Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / Million-Dollar Decoys, Rare Duck Calls & the Hunt for History (Ep 803)

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Million-Dollar Decoys, Rare Duck Calls & the Hunt for History (Ep 803) · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:00
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• 0:31
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• 0:38
  Katie Burke: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast. I'm your host, Katie Burke, and we are here live at DUX in Memphis, Tennessee in the podcast trailer. And I have Jon Deeter here from Guyette and Detter. Welcome to the show, Jon.
• 0:52
  Thank you, Katie. It's fun to be here. It's quite an event. Yeah. And this is our, this is my first time in this podcast trailer.
• 0:58
  Jon Deeter: I understand we're number four in the trailer.
• 1:00
  Katie Burke: We're number four in the trailer. So this is your first time to DUX. It's our second time having DUX.
• 1:06
  Jon Deeter: It is. I'm impressed. Two floors at the convention center packed with energetic people and lots of displays and decoys and camo and Yeah. If you're a duck hunter, you need to be here.
• 1:17
  Katie Burke: Yeah. It's cool. And last year, we just had the one four, so now it's yeah. It's doubled from last year. Yeah.
• 1:22
  So it's fun and we look forward to it every year, and I'm always shocked to see how many people come out. It's fun.
• 1:29
  Jon Deeter: Glad to be here this year, and I know I'll be back.
• 1:31
  Katie Burke: Alright. So so much has happened. I guess we talked from the podcast. Last time we talked was probably back in March.
• 1:38
  Jon Deeter: I think that's correct.
• 1:39
  Katie Burke: Yeah. And it was right before you had the first Cook sale.
• 1:42
  Jon Deeter: Right.
• 1:43
  Katie Burke: So a lot has happened since then. Yeah. You had two decoys sell for over $1,000,000. Alright. Two record breakers.
• 1:50
  How's it been going since?
• 1:51
  Jon Deeter: It's good. So that's the Jim and Diane Cook collection. They they they spent forty Jim spent forty years of his life acquiring the finest examples by the most important makers. He he was passionate about decoys. He was a super nice guy, shared his information with everybody, but it came time to sell his decoy collection.
• 2:10
  So we we picked it up last fall. We spent about a year preparing for this. We put together a book of the Jim and Diane Cook collection before the auction, and then April was our kickoff date for that sale. We had a 135 items of their approximately 430, but a 135 items in that April auction. And we have two day auctions in Lombard, Illinois every year at the North American Sporting Collectibles Association, and our auction, it's fifty years and running now.
• 2:43
  So if you haven't been to that Yes. It's not quite DUX, but it is for the Sporting Heritage and Sporting Collectibles. Anyway, so we had a two day sale there. It was our biggest sale ever. We reached $10,000,000.
• 2:54
  Katie Burke: Wow.
• 2:55
  Jon Deeter: The cook portion of that, the 165 items was 6,500,000. So yeah. So so Jim doing his due diligence and collecting over the years has certainly paid off. So what was important about that sale, Katie, and as you mentioned, a Joe Lincoln Wood Ducks sold for 1,260,000. That's the first decoy to ever break the million dollar mark.
• 3:17
  That was lot number one in the sale. Lot number two in the sale was an Elmer Kearl backed preening wigeon and it brought 1,140,000. So not only did we break the million dollar mark once, we broke it twice in that sale.
• 3:29
  Katie Burke: Being in that room when that happened, I was there and the auctioneer you had who is that? He's from
• 3:35
  Jon Deeter: John Hayes was deputy chairman of Christie's.
• 3:37
  Katie Burke: Christie's. Yes. Right.
• 3:38
  Jon Deeter: And he had actually sold the the last world record decoy when when it was our company and Christie's together.
• 3:45
  Katie Burke: Yeah. And he the way he, like, which is different than what we're used to. He's a slow auctioneer. Yep. He kinda takes his time, and it was it was get I was getting nervous.
• 3:57
  And then all of a sudden, it just
• 3:58
  Jon Deeter: It took a while for the decoy to open up at 300,000, I think.
• 4:01
  Katie Burke: But Yeah.
• 4:02
  Jon Deeter: And people were worried. We I wasn't. I knew we had at least five bidders on
• 4:06
  Katie Burke: the Yeah. You had the back. You were in the back. Yeah. It was going up
• 4:09
  Jon Deeter: the back. Come on. Let's get started. Let's get started. And finally, it did.
