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Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Katie Burke: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. Today on the show, I have a special guest coming all the way from Essex, England, Guy Taplin. Guy is a decoy carver, waterfowl carver. We're going to do this a little different. We're going to kind of just roll straight into the interview because with him being in England and the internet connection and everything, so we're just going to kind of roll right in. But this is a really special interview, so I hope you enjoy.
Guy Taplin: You must have seen those boats, Katie. I have, I have. They're very solidly built, but I mean, the disease and the likelihood of shipwreck and all that sort of thing, where they didn't know any different, that's what they did. I suppose people will look back on the way we fly now and think, my, they must have been mad, you know?
Katie Burke: Yeah, that's probably true. Though I can't imagine being on one of those ships for that long either.
Guy Taplin: No, no, no, no, no. I can't. I just can't imagine what it was like. But Essex in many ways is, I always compare it with New Jersey. It's annexed on, I'm 70 miles from London and the road called the A12 runs to London. It's a bit like the road that runs down the Delmarva to Cape Charles. And it's a sort of area that is all marshland. It's got the second biggest coastline in the UK, and it's very deserted. It's not everyone's cup of tea, that coastline. It's muddy creeks, lonely. It's actually wonderful, you know, but it's not heavily inhabited.
Katie Burke: Well, is it heavily inhabited with waterfowl? Because is it marshy?
Guy Taplin: Yeah. Well, now we've got… I go down, I mean, almost a stone's throw from me, there's the River Colne. It goes into Colchester, which is the oldest town in the UK where the Romans were. And I've been down there today and all the banks are covered in black-tailed godwits. They're coming through a migration. The swifts, you know, they come in June, July I've left. And soon, you know, not that soon, but October you're getting the Brent Geese coming in. We call them Brent, you call them Brandt. They're wonderful birds, you know. I used to do wildfowling back in the fifties, but I, that's really what started me on this journey. You know, I was born in 39 and just at the beginning of the war and a poet, a Yates, an Irish poet said, I want to be where all the ladders start in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. And the beginning of the war was like that and the rest of the war. And when I was evacuated to Wales, I came back to London. I was interested in birds. I wasn't a collective type of person. I've never been interested in sports. So I suppose I compensated with fishing, butterflies, collecting birds' eggs. Then in the 50s, I got into a bit of wildfowling, did two years National Service, came out in 1960, and the world was opening up with the flower power, all that. So then I got caught up in all this, and I got more interested in ladies at that time. And then came back, I got a job in Regent's Park, for four years, and that was looking after the waterfowl there. Well, I got this job in Regent's Park looking after the waterfowl on the lakes. I used to go out on weekends into the antique markets and saw these palm frond Spanish decoys, and what they were doing in Spain, they were getting rid of these decoys and replacing them with plastic ones like you do in America. And I thought I'd weekends working in part where I wasn't expected to do much, just look after the birds, and I started to, I thought I can do this, I started to make birds, wooden birds, with no view other than for as a hobby, and it was the expensive end of London, the Beatles, literally, which the pop group were around the corner, And people were coming in, I had an unusual job, so they talked to you, and people wanted to buy them. And then I started, I got Joel Barber's book, and I felt the tug of the undertow on me. And then I got Bill Mackie's book, and the undertow had me sort of dragging me out. And funnily enough, I've got the handwritten Mackie's American Bird decoys, he wrote it by hand, and I bought that in auction. The guy at Copley said to me, Colin McNary, said it should be in a museum, you know, but I've got it at the moment. It should! That whole thing with Bill Mackie, reading about the cobs, I suppose after that, obsession is the only way to look at it. I've been out to Cobb Island quite a few times, and it's sort of mecca to me. It's not a thing you can explain very easily, but of all the decoy makers, I don't go in for people like Crowell. I know most of his stuff's decorative, and the dust jacket plovers are wonderful, but I go down to the wards, The Dudley, Lee Dudley, and the Cobbs, Chincoteague, Susquehanna Flats, all that area. And I met Bobby Richardson, Henry Fleckenstein, Bill Purnell, John Sullivan. They're all wonderful friends.
Katie Burke: Yeah. So, okay. I'm going to go back. There's a lot of really great stuff there, so I'll make you elaborate more on some stuff. Sure, sure. Okay. My first curiosity, and I don't think, because, I mean, all of our listeners are probably American. I doubt that we have any that aren't. is, as a wildfowler there, what was that like? So what was hunting like there? And if you've hunted in America, what would be the difference between that? How would you describe it during that time?
Guy Taplin: What, the actual wildfowling itself, how we did it?
Katie Burke: Yeah, the wildfowling itself, yeah, when you were young.
