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RELOADED EP336 - Collector’s Series: Stan Van Etten TRIBUTE · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• 0:03
  VO: Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast RELOADED, where we bring you the best of our past episodes. Whether you're a seasoned waterfowler or curious about conservation, this series is for you. Over the years, we've had incredible guests and discussions about everything from wetland conservation to the latest waterfowl research and hunting strategies. In RELOADED, we're revisiting those conversations to keep the passion alive and the mission strong. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this reload.
• 0:39
  Katie Burke: Today, we're revisiting a conversation that means even more now than when it first aired. This episode with Stan Van Etten, past editor in chief of Hunting and Fishing Collectibles magazine, originally ran in 2021. But with Stan's recent passing, it felt important to bring his voice and stories back into the world. Stan spent more than two decades documenting and preserving the history of American sporting culture, elevating a niche publication into a national resource for collectors and historians. His passion for Americana, for the stories behind decoys, tools, and sporting collectibles, and for the people who cared about them came through so clearly in this conversation.
• 1:21
  He believed every object carried a story worth saving, and he dedicated his life to making sure those stories were told. Rearing this episode is our way of honoring Stan's legacy, his curiosity, his craftsmanship, and the generosity with which he shared his knowledge. We're grateful to have had this time with him, and we're grateful to share it with you again today. On the show today, I have special guest, Stan Van Etten. He was the editor of Hunting and Fishing Collectibles Magazine for the past twenty years.
• 1:56
  Welcome to the show, Stan. How are you today?
• 1:58
  Stan Van Etten: Well, fine. Glad to glad to have an opportunity to talk about the magazine.
• 2:02
  Katie Burke: So before we get into the magazine, which was your past twenty years, before that, though, you've had multiple careers. It was your retirement career. So let's talk about those years prior to the magazine and how that led up to getting into the magazine. So, yeah, kinda give us your little backstory there.
• 2:20
  Stan Van Etten: Well, it's it's kind of an interesting story and a bit of a long one. But when I grew up in Midwest in Illinois, and my dad was a college professor there at Western Illinois University. So growing up in the Midwest, and after high school and college, went to the University of Chicago and got a couple of graduate degrees there. My interest was sort of in history and also in literature, primarily I guess. So then after that, I transitioned to Auburn University for about eight years in Auburn, Alabama.
• 3:02
  And then after a kind of a tenure there at Auburn University, I migrated to Florida. Auburn University in Alabama is not that many hours away from Panama City Beach, Florida in the Panhandle area. We ended up there for a good while. I was a department head at State Community College there in the literature and language arts area. Finally, after more than twenty years in the university classroom, I wearied a little bit of of grading papers, I guess, or whatever.
• 3:41
  But over those years, I had come in contact with college publisher sales reps, and they would come by on a regular basis to to tell the college faculty and all of the schools around the country what was new and best and greatest from their publishing house. And I I had made friendships with some of the the college publisher reps, sales reps, and having finally grown a little bit weary of grading freshman essays and one thing and another. The idea of being a sales rep and a and a field editor for McGraw Hill Publishing Company, but it had a lot of appeal. And so we moved to New England and for the next almost eight years, I was a field editor and college textbook sales rep for McGraw Hill out of New York. Long story short, that involved the next transition was to move from New England back to the South where our family, our grown boys, our grown sons were.
• 4:47
  We settled in North Carolina. Interestingly, that's where the decoy interest came from. It's kind of a bit of a story in itself. My wife and I had always been weekend antiquers, and we we were interested in early American stuff. And but but just, you know, we that was kind of recreation every other weekend or so.
• 5:08
  We'd jump in the car and go go teaking. And it happened that at at this point in time in North Carolina, there was a new decoy, a wild fowl museum that was being created. And we got involved we got involved with that. We went down to see what it was all about. And of course, the fact that it was antique decoys intrigued us, but I had never in my entire life thought about collecting wooden ducks.
• 5:38
  I really hadn't. Though we'd collected a lot of other things that were anyhow, we got involved with the building and organizing of the new decoy museum there in Core Sound, North Carolina. I was intrigued by the historical decoys that they had in the museum there and really had a lot of interest in that. And but the more I learned about the old decoys that had been made there in that area and used by hunters who came down the East Coast to a lot of different hunt clubs down there on the Atlantic Seaboard. The more I thought about that, there was one magazine at the time called Decoy Magazine, it's still in operation.