• 4:12
  And, yeah, it was great to have John at the podium for that sale. John's a good friend and a great auctioneer. It is a different style. Yeah. The but he did a great job.
• 4:21
  Katie Burke: Yeah. It was fun. But, yeah, that first few moments, we were like
• 4:24
  Jon Deeter: Oh, no.
• 4:26
  Katie Burke: Oh, no.
• 4:27
  Jon Deeter: Welcome to the Old Timer Minute, sponsored by Old Timer Knives.
• 4:31
  Katie Burke: We didn't have waiters when we were kids. Like, we had knee boots. They didn't make youth waiters. So the first time I could get into waiters, and especially, it's even worse when you were a girl, because the first time I could get into waiters was when my foot was big enough to fit a size men's seven, I think it was. Yeah.
• 4:53
  Men's seven. So I was probably in my teens and I remember wearing these Raiders that were so big on me in the body. My dad would have to take the straps in the back and twist them and twist them and twist them and twist them so that they would stay up. And in Mississippi where we hunt, we have this mud called gumbo. Ever I wanted to walk out into the water, you'd have to watch to fall out because this my foot would slip out of the boots.
• 5:20
  Jon Deeter: Visit the oldtimer.com. We just finished session two of the Jim and Diane Cook collection in our July auction,
• 5:26
  Katie Burke: which was just last week, last Friday and Saturday, and
• 5:29
  Jon Deeter: we had about, 64 items, I think it was, in that sale of the Cooks. It just we just finished their portion of that was 3,600,000. The total sale was 6.5. You know, lot one, five hundred and forty thousand. The Elmer Kroll wood duck, second highest Elmer Kroll wood duck to ever be sold at auction.
• 5:49
  No. That sorry. The number one, that is the new number world record for an Elmer Crow wood duck at auction. Okay. But the whole auction was really great.
• 5:57
  But, you know, Katie, I got to open up the sale in July, and there's a lot of talk about the high numbers. Right? Yeah. And I think it's important for people to realize collecting decoys is much, much deeper than just this transactional number thing. Yeah.
• 6:10
  We get caught up on the numbers, but there are so many parallels with decoy collecting and duck hunting. Like, all these people in here. You know why they're here? Because they're having fun. It's the pursuit of walking around this building, looking at people's booths, finding something you want, doing it with friends, and decoy collecting is exactly that.
• 6:29
  And at the end of the day, what we're gonna remember is not the prices of every item sold at auction, but we're gonna remember how much fun we had, who we did it with, who we were with. I mean, we, you know, we see people fly across the country to spend time with people they met through decoy collecting. Yeah. And I I think it's really important to understand that. The market has remained energetic because it offers so much more than just the economic piece of it.
• 6:57
  Katie Burke: Right. And I was thinking, one of the questions have well, two things to that, but the first one is, is that now the highest collection sale? Like Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
• 7:06
  The grossing collection?
• 7:07
  Jon Deeter: Well, not quite. So Not quite. Session one was 6.5, session two was 3.6. So we're approaching 10,000,000 and that's the McCleary sale, I think was 10,500,000. It's right there.
• 7:19
  Katie Burke: So right there.
• 7:19
  Jon Deeter: So after November, we'll be there.
• 7:20
  Katie Burke: But my point of that is is, like, for Jim, like, this is not just a few years of collecting. He has created he's done this for for years and years and years. Yeah. Forty years. He's created relationships to get those decoys.
• 7:32
  Like, this a huge part of his life, and I know it was probably very hard to make the decision to let that go because it's more than just decoys.
• 7:39
  Jon Deeter: It was really sad, Katie. I mean, I you know, here we are taking the decoys out of his decoy room, and and Jim literally had to leave because he was getting choked up. And it's hard on me. I don't like that piece of it. But if he's going to sell it and our company's going to represent it, we're gonna do the best job we can.
• 7:55
  And Jim is very happy, and I know that. Yeah. Collecting was a huge piece of his life, and Jim collected he collected toys, he collected travel posters, baseball memorabilia, coins, art pottery, but decoys were his favorite collectible and it's of, again, of that people element that decoy collecting brings.
• 8:12
  Katie Burke: Yeah. And one of the things I always I ask every time I have a new collector on and even like some carpers, but I always ask what their first decoy was. Yeah.
• 8:22
  Jon Deeter: Great question.
• 8:22
  Katie Burke: Always know. No one has like, oh, I don't remember. No one ever says they don't remember. They always know exactly what it was.