Guy Taplin: Well, when I started out, I suppose I got into it. You see, I'm a working class person, you know, the bottom of the pile, and we never had any money. And I don't know how I got into it. I did got into a bit of pigeon shooting, probably through a friend. I must have talked to somebody and heard about wildfowling. There were a lot of old books on it, but there weren't many new ones. And I had a two and a half inch chambered 12 bore, and I chucked it in for a single barreled 8 bore. by Bland. And you know, this is a Damascus barrel gun, black powder, you load your own cartridges. And off I went with it. And it weighed 14 pounds, but I was, how old was I then? I was sort of 17, 18, strong fit. And what you did, you go, I shot on the Thames estuary, it's a very big, big river. I was on this, on the north bank on an island called Two Tree Island. It had an area of sortings. You'd go out there, as the tide was on the make, and you'd either dig a hole on the edge of the saltings and cover it up with, you know, bits of earth and plants, and wait until the tide comes up and the birds start moving. So it's past shooting, really. We were shooting Curlew, Brent, Wigeon, Teal. Then, I mean, this gun, you know, was the proper job. You could kill at sort of 80, 90 yards. It fired three ounces a shot. And if you usually hit number four shot, number five shot. you've got a pretty good spread, you know. But we didn't use decoys. The only decoys were ever used were pigeons. And they were used mainly by people because pigeons were a pest, a massive pest at that time. They came down on winter greens and they cleared fields. So they've employed people full time. to shoot pigeons. And they'd use a rig, maybe 20, 30 pigeons, but they'd been doing this since about 1890. And there's a firm, I don't know where it's still going, called Truelock & Harris, and they made punt guns, and they made the best pigeon decoys. You've had Dick McIntyre, you know Dick McIntyre, he's got a wonderful collection of Truelock & Harris and wonderful decoys. But it was said that we didn't have any decoys in Europe, but in fact we have. And a few people have written about them. There was a bloke called Chopin in France on the Camargue, the Truelock. A lot of people like in America, couldn't afford to buy commercial decoys, so they made their own. So you've got this enormous diversity of decoys, some with wings, all sorts of things. People get very inventive around this, you know, which has always puzzled me in America, because you've got this massive amount of decoys, mainly down the eastern seaboard, and some of them, a lot of them, are extremely creative. And you wonder, and these are ordinary people. They weren't very well educated, I don't think. And they knew about nature. They studied the birds. The birds were their living, they were market gunning, which we didn't do here. That's the big difference between our wildfowl. We didn't shoot for the market. We've mostly people shot for their food and maybe their neighbours. And a lot of that, and it still goes on, is punt gunning. I remember buying, I bought punt guns, I bought five muzzle-loading punt guns on the Blackwater. And when I'd finished buying them, I said to the guy who introduced me to these chaps, I said, what are they talking about? He said, they want to know whether you want any handguns. And I said, I don't think so. And he said, I said, what are they? He said, 12-bores. They regarded 12-bores as handguns. And of course, the punt guns were enormous, you know, the big Tong. It's the biggest punt gun in the world, firing 32 ounces, you know.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I guess there wasn't a need to outlaw them there because they weren't using them to the degree that they were being used here in America. We were just using them to massacre.
Guy Taplin: I mean, you were on the flight lines, you see. We had it with fish here. I mean, we had mackerel coming down Aries coast, and the women from Scotland would follow them. I mean, you're talking thousands of tons probably, and they're migrating, and they were catching them, and the women would follow down from the north of England, right down here, and prepare them, and then they stop moving. I mean, you always think fish are dumb, but they're not. They know they're being pursued, and they change their habits, you know. But we didn't have… I mean, the Eskimo Curlew is the one you… you got rid of over there. I mean, I talked to a chap, he's dead now, he was a wildfowler in Scotland, a man called George Trafford. And he'd been in Alaska and I was talking to him and he said, I found an Eskimo Curlew's nest. He was an old time egg collector, you know, a man. And he said, they'd been all over me from America trying to show me the pictures of it. And he's the only one I ever talked to that had You know, it was truthful, man. It actually found a nest. This was back in the 60s. There's still debate whether they're alive or not, you know, but who knows?
Katie Burke: Yeah, that's really interesting and very different from what I think a lot of people will have known. We talk about this a lot on the podcast and this like feeling of that oneness with nature and especially when you are, while you say wildfowling, we say duck hunting, waterfowling, that you get when you're out there amongst them and in their habitat. And did you have that experience at that age and did it influence you going forward?
