all these ducks in the creek and around the house, and I thought, “I want to go duck hunting.” So it evolved into making a rig of duck decoys because we didn’t have any to hunt over, so we made them.

Ramsey Russell: Ian, you showed me that cork decoy on the shelf in your daddy’s shop, your very first decoy. Tell me about that decoy.

Ian McNair: Yeah, so again, I was a teenager, I guess right around 14 or 15 years old, and I wanted to go duck hunting. So I thought, “Let’s make some duck decoys.” I found some old cork, and I think, just like you and Papa, I had some heads sitting around that weren’t finished. He helped me put them together, made some keels and tails for them, and into the creek they went.

Ramsey Russell: By comparison, how old were some of the decoys we hunted over this week? You had a couple of dozen decoys of various ages. Brian told me that you all hunted over some of them in high school.

Ian McNair: Some of those cork decoys, I think there’s a mallard in there from that original rig that I made 25, 28 years ago. Brian, my dad, and I hunted over them back in high school. That’s how Brian and I became really good friends, hunting and fishing over those birds.

Ramsey Russell: Was Brian barefoot back then too?

Ian McNair: I think so. I think we both were.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. So you went out with your first little rig, that first little decoy. Did you have any other decoys on that hunt back here on the creek? That first original decoy or just that one decoy?

Ian McNair: No. We had probably six or eight that we put together.

Mark McNair: Yeah, there’s some out in the barn, I think.

Ian McNair: Okay.

Ramsey Russell: And you went out, and you killed a duck over them?

Ian McNair: I wish that was the story. I was really excited. A flock of mallards came in and banked right over the decoys. I was so amped up that I shot right behind the drake.

Ramsey Russell: That’s usually what happens.

Ian McNair: Yes. I can still see it. I knew it when I pulled the trigger, I shot behind it. But you learn from your experiences.

Ramsey Russell: How many hunts before you did kill something over that decoy?

Ian McNair: I think on the next hunt, I shot a bufflehead.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Over that black duck decoy?

Ian McNair: Yeah. Right out here on my parents’ property.

Ramsey Russell: I noticed that a lot of the rigs you’ve made, Ian, your dad makes a lot of different species, but you focus almost exclusively on gunning decoys. I notice a lot of them are black ducks. Is that what you mostly make, a black duck?

Ian McNair: That’s probably my favourite duck to make and probably my favourite duck as well. That’s what we shoot the most of here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, so it comes naturally.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. What was growing up like for you? You weren’t in Connecticut. You were down here on the Eastern Shore. What was that like as a little boy?

Ian McNair: It all seemed really normal, living on the Chesapeake Bay with a creek and a dock in my backyard. But once you grow up, leave, and see the rest of the world, you realize it was a pretty unique way to grow up. My dad worked at home, essentially going out to his shop, and I spent most of my free time there when I wasn’t out shooting my BB gun or running around in the boat. I was home-schooled for middle school, which was great because rather than standing in line and doing busy work, I got to play outside and be a kid in the great outdoors here on the Eastern Shore. As you have remarked on this United States trip, it’s a pretty unique place.

Ramsey Russell: It’s a very unique place. It’s a very beautiful place. Yesterday morning, we were talking about, how in that pothole that little island pond we hunted, with all that marsh grass, it’s not cattail, it’s something else. Spartina?

Ian McNair: Spartina. Yep.

Ramsey Russell: And, golly, there was a moment when the sun got just right, the clouds moved out of the way, and it lit up the world. Spectacular. Spellbinding to see something so beautiful.

Ian McNair: The last few days have been some of the prettiest of the year. The light, the angle of the sun, the clear air, low humidity, and beautiful clouds. It’s been fun being outside for the last three days, chasing a black duck.

Ramsey Russell: How long after you made that first black duck and killed a bufflehead did you start becoming a decoy carver like your dad?

Ian McNair: So essentially, it was a hobby job because I would sell them throughout high school and college. That was my summer job. Growing up, I didn’t really know what I was.

Ramsey Russell: You were selling hunting decoys in high school?

