Digging old-time baseball and carving decoys over the generations

Time came when Pat Gregory traveled into family and carving history.

“In 1984, I started getting an itch to carve,” Gregory said. “My wife, [Nancy], who is the sharp one, said to go up and see Art. This is 40 years ago. We just lost Art last year.”

That’s Art Behmetuik, a major link in twining those histories.

“George `Home Run Skippy’ Barto, Arthur Behmetuik, and Pat Gregory have carried on a tradition of decoy carving in the Illinois River Valley for over 125 years! Barto taught Behmetuik and Behmetuik taught Gregory,” is how Zac Zetterberg, Curator of Art and Center for American Decoys, captured the nature of the lineage in a post by the Peoria Riverfront Museum.

Gregory is the great grandson of Barto. Gregory’s grandmother, Georgene Barto Karstens, was Barto’s youngest daughter.

Dale Bowman

I caught up with Gregory at the Henry Decoy Show on Feb. 11 after spotting a pair of Barto decoys for sale at a table.

The guy behind the table said, “I saw Pat earlier, he has a table.” He gave a directional wave and I found Gregory in the next row.

Barto had a more varied history that just carving. Zetterberg described Barto as “a professional baseball player (1898-1914) and steel factory worker before he started carving decoys as an occupation.”

Barto has a page on baseball-reference.com for 1905 and ’06 when he played, respectively, for Burlington Flint Hills in the Iowa League of Professional Baseball Clubs and Duluth White Sox in the Northern-Copper Country League.

Gregory said Barto ended up in the Joliet/Lockport area when he was traded from Kewanee to the Joliet Standards.

“He was a legend in Joliet and Lockport,” Gregory said.

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Gregory’s family is well rooted in the area, though Gregory and his wife stayed in Bloomington after grad school. His brother Doc is the president of the Will & Grundy Counties Building Trades Council.

Barto was a duck hunter and the only one who carved decoys and calls around Joliet. He and Behmetuik were pretty much the northern most carvers in the 1969 book, “Decoys and Decoy Carvers of Illinois.”

In 1947, Behmetuik, after coming back from the war, basically apprenticed under Barto, who died in 1959. Behmetuik had the patterns and tools of Barto.

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“I still use my great-granddad’s draw knife on all my decoys,” Gregory said.

The hunting tradition carried down, too. “I hunt over all my decoys,” Gregory said. “I adjust my rig to mirror what is migrating through.”

He starts hunting teal in September and ends with snow geese in Missouri in March.

“Blessing is that I have a hobby that pays for a hobby (hunting),” Gregory said.

Dale Bowman

At shows, Gregory uses the artwork of a Barto canvasback on his paper bags when he makes sales, as suggested by his wife. One eye-catching piece is an unfinished blue-winged teal he built for instruction purposes. His wife said it is not being sold.

That fits with the motto on his business card: “Carved in the Barto Tradition.”

On the technical side, he uses white cedar from Michigan for the body and white pine from Wisconsin for the heads (“pine is a little stiffer”). Cedar is water resistant, lightweight, floats well and rot-resistant. Occasionally, he uses cork from Portugal.

“It’s tough to find good carving wood,” Gregory said.

Barto mostly used white pine and some cedar.

“Old-timers weren’t artists,” Gregory said. “You don’t need to be an artist to make decoys. I am just a duck hunter.”

He doesn’t overcomplicate painting, “Keep it simple.” He uses Sherwin-Williams exterior latex, then seals decoys with spar varnish (boat varnish named for spars on sailboats).

“I probably carve 100 [decoys] a year,” Gregory said. " I don’t watch TV. I work in my shop carving.”

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He likes wood ducks and said, “I like making decoys you can’t buy, like ruddy ducks.”

He makes memory decoys, which usually contain ashes of a beloved dog inside of a shotgun shell inserted into a hole drilled in the bottom of the decoy.

“You shed tears over it when you are carving it,” he said.

He takes the responsibility of conservation seriously, helping for many years with an ongoing academic study of bluebills (scaup) on the Mississippi River (also on the Illinois River).

“It’s where we leave something for future generations, we have to walk the talk,” Gregory said.

When he is asked, “Why do you carve?”, Gregory replies, “When you are sitting there for eight hours waiting for ducks for one hour, I want to look at something nice.”

Gregory is an informative follow on Facebook or email at npgregory@aol.com.