Early Chesapeake Bay Scaup Drake Sink Box Wing Decoy, possibly by Ira Hudson or family, circa 1910

Early Chesapeake Bay Scaup Drake Sink Box Wing Decoy, possibly by Ira Hudson or family, circa 1910, a very shallow flat bodied decoy with black head, carved black bill, and black and white body. The decoy is in decent condition and very well shows its age and long use. The neck has an old crack and the head was re-attached long ago, and not so long ago. The paint is original and in dry untouched condition, pretty uniformly worn throughout. The bill has a nick along the left and bottom; the body has a bare few shot scars and slight scuffs around the edge; the bottom is unpainted and shows some erosion from age and use.

The head looks very much like the work of Ira Hudson, so if not by him then by family or neighbor. Hudson was born in 1873 and became a boat builder and accomplished decoy carver in Chincoteague, Virginia. Using soft woods or found scraps, he carved both hollow and solid-bodied decoys with a very life-like attitude. He made a wide variety of species, in varying styles, some with great detail and others more simple. He featured a rather distinctive shaped head that tended to sit high on a neck shelf. Ira had a large family and involved all his children in making decoys to some extent or other: sons Norman and Delbert and daughter Alice were successful decoy carvers on their own as well. Ira is regarded as one of the finest decoy artists from the Chesapeake region.

Measures: 5 in H x 12-1/2 in L x 5-1/4 in W.

Wing duck decoys were carved with very shallow flat bodies to sit atop the wings of a sink box and still look natural as if most of the body was beneath the water. The sink box was a floating raft just barely at the surface, holding a submerged box to hold the hunter hidden just below the water level: in effect a free-floating submerged hunting blind. The box was anchored in the center of an extensive rig of decoys that would number in the hundreds. The wing ducks were laid out to merge the sink box into the rest of the raft of decoys. Some were made of cast iron, quite heavy, to help submerge and balance out the sink box as ballast.

Sink boxes were very dangerous and liable to flip or sink with the entrapped hunter. But they were so effective that states soon began to restrict or even prohibit their use. By 1839, New York prohibited the use of sink boxes. From 1852 to 1897, other states such as Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and New Jersey banned their use as well. Eventually they were outlawed in all of the United States under federal law.