Ian McNair: Yeah. A lot of them just went on people’s shelves. But I made a rig for one of my buddies that I’m gonna hunt tomorrow with made a rig for his brother. I made a bunch of hunting decoys for Brian, but also selling to the collectible market, where people buy them more as a piece of art rather than a true hunting decoy.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Ian McNair: And then after college, I went and did a bunch of different things. I ended up essentially selling everything I owned, which wasn’t a whole lot, and buying a backpack. And my girlfriend at the time, now wife.

Ramsey Russell: I’m glad you brought that up. I thought you told me that last night around the campfire when I was taking a break between batches of oysters.

Ian McNair: A lot of batches of oysters.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Ian McNair: I’ve never seen anybody eat so many oysters, Ramsey.

Ramsey Russell: I think I may have eaten too many. Tell me about this trip. How did you meet your girlfriend, who became your wife? And tell me about what you all did, because that was pretty interesting.

Ian McNair: Well, we met in college but ended up, kind of by circumstance, reconnecting after college. When I was living up in Washington, D.C., I got a job in sales after college and pretty quickly realized that wasn’t really what I wanted to be doing.

Ramsey Russell: What were you selling?

Ian McNair: I was selling furniture for a company called Thomas Moser out of Maine. I kind of got into it, I met somebody who was running the showroom, and I was into woodworking, so I got a job at a showroom down in Charleston when I was in school. Essentially, they offered me a job out of college, and I took it. But after about a year, I was like, this isn’t the way I want to spend my time.

Ramsey Russell: When you say selling furniture, were you selling like couches to consumers?

Ian McNair: We had a showroom in Washington, D.C., and yeah, I was a salesperson, if you can imagine that. But Becca ended up in Washington, D.C. as well, kind of by a twist of fate. She put this idea in my head that you could move to New Zealand, work on organic farms, live in a tent, and just go see the world. And one day, I just called her up and said, “Hey, let’s just sell our stuff and move to New Zealand.”

Ramsey Russell: Let’s go.

“I considered moving to New Zealand, but the Eastern Shore is home.”

Ian McNair: Not permanently, but let’s just go. So we essentially bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand via Fiji and had everything in a backpack. We volunteered at a national park, worked growing oranges and grapes, hiked all over the country, and just had this amazing adventure.

Ramsey Russell: How long were you over there doing this?

Ian McNair: Seven months.

