Decoy Collector Show March 2, Celebrating 100 Years of Waterfowling at Pattersquash

Outdoorsmen are slogging through this awful sporting offseason, between the conclusion of waterfowling at the end of January and the earnest start of fishing in late March, when there is nothing to do but touch up the year’s dings in decoy paint, or get fishing tackle primed and ready for the coming season (which only makes me feel like it is farther away).

If you are a waterfowler suffering the wistful longing we all feel just after a season ends (even a horrible one, like this one), I might suggest you plan to attend next weekend’s annual decoy collectors show in Hauppauge.

The spotlight showcase of this year’s show, the 52nd Long Island Decoy Collector Association Show, will be on the 100th anniversary of the Pattersquash Gunners Association, one of the oldest surviving waterfowling clubs on the East Coast, and the appurtenances that the LIDCA has compiled in its honor are sure to light a nostalgic candle in the heart of any waterfowler.

The Pattersquash club is based on Bellport Bay, where its members have hunted the marshes for ducks and geese from scooter boats over decoys since 1924 — one of the early proponents of the practice of working birds over decoys during daylight hours, instead of ambush hunting them in roosts at dawn and dusk. The club’s members were also the founders of the LIDCA.

The iconic clubhouse — a shack mounted on stilts in the midst of the marsh — was destroyed during Superstorm Sandy but was rebuilt with permission from the local governments and the Fire Island National Seashore, which would never allow such a structure to be rebuilt anew now.

As always, the LIDCA looks to have done a bang-up job of mustering collectors and club members to compile a cornucopia of artifacts of Long Island’s waterfowling history and culture.

The Pattersquash showcase will feature an original scooter boat, designed and built by Benjamin Hallock, and various types of decoy rigs that were used by the club’s hunters throughout the 20th century, as well as lots of videos and maps and, of course, some fantastic photos from the old days at the club.

If you’re reading this in the print editions of The Press and Express, you’ll see one or maybe two here — but go to 27east.com to get a better taste of what will be at the show.

The photos from the old days are rife with oilskin jackets, rubber waders and Jones caps, scooter boats meticulously stacked with decoy spreads. In the photo attached, note the small spreads that each hunter carries with him, just a handful of geese, puddlers and diver decoys, and each man hunting solo, their motor-less scooters towed out to the marsh by a tender and then pushed into the cricks with long paddle-poles. It looks like what must have been a fun way to hunt.

Along with the always impressive gathering of antique decoy collections and modern-day carvers, this year also will feature the return of the duck boat exhibition, which invites hunters to being their working duck boats to display in the parking lot outside the show. This year also will feature a miniature model duck boat exhibition — maximum size, 18 inches!

The show is March 2 and the IBEW Hall 25, 370 Motor Parkway, Hauppauge. Doors are open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Parking is free and tickets are $12 (children under 12 admitted free). Check out the LIDCA website for more information, lidecoycollectors.com.

Check it out. If waterfowling is your thing, you won’t be disappointed.

Catch ’em up. See you out there.