Arts & Photography 

The beauty of every realistically carved decoy begins in the pattern - its proportions, details, and accuracy of stance. And if you've ever gone hunting through dozens of books for a specific species to trace, you'll know how frustrating it is to find the right one. Professional decoy carver Keith Bridenhagen solves this problem by including here almost every North American duck species. To ensure accuracy, he has researched each species from live birds and mounts.

The patterns are reproduced life-size so there's no need to redraw them, just trace the pattern directly from the book. Every decoy is labelled with specifications for eye size and color, body length and width, and is drawn perfectly proportioned with easy-to-follow details for wing and tail positions. No oversimplified shapes or complicated feathering here. And Bridenhagen has drawn the birds so that their most unusual features are displayed.

Once you've mastered the basic design, you can capture other realistic stances by interchanging the heads, which are drawn in several attitudes, including sleeping, alert, excited, at-rest, and normal. Bridenhagen encourages carvers to develop their creativity by employing even more variables - open the bill, enlarge the eyes, or change the crest.