Wooden Counterfeits

[Wild Skies]

It was a very cold day in November when a friend and I were set up in a shore blind on the Colic Slough off Wisconsin's Wolf River. The winds were blowing hard, the grey clouds were moving fast and skim ice was forming along the shoreline when a small flock of seven Green Wing Teal came screaming over the trees from behind and swooped down low over our blocks out in front of us. They kept right on a-goin' never to be seen again. But, it was that sound . . . oh, that sound . . . of the wind swishing and rustling through their wings and feathers that only a duck hunter can appreciate. Those sights and sounds are forever etched in my mind.

It was THAT DAY, it was THAT SIGHT and it was THOSE SOUNDS that inspired me to ask Robert Mitchell of Ashville, NC to carve these GWT flyers. Each and every time I look at them I relive the moments . . . I hope it never ends.