EXCELLENT, 100% ORIGINAL PAINT to BOTTOM & KEEL!! EXCELLENT IN-USE GUNNING REPAINT on this SCARCE VERY EARLY BEN SCHMIDT HEN MALLARD GUNNING DECOY from MICHIGAN CARVING LEGEND BENJAMIN SCHMIDT!! THIS DECOY is in EXCELLENT 100% ORIGINAL STRUCTURAL CONDITION with EXCELLENT PATINA to the feathered PAINT & SUPERB CARVING to the WINGS and SPECULUMS!!!! VINTAGE ~VERY EARLY ST. CLAIR FLATS c1930 \"BEN SCHMIDT\" Wood Duck Decoy MICHIGAN a.imagelink {color:#efe2ae;} a:hover.imagelink {color:#efe2ae;} a:visited.imagelink {color:#000000;} a.imagelink img.saleimage { border: 2px solid #efe2ae; } a:visited.imagelink img.saleimage { border: 2px solid #000000; } Description

The Great Benjamin S. Schmidt (1884-1968)

• Detroit, Michigan and Later Centerline, Michigan

(BELOW): OTHER AWESOME PUDDLE DUCKS!!

SCARCE VERY EARLY; \"HEN MALLARD\"; AWESOME WING CARVING; c1930 \"BENJAMIN SCHMIDT\" WOOD DUCK DECOY; Centerline, Michigan (Lake St. Clair, Saginaw Bay)

• Excellent Very Early Feather Stamping and Wing & Tail Carving, Vintage Early Glass Eyes!

OUTSTANDING 100% ORIGINAL RIGGING!

HUGE, VERY EARLY 4-lb. 2-oz. LONG BODY BLOCK!!

• Excellent and Vintage Ben Schmidt Decoy with Awesome Head, Wing and Tail Carving!
• Outstanding Semi-Alert, Slightly Turned Head!!
• Awesome Bill with His Perfectly Executed Bill/Head Separation, Nostrils and Mandibles!!
• 100% ORIGINAL PAINT to BOTTOM & KEEL; EXCELLENT OLD IN-USE GUNNING REPAINT to BODY & HEAD!!

(Below): Excellent Picture of a Ben Schmidt Hen Mallard from c1958 so You Can see how He Kept to Form But Refined his Carving Prowess Significantly)

• \"A Perfect \"Very Early Period\" Specimen of a Vintage Marsh Hunting Block Made by the Dean and Most Famous Michigan Decoy Carver in History; Mr. Benjamin Schmidt

This is a Great Decoy From His Earliest & in My Opinion Favorite Period!!\"

• THIS DECOY is PAINTED in It\'s MID FALL, COLOR SCHEME and How We Often See HEN MALLARDS DURING the SEASON in MICHIGAN!!!!

RARE and AWESOME \"LOW PROFILE\", \"LONG BODY\"!!

This DECOY Has Excellent & VERY EARLY FEATHER CHECKING -and- EARLY WING CARVING typical of ONE of His EARLY DECOYS!!

• VERY NICE PATINA to the BEAUTIFUL OLD, DRY, LEAD-BASED or OIL-BASED REPAINT!!

This DECOY has SOME of BEN\'S MOST AWESOME & EARLIEST STRAIGHT-LINE \"GOUGE CARVING\" to the WINGS and TAIL... JUST PURE EARLY BEN SCHMIDT STYLE and FORM!!

BEN\'S AWESOME VERY EARLY \"FEATHER STAMPING\" to the SIDES & BACK & BREAST... IT IS SO EARLY that the STAMPING DOES NOT GRADUATE IN SIZE in MANY AREAS....WHICH LATER, ALL of HIS DECOYS EXHIBITED!!!!

• If You Like Vintage Decoys from Famous Master Carvers That Saw Action Doing What it they were Made For and Still Are in Outstanding Condition....THIS IS A GREAT DECOY FOR YOUR COLLECTION!!

