Decoys are a lifelong hobby and craft for North Hanover man.
By: William Wichert
NORTH HANOVER Looking over photos of him and his friends, dressed in camouflage suits on the rocky shores of Maine, Clarence Fennimore tried to express the true meaning of the hunt.
"It’s not about shooting the bird. It’s about getting out there in the early morning and putting out your decoys," said Mr. Fennimore. "It’s about being out with your friends. You won’t find many guys hunting by themselves."
Those decoys wooden ducks used by hunters to lure birds close to the water are the central aim of a time-honored tradition being upheld by carvers like Mr. Fennimore, who has spent the last two decades creating pintails, wood ducks, black ducks and other birds out of blocks of wood in his basement workshop.
"It’s nice to sit in the boat and see your decoys rocking in the water, and you know you made them all," said Mr. Fennimore, who has lived on Schoolhouse Road for 28 years.
A retired phone company manager, Mr. Fennimore has been using decoys to hunt birds since he was a teenager growing up in Bordentown Township, where he and his friends would go down to Crosswicks Creek for some hunting after school.
"Once we got our drivers’ licenses, we headed to the Shore," he said. "There was a lot of interest in hunting back then." On the first day of deer-hunting season, even school would be closed, he said.
As the production of decoys evolved from the handmade wood carvings of the early 20th century to machine-processed and finally to plastic and rubber decoys, Mr. Fennimore kept hunting and collecting original decoys, but did not begin carving ones of his own until the 1980s.
The craftsmanship came naturally to Mr. Fennimore, because he had spent many years watching his uncle, Harry Fennimore, create decoys in their Bordentown home.
"Once I started doing it, it was like a fever," he said. "I had to keep doing it."
While Mr. Fennimore moved around his workshop, where a pile of sawdust sits in the corner, he gave a step-by-step overview of what he calls the "pretty simple process" of decoy carving.
First, you take two blocks of wood and glue them together. Then you sketch the design of the duck’s body on the wood and saw off the excess pieces to form that shape. The same work must be done on the head, which is then attached to the body with a nail rod. After some sanding and final touch-ups, the painting can begin.
"The hardest part is the painting, but it is also the most enjoyable part," said Mr. Fennimore. Using a mix of oil paints, he creates lifelike representations of each bird’s features, from the red bill of a wood duck to the black tail feathers of a pintail.
As Mr. Fennimore has become enmeshed in the small-knit world of decoy collectors, and the even smaller community of carvers (he said about 15 of the 170 members of the New Jersey Decoy Collectors Association are actual carvers), he has received high accolades for his work in recent years.
The association named him "Carver of the Year" in 2002, and then his pintail was featured on the 2003 New Jersey Duck Stamp. Last year, Mr. Fennimore was selected as one of two carvers to represent the state at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C.
Despite his success, Mr. Fennimore said he does not experiment too much with decoy styles. "There’s always been people who pushed the envelope. That’s good," he said. "I’m traditional."
Mr. Fennimore said he sticks to the original designs associated with different regions like the Delaware River area, where decoys usually appear with raised wingtips, and Barnegat Bay, where the tops of decoys are more smooth.
Most of these regional styles were established by famous carvers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when decoys were primarily viewed as a hunting tool and not something to save for the future.
Today’s mindset is completely different for carvers like Mr. Fennimore. He still uses decoys on hunting excursions, but also travels to decoy shows across the country and peruses lists of items on eBay to add to his collection.
"They’re truly a collectible. They’re limited," he said. "Even in our throw-away society, we wouldn’t throw something like that away."

