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But have you ever considered using driftwood for making duck decoys? You can, very easily and at a neat profit, too! That is, if in your spare time you emulate the hobby of Rudy LeCompte, oil chemist of Bay town, Texas, who conceived and developed the unusual idea in his locale fifteen years ago.

LeCompte, an outdoor enthusiast, hit upon the plan when he was suddenly struck by the urge to do some duck hunting, but after investing in a new shotgun, hip boots, shells and a small boat, found he couldn't afford the price sporting goods stores were asking for factory-made duck decoys.

The chemist refused to use junk for lures, such as tin cans, paper sacks or other rubbish adrift to attract wild ducks into a duck pond. Some hunters did with surprising success, he says, but not many self-respecting sportsmen resorted to that crude method. Neither would he. He vowed that next season he would own two dozen duck decoys or else!

"But next hunting season my finances were even lower," LeCompte recalls, "what with building a new home, illness in the family and two growing children."

LECOMPTE FOUND, a solution to his decoy problem the following summer, however, when he went trout fishing near Galveston bay. While waiting for a nibble he idly watched pieces of driftwood play across the water and wash inland. At the water's edge he noticed a large deposit of driftwood, the same sort of buoyant driftage he and his brothers, as boys, often used to fashion crude life preservers to aid them in learning to swim.

Quickly reeling in his fishing line, the chemist loaded the lightweight driftwood into his boat and headed home with a great idea spinning around in his mind. A great idea, that is, if it would work.

"My family didn't think much of my venture," LeCompte says. "As a matter of fact, they told me so in no uncertain terms. In a way I couldn't much blame them."

So without benefit of a mechanized workshop or high-powered tools, the Bay town chemist began experimenting in a corner of his garage, carving with a sharp knife driftwood replicas of real wild duck—mallards, pintails, canvasbacks and teals.

After fifteen years he still clings to no more tangible assets than a hatchet, a small handplane, a sharp pocket knife, several small cans of paint bought from a variety store and, of course, a supply of driftwood.

"Possibly the only thing that might be time saving is a bandsaw," LeCompte says, "but I manage without one since the work is simple, easy and pleasantly relaxing."

ACCORDING TO LeCompte, he never really tried to sell his driftwood decoys, but friends and fellow duck hunters seemed so enthusiastic over the effectiveness of them that he was almost forced to continue his craft to comply with the wishes of his hunting friends.

Sportsmen, duck hunting in the Houston-Galveston area, spotted the LeCompte decoys and orders began coming to him via telephone, mail and direct approach. "Actually before I knew it," LeCompte says, "I was in business. And the best part of it all, as I soon learned, is that in hunting circles the demand for good driftwood decoys was great. And if anything, the demand seems even greater now."

Without making any organized effort to show his duck models to the public, LeCompte says he has never had any trouble selling as many decoys as he can carve. Like most people, his spare time is limited and he spends only odd hours at his workbench.

Although local sporting goods stores have encouraged this hobbyist to display his driftwood ducks in their sports windows for the purpose of sales promotion, LeCompte has never found it essential to accept their generous offer.

"In my case there never has been any real need for organized sales promotion," he says. "I do a lot of duck hunting, and using my driftwood decoys on these hunts, I come in contact with many hunters from other locales. They see my decoys in actual use, and usually if they like them they will place their decoy order with me for the next hunting season."

TO PROFIT from his driftwood hobby, LeCompte works months preceding the winter hunting season. He attributes most of his decoy sales to always having several dozen decoys on hand and an ample supply of his products by the time hunters start purchasing their necessary fall hunting supplies.

For many hunting seasons, when time would permit, LeCompte helped supply private hunting clubs in his areas with driftwood decoys.

"These private hunting clubs," LeCompte explains, "need a large supply of duck decoys on hand not only for the use of their fellow hunting members but for the benefit of hunting guests as well.

"These sporting groups take pride in their duck decoys and are not only eager to find a decoy maker in their area to help supply their demand, but they will also pay generous prices every season to have their decoys painted and repaired."

Though LeCompte has never placed his wares in store windows to boost his decoy sales he has obtained publicity in other ways. In the past, local school, civic, and handicraft organizations sponsoring hobby shows and exhibits have sought out the chemist to display his driftwood decoys on their program for the benefit of his Texas community. It is little wonder LeCompte is known in his southwest area as "the man with the ducks."

Then last year, being a modest person, LeCompte was taken aback when he was approached by National Broadcasting Company television cameramen, who made a five-minute movie of his simple decoy-making hobby for nationally telecast news reels and sports programs.

"That was quite an experience," LeCompte relates laughingly. "But going through a lot of tiresome, slow motions wasn't all fun.'"

Not only duck hunters and outdoor enthusiasts beat a path to this man's door, but also women eager to solve Christmas and birthday problems. Many decoy orders are placed by wives who want the ideal gift for their hunter husbands. Others are homemakers, eager to have LeCompte carve driftwood decoys for mantelpiece ornaments for dens, or to convert them into lamps for their homes.

But the bulk of LeCompte's products he sells to sportsmen in his southwest section. And since wild ducks of the mallard, pintail and canvasback species are more universally prevalent and more frequently hunted by sportsmen in almost all parts of the United States, LeCompte carves and paints his models to resemble these three particular types.

"I sell my driftwood decoys, usually, in units of twelve," LeCompte says, "but most duck hunters want no less than twenty-four decoys. Mainly because two dozen artificials make an adequate stool for hunting in small sloughs and lakes.