• 6:33
  So I ordered all back issues of the past issues of Decoy Magazine, and that was quite a few. That was a big box, more than one box. As I studied and read through these back issues of Decoy Magazine, I really became intrigued. And but having been in the book business, so to speak, with McGraw Hill for eight, seven, eight years, I thought to myself, this is a really interesting magazine, but I wonder wonder if there's a magazine out there that covers more than just decoys. Why isn't there a magazine out there that covers all the collectibles, all the old historic artifacts that had to do with America's passion for hunting and fishing.
• 7:21
  And so I looked around and did my research. And sure enough, there wasn't any such magazine. There are a lot of sporting magazines, a lot of magazines that cover fishing and hunting articles, that sort of thing and products. But I could not discover a single magazine that focused on the actual artifacts from the hunting and fishing tradition in America. So long story short, I I launched a magazine whose central purpose was to record the history both in print and in photos and pictures to to preserve the history of American hunting and fishing.
• 8:03
  And so the magazine, you know, our first issue was at the beginning of of
• 8:09
  Katie Burke: At 2000. Right?
• 8:10
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. Yeah. We launched it in 2000 and then concluded with our last issue, the December issue of 2020. So we did the twenty year plan that I we I initially had in in mind.
• 8:24
  Katie Burke: Oh, really? I didn't realize you had a twenty year plan in mind when you started. So let's talk about those beginning years of the magazine. Did you have a goal in mind for the magazine at first, and it did it evolve over time, or how did you expect it to to go in the beginning?
• 8:43
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. That's a that's a great question. Yeah. I did. I've I've I very much did have a a goal in mind.
• 8:49
  Was interested in two things. I was interested, you know, in the antiques, in the artifacts, the the old 100 year old decoys and and what have you. I was interested in that, but I was also interested in more than just the artifacts. You know, I didn't just wanna buy a bunch of old decoys and put them on the shelf and say, well, yeah, those are interesting. They're pretty.
• 9:11
  I wanted to know the story because old decoys, like old anything else, have a story and they have a history. And this was kind of, a Decoy magazine had touched for a number of years on that very thing, the decoy itself and the decoy's history, who made it, when was it made, why is it different from somebody else's decoy, you know. But the thing about Decoy Magazine was that decoys was basically all they covered. It was all the magazine covered. Everything was about decoys.
• 9:48
  I was interested in creating a magazine that had not only the artifacts and the history of the artifacts with regard to decoys, but I was interested in all the other things that went along with American history of fishing and sporting, which would get into spearfishing, for example, up in the North Country, the decoys, the fish decoys that were made for ice fishing and the whole realm of fishing generally, you know, from dry fly, wet fly, all kinds of fly fishing and just, you know, the split bamboo poles that were made for the fly fishing folks. So then the stories behind those. And it was just a matter of wanting to discover the artifacts, have somebody write an article about them, but also record the history, who owned it. And outdoor sports in America has a great grand tradition. I mean, there have been the Northeast, the Northwoods, the Midwest, the different, you know, bird flying patterns and migration patterns.
• 11:05
  You know, there were all these other things that went into the story of America's hunting and fishing past that that I wanted to to to cover and to preserve the history. Well, what happened was that when we published the first issue, I had a a table of contents. It was kind of a potpourri of that touched on all these these different things and made very clear to the readers that this was going to be a magazine that covered not only the hunting and fishing artifacts from fishing reels to guns and all of that stuff. So long story short, after we launched the magazine, I had put out a fairly significant bit of advertising for the upcoming launch of this magazine. In fact, one of the first key ads that I ever ran was a I think a half page ad in Ducks Unlimited.
• 11:58
  And
• 11:58
  Katie Burke: I mean, they go back and look for it.
• 12:00
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, know, it seems to me, if if I recall, I just wanted to get it out get the information out there to to the sporting world people. Mhmm.
