Brothers of the Blade, Part One

Now the question became, “What to carve?” Rich suggested that we expand our horizons and carve something less common. We decided on a rosy-billed pochard, a bird from South America. There are 15 different species of pochards in the world, including the greater and lesser scaup, ringneck ducks, canvasbacks, and redheads of North America.

So why the rosy-billed, you ask? “It was a hair-brained idea of my lunkhead of a brother, Ross!” says Rich. With the project selected, it was time to get carving.

We enjoyed the chance to carve something in our Dad’s shop. The project became a homecoming of sorts for both of us, an opportunity to design and carve a bird together and in a place where we both spent time with our dad. It connected us to those simpler days when Dad was in charge, and all we had to do was listen. In fact, we can still hear him saying, “Are you making little ones out of big ones?” and “Boy, that looks like a waste of good wood.” All in good fun, of course. Join us, as two brothers continue a family tradition and make a decoy together, each in his own style, as only brothers can do.

After the years we’ve had together and all the talk about family, Rich and I had a discussion about spending more time with each other. Thanks to distance and obligations, we seldom get time to carve together. We decided a great way to do that would be to carve a bird in Dad’s Pennsylvania shop, known as “Smoker’s North.” It turned out to be a good way to reconnect as brothers and to compare our different carving styles