Ramsey Russell: Okay.
Ian McNair: And then we came back and got jobs working as tour guides all over the U.S.
Ramsey Russell: Kind of vagabond. You all didn’t have a home? You all just went here and there with the seasons?
Ian McNair: That’s it. I always had this home base here at my parents’ house, and I could come back and carve decoys in between jobs. We lived in the Virgin Islands for a couple of summers, went to Alaska for four summers as tour guides, and spent a year and a half in South Korea teaching English.
Ramsey Russell: And she was doing the same thing?
Ian McNair: We were doing the same thing. So we essentially had this giant adventure for most of our 20s.
Ramsey Russell: Wow. And then what happened? How come you aren’t still doing that?
Ian McNair: Well, this was long before the kids. I was having the time of my life because I love to travel and see the world and have adventures. But Becca, at some point, said, “I want to do something that matters and is important.” She wanted to become a schoolteacher. So I had to acquiesce to her demands because I knew she was right, even though I would have loved to keep traveling. I also wanted to do something for myself. Growing up, watching my father and how he lived his life and carved decoys, worked for himself, and supported himself. I looked at my decoys through my 20s, and they were fine, they were good. But I wasn’t progressing as an artist, in my opinion. I wasn’t getting better. I’d get better and then I’d go. I wouldn’t carve for six months, and then I’d come back, and then I’d catch back up to where I was. It’s like, if you’re going to do something in your life, you’ve got to do it every day. You have to focus and work at it.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah.
Ian McNair: So right around age 30, I said, “Okay, I’m gonna give this a shot. I’m gonna become a full-time decoy carver and see if I can make it work.” And that’s what I did. Then Brian called me up and said, “I’ve got an idea.”
Ramsey Russell: What kind of teacher did your wife become? You told me she went to Oregon to go to school.
Ian McNair: Yeah, she got her degree in Montessori education.
Ramsey Russell: Which is what?
Ian McNair: That’s another story. She could explain it a lot better than I can. But rather than being teacher-focused, it focuses on the child and how they think versus how a grown-up thinks. I didn’t know anything about it at first, but after watching what she was doing, I realized it was similar to how I taught myself things. It’s a great process and fun to watch.
Ramsey Russell: A different approach to teaching?
Ian McNair: Totally different approach. Completely different approach.
Ramsey Russell: So you all are doing something meaningful, she’s out of school, she’s teaching, you’re carving. I guess you’re carving full-time. When did you all decide to homeschool your children like you were homeschooled?
Ian McNair: We had been living in Charlottesville, Virginia, because she found a school there that was our reason for moving. It was closer to home than Alaska, where we had been, and Portland, where we had previously lived. In Charlottesville, we lived in a 660-square-foot house, which was great for the two of us. Then we had our first daughter, and when we were expecting our second, we decided to move back here to the Eastern Shore of Virginia. That was about five or six years ago. We did it to be closer to my parents, and I wanted to raise the kids here because I think it’s a great place to grow up. When we moved back, Becca could either get a job and pay for our kids to go to school, or she could homeschool them. So now I’ve got three daughters, homeschooled in the Montessori model.
Ramsey Russell: With all that traveling, it never occurred to you that maybe you all wanted to live somewhere other than the Eastern Shore? I mean, weren’t you working in some places, because I’ve traveled some places before, while I’m there in the moment, I thought, I could live here.
Ian McNair: When we went to New Zealand, I kind of thought about it, and it’s like, if I didn’t have any family back in the States, I might have just moved to New Zealand. I could definitely live here. I love the place, but I don’t know. The Eastern Shore, I’ve always considered this home.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, yeah. Your home, right. I mean, that’s really. I’m the same way. No matter how far I travel around the world, Mississippi’s home.
Ian McNair: Yep.
Ramsey Russell: And it’s funny how you can take me out of Mississippi, but you really can’t take Mississippi completely out of me, no matter where in the world I’m at.
Ian McNair: True story.
Ramsey Russell: What was it like, Mark, to see Ian following in your footsteps? Is he an artist like you are?
Mark McNair: We’re different, perhaps because of my more, my art background. But Ian got into photography when he was in College of Charleston, and I think his instructor there, had a very positive effect on him because he took good photographs. He still takes good photographs.
Ramsey Russell: What effect did your photography teacher have on you, Ian?
Ian McNair: She was a great artist, and I was already into photography, and taking her classes challenged me to think differently when taking photographs. It was something that I enjoyed. So when you enjoy something and you have a challenge, it’s a good way to progress.
Ramsey Russell: How does that translate into your carving?
Ian McNair: It’s a good question. I guess with the way you perceive things, the way you see things, the way you think about things. Actually, rather than, oh, let’s take a snapshot, let’s consider what we’re doing. The composition, the balance, the form, the lighting.
Ramsey Russell: You came by painting naturally, Mark, because you were an artist. I mean, the mixing of the oils and the colors and stuff like that. Was that something you taught Ian, or is that something you just have to learn on your own?
Mark McNair: Anytime he ever asked, he could see what I was doing, and I never held anything back from him. So it came naturally. I think what he said about the photography was what I was referring to, his sense of composition and space and arranging things. I can see it in the photographs he takes today and the photographs he was taking then. It wasn’t just like, some people can take a photography course, and it’s all predictable. But I thought he was doing some interesting things. Most of it was, as I recall, all black and white, wasn’t it?
Ian McNair: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Mark McNair: Yeah. And she lent you a real camera. He was working in the darkroom in those days. I could see him making some real serious progress. I think that anything you learn, you can apply it. Especially like that, you can apply it to other things later in life. Artistically, there’s a lot of things that are the same language. My background was different because I grew up at a different time and had different experiences.
Ramsey Russell: The medium almost doesn’t matter, does it?