• 12:10
  And and because of my my involvement with the decoy museum here in North Carolina, anyway, I I came up with I I consulted with a bunch of folks, and they said, we'll put an ad in, you know, in Ducks Unlimited. And so I did. It was a it was a little pricey at time, but we got a we got a strong response from from that ad and from several other ads that we've placed. And I I guess we had I don't know. We probably had three or 400 subscribers, you know, before the first issue came in.
• 12:39
  I remember at an auction, one of the large national decoy auctions, especially in the Northeast, we were there on the Coast of Maine at that auction and we had flyers put out on the coffee tables and stuff at the resort there. And we were sitting there and nobody knew who we were. My wife and I were just there kind of observing, but there were a lot of people that picked up the flyer that we had on these coffee tables, and they'd look at each other and say, you know, I don't ever go. Guess what? It did.
• 13:13
  Katie Burke: It did. Yeah.
• 13:14
  Stan Van Etten: And so we had after the first issue got out, there was a big show in the Milwaukee area, and and we flew up there with three or four boxes of the the first issue, and it went it disappeared like hotcakes, and and the response was just overwhelmingly positive. And so I guess, you know, by the third issue or so, we had, you know, had probably had 1,500 subscribers or something like that. I I think, you know, but the thing the thing is that the subscribers were, you know, they knew what they were subscribing to. They knew a friend who'd had a got a copy or, you know, one way or another, they knew what they were buying into. And the great thing is that for the twenty years that we published it, you know, we didn't lose virtually anybody, you know, and and in fact, it it it continued to grow because because, you know, they were these were people who talked to each other, you know, they belonged to local decoy clubs or collecting groups or or what have you.
• 14:15
  Katie Burke: In that first issue, did you primarily write it, or when did you start gathering, right, you know, outside writers, and how did that all begin?
• 14:25
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. Great great question. Well, you know, there wouldn't have been much of a magazine if I'd had to write the articles, especially in the in you know, that changed during the twenty years. By the time I was into my about, you know, fourth year or so, oh, I had a lot to say. In those in those early first years, I, you know, I was totally dependent on contributing writers, you know, but it didn't take long, you know, it didn't take long after the word was out that Stan's doing a a magazine that's right down our alley.
• 14:55
  Here's our chance to write about what grandpa's decoys looked like or why he liked them so much or, you know, the hobby, the collecting hobby of for for decoys, you know, is a really in touch, stay in touch group. And so long story short, in the 20, I I think I made a small payment before three or four articles early on in the first couple of issues. But after that, we didn't pay a dollar for any of the articles. And we had a stable of writers that for the twenty years, some of the folks wrote maybe 20 articles, some of them wrote more than that. Sometimes, depending on the subject or the topic or or the decoy carver involved or whatever, there were some issues in the magazine where maybe there were two articles by the same by the same writer, but they weren't interested in being paid.
• 15:49
  I mean, I'm sure they would have taken a check.
• 15:52
  Katie Burke: They just wanted to be heard.
• 15:53
  Stan Van Etten: But they they just wanted they just wanted the the the key phrase through all of that was preserve history.
• 16:07
  VO: Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited Podcast sponsored by Purina Pro Plan and Bird Dog Whiskey after these messages.
• 16:24
  Katie Burke: I have a question. I didn't think about this earlier, but you're talking about because you're beginning, and you're also beginning learning about decoys and the history behind them. So, how did you handle fact checking in those early days? Did you just trust your sources or, like, I mean, towards the end, it would have been a different story, especially if you got to know your contributing writers. But in those first years, how did you handle that?
• 16:48
  Stan Van Etten: That's a good question. And it's like I was saying, it's really a tight knit community. And I probably had what amounted to a board of of scholars or or what whatever you wanna call it. You know, I probably had a dozen people that just right away stepped up and stepped forward and said, we want to help any way we can. We want to write some articles for you, but we're here if you've got a question about an article that's been submitted or something like that.
• 17:15
  Based on my having bought all the old back issues of Decoy Magazine, I'd probably spent before I actually launched the magazine, I'd probably spent the best part of a year, I guess, reading through the back issues of Decoy Magazine. And you'd see writer, author names that just kept recurring issue after issue or several times during a year. And so although I didn't know these people personally, did, of course, after once we got going with the magazine, but I recognize names, and these folks were just generous beyond belief with wanting to share the information and the history that that they had. And there were, in fact, over the twenty years, there there were a couple of occasions where somebody was sending articles in on contemporary a contemporary carver or two or and they they were doing the article on this this whoever whoever it was, and they were they were asking the person that they were doing the article on, who in most cases was a carver, for three or four sample birds of their carving. This didn't happen early on, but it did actually happen a couple of times.
