There’s a little place I hunt, a pocket-sized beaver swamp with duckweed-spangled water and a canopy of flooded timber hung with mistletoe that is so fetching, so postcard perfect, that I blame its primeval charms for prompting an uncharacteristic decision on my part. Last year, standing in the swamp, I thought: I should hunt this place with hand-carved wooden decoys. This spot deserves something special.
It was an uncharacteristic thought in that hand-carved wooden decoys have long seemed a luxury I didn’t want to pay for, and a literal burden I