“The light, the shape, the movement… a good decoy keeps your eye engaged.”

Mark McNair: I noticed that when I was doing some theatre work with a very good director, and I found that the way she would move us around on stage and the way she talked to people, and there were people that were very good dancers in that, the way she would talk to them. It’s very much the same language about composition and texture and movement. A lot of times people think of photography or artwork that you hang on the wall, they say, well, its two-dimensional art, but when the alchemy really comes into play. When I say the alchemy, I mean, like, you’re changing a base object. Here we have wood, and we’re changing it into something completely different. This is three-dimensional. Looking at these ducks. So the top photograph is two-dimensional, but it creates a three-dimensional sensation. You’re creating another dimension of time and space where your eye is drawn to it and then drawn through it and around it. A good decoy, which is what I find so fascinating about them, is that you’ve got a different view of the bird than I do, and Ian has because he’s down at the other end of the table. Hopefully, there’s a place where your eye is invited into this shape and into this form, and it wants to continue around it. If you’re really successful, the form and the patterns or the paint or lack of paint or anything is enough to keep you engaged. It keeps you moving around until you’re finally satisfied. Then go look at something else. But see how the light, there’s this ridge right here. It’s very subtle. But look what it does to the light and the dark, and how it adds another dimension to that bird. If that was just flat across the back, it would just be flat across the back. It doesn’t have to be there, but I found it made something a little extra special.
Ramsey Russell: What do guys like you all think about while you’re out there in the shop? You take a block of wood and you start drawing, pulling the knives. What are you thinking about?
Ian McNair: It’s a good question.
Ramsey Russell: Are you focused on that shape in that three-dimensional form, or are you thinking about killing ducks, or what are you thinking about?
Ian McNair: I guess you can think about just about anything because you can spend pretty much all day out there, carving a decoy all the way into the night.
Ramsey Russell: Do you ever find yourself getting in a hurry, oh, I got to get this done? Or have you evolved where it’s just make each stroke count?
Mark McNair: I’ll just answer for both of us. I’ve been carving longer than he has, but he’s been carving long enough to know all of the above. The important thing is not to follow what you’re doing but drive what you’re doing. Do it by design. Don’t just go like, I’m going to carve and see what happens. Conceive it in your mind and drive the process so that you get that instead of this.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve done very, very limited carving. Crude, square-looking at times, but effective. It kills stuff.
Mark McNair: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Cork rides so good in the water. I think that’s what matters. But you can do the top pattern and the side profile, but once you get that, now it’s all on you to give it that shape and give it that duck-like appearance, those rounded corners, those smooth edges, and the details. I think you either got it or you don’t. A lot of mine will be lopsided. They’d be slouching on one side or the other. But anyway, I just always found it almost intoxicating, hypnotic just to be out in the shop and doing heads, right. I was using a Fordham, but man, we were talking about that Atlantic white pine, and it just smells so beautiful when it’s being turned. It’s a wonder somebody hasn’t made a lady’s perfume out of it. Just sitting there and shaping it, sanding, doing whatever you’re doing. I just found myself lost. I might go out for an hour before the news came on, and then it’d be 1 o’clock in the morning when I came up.
Mark McNair: That’s happened a lot.
Ramsey Russell: You just kind of get lost in it all.
Mark McNair: Yeah.

“Art and hunting… you tie them together. A decoy is a small work of art.”