• 18:31
  And I I found out it was happening because a good a person who had become a good friend called me and he said, hey, Stan, I just wanted to check something with you. I I you know, so and so is doing an article on on my carving, and he wants two of this this kind of duck and one of this other kind of duck, and he wants three or four of my carvings to pay for the getting the article in. And he says, is that is that your policy? And I said, god, no. You know?
• 19:04
  No. That's not our policy. That's sneaky. So, you know, so that was a wake up call and but I, you know, I wouldn't wanna overstress that because that only happened a couple of Right. In a couple of cases.
• 19:20
  But but it allowed me to it allowed me to to to to contact the carver and, you know, and and I didn't just say no. I on on a phone call, I I talked to the the the carver at length and I was just flabbergasted that that that was happening. But, you know, was a quick steady by because I had that background, you know, with looking at, I don't know how many years, but a bunch of years of back issues of Decoy Magazine. And it's a it's a, you know, the collecting of decoys is a kind of a fraternity sort of thing, and and you better be careful what you say about somebody because that somebody probably is gonna
• 20:04
  Katie Burke: No. It's true. And, you know, I use your issues, I mean, decoy as well, but I use I have a whole backlog of your issues, and I use them for this podcast and for exhibits. I mean, whenever I'm doing anything or any of our little videos, I go through you've sent me that handy little Excel sheet, which now I can do it faster, but
• 20:25
  Stan Van Etten: Oh, yeah.
• 20:26
  Katie Burke: I go through and I find every article written on the topic and Yeah. And do my research. And, you know, you know what's really interesting, especially with some of those really old decoy magazines, is you can go back and you can see those very first articles on, you know, say a certain carver, and then you go and I used to try to start at the beginning and work my way up because you can find where opinion has changed over time, and it's it's interesting And, to watch that
• 20:52
  Stan Van Etten: you know, I don't know if you're familiar with this particular case, but there's been during the twenty years that I that I did the magazine, there there's been this huge controversy over what they call the Bowman Bun. I'm sure you've run across articles on that. Both sides of the argument are, you know, they're they're passionate about thinking that it was Bowman or it was Bunn, but and I have my own opinion about that. But we we ran several issues over the years that that addressed the Bowman Bunn controversy. And but I think it's a pretty clear cut decision, but there's some some strong feelings out there in certain certain places, certain groups.
• 21:35
  Katie Burke: Yeah. I'm interviewing, Corey in a couple weeks. Corey Rogers. So, yeah, I need to go back and look at your issues for that one.
• 21:43
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. I'll send you those issues that had those articles in. There were about five issues scattered scattered through the years.
• 21:52
  Katie Burke: It is an interesting topic. I'm excited. Yeah. It's I don't wanna yeah. It's an interesting topic.
• 21:57
  There is another one I can't remember. Oh, I was looking at the Evans stuff and how the opinion has changed on Evans decoys over the years as well, and that was really interesting how it's, you know, almost gotten smaller rather than larger.
• 22:11
  Stan Van Etten: Oh, yeah. Yeah. It really you know you know, and there there have been issues like where, you know, you're you're familiar with the idea of a a delay that can do the decoy. You know, you have a model decoy and know how that works with the power lathe turning them out.
• 22:29
  Katie Burke: Yeah. Go ahead and explain it though. Maybe our listeners don't exactly know.
• 22:34
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, there's a there's a woodshop tool called a lathe, and a lot of people, they know what a lathe is, but they they probably haven't thought about it in terms of decoy carving. But if you have a model of that you want to reproduce, put it on this lathe machine that has a kind of a spindle on both ends of the decoy or whatever it is you're trying to make a copy of. And you use a cutting blade, sort of like a chisel of sorts, and you turn on the switch and the whatever the wood you're carving goes round and round and you cause you direct the cutting edge by putting this little pointer thing on the artifact that you're copying.