• 8:30
  Jon Deeter: So it's funny. We try to figure out how to get more people collecting decoys. Right? It's what keeps me awake at night. If you talk to people, how did you start collecting decoys?
• 8:39
  The most popular answer is somebody gave me a decoy. Mhmm. And it's exactly that. They remember it forever.
• 8:44
  Katie Burke: They do. And most of them, they still have it.
• 8:46
  Jon Deeter: That's exactly right.
• 8:48
  Katie Burke: Few out there that have traded them. But
• 8:49
  Jon Deeter: I still have my first decoy given to me by my wife in 1985, and it's a repainted buffle head from the Saint Lawrence Sea.
• 8:57
  Katie Burke: Really? Yeah.
• 8:58
  Jon Deeter: Yeah. Yeah. So you're right. That's people will remember that.
• 9:02
  Katie Burke: They always remember.
• 9:03
  Jon Deeter: It's a good
• 9:03
  Katie Burke: question. Yeah. Because it's more than just that. Yeah. It's and especially if it then took that decoy then sparked that interest to continue collecting decoys.
• 9:12
  Right? You know, it means a lot more that way.
• 9:21
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast sponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 9:36
  Jon Deeter: What was your first decoy?
• 9:38
  Katie Burke: Well, my first decoy was also given to me. It was my first few months I think you were here. Charles Jobes was here. Yeah. You were here that weekend.
• 9:47
  Yep. And Charles gave me a decoy, a black duck.
• 9:50
  Jon Deeter: Oh, we were down at the
• 9:51
  Katie Burke: At The Pyramid.
• 9:52
  Jon Deeter: Sort of the Pyramid. Yep.
• 9:53
  Katie Burke: Yeah. At The
• 9:53
  Jon Deeter: Pyramid. That's really cool.
• 9:54
  Katie Burke: So that would be my first decoy.
• 9:55
  Jon Deeter: Yeah. And since then, that collection's grown?
• 9:57
  Katie Burke: Signed it and wrote wrote all over the bottle of it. Yeah. Yeah.
• 10:00
  Jon Deeter: Charlie's a great guy. Saw his booth upstairs.
• 10:02
  Katie Burke: Yeah. So he he's upstairs. And, you know, as someone who does this and goes to I go to all those collector shops and, like, meet with collector with carvers and stuff. Yep. I get I get gifted a lot of decoys.
• 10:13
  Nice. Yeah. It's pretty good kicking.
• 10:15
  Jon Deeter: That's maybe the best kind of collection to have Honestly,
• 10:18
  Katie Burke: though, it means a lot.
• 10:19
  Jon Deeter: Right. Each piece is a memory.
• 10:20
  Katie Burke: Very special.
• 10:21
  Jon Deeter: Yeah. This is fun, and the the culmination of lots of people's collections selling at auction, that's that may be the end. It may be the beginning if you're buying it. But the cool thing is, Katie, there's still stuff out there. Right?
• 10:33
  Like, there's still things that are in people's garages, in the attics. Believe it or not, I mean, you know, here we are 2026, and you'd think most of that's been found. I wanna tell you a story.
• 10:45
  Katie Burke: I got one for you too.
• 10:46
  Jon Deeter: Last week, I get a phone I get an email. This lady sends me a picture of a duck call. And I look at this picture, and I just went, holy cow. I said, that's really a good piece. What's your phone number?
• 10:58
  Silence. Three days. It's killing me. Yeah. I said, you know, that duck call can be worth and I wrote down a number, a big number.
• 11:06
  Mhmm. Nothing. I'm thinking, on earth is somebody teasing me? And so finally, this sweet lady calls me, and she says, I'm cleaning out my aunt's house, and there's this duck call that was given to their family a long time ago, and it's it has remained in the family. And I just don't know what to do with it.
• 11:24
  I said, well, here's what you have. Here's exactly what you have, and it's worth quite a bit, and we'd love to be able to work with you on it. Mhmm. And I said, and by the way, I'm gonna be at Memphis D U X on what is today?
• 11:35
  Katie Burke: Saturday. It's Friday. Friday.
• 11:37
  Jon Deeter: I'm gonna be at Memphis D U X on Friday if
• 11:40
  Katie Burke: you wanna meet me in the morning. So this morning at
• 11:42
  Jon Deeter: 9AM, I woke up and drove over to West Memphis, and I met this wonderful person, and she gave me this. Katie, this is one of the most important duck calls to ever be found, and I picked it up at 09:00 this morning. And this call is so cool. It was made by Victor Glodo.
