The Wild Duck Chase: Inside the Strange and Wonderful World of the Federal Duck Stamp Contest

The Wild Duck Chase: Inside the Strange and Wonderful World of the Federal Duck Stamp Contest
ISBN-10
0802779549
ISBN-13
9780802779540
Category
Nature
Pages
272
Language
English
Published
2012-09-18
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Author
Martin J. Smith

Description

THE WILD DUCK CHASE is the basis for “The Million Dollar Duck,” a documentary feature film, directed by Brian Golden Davis and written by Martin J. Smith, premiering at The Slamdance Film Festival in January 2016. The book takes readers into the peculiar world of competitive duck painting as it played out during the 2010 Federal Duck Stamp Contest-the only juried art competition run by the U.S. government. Since 1934, the duck stamp, which is bought annually by hunters to certify their hunting license, has generated more than $750 million, and 98 cents of each collected dollar has been used to help purchase or lease 5.3 million acres of waterfowl habitat in the United States. As Martin J. Smith chronicles in his revealing narrative, within the microcosm of the duck stamp contest are intense ideological and cultural clashes between the mostly rural hunters who buy the stamps and the mostly suburban and urban birders and conservationists who decry the hunting of waterfowl. The competition also fuels dynamic tensions between competitors and judges, and among the invariably ambitious, sometimes obsessive and eccentric artists--including Minnesota's three fabled Hautman brothers, the "New York Yankees" of competitive duck painting. Martin Smith takes readers down an arcane and uniquely American rabbit hole into a wonderland of talent, ego, art, controversy, scandal, big money, and migratory waterfowl.

Get the book

Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Search the book
eBay.com
eBay.com
Search the book

Similar books