Capt. John “Hump” Glen

John Glen was both a waterman and farmer for most of his life. He started carving in 1916 and continued through the early 1930’s (Fleckenstein, Decoys 235). All of Glen’s decoys were hand-chopped, and telltale knife marks attest to the fact that each was finished with a spokeshave. However, Mrs. Glen did sand some of the birds and further helped her husband by puttying and painting them. With his wife’s occasional aid, Glen produced baldpate, black duck, canvasback, goose, mallard, pintail, redhead and scaup decoys. Hunters and collectors tend to regard Glen’s pintails as his best pieces. Along with these traditional wooden lures, Glen also designed a silhouette goose decoy, the first ever used in the cornfields of Maryland. Numerous gunning clubs including the Cedar Point Gunning Club benefitted from Glen’s stools. John Glen put so much of his time into carving decoys that he named his place the “Decoy Farm” (Fleckenstein, Decoys 235).