The Wood Carver
Fanciful and Fine Fish Decoys Carved by Packwaukee, Wisconsin Man
First you notice the colors–iridescent blues and greens, mottled black and white. Then you see the shapes-soft curves, rounded bodies, sharp angles. Finally, you just have to pick one up to look closer at the fine detail; then you touch the smooth wood, feel the slight heft in your hand, and let your finger move the tail ever so slightly. You’re hooked. They caught your attention, then your interest, and then your heart. They’re the hand carved spear fishing decoys of Packwaukee, Wisconsin carver Jerry Bynum and if you’re like most people, even if you’ve never splashed a decoy through a hole in the ice, there is something about the grace, fluidity, and even the humor of these aquatic figures that makes you want to own one so that you can handle it and look at it again and again.
Jerry has always been in love with the outdoors, hunting and fishing every chance he got.
“I thoroughly enjoy every aspect of hunting and fishing,” he said in a recent interview in his home that overlooks Buffalo Lake. “My favorite sport has always been duck hunting, but I love bow hunting and musky fishing, too. But when I developed rheumatoid arthritis that limited what I could do, I still wanted to put myself in a position to take the most satisfaction from outdoor sporting.”
Jerry and his wife Jane, married since 1967, moved to Packwaukee from Pewaukee, Wisconsin about 18 years ago. Jerry is semi-retired from house painting and Jane manages a data entry office in Portage and is president of the Packwaukee Library Board. Jerry hunted and fished in the Montello area for years and one father’s day, the couple took a drive on the rural roads. Jane told him to turn onto a wooded lot on Buffalo Lake and said, “Happy Father’s Day, I bought you this lot.” After a lot of work clearing the land, the couple built their home in the midst of the hunting and fishing paradise Jerry loved.
The couple has a large collection of both antique and new fishing decoys. It was at a big fish decoy show in Minnesota that Jerry was encouraged to start to carve his own decoys. David H. Beighley, from a 3 generation carving family showed Jerry the world of decoy carving after another world class carver, Darren Kvam flipped him a piece of wood and told him to carve a decoy.
“By the end of the week, I’d made a decoy,” Jerry said. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I just kept going and ended up with a lake trout.”
Ice fishing decoys are not like the tiny lures tied for trout or pan fish. They’re hefty, come in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors, and are weighted. They’re carved and created so that they move realistically in the water to attract the fish that are being hunted. Spearing is only allowed in 7 states and in Wisconsin, only sturgeon can still be speared. Fishing decoy traditions go back to Native Americans who still create some of the most beautiful and best fishing decoys.
Antique decoys are a collectible group in themselves, but today’s carvers are creating works of art as well as usable decoys. All of Jerry’s decoys can be used for fishing, although he also creates fanciful mobiles purely for fun and eye-catching decoration. He carves his decoys all out of native woods, usually white cedar or red cedar or white pine or bass wood.
“I have to find wood with the least grain in it,” he said. “More grain and it’s harder to carve, easier to split. I’m always picking up pieces of wood that I find in the area.”
Some of Jerry’s decoys are natural with 7 coats of gun stock finish. Others are painted realistically or in bolder colors. Acrylics or oils, the painted decoys are thoroughly over coated with water proof coating. His decoys may be solid pieces of wood with tail and fins all from the same block or he may add metal fins and tails. He uses taxidermy glass eyes or other bits of metal or glass like old shoe buttons, but whatever the medium, the placement of the eye is critical.
“Anything will attract fish,” said Jerry. “They’re curious critters. But attracting them and getting them to come to a decoy directly under your hole so they can be speared are two different things.”
Jerry starts by drawing a fish. Then, he creates a cardboard template, carefully judging the bend of the body and placement of the fins so that the decoy will move realistically in the water. For instance, he may need to carve the decoy for a left hand swim in order to lure the larger fish to the decoy. Many of the tools that Jerry uses in his carving he’s made himself, fashioning a file or an awl or a blade into just the tool he wants. Among the many decoys he’s carved are rainbow trout, sturgeon, arctic char, eel pout, blue gill, and crappie.
Jane encourages Jerry to finish his work even if he becomes frustrated with the piece.