• 23:27
  And long story short, nothing wrong with that, but it's not a hand carved decoy. And the thing too, the factor too is that a decoy was churned out on a lathe very often, there ends up being 100 or 500 of those decoys made and they're all made with a copying lathe. And so but then a lot of things can happen then. They could be painted just in a routine factory sort of quick paint job deal, which makes them worth almost nothing. But or they could be painted by a professional painter or there's any number of different kinds of stories that could but historically, there have been there were at some point in time, a lot of factory made decoys and that were made from a copy lathe.
• 24:26
  And that was okay for if you're just buying this decoy to go toss in the water and shoot ducks when they come when they fly over. There's nothing wrong with that in any case, but it complicated the world for decoy collectors because some decoys were being sold out there as if they had been made by a particular carver or something. And anyway, you can see the implications that could come from that. But that the hobby, the collectors these days are pretty sophisticated. And of course, the prices kind of demand that people who are paying very high prices are going to know what they're buying.
• 25:15
  And if if the individual doesn't know on on his or her own part, you know, there there are plenty of people out there. Be glad to tell them.
• 25:23
  Katie Burke: Yes. There are. So over your like we talked about the contributing writers, and I know you're a collector as well, since we talked about a little bit, how had the magazine those relationships affected your personal life and as well as your personal collecting?
• 25:39
  Stan Van Etten: Oh, yeah. Well, we've gone, you know, as I said back early on, we Deb and I have been collectors of a lot of things for a long time, but the the the decoy the interest in decoys and the fact that really the the interest was not only personal but professional with the magazine, we've been to a lot of places, a lot of antique shops and where we probably wouldn't have gone before. Just a quick example, Lake Cushnigon up in Wisconsin has a great history of decoy hunting. And there was an early period though in the eighteen hundreds where a lot of the wealthy sports, you know the term, wealthy people who, you know, just followed their passion and went duck hunting one place and pheasant hunting somewhere else. So but this area in the Minnesota, Wisconsin area just was there because of the Midwest Flyway, I suppose, you know, in large part.
• 26:54
  But anyway, it was a great hunting duck hunting area. And and so this Lake Kushkinganong, I'll send you a copy of that magazine too. They when people began to collect decoys fifty years ago, seventy five years ago, when they began to collect decoys for for decoys sake and they're not worried about hunting them, but collecting the decoys, They they they discovered a lot of a lot of decoys that looked an awful lot like Upper Chesapeake Bay decoys and and Northeastern decoys. And the more the collectors up in the Upper Midwest became aware of, how come these decoys over here in Minnesota and Upper Wisconsin, Minnesota, How come how can they look so much like the decoys that that have been discovered over in the Upper Chesapeake Bay area? Well, the deal was, it turned out that that the the hunters and the sports who came from the Northeast, they did a lot of hunting in the Upper Chesapeake area.
• 28:06
  And but they also they also did a lot of hunting over in the Upper Midwest in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Michigan. And so these same people, these same wealthy sports that had 100 decoys that were made in the Chesapeake Bay area, they took they took a a batch of those same decoys and went to the Upper Midwest when that got to be a popular place. And so so these decoys, just because you found them in the the Lake Koshkonan area, didn't mean that's where they were made. It just meant that the the rich sports who came from New England who had been, you know, using decoys that made from from the Upper Chesapeake Bay area, it it just you know, decoys travel. If if the guy who owns them travels, they travel.
• 28:59
  Katie Burke: Yeah. So why would they have gone to hunt there from that location, like, from the Northeast? Like, why would they have gone
• 29:06
  Stan Van Etten: to That's that probably, you know, a long a long story, but but the fact is that once again, this kind of fraternal thing, you know, there were certain play you know, like, people used to go to the Catskills. Right. Yeah. New York and and Boston went to the Catskills, and then they went to the Adirondacks, and they and they built summer homes there. And it was just a matter, I think, of they weren't there were some of those same guys came down the coast of Atlantic Seaboard and this Core Sound Museum down there in North Carolina that I was talking about earlier, the decoys moved around with these guys who just, well, where we go this where should we go this fall, guys?