Guy Taplin: Well, do you know, I've got it as I'm now, you know, I'm heading up to, like, 86 now. And I've found more, it's hard to put it into words, really, an affinity. It is, it's a very… Yeah, it is very difficult. I mean, it's a form of love, really. And you want to, basically, when you're younger, you know, Wildfowling, basically, is often a young man's game, because it's cold, you get up four o'clock in the morning, you've got to be bonkers to do it, you know. And often you don't kill anything. But the atmosphere out there, the weather, the tides, is very, very intense. And probably one of the most precious experiences you can have is hunting. I mean, I do a lot of spinning. I'm recently spinning for Pike. And hunting is totally different from going out for a walk. I mean, the trouble is with me, I realised that it didn't need me, there's enough people, enough people damaging the planet without me adding to it, so I stopped shooting. But I miss it a lot, you know, and I've got a big collection of old wildfowling guns, you know, really good ones, big boars. But when my first one, a love of nature came first, really, really looking back on it, a deep love of nature, and collecting, I think that's why people collect eggs and all the other things they go after, is a form of connecting with nature. My daughter calls it a Dharma door. It's like if you look at any of the religious things like Christ, they're Dharma doors, and you go through them to get what you're looking for. And I think decoys, for certain people, Henry Fleckenstein, John Sullivan, certainly were people like that. They weren't in it. They earned a living out of it, but they weren't in it for the money solely, you know. They were in for the history, the experience, picking up an old bird, and often you smell them. This is the funny thing. You turn them over and smell the wood. I've talked to John Sullivan lots of times about it, and I don't understand why I've got that deep feeling for those things, you know. I mean, I was going to become, I was going to become a monk. I was interested in Buddhism, Rinzai Zen. It's a militant school of Buddhism. And I was going to become a monk, but I met Rabina, my wife, and love and my fall of religion didn't go together very well. So I could have been a monk. But I think people with a lot of emotion, like Henry had and John Sullivan's got, they're not on a spiritual thing, but it's not a totally dissimilar journey to one's heart. You develop over a period of time, especially if you're a maker. If you talk to someone, I mean, I don't know whether he's like that, but I've talked to Cameron a few times, Cameron McIntyre,
Katie Burke: Yes, he is very much like that.
Guy Taplin: I think he would, he would have his own way of expressing himself, but I've got a deep feeling it's the eye to eye on me that, you know, a lot of them, a lot of them talk.
Katie Burke: Yes, he would. I'm good friends with Cameron and I interviewed him and you need to listen to his interview. I did, I did. Yeah, it's very, he's very much very thoughtful. He's his own man.
Guy Taplin: Has an emotional… Yeah, and you earn that. It's not a gift to you. It's not an easy road going down. Even though I'm married and I've got Nancy, it's not an easy path. You have emotional stuff going on all the time. I'm up and down like a yo-yo, even at my age. But you make a path by going. You uncover an old path. Those are the wonderful sayings, you know. And as I said to you when we're emailing, when I was down there with Curtis Badger on that Delmarva, I looked up the book, tracing the origins of the Cobb property. And that's what it said in the beginning, standing in the doorway of a day long ago.
Katie Burke: I haven't really talked about this as much, but I understand what you're saying. And I think, you know, you have it as an artist and then probably John, who's a friend of you and the podcast and myself personally, but has it as a historian. And as someone, so I was, me and my background was art history, art, then art history, then museums. And when I was going through that, especially when I was doing the museum work, my master's work, We all had, it was definitely, it was a unique experience because it was a small group, but a group of people. Maybe we're different and we're interested in different parts of that world, but we definitely had this innate connection with the past and maybe I, you know, I did it through, you know, different, like through art and through, um, I grew up in waterfowling and that sort of thing. So I had it in that direction, but that was more my focus, but they all had it. And it was, and I tell, I think, and I talk about this with people who collect a lot more than I do artists, because I feel like collecting is something you're kind of born with that connection to physical objects. Um, And it's just really interesting. I do. I think that feeling in something… Now, if you have people in your life that can help support that and let you lean into it a little more, it's great because then you can do it. But it's definitely… I think it's something you're born with. I don't know. I think some people just have it and have that connection. When I think about decoys, I think… That's so crazy, and you'll think this too, is they didn't need to make them that way.
Guy Taplin: No, no, they didn't.
Katie Burke: No, like the ducks would have came, but other objects, like the ducks, if it was strictly for hunting, that they didn't need to do that. They, you know, if that the only goal was to kill the ducks and that that wasn't necessary, but obviously they had, they wanted to put more into it besides that.
