by Video compliments of British Pathe Ltd.

Just recently a very rare silent movie from 1927, titled “Modern Machinery has not taken this old hunter from his odd job,” appeared as a YouTube video. It doesn’t take a knowledgeable collector long to recognize that the “old hunter” is none other than Joe Lincoln of Accord, Massachusetts .  

The short, only a bit more than a minute long, shows him hand chopping a body, spoke shaving it, carving a head and putting glass eyes into a merganser decoy. “And they do the job” the video concludes, followed by a vignette of a bunch of ducks and coots in a nearby bay. This is the closest thing to a time machine, allowing today’s collectors an opportunity to see the master at work. At one point in the film a row of painted Canada geese sets on a shelf behind him while at work.

According to the video’s owner, British Pathe, a film company that traces its roots back to the 1890s, this was one of “Walter Futter’s Curiosities.” Futter was an American film director that made a collection of “shorts” back in the 1920s. They later acquired the rights and have retitled them for use on YouTube.  

If you haven’t seen the film and would like to view it we have posted the YouTube video on our website – www.DecoyMag.com. We appreciate that British Pathe Ltd. has given us permission to reproduce these images.

This article appears in the May/June 2014 issue of Decoy Magazine.