“A few miles up the river the boat entered and steamed across Lake Butte Des Morts . . . with many thousands of acres of bog and rush-grown marsh on either side. When I remarked to the captain that it looked good for mallards, he said it was, but there was a gun for nearly every bird.”
“Lake Poygan Ducks and Fish,” by O.H. Hampton, Forest and Stream, December 16, 1893

Market Hunting

The vast wetlands found in the Lake Winnebago Region were ideal habitat for ducks and other water birds. Great flocks of ducks darkened the sky every spring and fall during migration. Wild rice, wild celery, duckweed, pickerelweed and many other aquatic plants offered a plentiful source of food. The dense cover and grasses surrounding the marshes were perfect nesting sites. Waterfowl flourished.

Native Americans had long used ducks as a food source, but the coming of white settlement brought market and sport hunters. Market hunting was killing birds for sale. Birds were packed in barrels of ice and salt and sent by train to market in urban centers, including Milwaukee and Chicago. Because there were no bag limits or any form of restriction, market hunters were free to kill as many ducks as possible. Most people in the 19th century thought that the supply of ducks was endless.

Many early market hunters used “punt guns,” extremely large guns with a bore size of 1” to 2”. These guns were mounted to the front of a skiff, a small, low profile boat. The hunter used the skiff to sneak up on a large flock of resting ducks, called a “raft.” The hunter fired just as the raft rose into flight. The cloud of lead shot would spread over a large area, killing dozens of birds with a single shot. Punt guns became obsolete after repeating shotguns were developed.

The Wetlands & Waterways exhibit includes a punt gun found by divers on the bottom of Lake Winneconne in 1995, as well as the account book of market hunter Russell Ades, listing the thousands of birds he killed.

Hand Carved Decoys

The bountiful number of ducks in the Lake Winnebago Region meant that there were many duck hunters, and hunters needed decoys to bring birds within range of their shotgun. Most of the early decoys were carved by hand from cedar or pine. Some of the bodies were hollow with a cedar board on the bottom, while others were solid wood. Cork was used for bodies after World War II, because cork was plentiful and cheap (or free) when the big ice storage warehouses were torn down. (Cork had been used in the walls for insulation.) Hunters also used factory-made wooden decoys, manufactured by Mason or Evans.

The design and craftsmanship of locally made wooden decoys varies from downright crude, to beautiful works of art. From the mid-1850s to the end of World War II, there were hundreds of people carving decoys in the Lake Winnebago Region. Some carved just enough decoys for their own use, while others produced many thousands in their lifetime, selling to other hunters. Most carvers and hunters in the area also used coot decoys, which were thought to add realism to a set of decoys, Coots, known locally as “mud hens,” also were killed and eaten.

Various decoys can be seen in the Wetlands & Waterways exhibit. Here are just a few examples:

August Moak (1852-1942) of Tustin, Wisconsin. The decoys of this German-born are highly sought after by collectors. OPM #7668-4	Frank Resop (1875-1953) of Berlin, Wisconsin, was born in Poland. His decoys are very distinctive and during his life he is thought to have carved about 1,000 decoys. OPM #1991.22.6

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