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Some, hunters took wounded birds home and nursed
them back to health to employ in subsequent hunting seasons. Other
would-be breeders stole eggs from wild mallard nests and incubated
them under a farmyard hen. Eventually call birds were generations removed
from wild birds; and a thriving market developed for eggs, young and
adult call birds. The classified ad sections of newspapers and outdoor
magazines were awash with call birds for sale, particularly in the
early-1900s as wildfowl grew increasingly scarce and competition between
hunters to shoot what was left intensified.
 Illinois, with its famed wildfowling tradition, seemed to be the epicenter of
call bird production and sales; and most call bird breeders seemed to be in the
eastern half of the country. “PURE BLOOD MALLARD DECOYS, the small kind, $3.00
per pair. A square deal. Also ferrets.” was the November 1913 Outer’s Book classified
ad from E.N. Hoover of Sterling, Illinois. Wallace Evans Game Farm in St. Charles,
Illinois advertised in Outdoor Life, November 1929: “DUCK HUNTERS—We
now have ready for delivery a fine lot of genuine small variety English or Belgian
Gray Call Ducks. Nearly every variety of wild duck responds readily to their
clear, soft, enticing voice. They are very tame and easy to handle. Order early
and avoid disappointment.” Nebraska-reared call birds were available. Earl Haswell
from Tekamah advertised in the September 1930 issue of Outdoor America:
“GENUINE Small Type English Call Ducks, first prize winners at Madison Square
Gardens. Canada Geese decoys and breeders.”
Seldom did a year pass when Griswold’s letters-from-readers column did not contain
one or more inquires from hunters wanting to buy call birds or breeders offering
them for sale, particularly as the hunting season approached. For those not wanting
the hassle of keeping call birds year-round, they could buy, perhaps even rent,
birds in short order for a hunting trip. J.C. Den, who operated a sporting goods
store in North Platte for many years, advertised in the North Platte Telegraph in
September 1922 that he had “Live Decoy Holders” in stock and: “If you are in
want of live Goose or Duck Decoys, I can put you in touch with parties who can
furnish them.”
A Chincoteague, Virginia breeder, in the November 1925 issue of Field and
Stream, quoted the following prices: Black or gray English callers $6 per
pair, young black mallards $7 per pair, “old stock” black mallards $9 per pair,
and Canada geese $15 per pair. Canada geese, known to mate for life, or at least
so long as both of the pair were alive, were typically sold as pairs. Those prices,
give or take a dollar or two one way or the other, were typical of the 1920s
and early-1930s, varying slightly with how proud the breeder was of his stock,
how many he needed to sell and how close it was to the opening of the waterfowl
hunting season. McNeel said that there were so many men in North Plate who raised
call birds, both ducks and geese, that often a call duck could be bought for
a dollar and a call goose for five. Sometimes, if the breeder knew you or needed
to cull his flock down after the hunting season, he would just give them away.
According to Griswold, ducks appropriate for use as live decoys could even be
had at the market in larger cities such as Omaha, although, if one reads enough
of Griswold’s writing it becomes obvious he occasionally wrote with more authority
than warranted on topics of which he had little firsthand knowledge.
“For the benefit of wild fowl shooters interested in call ducks—as live decoys
are called in the east—I will say that there is no need of importing these ducks
from the ducking resorts of that section of the country, for all you have to
do is to put three or four dollars in your pocket, stroll down through the market
and look at the coops of ducks exposed for sale, and if you know a mallard duck
when you see it you will have no difficulty in picking out eight good representative
drakes,” Griswold wrote in a March 10, 1912, Omaha World-Herald column.
“Then look out for four hens, getting those as near the color of the wild duck
as possible, and if you can find any small, rather light grown [small] hens,
with a white stripe on the cheek, don’t fail to secure them. Back on the Illinois
river, they have plenty of them, and you will find them in almost any market.
They have proved to my knowledge the best and most incessant callers that I ever
handled. But no great matter if you don’t get them; it is all in handling decoys.” [
Live decoy advertisments from Outdoor America, October 1927]
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