Carver lives up to nickname Ducky
For more than 50 years, Vernon ‘Ducky' Schnare of Cape Sable Island has been a carver and collector of all things ducks
A nickname earned as a child because he liked to chase ducks around a pond has served Vernon ‘Ducky’ Schnare well.
“My sister nicknamed me,” says Schnare. “It had nothing to do with carving. It worked out all right.”
For more than 50 years, Schnare has been a carver and collector of all things ducks, earning a reputation for excellence and knowledge of the art and the tradition.
“I made my first set of decoys when I was 21,” he says.
Since then, he has carved thousands of duck decoys as well as other wildlife species. From hummingbirds and cardinals to tunas and swordfish, Schnare’s work is well-known.
“Fish is the big thing right now. Take halibut, tuna and swordfish, that’s what people want. Everybody’s got a man cave and that’s where that stuff goes,” he said.
Schnare, better known as Ducky, uses cedar and pine for his carvings. “Basswood is better but it’s expensive,” he says.
A drawing knife, spokeshave and utility knife are his three favorite tools, much the same as what was used years ago to make decoys.
“The old fellas, a lot of them used a hatchet and a pocket knife,” says Schnare. “They were making them to use. They didn’t care what they looked like as long as they were working and bringing in the ducks.”
In the early 1900s whittling was America’s number one pastime and people made the decoys to go hunting for food, Schnare explains.
“Now they go for the sport of it, not so much the food part. Back then it was food. In the 1800s they had market hunting where they shot and sold them to the big cities in the U.S. They were allowed to kill as many ducks as they wanted. They were allowed to kill two or three hundred a day," he says.
"The Labrador duck is extinct. They shot the last one. It’s in a museum in New York state, the last known Labrador duck, and the Canvasback dropped so low they were only allowed to shoot one a day," he points out. "In
1916 they made a law to stop the market hunt. It was a business like someone going fishing. They made money.”
Schnare has also amassed an extensive collection of several thousand duck decoys and carvings over the years, bought at yard sales, auctions and online with a few trades and gifts thrown in. He’s quick to rhyme off some of the well-known carvers from the area from throughout the years – and there are a lot of them. “Just about everything in here I didn’t make,” says Schnare standing in the midst of his collection, picking one out that was carved by the late Richard d’Entremont of Pubnico. “Look at the detail on that,” he says.
The interesting thing with decoys he says as he picks out three decoys of the same duck is that they are all different. “It’s the individual, how he seen it and when he made it. He made it the way he seen it," he says. "That’s the fun of collecting because there are so many varieties of the same bird, but they all look different. That’s how you can tell who carved it.” Ducky is the go-to guy locally for getting a carving maker identified.
“People will bring decoys to the barn and want to know who carved it and we will call Ducky," says fellow carver, collector, duck hunter and good friend Alton ‘Buzzy’ Smith. "He knows pretty well every decoy and who made them."
Ducky even has one of Smith’s early decoys in his collection that he made when he was 16.
It was a working decoy, says Smith. “We couldn’t afford to buy the plastic ones back then so everybody made their own.”
Over the years, Schnare has inspired quite a few people to take up carving, Smith says.
“He’s very talented, but don’t tell him I said that,” says Smith, laughing. “He’s made a lot of stuff in his lifetime.”
For 24 years, Schnare was the Industrial Arts teacher at the Barrington Municipal High School.
“One of our projects in school was a duck,” recalls former student Johnny Nickerson, who also carves, collects and hunts ducks. “He has inspired more carvers in this area than I can name. He was one of the first around here to collect decoys and in doing so kept the history alive.”
Schnare often has people drop by his workshop at his home in North East Point.
“It’s a fantastic hobby,” he says, adding getting to meet people is part of the fun.
“Everyone can carve,” he says. “You’ve got to have something to do when you retire.”