The city of Fortuna shut down their Main Street on Saturday to have a town yard sale. I had stopped to hit the ATM on the corner and decided to take a walk. About a block down, I came upon this fun find. It's a Pacific Brant decoy and a good crude one at that! I'm told that a lot of these were made of Redwood since it's rot resistant, light and fairly durable and was a very abundant material in this area. I'm not sure if this one is or not.

This decoy is pretty neat because the body is not carved very evenly making it heavy on one side and light on the other. The maker had to get creative when he weighted it in order to make it float level. The head is probably a replacement, The paint is old and right but the wood doesn't show the same wear as the body. They break a lot of heads because they are delicate in nature being so much smaller than a regular duck or goose head.

All in all, it's a great representative local brant decoy that will be a fun reminder of my stay here in California and of the time last winter when I tagged along on a Youth hunt for Brant.








Young Hunters mopping up the cripples after dropping 5 birds out of one flock
The decoys in the picture are 40 year old Herters. It gives you an idea just how old the one I found probably is.

Neat stuff right there! I like the weighted bottom as well, very interesting.

Awesome find dude. I'm eat up with old decoys, I got a bunch, most of them just sentimental from the local old timers that have passed.