“Sometimes the wood and tools just won’t do what you want,” Jerry said. “One decoy I was fed up with and told Jane I was going to make her a spatula out of it. But she kept encouraging me to finish it and I did. I took it to a show and Tom Winters, a noted carver, bought it. You just never know.”
After the decoy is carved, a cavity is drilled into the wood. This takes much thought and precision because molten lead is poured into the cavity and will make the decoy “sink or swim”, so to speak. If the weight isn’t correct, the movement will be wrong and the decoy may be relegated to pretty, but not usable. As said before, all of Jerry’s decoys are made to be used, a critical element in the decoy shows where Jerry has taken home ribbons.
At a show, like the Great Lakes Fish Decoy Competition in Michigan or the John Jensen’s National Fish Decoy Association contest in Minnesota, the judges put a line on the decoy and drop it in water. It must sink, lay level, and can’t list or tip. When dropped, it should do a left or right turn or swim in a circle. There are many categories and competitions at the shows. A good site to learn about the making, collecting, and showing of fish decoys is http://www.glfda.com, web site of the Great Lakes Fish Decoy Collector’s and Carver’s Association.
Jerry’s decoys have brought home a number of ribbons. At this year’s Marquette County Fair, he entered 7 decoys and received 8 ribbons including best of show in senior woodworking. At the John Jensen National Fish Decoy contest he’s brought home 3rd and 4th place ribbons and received an honorable mention in folk art at the Great Lakes Fish Decoy competition. The competition at these national shows is formidable, with master carvers from around the country and sometimes the world entering their work.
Carvers tend to be creative, partly because the act of carving itself is often at the mercy of the medium. The wood may not let you make that curve just the way you’d like or a slip of the chisel and your bluegill becomes a bottom feeder. But beyond the fickleness of the wood, there’s the fun of being able to create fanciful and fantastic creatures. While Jerry’s decoys are all usable, he, like many other carvers, creates folk art decoys as well as working fish decoys. The Great Lakes Fish Decoy competition defines folk art decoys as “generic fish decoys which do not represent any particular species in form, decoration or markings. Carvers will use their own imagination as to the form, coloration, markings or paint patterns.”
A good example of one of Jerry’s folk art lures came to be because of his grand daughter.
“My youngest grand daughter loves my carving,” he said. “So I asked her what color decoy she’d like me to make for her. What should I have expected? Of course she said pink.”
And a pink decoy she got, a chubby pink fish with big red lips and a pink poof on top it its head.
Jerry is adamant that his carving remain fun. He doesn’t take orders, although there are plenty of people who’d like him to. He does show and sell at various events like the recent Rendezvous at Pioneer Days in Westfield, Wisconsin and the NFLCC Antique Tackle show in Wisconsin Dells. He’ll also be at the Gun and Sporting Show at the Howard Johnson’s in Wisconsin Dells on October 26.
A highlight of Jerry’s decoy carving is meeting and getting to know other carvers. He holds many in high regard and expresses a feeling of honor to be among them at shows and contests. It’s a tradition among carvers to trade their work and Jerry is thrilled whenever a master carver is interested in trading for one of his decoys.
“It makes me feel very, very happy,” he said, “that they’d want to trade for one of my pieces. It’s a natural high; the ultimate compliment when another carver wants to trade.”
Jerry says his carving is “good for me both mentally and spiritually.” That’s easy to understand when you see his work. You’re drawn in to its form and color. You follow the lines with your eye and trace the grain of the wood with your finger. Each carved decoy sits suspended between art and history, fable and nature. Each one is a memory of the plunk of a lure into a crystal lake or the smell of the pines across a frozen expanse of icy water. From his hands to yours, passes the love of the outdoors and a figure laden with that magical connection between man and fish throughout history.
Captions:
Jerry Bynum of Packwaukee carves his spear fishing decoys in an expansive workroom in the lower level of his home. Many of his tools are also made specifically for his carving.
Besides spear fishing decoys, Jerry Bynum of Packwaukee makes fanciful fish mobiles using the upside down tops of old Christmas trees and numerous hand carved fish that he paints in bright colors.
Jerry Bynum of Packwaukee has earned numerous ribbons for his hand carved spear fishing decoys.
Besides working decoys, Jerry also carves folk art decoys. Here is one of his creations, also weighted to be a usable decoy. He was inspired by some big lips on a monkey and just had to carve a fish with those same big lips.