"Before prices rose so high, I charged $2 per decoy or $24 per dozen decoys, but the last six years I've had no trouble selling my handcarved models for $4 per decoy or $48 per dozen. Duck hunters seem eager to buy my models for this price, which certainly compensates for my spare time spent at the workbench."

AFTER BEGINNING his hobby, LeCompte fashioned a two-piece decoy pattern to simplify his handcarving method. With this pattern he has been able to achieve accurate body proportions for his driftwood decoys. Today, he still finds his patterns which he suggests can be cut from heavy cardboard or ¼-inch plywood, to be indispensable to his craft.

Using a real, wild mallard duck, which he killed one hunting season, as an original in creating a pattern for his decoys, LeCompte devised a pretty accurate guide for carving his mallards, pintail and canvasback models. All three varieties of decoys can be carved from this two-piece pattern with only slight variation in the shape of the tail tips on the decoys.

"There is little difference in the body size and shape of the two species of mallard ducks—the greenhead drakes or the mallard hens," LeCompte says, "but the pintail and canvasback ducks are somewhat different. Pintails are what their name implies, birds with a decided long pointed tail. Canvasback ducks have much broader bodies and a much shorter tail. But I do carve all three models from the one pattern and vary the size and shape in carving."

Small driftwood scraps are used in making the head parts of the decoys which are carved separately from the main body parts. These decoy heads are attached to the decoy body with six-penny nails before any of the painting is done.

LeCompte prefers using cypress driftwood in making his artificials. However, he recommends other soft, lightweight wood such as balsa, tupelo, cottonwood, spruce and other wood which is available to the would-be decoy maker.

"Any of these soft woods," he says, "might be just as pliable to work and just as effective in the finished product." Hand-sawing the driftwood into fifteen-inch cross-cut pieces, LeCompte removes all excess roughness with a hatchet, trimming the wood down into slabs of five-inch thickness. These five-by-fifteen-inch driftwood blocks are used for the body parts of the decoys. Any driftwood piece which measures one and one-half by four by six inches is large enough for the making of a decoy head.

Applying his cardboard decoy patterns to the driftwood and outlining the duck profiles with a heavy pencil, LeCompte does the rest with a sharp knife, small hand plane and scads of sandpaper. The decoy head parts are then attached to the body parts with six-penny nails. Then LeCompte gives his assembled models a vigorous sanding with fine sandpaper, smoothing them to a slick finish.

"CARVING A decoy," LeCompte says, "takes little more than one hour, but the painting of a decoy takes much longer because of the time it takes for different color paints to dry."

Before painting, LeCompte applies a generous coat of shellac to his models as a protective base coat to seal the driftwood decoy and to make it water resistant. "In painting decoys," he says, "you have to avoid using a glossy paint. I always use dull tones or flat paints. From experience I know nothing is so detrimental to a duck hunter on a sunshiny day as a bright, glary stool of decoys. Wild ducks are pretty wary creatures; your decoys must not scare them off."

For instance, in painting mallard drakes, better known to duck hunters as "greenheads," LeCompte paints the decoy first with a white paint, preferably an "outdoor" white paint.

After this white primer coat is dry on his driftwood models LeCompte paints the decoy head a dark green. The breasts of the mallard drakes are painted a dark brown; the wings dark grey with two Prussian blue stripes on the wings. Around the decoy neck, he allows the white paint to show just enough to form a white ring around the drake's neck.

The remainder of the mallard drake decoy is painted a light grey. The decoy tail is painted black with white on the tail tip. On the duck bill or beak LeCompte uses a greenish-yellow paint combination which he mixes himself, for authentic duck color.

In the painting of a mallard hen, LeCompte uses a light brown paint, the predominant color for this type of duck. A darker brown paint is "dotted" on to show contrast in the plumage, and to resemble feathers. The bill of the mallard hen is colored with an orange paint.

The pintail decoy, though very graceful, is not quite as colorful as the mallards. This type of decoy requires nothing more, LeCompte says, than a white breast, dark brown head, light grey bill, dark grey wing feathers and a black tail tip.

The canvasback decoy requires black paint for the breast, dark rust for the head, dark grey for the bill, a lighter grey for the wing feathers and also a black tail.

LeCompte mixes much of his own paint in order to obtain more authentic wild duck colors for his decoys and to achieve as lifelike an appearance as possible. "To do a good job on duck decoys," he says, "that is, in the painting . . . it would be well for the novice to study books on wildlife. Most of these carry good pictures of the different species of wild ducks. They also show realistic, vivid colors which one might well try to match in painting a decoy."

AFTER THE paint is dry on his driftwood models, on the base of each decoy LeCompte attaches thin strips of lead to assure proper balance of the decoy on water and to prevent it from tipping on a windy day, as almost any type of decoy will do, he says, if not properly weighted.

LeCompte makes these lead strips, which resemble in size the blade of an ordinary paring knife, at his work shelf. First, he melts salvaged lead scraps over a flame until the lead liquefies; then he pours the hot melted lead into very shallow molds, one by four inches.

After these lead strips harden in their molds, LeCompte removes them and places one lead strip lengthwise on the base of each decoy. Using small copper nails, he hammers the nails through the lead strips at each end, thereby fastening them securely to the bottom of the decoy keels. (It is possible to drive a nail through lead which has been heated and formed into thin strips.

As a finishing touch to make his driftwood models more lifelike and appealing, LeCompte livens and dresses them up with amber-colored, plastic "duck eyes," which he purchases from sporting goods stores for just a few cents.