Guy Taplin: Well, what I find, um, certainly the most pleasurable things, you know, I find to do is if you're making something for somebody, not for money, it's like it could be a wedding gift or a birthday or something like that. Rubina will say to me, have you got anything for so-and-so? You know, and I think, oh God, you know, and I thought I'll make something, you know, and I get a lot of pleasure out of doing that, but I still have to get it right. I can't cut corners on it, you know, um, I've got to get it right. And I think the people, I mean, I know probably intuitively more about the Cobbs than anyone else. I mean, those people could build boats. They could… I mean, you look at those hotels on that island. It was a lot of builders on there. No doubt they were transported timber and stuff from the main… But they could build houses, you know. In those days, people were very adept with their hands. And I don't think they… And they're all different. You look at the decoys up there. If you look at a Dudley and you look at… Bernard, you know, I think, I think the Bernard, the high head Bernard's probably the best Sashkoana decoys. I mean, you've got the, you've got the Holly, you know, the James Holly teal, those lovely little teal. But I think the Bernard's, in my book anyway, I mean, I know the Graham's are historically wonderful, but I think the Bernard's are great. And yet they're all different, you know what I mean? But the thing is, you take somebody like Shang Wheeler up on Stratford in Connecticut. Lang came along, Holmes, I've probably got my older role, and then Shang Wheeler. And they, a lot of people copied them. You know, you always got one guy, nothing cop. And then there's a load of other people. They weren't going to be worried about being creative or anything. They were just worried about making a decoy. they see something like a cob, they do their version of a cob. You know, they've got split wings and fitted head. So it's interesting, the one person predominantly does that. I mean, with Dudley, I mean, I think his canvas backs or, you know, the early ones without the wing cuts on them, where they've got the LD in, are absolutely wonderful. You know, they're as good as anything from the pyramids or China or anything. You know, they're just a wonderful object.
Katie Burke: And they're very, they're so standalone too, because when you look at the rest of that area, like he came up with something completely, because he had a whole different interpretation of what a duck would be.
Guy Taplin: I remember being in Henry Fleckenstein's house, and George Riger was writing an article for the National Geographic, and Dick McIntyre came in, and he had a Shangri-La black duck, I believe, and two or three Dudley Cans. And I was, it was early days to me. And I, you know, I don't know that much now, but I certainly didn't know very much then. And I thought, wow, this is fantastic. You know, and they, they were talking about McCleary and Bobby Richardson was there and this was back in the seventies and they going, we don't understand the guy, you know, what is, buys everything. Because I always thought he lived in Texas, McCleary, and I don't think a lot of tax, John Tax, came out of there, I think. There weren't a lot of decoys there.
Katie Burke: No, there's nothing. John Tax came out of Minnesota. Minnesota, was it? Minnesota. Yeah, Minnesota. Yeah, there's nobody in Texas.
Guy Taplin: Let me see. So he, like me, When I found interest, most people in America seemed to collect initially the state, the decoy, the New Jersey, Maryland, they collect the decoys there. And because it's got so, it's got terribly expensive now, you know. I mean, I looked at the last couple of Guy and Dieter auctions and you can still pick up stuff reasonably, but the good stuff is, you know, unbelievable.
Katie Burke: I mean, look at that. Shea Guillory Yeah. It's interesting because where I grew up, there's nothing. And it's a very deep, rich waterfowling hunting history, but we have no decoy or no calls either in Mississippi. So it's interesting. I don't know why that is. There's some debate because where I'm from, it's similar to the Arkansas area, which is known as the duck hunting capital of the world. And there's some debate, like maybe because of the way we hunted in flooded timber, there wasn't the need for decoys in the same way. I don't know, but it is interesting. And I have always found it interesting with collectors, why they collect what they collect, because some of them do. stick to their state, their area. Some of them pick by species. I've seen that a lot. Yep, I've seen that a lot. Like, you know, there's a guy I know that does only teal, he has a big teal collection. I also know a guy who has a big Canada goose collection. So I do, and I also have some, he does my ganzers as well. So I don't know, I don't know. The science behind, the psychology, I should say, behind collecting is very unique for the individual.
