Last summer I visited Marty Hanson at his workshop outside Hayward, Wisconsin, for a story for North Magazine.

Hanson has raised the craft of wooden decoys to an art. Today his work sells for anywhere from the low thousands to five digits. He’s also one of the last craftsmen of his kind.

These days Hanson can get lost in his work for hours, after which he can’t remember carving, but the bird is finished. It’s hard to say, in the age of social media, if there will ever be another path like the one he took, from carving wooden ducks for the local gun club as a kid to making his living at the top of his field.

Story here: The Art of the Decoy
https://issuu.com/tracyramsay/docs/north_summer_2026

Video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxLCzGi9oZE
4w