DECOY COLLECTING

$Bill, Wacko Wally and BirdMan were heading for Montrose Colorado for a duck, goose and pheasant hunt, rolling along the highway in $Bill’s black Pontiac.
BirdMan had his usual back seat and could see the glow off the top of Wacko’s bald head. $Bill says, “My theory of economics is real simple, buy low, sell high, nothing more complicated.” Wackos ears perked up as did BirdMans for the insight of the decade, how to make Big $. Wacko says to $Bill, “Didn’t you have a wooden decoy collection worth over a million dollars?” “Yes”, says $Bill, I brought plastic decoys to the blinds on the Illinois river in the 50′s and 60′s near Henry Illinois, the home of the famous carver, Purdue, and traded them to the hunters for their hand carved works of art.” “My wife hated them stacked all over the garage and basement, and when we parted ways, she took them, my buddies had to purchase them back from her.” “They eventually had a worth well over 1 million greenbacks.” “I do that with everything, from antique furniture to real estate, stocks and bonds, and collectible shotguns.” Wacko Wally was beside himself at this point, and his bald head shined even brighter. That day, during a Chinese ring-necked pheasant drive, BirdMan floored Wacko again with “You know these pheasants have been around since the Miocene age, after the dinosaur wipeout. There are bones and fossils of pheasants that have been carbon dated in Mongolia, China, and Korea.” At that point Wacko couldn’t take it any more and fired 3 rounds from his Browning autoloader at a passing flock of mallards 300 yards up, not a feather stirred but 15 pheasants jumped up 20 feet away, and Wacko had an empty gun. Wacko exclaimed, “I guess I buy high and sell low.” BirdMan walked out of the river with 3 pheasants,
4 quail, and a lesser Canadian, and $Bill grinned, and said “That is the way it was in the old days, by Henry Illinois.”