Guy Taplin: Well, I think what's interesting is if you look through, say, something like Deacon magazine, you'll get people, he's dead now, but like Joe French, because he's had a lot of experience, tell early beginners what to do. And one of the things I found that I developed is I collected You know, you hear people like Bowman. I mean, you've got to wash your mouth down there when you mention that name. Dilley, you know, Obadiah, Obadiah Verity. I'd still prefer it to be Bowman, personally. And Crowell, the Wards, the Cobbs, Hancock, Jester, you know, Hudson, all that lot. It's a big selection. And I started to collect them all, you know, the whole lot, and pretty good ones as well. But then I found in the recent years, my taste, and in making stuff, has got down to really beat up old things. I remember McNair saying to me, Mark McNair, this was back in the 70s, he said, you can't do, he's talking about the paint, you can't do what nature does, but you can, you can do what nature does, but when you don't do it, you put it out in the garden for six months. So you can't do it with oils. but you can do it with receptive paints. Like, basically, I don't use any artistic paints at all. I use household emulsion and it's very, very porous. And you can put it in the garden and the weather does, if you want it to look old, the weather, leave it out there six months and it looks a hundred years old. But that's everyone's, but I prefer old beat up things. So I'm away from Crow and people like that, you know, the Northern lot, Massachusetts, I'm more down South.
Katie Burke: What was your introduction to decoys? Like where was the first decoys you saw? And then how did you get your hands on a barber book over there to know to even look for it?
Guy Taplin: Yes, good point. Well, as I said to you, I used to go down to all of the London antique markets, Portobello Road, Church Street, Camden Passage. They were, by today's standards, pretty rough already. And there'd be these palm… The Spanish was using palm fronds for the body, and they'd put them in, rather like the Californians do. And they were, I don't know, 10, 15 pounds, you know, $10, something like that. And I went back, and because I was rearing young birds, so I had to be there seven days a week, but they didn't expect me to do much a weekend, so I had an island. in Regent's Park, and with a shed on it, and surrounded by birds. And I'd loved nature anyway, and I'd done Wildfowl, and I thought, I'd like to have a go at this. And I wrote to the Shooting Times, which is a magazine in this country. It crosses the ball between Wildfowl, and pheasants, grouse, everything. And they put me on to a guy called Terry Dean, who was a fly-tire. He tied flies for fishing. And he told me about Barber. and I got the book. I don't know how I got in touch about Mackie. I think there was, I think Decoy Magazine, an early one, or Decoy Marketplace was out and they had adverts for it. And I'd love to know, I mean, I think Bill Purnell, they said that he's just an old tune to Tigger. I bought some very good decoys off of Bill. And he, all that's got, he's still there, Bill. So is Bobby Richardson, but they're older than me. I mean, I think they're 88. That early school are nearly gone now, you know, and they were picking up stuff on the coast. And I was talking to John O'Sullivan a couple of days ago, and he's been talking to Bobby and Bill. And I said, get the stories out of them. You know, they've got fantastic stories. You know, with Roy Ball, with his collection. He said, Bill said to me, he went down there and he said, I want to get some cobs. And he said, a guy was coming past with a truck. Some of them had no signatures in any, it was like, they were like $20. with ends or ease, they were like $30. And he said, but I know where we can get them. And he went to Chariton and saw the cobs. Roy Ball got a really good black duck. Bill got a few things, you know, and they were picking them up still at Salks. I mean, I went round Oyster with Walter Ola. Unfortunately, he's dead and all now. And we knocked on doors and picked up a few things. And what was interesting in the church in Oyster, there's a picture of Christ and it's signed by swords. And you've got to think is, you know, those guys, you know, road transport was not that good in those days. And they were going on down the coast with cargo. And, you know, it would be like walking down the street for them, you know, to go down to Oyster or something like that. They'd go down there and bring something and take something back. I'm sure that's how a lot of their decoys, you know, the Cobbs got the New Jersey birds, Elkennedys anyway, later on.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I mean, it's not that far from each other.
Guy Taplin: No, no, not at all. It's all pretty close. And they're all sailing boats as well, you know. And the thing is with the Cobbs, for me, the Cobbs were the ultimate, you know, they, they, seven mile out on this sandbar and they, built they built a dynasty out there and then in before the civil war and obviously 1896 it's white it's wiped out it's gone everything's gone and it was so and what they left behind was you know the wonderful barrier island museum with all their stuff um i went out there and jack brady took me out, he's older than I am, took the whole family out, I went out with Nancy and Rubina and got right out to where the barrier islands were and we could see the surf break, it was an old aluminium boat, the surf break in November and he said to Nancy, I don't want to worry you folks but we're in the wrong channel, And I thought, this is typical. And she got her phone out on Google Earth and guided him in to Cobb's Island. And I thought, that's the modern world with the old world, you know. And it's that. The thing is with me here, the good thing is that no one knows about decoys in this country at all. And so I started to make these wooden burns. It was like walking on water. You know, I couldn't make enough of them for people. But I've got no one here at all that has got the slightest idea I can talk to about it or anything, you know. It's all in America.
Katie Burke: That wraps up part one of my interview with Guy Taplin. Stay tuned for part two. Thanks to our producer, Chris Isaac, and thanks to you, our listener, for supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.