• 12:00
  Katie Burke: Oh, yeah.
• 12:01
  Jon Deeter: Okay. So Glodo lived in Southern Missouri. I think the story is he lived in Southern sorry. Southern Illinois. Illinois.
• 12:08
  And then he moved to Real Foot Lake. Yep. And he's the founder of the Real Foot Lake style of duck call. The note on this call says, 12/02/1963, glow toes, and he spells it g l o t o s. It's actually g l o d o.
• 12:24
  In my possession since nineteen o eight, Lewis Hamill. So it came from the Hamill family. This call is valued at $50. Do not keep do not it's a do not keep it tight or something like that. So what's cool about that, Katie, is not the fact that it's worth more than $50.
• 12:46
  Katie Burke: Yeah. It's definitely worth more.
• 12:48
  Jon Deeter: That's the first doctor so Ryan Graves and Mark Warmoth
• 12:52
  Katie Burke: Yes. Are in the town. Experts of Tennessee. Yeah. So all those calls.
• 12:56
  Yes.
• 12:56
  Jon Deeter: The two of the most knowledgeable people in that calls. I showed it to him because they're over in the display at the the Pyramid, and Ryan said that's the first documented glow doh call that anybody's ever seen.
• 13:08
  Katie Burke: Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing.
• 13:11
  Jon Deeter: And it it was just found this well, I just picked it up this morning.
• 13:15
  Katie Burke: Yeah. And it's just been sitting in someone's house since nineteen o eight.
• 13:19
  Jon Deeter: Yeah. So we'll offer that in our November auction, and we're gonna make some nice person that sent me an email very happy.
• 13:25
  Katie Burke: Very happy.
• 13:26
  Jon Deeter: You know, the estimate could be 20 to 30,000. It could be 15 to 25,000, but it's gonna bring quite
• 13:32
  Katie Burke: a Yeah. That's in a great condition. Yeah. No. Yeah.
• 13:35
  Victor Glodo is one of the very first call makers.
• 13:37
  Jon Deeter: Exactly right.
• 13:38
  Katie Burke: So yeah. Because we had some really nice ones in Ryan has some really great Glodos in his collection.
• 13:44
  Jon Deeter: Yeah. I think he's got eight, he said.
• 13:45
  Katie Burke: Yeah. They're really nice. Yep. When they were here in Memphis, they had them in there.
• 13:49
  Jon Deeter: Oh, yeah. He said you do a display of duck calls at the pyramid quite often.
• 13:53
  Katie Burke: Quite often. Currently, I don't have anything right now because we have the Canada Goose exhibit is still there. Tim Peterson's Tim Peterson's collection, and that'll be there through January. But yeah. So we won't do but we'll have calls actually coming up in our new next exhibit starting in February.
• 14:09
  Jon Deeter: That's great. This is a, you know, this is a unique area. The lady said, oh my gosh. She said, this is gonna make you sick. I I threw away all the decoys.
• 14:16
  But there really weren't decoys. Good decoys weren't shipped to this part of
• 14:20
  Katie Burke: the country. It's very it's very interesting. Yeah.
• 14:22
  Jon Deeter: This is the you know, you draw a couple 100 miles circle around here, and it was all about the duck call. Yeah. Because people are hunting in trees, they didn't need necessarily good good decoys. If they had decoys, they just bought pascagoula or herders or whatever.
• 14:36
  Katie Burke: As my dad say, we painted milk jugs black.
• 14:38
  Jon Deeter: That exactly. Exactly. So this is not a decoy rich area like you'd find in the Illinois River area or Michigan or Wisconsin or out east or even out in California. But this is where the great duck calls came from, and the other reason for that, we we don't find many duck calls along the Eastern Seaboard where many of the great decoys are from, but because we didn't have mallards. Yeah.
• 14:59
  Right? There were no mallards, so there wasn't any reason to make a quacking duck call.
• 15:03
  Katie Burke: I tried to tell people that and people usually are pretty shocked by that.
• 15:05
  Jon Deeter: Yeah.
• 15:05
  Katie Burke: Yeah. Yeah. And I was shocked when I learned that because I grew up, you know, hunting in Mississippi Delta and I've had it my whole life. And then when I went to grad school in Philadelphia, we'd worked with the Tuckerton Museum. Yep.
• 15:19
  Seaport Museum. Seaport. And I saw old decoys for the first time and I was like, oh, what are these? Because I'd never seen an old decoy until I was like 23 years old.