Ramsey Russell: How does hunting over your own decoys, I’m asking both of you, transform your approach to duck hunting? How does being a carver, making these decoys, reflect in your approach to duck hunting differently than what other people might do? Myself, for example, I load up the boat with a bunch of plastic or foam decoys, go out, chunk them, and go at it. I mean, you all are running smaller spreads, homemade spreads, different postures and poses. But has it transformed your approach to duck hunting, or has duck hunting transformed your approach to carving?
Ian McNair: I think it’s all more or less tied together in the lifestyle where they’re all intertwined. Carving the decoys, obviously, you can do that year-round, but you’re thinking about the time you spend in the blind watching birds, watching birds decoy. And you’re also thinking about making a small little work of art. The cool thing is you can tie the two things together.
Ramsey Russell: Is it art? Is what you all make art? Is a working gunning decoy art?
Ian McNair: Not necessarily, but it can be.
Ramsey Russell: Or is it an artistic approach to hunting? That’s what I guess I’m getting at with that question. It seems to me that, at their most basic level, you can kill ducks over pop bottles or blocks of wood.
Ian McNair: Right.
Ramsey Russell: Maybe more realism is better. I’ve hunted out in the Great Salt Lake region. The water’s two inches deep all the way to the horizon, and the birds raft up. There’s nothing but open water, two inches deep. That’s why they invented the airboat, to get out there and access those parts. And once they got out there, okay, now how do we hunt these ducks? And they came up with the most ingenious idea of just using a bunch of black silhouettes, sticking them all out, putting on a black hoodie or something, and crawling right in the middle of them. Sit in a little tub or sit on your butt with waders on and hunt these ducks because all they see are those flats. I’ve noticed a lot of guys, I guess you could just use black anything out there, but boy, they’ve gone into where you see just the silhouette, a black silhouette, and go, that’s a gadwall. You can see that head shape. Or that’s a green-winged teal, or that’s a pintail. You can see that stuff. And I guess the ducks can too. So that versus one of these decoys, somebody that spends so many hours painstakingly doing this thing and lost in the reverie of going duck hunting over this decoy, it’s almost like an artistic approach to duck hunting. So which is more important, the approach that you do with your homemade rig or shooting the ducks themselves?
Mark McNair: Well, there’s a lot going on here. I was thinking, my first hunt, we hunted over silhouettes for those white-winged scoters. I remember hearing at the time that guys would take Clorox bottles and paint them black.
Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.
Mark McNair: And they would use those. It’s not really sexy, but it worked. I thought when I looked at those silhouettes, because all the birds are facing different directions, I said, well, that’s going to look a little funny. You get out there in the boat, and you’re bobbing up and down on that gray-green sea and everything like that, but you didn’t pay any attention to that at all. You were talking about the draw knife before. How long does it take to do such and such? It doesn’t take long to remove all the wood that is not the duck. Where the time comes in is when, well, do you want to carve around the mandrel, the details? Do you want to use glass eyes or not? There’s a kind of well-known little story about a guy up on Chincoteague, and he didn’t paint eyeballs on his birds. His birds were really crude, but the local guys will tell you they were terrific decoys. One time someone said to him, “Mr. Hancock, these decoys don’t have any eyes on them.” He goes, “Well, by the time they get that close, it’s too late.”
Ramsey Russell: That’s right.
Mark McNair: And it’s so true. I use black eyes because I think they’re just clean and very effective rather than using colored eyes on my puddle ducks or something. Going around to what you said about making the decoy and actually having birds come into it, going out here with Ian out on the island and doing that with a rig that we made. We live on the Chesapeake Bay. There’s 2,200 miles of shoreline here. You’ve got inlets and creeks and farm ponds, and 22 miles across the bay to the western shore, which is more of the same. And to actually have ducks flying, they don’t have to come in here, but they turn their head, and they go and come back and pitch right in front of you. We’ve figured out that little spot, that little honey hole for them. And it’s birds you made. Talk about consummation of the whole process. It’s fascinating.
Ramsey Russell: Would you enjoy it as well if it were store-bought decoys?
Mark McNair: Well, we hunt on the West Coast.
Ramsey Russell: If it was Clorox bottles and you were shooting birds, is it form or function?
Mark McNair: That’s interesting. I would rather shoot over my own. But if I’m hunting with somebody using Clorox bottles, that’s okay with me. I was thinking about the West Coast. Ian and Colin and I have been going out there for the last several years, and we shoot over plastic decoys out there. What I got there, they’re beautiful plastic decoys. And if you had to load up all the wooden decoys and haul them out there and set up, how many, three, four dozen?
Ian McNair: Yeah.
Ramsey Russell: It’d be pretty heavy, wouldn’t it?
Mark McNair: These plastic decoys are very, very high quality, and they look wonderful on the water.
Ramsey Russell: What about you, Ian? Would you rather hunt over that or hunt over your own?
Ian McNair: I enjoy it all, really. I’ve got nothing against plastic decoys, and I’ve shot plenty of ducks over other people’s plastic decoys. But for me, it’s like going out to Mike Cole’s place in California. He doesn’t know how to carve a duck, but he knows how to create duck habitat. He’s an artist in creating duck habitat, and that’s what he loves to do. You probably better than anyone know that there are all these different aspects to duck hunting that people excel at: call making, land management, decoy carving. For me, the decoy carving is something I love to do, and watching it all come together, like Papa just said, is really satisfying. So yeah, I love hunting over my own decoys. It’s the whole going out to that blind out there where we shot those first ducks with my dad, with Brian, with other friends that we’ve been doing it with for 25 years. It’s just a great tradition.
Mark McNair: Yeah, kind of closes the circle. When I saw him shoot birds over birds that he carved, that was really a very satisfying moment.
Ramsey Russell: Really.
Mark McNair: Oh, golly, yeah.
Ramsey Russell: Why did you all pull, I hope it ain’t a personal question I’m walking into, but why did you all pull Ian out of school and start homeschooling him?
Ian McNair: Because I begged to be homeschooled.
Ramsey Russell: You begged to be homeschooled?
Mark McNair: There you go.
Ian McNair: My younger brother Colin was homeschooled from kindergarten. He’s six years younger than me, five and a half years younger. I was like, “Wait, I have to go to school all day?” School was easy, and it was just boring. It’s just like busy work, busy work, busy work. Colin works for two or three hours a day, gets all of his work done, then he gets to go hang out in Papa’s shop. I want to do that.
Ramsey Russell: Does your brother carve also?
Ian McNair: He does, but not as much. He’s got a job in the same industry. He is the decoy specialist for Copley Fine Art Auctions. He’s a great carver. He’s got a great eye. He understands how to make a decoy. But he also is one of the leading experts in old decoys in the country.
Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I know that.
Ian McNair: Yep. So back to homeschooling. I want to go home and just work for a couple of hours, get my schoolwork done, and then go hang out in my dad’s shop. Go play off the dock or run around in my boat. Sounds a lot more fun than queuing up for class.
Ramsey Russell: I asked this question leading up to this one. You were telling me last night, Ian, that you and your daughters come over here and spend time with your dad in his shop just like you did. What are you teaching them, Mark? What do you teach a child? How old are your children, Ian?
Ian McNair: 7, 5, and 1 years.
Ramsey Russell: What are your grandkids learning in your shop that they would not learn in school?
Ian McNair: We were pouring lead weights the other night, and we were rigging. I was like, “You guys want to make some weights?” “Oh, yeah.” So we’re melting down lead and making those mushroom weights that we used because I had a bunch of new decoys that I made. They were crimping on the monofilament lines there. And Poppy takes them out there and pretty much goes crabbing and fishing off the dock. And just hammering nails.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about that a little bit. I mean, what do you do with children like that? And what do you think you’re teaching them that is so important in life?

