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‘ > TE vcctor ne 5 AS eee : Bepseey Meccan og yy 3 li diluil . “dtl Sh dns eee Sea eee a ie eels me ee, ern a Se ences: — J. C. SCHULTZ, tried a dozen types of field decoys for goose hunting without finding one he liked. They were either too heavy or too bulky—he couldn't carry enough decoys when he took along a carload of friends—or they weren't natural enough to fool the real geese, So like a lot of do-it-yourselfers faced with an unsatisfactory product, he decided to try making his own. ¢ ideal material seemed to be rubber— ~ inflatable decoys are light, easy to carry lecoys impractically ex ve, so he tried using cast-off inner tubes, which he could pick up free at any service station or garage. Even new tu condemned be cause of a flaw, were available at little or 0 cost, 154 of Aberdeen, So. Dak, current deco: i have been en, orsed by Ducks UJ ~ ee ae et a pattern, he laid a freshly-killed Jan goose on a piece of paper and out- a two-piece pattern, but when he put the two halves together, the outline wasn't right—it bulged where it should have been flat and was flat where it should have bulged. Finally he skinned his “model,” tanned the skin, and laid it out, cutting off sections and laying them out until he had a nine-piece pattern. In later experimunts with mallard duck decoys, he worked out piece pattern for that size, The first decoys, assembled with a cold- patch method and painted with decoy paint, were not a success. The seams wilted in the ulling the body out of shape, and the lastic, re-