SHIPPING INCLUDES INSURANCE

Awesome Ben Schmidt Hunting Decoy; Perfectly Solid, Outstanding; With an Excellent Patina!! This is a very nice, wonderfully formed, solid cedar wood Scarce Hen Mallard duck decoy by Benjamin S. Schmidt (1884-1968) of Detroit and later Centerline, Michigan. Of all the noted carvers who lived in the greater Detroit area, Ben Schmidt was by far the most accomplished and well-regarded. He made decoys for personal use and for sale and Ben was the person the late world renowned collector and decoy historian William J. Mackey, Jr., described as the maker of, \"just about the All-American working decoy\". Ben Schmidt made his first decoys in 1914, but didn\'t carve commercially until 1934 at the age of 50; and the rest is history.

Ben Schmidt Showing Friend and and Saginaw Bay Carver Don Parker a Trick or Two!!

Ben would go on to be considered the dean of carving in the Detroit Metropolitan area and was copied by countless aspiring decoy makers in Michigan, Ohio and even Ontario including Ralph Malpage, Doug Burrel and Wragg & Burrel of London. Ben Schmidt\'s decoy making prowess would eventually propel the name \"Schmidt\" into the annals of decoy carving history and national respectability. Ben was a host in his shop to a plethora of famous Michigan carvers like Charlie Pozzini, Ralph Johnston, John Schweikart, Ralph Reghi, Jim Kelson, Nick Purdo, Hank Walters, Pecore Fox, Ferdinand Bach, Tom Schroeder and many others from the Mt. Clemens school of carvers; and also including his brother Frank and the lesser known master carver Walter Snow of nearby Royal Oak, Michigan. As you can see by the photo below, the prominent Detroit area carvers of the area were all familiar with each other and in many cases close friends.

Five of the Most Prominent Carvers from the Detroit Area from the First Half of the 20th Century!!

Many of these historically important Detroit area carvers knew each other. As a matter of fact, Ben needed wood to carve a special order swan one night for Phyllis Ellison, so he turned to Hank Walters of Fair Haven for the wood as he was the only person that had a large enough piece of cedar stock. To thank him, Ben rewarded Hank with a beautiful pair of miniature Mallards. In the 1960s and 1970s, Phyllis Ellison, of Farmington, Michigan, was an avid collector of waterfowl decoys and materials pertaining to decoy carving and carvers, especially those of the Great Lakes region. The materials decorated her home and served as sources of inspiration for her work in the advertising business in Detroit. She not only knew Ben very well but also most of the Detroit areas most well known decoy carvers. Ellison visiting Ben and the others in their homes and hunting places, but also she was great friends with the growing number of decoy collectors in the region.

When Ben was behind on orders, Nick Purdo of Mt. Clemens supplied him with awesome Canvasback heads and Walter Snow and his brother Frank carved bodies as well as heads to help him catch up up. You can\'t mention Michigan and duck decoy in the same sentence without Ben Schmidt\'s name included in there somewhere.

This Outstanding and Classic Old Ben Schmidt Hen Mallard duck decoy up for sale has his distinctively carved head, and with a classic, somewhat relaxed medium-height head pose and it is certainly highlighted with his trade-mark wing and tail carving along with Neat Very Early Feather Stamping. As a matter of fact, Ben Schmidt\'s hen Decoys are some of the finest and most realistic decoys ever made, and this hen is a great example of one his early and very large puddle ducks. This decoy is from his early period when he made some of the most memorable, very large and true-to-form decoys of his long career. This decoy is as solid as the day that it was made and while it saw plenty of action you could hunt over this decoy tomorrow and lose nothing from the day that it left his work shop. It is in such perfect structural condition a small tail chip, a few small surface checks on the back and a couple surface stress checks to the bill. When I say that you could hunt over this decoy tomorrow that shouldn\'t surprise anyone, as Ben\'s decoys were as well made as any of the decoys from anywhere and during any time and fine examples like this Scarce Early Hen Mallard are a testament to that. From a structural standpoint this decoy is in awesome condition as the head is as tightly attached to the body as the day it was made and it is from his finest carving period which is a huge plus. The rigging is perfect and 100% original; the hand made copper line tie and lead weighted keel are excellent & fully functional.