Mark McNair: I think maybe to be themselves and follow them with a little bit of guidance, kind of thing. Maybe all children are like this. I don’t know. Sort of. In my experience, it is. They’re very fertile minds. Esme, she’s the oldest, one of her resonates with me and probably always will. She goes, “Poppy, I have an idea.” That’s the lead-in, right? “Let’s build a fort here, and we’ll take some rope.” We have the climbing tree down here. That’s beautiful. It’s just meant for children to climb in, and they got all these ropes, and we got some pulleys, and they’re hauling stuff up and down on the pulleys. And they decided it would be a great place to have a picnic lunch. They love to have picnic lunches. So they make the picnic lunch, and we put the stuff in a basket, and they’re using the pulleys to haul it up into the tree, and they do that kind of thing. And there’s another one. It comes. And I just saw this picture the other day about children and creativity. We have blocks here, you know, nice, beautiful blocks, and they love to play with those. But in the studio, I’ve got all these irregular shapes. When you’re cutting out a plank, you’re cutting out decoy bodies and heads and stuff, so you end up with all of these irregular shapes. And they might be flat over here and all these curves and stuff. And I’ve piles of it. And Esme and Imogen were here one time, and they started piling them up like blocks. And after a couple of tries and a few failures with them just sort of tumbling over, they figured out how to get, you know, if this one goes here, and this will counteract this. And there’s a photograph of Esme standing next to a pile. It’s got to be 4 feet tall. And there’s not a single piece of wood that’s the same shape as the other. And it was wonderful. I gave them a little help in the beginning, and then they took over.

