This is a beautiful pair of 1/2 scale mallard decoys made and painted by Charles Perdew for F.D. Loomis. Loomis and F.W. Paralee were commissioned by the State of Illinois to document all of the decoys made in the state. They recorded over 200 carvers in "The Decoys and Decoy Carvers of Illinois" The most prolific and best known carver on the Illinois River was Charles Perdew (1874 - 1963). During his sixty-year carving career he made thousands of hunting decoys using a drawknife, wood gouge, whittling knife, and a make shift mechanical sander fashioned out of an old treadle sewing machine. Perdew carved mostly puddle ducks, mallard, pintail, green and blue winged teal, wood duck, diver ducks, bluebill, canvasback, and geese. He also carved decoys for crow hunting. There was once a bounty on dead crows in Illinois. Perdew influenced many Illinois carvers and several he personally taught. Perdew also made a few mechanical owl decoys whose heads turned and made a rasping sound as a string was pulled. This lot features two mallards, a hen, and a drake. As noted above they were given to Mr. Loomis by Charles Perdew and are both marked on the bottom "Loomis/Monmouth, Ill./ssn". The ducks are as expected beautifully carved and painted by Perdew. They are approximately 9 1/2 inches long, 3 1/2 inches wide and stand just under 6 inches to the top of the head.