• 29:50
  Let's let's go go to down the Atlantic Coast. Let's go down to the North Carolina Coast. And so the decoys traveled just because when somebody mail ordered a decoy from somewhere, these guys had dozens and probably more than maybe they had 150 decoys. And there were five guys in the hunting party and they went, let's go to Lake Kashkin on over in Upper Midwest this time. And so but anyway, we did a series of articles on that, but there are several people who are really they know the whole history of that and they know who they even know who made the decoys and which ones were.
• 30:32
  But the underside, the flip side of that coin is that during the same period, there were all kinds of carvers in in in that Upper Midwest area itself who were making decoys, but they looked entirely different. Those decoys looked entirely different from the ones that that these guys brought, you know, from the Upper Chesapeake Bay area. And so, you know, it's just what I what I was really gonna tell you, I think your question was about collecting antiques myself Yes. Yes. So here here we are in Central North Carolina and a 100 miles down the coast and to to the Decoy Museum, but somewhere in between there is is Greensboro, North Carolina.
• 31:16
  And and I go in walk in an antique shop there, not not knowing that not even expecting to find a decoy there. But I walk in there and then this little dark corner of one one room in the in the antique mall, Here's this whole decoy sitting up there on a on a shelf, you know, just looking sad as hell. And and I I pull it off the shelf and look at it, and I say, I don't know. I don't know. Don't know where that where that came from, but it had a big brand on it, a big incised brand said Hoard, h o a r d, all in all in large caps carved carved in into into the bottom of the decoy, h o a r d.
• 31:58
  I had no idea what that meant. I figured it meant a guy's name, but I didn't know. But anyway, so several years go by, I I keep I kept it. I showed it to a few people at some of the national regional shows, and they didn't know. And then this guy, one collectors of from that Koshkonong Lake area and I are talking, submitting a couple of articles on the history of of duck hunting and decoys in the Lake Kosta Gaddon area.
• 32:29
  And and I'm talking to him, and he sends me a bunch of pictures for the article. And and lo and behold, one of the major, major hotels on that lake on that lake was the Hoard Hotel, h o a r d. And so, you know, it was it was a high end kind of hotel place, and they they supplied decoys for the for the rich sports who came out there to hunt. And so this was one of the of the local type decoys as opposed to the Upper Chesapeake area. And and it was one that was that the Hoard Hotel had, you know, that was a 100 years old.
• 33:09
  And and so suddenly suddenly, you know, this guy calls in this writer calls in to do an article or two. It turned out to be a three article series. But but he, you know, here here here here it was, bam, all at once. And I said, several people at at shows when I'd taken that around different shows because I wanted to find out what what it was, where it'd come from, and had had wanted to buy it from me. But I I didn't wanna sell it because I didn't I didn't I wanted to know what it was first.
• 33:38
  And so my my hanging on to it paid off because now here here it was. And, you know, not that many of those that are that are marked like that with a hand bar. The the the word the letters h o a r d are probably an inch and a half tall, you know, and then they're deeply incised with a jackknife, you know, or something.
• 33:59
  Katie Burke: I didn't know hotels had decoys. Makes sense. Like, they they at certain times of the year, they're almost like resorts for hunters in that time period. So it makes perfect sense.
• 34:10
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. Yeah. I have one I have one decoy that came up in a Gayat and Dieter auction. They're one of the largest, if not the largest decoy, auction house. And I have one decoy that I got out, I was able to get it out of one of their auction sales.
• 34:32
  That is marked on the bottom, it has a carver's initials, but I've never been able to figure those out. But it has an incised brand on the bottom of the decoy that says NYC and then an ampersand, the hand and sign says New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. How's that for a mouthful on a brand? So so NYC amp and New York I'm sorry, New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. Hudson River was, of course, merged into the New York Central after a while.
• 35:17
  So, well, what's the big deal about that? Well, why would a railroad why would a railroad have decoys wood decoys? Why would the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad want to have decoys? Well, because they did a hell of a business with these fat cat sports who traveled around to different locations. You know, they would rent two or three cars with a express train, and next thing they know, they were not in New York or Boston or Baltimore.
