By Jim Smith
NOTE: This story originally ran in the October 2017 issue of Up North Voice
GRAYLING – it just might be one of Tom Haller’ hand carved duck decoys and if it’ yours, you have a real treasure. Tom retired from his occupation as a carpenter and moved to the Grayling area almost thirty years ago. He grew up shortly after the ‘Great Depression’ years in Detroit’ ‘Down River’ area in a family that lived for duck hunting. Every chance they got they headed for the Canadian marsh’ across from Grosse Isle. As a young man and a carpenter’ apprentice, Tom said they never had enough money to buy duck decoys so one day he decided to try his hand at carving some.
Tom salvaged old telephone poles to obtain the cedar he preferred for the decoy bodies and ordered the heads pre-carved from Herter’ catalog. The first year he started carving he made one hundred decoys.
<span “=””>’They weren’t real pretty but they sure attracted ducks,’ Tom said.
>At the same time, the family did a lot of spear fishing through the ice. Naturally, Tom figured if he could carve ducks, he could also carve spear fishing decoys. Between the duck hunting and the ice fishing Tom was able to bring home ‘a lot of bacon’ to help feed his family as he was growing up.
As time went on and marriage and children took up more and more of his life, duck hunting and ice fishing kind of got left behind. It wasn’t until the kids went off on their own that Tom and his wife were able to relax and move north to a home on the AuSable’ east branch. Here, Tom again found time to start working on his decoy’.
Tom makes two kinds of duck and fish decoys, working and ornamental. For his ornamental artwork decoys he uses a variety of wood species. The pine, cedar and basswood figures are usually painted to mirror the real fish and birds they represent. His duck decoys are designed to look like a flock of ducks at rest or feeding on the water.
His spear fishing decoys are made to look like something larger fish would eat. As Tom says, ‘Don’t make it look like a fish, make it look like food.’
When Tom starts a new decoy he typically attacks an old telephone pole with his chain saw cutting out chunks of wood that can be finish cut on his band saw. The resulting blanks are the starting point for Tom’ duck decoy bodies or fish models. A wood rasp does a nice job of roughing out the duck decoy bodies but the duck heads and the spear fishing decoys are all hand carved by Tom using just his old fashioned ‘jack knife’.
Once the decoy is sanded and fins and heads attached, the final finish is dictated by the ultimate use. Decorative pieces are finished to look like real fish or ducks and the working pieces receive weights and hook-ups to make them appear as real ducks or food a Northern Pike may gobble down.
During the summer you will find Tom whittling away at the Grayling Fish Hatchery. In the winter he goes south but his decoys can still be found at the ‘Tip’n the Mitten’ on Michigan Avenue in Grayling.
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