A different kind of Thanksgiving bird

EASTON, Md. — Thanksgiving is a holiday where the consumption of fowl, mostly the turkey kind, is popular. A small town on the Maryland Eastern Shore held a festival celebrating another kind of fowl.

The annual Waterfowl Festival, in Easton last weekend, was part art show, part hunting and outdoor exhibition. Proceeds were donated to Ducks Unlimited for conservation efforts. 

"This is considered the grandaddy of all wildlife art shows," said Bruce Armistead, an attorney who served as president of the festival from 1987 until 1990. 

Local vendors participate in the annual Waterfowl Festival in Maryland.: Photo by Kristin Tangel, the American Observer

The show began in 1971 with approximately 40 exhibitors, and raised $7,500. Since then, the festival has raised over $5 million, Armistead said.

"It's more artistic than outdoors," he said of the event, which is run with the help of 1,500 volunteers.

This year, there were 13 exhibit venues, mostly art galleries of paintings, sculptures, photos, decoys, and other carvings through the center of town as well as in schools and churches. Two bus routes offered stops at most exhibit locations.

The festival has enlisted wildlife artist Art LaMay to paint a promotional poster each year since 1987. The poster's subject is decided by a committee and by suggestions from festival attendees.

"It's for people to take a little bit of the festival home," he said.

This year's poster, "The Socialites," depicts a great blue heron and two snowy egrets. LaMay said they congregate during the spring when breeding, but do not tolerate each other any other time of the year.

The painter, who now lives in Florida but used to live in the Easton area, also exhibits at the Southeastern Wildlife Exposition in Charleston, S.C., every February. He designed the poster for that show in 1986.

"I've got all my originals down at the Elks Lodge," LaMay said.

In other corners of the festival were a series of sculpture galleries.

Roger Martin, a North Carolina-based sculptor, worked on a medium-sized clay model of his "Close Encounter", a sitting bear with a butterfly on its foot. It would eventually be cast in bronze.

"I build an armature and bend and change it until I get a pose I like. The image evolves," Martin said.

Most sculptors work with a photograph, but Martin said he does not.

Besides bronze, Martin also sculpts taxidermy. He and fellow sculpture exhibitor Paul Rhymer helped sculpt the renovated mammal exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Sculptor Roger Martin shows off his sculpture of an owl.: Photo by Kristin Tangel, the American Observer

The outdoors were a major component of the festival. Easton Elementary School was filled with exhibits from conservation groups and wildlife refuges. Skyhunters in Flight had falconry demonstrations in which a free-flying hawk and a falcon hunted down lures made to look like a rabbit or bird.

There were also shooting demonstrations and calling contests.

Dogs also made a splash at the Waterfowl Festival, too.

Justin Aimone brought Cooper, his 3-year-old black Labrador retriever, to participate in a series of demonstrations. They were simulated hunting scenarios, complete with duck calls, gunshots and retrieving dummies. The retrievers had to swim across the pond and bring back as many as three dummies.

"They really play an essential part of getting birds we otherwise can't get ourselves," said Aimone, who has hunted ducks with retrievers for more than five years.

Aimone said it takes approximately two years to fully train a hunting dog to bring back shot birds.

There was also the DockDogs competition, where competitors were judged by how far they jumped into a pool while chasing a toy.

That was not all there was at the festival.

Local wineries offered free tastings. At the wildlife emporium, art and crafts were sold, including more carvings, decoys and decoy parts.

Paul Eberle had an eye on the wildlife emporium.

He was the representative for Pennsylvania-based Tohickon Glass Eyes, and sold nothing but eyes in numerous colors for decoys and taxidermy.

'"There are two or three companies in the United States that sell eyes," Eberle said.

He had eyes in multiple sizes for birds, fish, mammals and reptiles. Deer eyes came in several different styles, based on where the iris and pupil were.

Eberle sells the glass eyes at 20 decoy and taxidermy shows per year.