• 35:48
  They were, you know, they were somewhere on the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad property. And my guess, I don't I can't prove this, but but why else would a would a decoy be branded with railroad, you know, on the bottom? Well, the answer is that these guys, they did the railroads did a heck of a business with with rich hunters, you know, sport hunters. And and and so my my guess is I pretty well take it to the bank, I think, that they they had they there were trains that were chartered, you know, for for groups of these guys. And and I think that the probably the railroad company owned some sporting lakes, you know, hunting grounds.
• 36:33
  I mean, trains made the railroad's made a pot of money from those. I've done a couple of articles on that too. Yeah. Interesting. You know, it was a common kind of thing for a group of 30 or who knows how many.
• 36:48
  Guys who knew each other and they said, let's go hunt this year at Lake So and So. It might have been in Michigan, it might have been in Minnesota, you know, who who knows where.
• 36:58
  Katie Burke: I mean, you know there's evidence of them going to North Carolina on the railroad for sure. So before we go, we wrap things up, is there anything that you wanna add or a story you wanna tell or anything, you know, something that we hadn't talked about that we didn't get to that you'd like to talk about?
• 37:14
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. Well, I I you know, one of my favorite stories or I guess it's not a story, it's just a it's a it's kind of a position that I that I have developed. And it is this, that, auction houses today, it's not unusual if it's a decoy auction. It's not unusual for them to have half a dozen or more decoys that sell for 6 figures. And there are a whole lot of decoys in decoy auction from a major house that maybe have as many as 50 decoys that sell for several thousand dollars, $3,000 $4,000 $5,000 So, a serious these people who collect these historic artifacts, it's a serious passion that they have.
• 38:09
  And so with the twenty years of publishing the magazine, what I've if I had one preachment to make, it would be this, that if you love old stuff and you have a passion for it, it's not just because you want the item. It's not just because you want the artifact. Because you want the artifact because it is, in fact, great folk art. You want it because it is it's it's it's a great thing in and of and by itself. But there's another reason.
• 38:39
  There are two reasons why you want it. And the second reason may be almost more important than the first, which is you want it because it has a great story, and you want to know the story. And if there's one thing that that Hunting and Fishing Collectibles magazine did in its twenty years, it linked the the artifact with its story. And I ran many articles of that pictured decoys and showed brands on the bottom or whatever. And guys, you know, I don't I can't even guess how many times they would write or call me and say, hey.
• 39:17
  You know, I thought this decoy was from the Chesapeake area. Turns out it was made in Washington State. A guy out there called me and said, hey, I got a decoy just like yours, and I can tell you who made it. He just lives 30 miles from where I am out here in Washington State. So, you know, decoys can be they have a story, and sometimes the story is really, really interesting.
• 39:39
  And it, you know, without the story, it's kind of like, oh, yes, I knew Abe Lincoln, but nobody knew where he came from. I mean, how silly? Why would you want to know Abe Lincoln if you didn't know anything about him? And so kind of the brand of our magazine in terms of focal points was that there's the decoy hurrah and there's the story, double hurrah. And so that's one thing that I would kind of like underline or spotlight or something, you know, because it's not just collecting, you know, it's not just collecting another decoy.
• 40:24
  It's it's collecting a a decoy that is worthy of of of discovering the story behind it.
• 40:32
  Katie Burke: Yeah. And as a nonprofit supported by hunters, it's important to know where our history came from and
• 40:41
  Stan Van Etten: Oh, yeah.
• 40:41
  Katie Burke: Yeah. Very very well said. Thank you, Stan. Thanks for coming on the show. How can people reach you if they wanna get any back issues or anything like that?
• 40:52
  Stan Van Etten: Yeah. Great. Well, our our website I'm we're we're continuing on with our website because we have we have available issues from all all of the issues from the twenty years. And our our our website is www.hfcollectibles.com. Oh, and and let me give you my direct the the direct email, not just the website, but the direct email is hfcollectibles@aol.com.
• 41:18
  Katie Burke: Perfect. Alright. Well, thank you for coming on the show today, Stan. It was fun.
• 41:22
  Stan Van Etten: You bet. Thank you.
• 41:23
  Katie Burke: Thanks to our special guest, Stan Van Etten. Thanks to our producer, Chris, and thanks to you, our listener, for supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.
• 41:34
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