By Nate Jones
Staff Writer
After three years of hosting their annual summer decoy auction outside of Maine, Guyette & Schmidt, Inc. – the world’s largest decoy auction firm formally based in Farmington – is bringing its wooden winged works of art back to the pine tree state.
Gary Guyette said this year the two-day event scheduled to begin July 26 at the Wyndham Hotel in South Portland will feature decoys carved by the late Gus Wilson of South Portland. Last year the firm sold a pair of Wilson’s decoys for nearly $300,000, he said.
“There are several well known carvers from the state,” Guyette said. “Wilson is the most well known.”
Mike Mallar, owner and operator of Mallar Decoys in Augusta said Wilson – who was born on Mount Desert Island in 1864 – began carving ducks around the same time he began his career as a lighthouse keeper at Goose Rock Island in the eastern portion of Penobscot Bay in 1915.
“He had a lot of time to observe sea ducks,” Mallar said. “[Wilson] is a folk hero of sorts; he understood the form.”
Wilson, who either sold most of his decoys for about 25 cents a piece or gave them away to family members, was eventually transferred to Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, where he spent less than a year before taking over his brother’s position as caretaker of the Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse in South Portland where Mallar said he finished a 20-year career as a lighthouse keeper before he died in 1950.
“In my opinion some of his best decoys were made right there at Spring Point,” he said.
The lighthouse Wilson took care of was very different than today’s Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse; there was no breakwater and Mallard said Wilson would row out to the light from the nearby shore and stay there while he observed birds and carved decoys with whatever driftwood he could find there and would then paint them with automobile paint.
“A lot of lobstermen and fishermen would use decoys to supplement their income,” he said. “They weren’t carving for sale, they were carving to put food on the table.”
Mallar, who has been a decoy dealer for 10 years, said he became fascinated by Wilson’s story as both a lighthouse keeper and a decoy carver. He has tracked Wilson’s heritage and even visited his old home on Preble Street in South Portland.
“Most of the decoys he carved he did in his garage or the front seat of his car,” Mallar said. “It is kind of neat to stand in his driveway and imagine what it would have been like back then.”
Mallar said he and his father have collected five out of Wilson’s estimated 5,000 decoys over the years, and he’s learned how to spot a fake.
 “Wilson had an uncured stigmatism; if you put a level on the head of any of his decoys, it won’t line up either straight up and down or to the side. If you’re trying to counterfeit his work, that would probably be something that would be difficult to reproduce,” he said.
The off-kilter angle of a decoy’s head is just one of the traits commonly found in Wilson’s work; Mallar said a seasoned decoy dealer can tell his work just by the quality of the carving and the construction of the bird.
“I’ve seen almost 10,000 decoys that claim to be Wilson’s,” he said.
Guyette said the firm is pleased to be returning to Maine, and they are hopeful decoy enthusiasts from all over the East Coast will travel to the event.
“We have a lot of clients from the south,” he said. “They usually come up to Maine, spend four or five days on the coast and just enjoy the state as well as come to the auction.”