John Scheeler, born in 1925, was from Mays Landing, New Jersey. As a young boy he was not interested in carving as a profession but had made a few decoys. Scheeler started carving professionally and competing late in his life, not entering his first contest until he was forty-three. He became serious about carving after he visited the Ward Foundation's annual Carving and Art Exhibition. He was interested in studying painting as a way to improve the realism of his early decoys as he started to consider making birds for competitions. He took a correspondence course from the Famous Artists School but dropped out after his daughters became ill. He entered his first contest in 1971, the U.S. Open held in Babyl...