• 15:27
  Jon Deeter: Katie, you'd apprenticed for this job for a long time, hadn't you?
• 15:30
  Katie Burke: Yeah. Yeah. So but I had not seen it. Oh, I didn't know what they were until I was 23 because I grew up here.
• 15:36
  Jon Deeter: Right.
• 15:37
  Katie Burke: Yeah. And they weren't but we were talking earlier, Ryan, about you wanted me to meet one of the turpents, which are from right here in Memphis, Tennessee.
• 15:43
  Jon Deeter: Absolutely. I think there's a don't know if we're on third or fourth generation turpen family.
• 15:47
  Katie Burke: Yeah. Yeah. And they're from right here in Memphis, Tennessee.
• 15:50
  Jon Deeter: That's great. You know, and the calls are just another part of promoting the waterfowl heritage and continuing waterfowl heritage. You've got great great old guns like you have Bo Whoop on display over at your
• 16:01
  Katie Burke: Oh, you got to see it today.
• 16:02
  Jon Deeter: I was over there at headquarters. So Bo Whoop with Nash Buckingham's Yeah. Famous Ainsley Fox, and then you've got calls like the Glodo, and then we have decoys, which our company specializes in primarily. Yeah. It's all it's all and then so much of it's on display at the at the Pyramid.
• 16:19
  Katie Burke: And we also have speaking of, like, you know, marketing, they're all over there now set up selling stuff. And also, like, even if you're not going to buy stuff, like I was saying, like, just talk to them about it. Like, pick up decoys, pick up calls, ask questions. Yeah. You're referencing the dealers.
• 16:34
  Yeah. The dealers at the pyramid. Like yeah.
• 16:36
  Jon Deeter: Tom Reed from Charleston. You've got Dave Nebone from Illinois, and you've got Jon and Amy Sarver also from Illinois. You've got some really nice dealers over there with sort of popular price point items. Mhmm. And all of those folks are happy to share anything about an old decoy or about something they've made.
• 16:54
  Katie Burke: Yeah. And like at like, I was there was a guy over there this morning and I was I was happy to see. He just picked up decoys and he was like, okay, what is like is this tell me why this is like not old paint or versus like, how do I tell if it's old paint or
• 17:07
  Jon Deeter: Yeah.
• 17:08
  Katie Burke: What's like point out things like the differences in like quality of a decoy. And and Dave obviously, like, walked him through, picked up different decoys, showed him, like, different things and
• 17:18
  Jon Deeter: Good.
• 17:18
  Katie Burke: He but that's what it's about. It's about, like, getting your hands on stuff and
• 17:23
  Jon Deeter: Yeah. Those are all those are good dealers. Now, this is the first time you've had a decoy show?
• 17:26
  Katie Burke: This is the very first time.
• 17:27
  Jon Deeter: Yeah. Over there. Well, good. I hope that goes well. Look like plenty of people visiting the booths.
• 17:31
  Katie Burke: Yeah. There's there's plenty of people going over there, there's a shuttle that takes people over there, so it's it's easy.
• 17:36
  Jon Deeter: So d u x will be this time of year
• 17:39
  Katie Burke: Every year. Hopefully.
• 17:40
  Jon Deeter: Every year in the future.
• 17:41
  Katie Burke: Doing this well.
• 17:42
  Jon Deeter: If it's doing this well, it's gonna yeah. I imagine it'll happen again.
• 17:46
  Katie Burke: Yeah. Well, you'll have to come back and, bring your boys, and they'll probably spend some money.
• 17:50
  Jon Deeter: And they wanted to come. Riley said, tell me if you see anything cool. I was like, Riley, I am so busy. I haven't had a chance to walk through slowly. Yes.
• 17:58
  But
• 17:59
  Katie Burke: Alright. This is fun.
• 18:00
  Jon Deeter: Alright, Katie. Thanks so much.
• 18:02
  Katie Burke: Thanks. Good to see you.
• 18:02
  Jon Deeter: Great seeing you again.
• 18:05
  VO: That's a wrap for today's episode of the Ducks Unlimited Podcast brought to you by Bird Dog Whiskey and Cocktails. From post hunt unwinds to celebrations back at camp, Bird Dog delivers award winning flavor to every moment. Enjoy responsibly. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe, and check out ducks.org/dupodcast for more stories, science, and all things waterfowl. Guest opinions are their own and don't necessarily reflect those of Ducks Unlimited.
• 18:30
  Until next time, stay fired up, stay focused, and stay tuned to the Ducks.