Ramsey Russell: When Ian was shadowing you in the shop, learning to carve and pulling the spokeshave and doing stuff like that. Where was the fine line of giving him guidance versus just letting him express himself?

Mark McNair: I think probably when he actually really wanted to do something other than making curlies. And that’s what he used to call them. Because when you take a spokeshave and you draw it across the wood, you get this long curve and get really good at it. Sometimes you’re working on a swan or something, you get a curly that’s, you know, six, eight inches, foot long. And it’s very satisfying because you hear it being cut by the blade, and that’s, I don’t know. I like that feeling. I like that sound. And so at some point, he wanted to just not make curlies anymore. He wanted to actually construct something. And as I recall, it was a fish. He loves to fish and always has. And so I showed him how to take what this, you know, skill set here that he had developed and how to use it to shape something. So it just happened. And then all of his curlies now are to make a duck or a fish or something like that. And I think,  excuse me,  the girls are the same way. They helped build some birdhouses. That’s a great project this summer. Yeah. Because everything’s pre-cut. But they knew how to nail because they’ve been pounding nails since they were little, just at random. And now they can actually direct those little, lovely, little four-penny galvanized box nails.

Ramsey Russell: The king is entering, anybody heard that his ringer went off? Yep. Ian, who were some of your influences? Who influenced your carving? Your dad was talking about some of the guys up in Connecticut. Obviously, your dad influenced a little bit of your carving, but who were some of your influences? Do your decoys look like your dad’s?

Ian McNair: He’s obviously my biggest influence. I think you can tell by looking at my decoys. I mean, growing up around it. Papa is one of the best carvers out there, in my opinion, so it’s a good person to copy. And I started with his patterns, essentially, when I made my first birds. But I’ve definitely developed my own style and character where you can, it’s kind of distinctly my own at this point. Aside from my father, a lot of old carvers,  the Cobb family that lived on Cobb Island, just east of here on the Atlantic Ocean. I really like their decoys. They kind of emulate the character of the island and the people that made them. And they’re really unique but skilfully made. The Ward brothers, I like a lot of things that they did as well, and I think you can see some of that in my carving as well. I could probably go on and on, a lot of other, I look at old decoys.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, a lot of Eastern Shore influences.

Ian McNair: I would say the Cobbs are probably my favourite, just because they are local, and it’s just part of our lore and our history here. But I guess I could probably, you could probably say there are 50 different influences of things that I see, “Oh, I like that.” I’ll kind of emulate that and bring that into what I do and how I do it. And I’m still evolving. I’ve got 50 different patterns around my shop, and it’s sort of, “Okay, I like this head here, but I think I want to change this,” so I’ll kind of adjust it every time I revisit something.

Ramsey Russell: Do you all still duck hunt much together?

Ian McNair: Papa and I?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Ian McNair: Yeah, we used to hunt more here, but we’ve kind of been seeing fewer and fewer ducks here in the creek. But every year, we take a trip out to the West Coast, Colin, my father, and myself.

Ramsey Russell: By the West Coast, you don’t mean California?

Ian McNair: We go to Central California. Yuba City Hunting. We’ve got a really good friend out there.

Ramsey Russell: Chicken capital of the world.

Ian McNair: Okay.

Mark McNair: Is that right?

Ramsey Russell: You all haven’t seen all the chickens?