This Excellent Scarce, very early and very large Ben Schmidt Hen Mallard Wood Duck decoy measures a huge and very long-bodied 18-1/2\" long, with a nice, wide beam of 8\" wide x 9\" tall and weighs a somewhat hefty, yet very rig-manageable 4-lbs. 2-oz. of solid cedar. This is a perfect example of one of Ben\'s long bodied, high-tailed and extremely large decoys that is heavily weighted with its original lead weighted keel and copper line tie. This is also a fantastic example of a Schmidt decoy that was made so perfectly that it could stand up to anything Lake St. Clair or the Great lakes could whip up and even if it was hit by a rogue 3-foot wave it would most likely stay upright, but if it flipped it would right itself immediately. The hand-cast lead weight is \"perfect\" as is the awesome hand-made copper line tie that might have been one of the ones he made while riding on a city bus. It is an extremely solid and sturdy bird and makes for an excellent example of the finest early carving that Ben Schmidt executed. Also, a real adult Hen Mallard duck in the wild is about 24\" long when stretched out and measured from the tip of the bill to the tip of the tail; and this decoy is realistically carved and over-sized because if you stretched this decoy out it would come to around 28\" in length. This Very Nice decoy has perfectly carved in bill/head separation, his trademark awesomely carved mandibles, small nostrils and an absolutely perfectly shaped and formed \"Mallard\" bill!! The bill is so accurate that it looks like it was cast after a real ducks bill, which isn\'t unusual for a Ben Schmidt decoy. Very nice Ben Schmidt Hen Mallard from his \"early\" period of Ben\'s carving (1930-1938), when he was providing hunters with an outstanding and incredible wood duck decoy that swam perfectly and they also righted themselves quickly to make a rig that rivaled anything on the water from anywhere in the country. If you are from the Detroit area you\'ll find interesting that Ben sold his mallard and pintail decoys for a few dollars each at the Hudson\'s flagship store in Detroit. I recently bought several that are price marked and in the original sack from Hudson\'s and they are great examples of his puddle duck decoys. This exceptional Hen Mallard up for sale is from a slightly earlier time period. Here\'s a chance to own one of the nicer early, vintage \"Gunning Blocks\" that was carved by Michigan\'s renowned master carver Benjamin Schmidt, and this decoy is symmetrically perfect from a carving standpoint and has nicely carved in and mounted glass eyes . This bird was repainted in a nice mid-fall plumage, which is what they look like when they migrate through Michigan earlier in the season. A great addition to any collection of vintage working decoys from Michigan wood duck decoys and shorebirds. If you have any questions or would like any additional photos feel free to email me. Thanks for looking.

The first 16 Photos are of this Awesome and Very Nice Ben Schmidt Hen Mallard duck decoy up for sale. The Last 8 photos are of other Awesome Ben Schmidt Large \"Puddle Duck\" Decoys from His Early and Middle Periods. Pictures are mallards, Black Ducks and Pintails.

(Above): Vintage Photo of Ben Schmidt Well On in His Years, and Even with Failing Eyesight, Still at it Inspecting a New Head!!

(Above): Outstanding High Head Hen Mallard From around 1952-56; Note the Outstanding Painting and Carving Finesse From This Period,

(Above): Very Early Drake Mallard With A More Deliberately Created Appearance to the Carving and Painting But an Early Beauty and Workhorse!!

(Above): Rare and Very Nicely Formed pair of Ben\'s Old Squaws!! These Are Hard to Come By and I am Loading a Very Rare, Mint, Signed Drake Old Squaw on in the next 2 days, You Just Seldom see Either of this Species!!!!





(Above): Mallard and Black Duck photos from Lowell Jackson\'s Benjamin Schmidt Pamphlet!!

• NOTE: If You Look Closely at These Photos You Will Immediately realize How truly Awesome to His Early Form this Hen mallard Up For sale Really Is!! This Decoy has Carving Form and Style That is As impressive or More Impressive Than Any of These!! About Mr. RARE BEN SCHMIDT \"OSCAR PETERSON STYLE\" WALL PLAQUE!!

  VERY RARE BEN SCHMIDT \"FULL-BODIED\" LABRADOR DUCK BELOW are a COUPLE of BEN\'S DRAKE CANVASBACKS from Over the Save time & money with
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