Mark McNair: Running around on the highway out there? Yes.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve been in Yuba City, and there’s just wild chickens everywhere, and people put water pans out, feed pans out, and get upset if you accidentally run over one.

Mark McNair: Yeah, I saw that. Last year was the first time.

Ramsey Russell: I’m surprised they don’t have a chicken and dumpling festival or something every year. Do you take your own decoys out there?

Ian McNair: We’ve taken one of my decoys out there just kind of for fun, to throw it out there and maybe leave it with one of our hosts along the way as a thank you. But I’ve never taken a whole rig or anything like that.

Ramsey Russell: If you all were gonna go out here,  this pond back here behind,  if you all were gonna go hunt together, local, would you use your decoys or his, or would it be collaborative?

Ian McNair: We’d probably use the decoys that we just used here the last couple of days up there on Chincoteague. And we collaborated on some of those together, especially those early ones.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Are you still shooting tail feathers?

Ian McNair: I think I’m a pretty good shot, but I jumped that timber doodle yesterday, and I definitely shot right behind that.

Ramsey Russell: We can miss with the best of them. I’m just getting you. I’m giving you a hard time.

Ian McNair: We all, I think especially early in the season, it’s easy to do. Kind of make the same mistake and then learn from it every season, it seems like.

Ramsey Russell: Do you think your children will have artistic instincts and maybe even decoy carve themselves?

Ian McNair: You never know. They’ve definitely taken an interest in it already, where Esme is like, “Papa, I want to make a duck.” So she kind of did the same thing I did when I was about that age and found an old head and an old body that I had cast off and glued them together and did a little spokeshaving and painted it. So she’s definitely, if she wants to take it up, she’ll have the background in it, and I guess we’ll see. I don’t want to force them to do anything they wouldn’t want to do, but for the most part, they really just want to come out there and do what I’m doing. So I try and encourage that as much as possible.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I appreciate hearing you all’s story, and I sure enjoyed hunting over those decoys, Ian. It was a real treat to hunt over some real decoys like that. I enjoyed every bit of it. I’m a lucky man because you aren’t the only carver I know. I’m thinking of Pat Gregory. I hunted over with him and Doc on the river, and they got a massive spread of homemade decoys for divers, which takes big spray. Of course, they can soak them all year. They don’t have to move. I don’t know how we’d have moved, I don’t know how we’d have made that half-mile walk through the marsh grass yesterday carrying any more decoys than we did.

Ian McNair: I wouldn’t want to carry a couple hundred decoys across that marsh on sleds. No thanks.

Ramsey Russell: So that in and of itself will change your approach to hunting, won’t it?

Mark McNair: Yes, indeed. Yes.

Ramsey Russell: Anyway, thank you all very much for having me. Thank you very much, Ian, for helping me check Virginia off the list. I really, truly appreciate it.

Ian McNair: Happy to do it. It was a great, great several days we spent out there in the marsh and some great memories.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. Mark, do you have social media? I know Ian does. Tell people how they can connect with you, Ian.

Ian McNair: Yeah, my Instagram is Ian Carves Decoys, and I think my Facebook is Ian McNair Decoys. I got a website as well, and it essentially showcases some of my carvings on there.

Ramsey Russell: How do you sell decoys like that? Do people call you up? Do they buy them? Do they buy rigs? I mean, do they buy five, six? How do you do that? Buy one every now and again?

Ian McNair: Most of the decoys that I sell go to collectors. I’ve sold Brian a number of those decoys that we hunted over. I’ve sold some to my other friends, but most of them, it’s singles and pairs that I’ll sell mostly to friends. I don’t make that many decoys a year, so it’s essentially relationships that I’ve built with people that I’ve known for a long time or have gotten to know because of my decoys, and they’ll buy a decoy or two a year. Just through personal relationships is really how I sell them.

Mark McNair: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Well, folks, you all connect with me, and you heard how. Mark, thank you very much for giving me a tour.

Mark McNair: Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.

Ramsey Russell: The pleasure was all mine, I promise you. And folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of the Duck Season Somewhere podcast from the Eastern Shore in Virginia. See you next time.