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A good weekend to duck in to HdG for fowl festivities

Staff reports

Posted 5/01/09

For 27 years, Havre de Grace has held its signature springtime event and this year will be no different with the 28th annual Decoy and Wildlife Art Festival taking place from today (Friday) through Sunday at locations around the city.

There will be more than 140 artists exhibiting and selling their work during the festival, as well as live and silent auctions, children’s activities, retriever demonstrations, carving competitions and lots more.

The festival, celebrating the city’s status as decoy capital of the world, will take place at Havre de Grace Middle School, the Havre de Grace Activity Center, the Decoy Museum and Harris Stadium at Havre de Grace High School.

On Friday, vendors will be displaying their masterpieces from 6 to 9 p.m.; the festival will continue throughout the day Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Admission to the festival is $6 per day or $10 for a weekend pass. Children under the age of 12 are free. Admission costs will benefit the Decoy Museum.

The price includes admission to all four venues of the festival and there is no need to worry about walking either because there will be free shuttle buses to all festival locations and downtown Havre de Grace.

Visiting each venue can work up an appetite, which is a good thing since there will be food vendors at each of the venues to buy food.

Brand new this year at the festival is Delta’s “Waterfowler Days” to be held all three days at the Havre de Grace Activity Center.

Delta’s “Waterfowler Days” is a hunting show sponsored by the Upper Chesapeake Chapter of the Delta Waterfowlers.

The show will feature numerous outdoor specialty vendors including hunting and fishing suppliers, hunting guide services and specialty goose and duck calling vendors.

The “Waterfowler Days” will also include calling seminars and contests, retriever training demonstrations and seminars and wood duck box building.

There will be a goose and duck calling seminar for children, where they will not only learn how to call, but will be given a duck call to take home with them.

At the Decoy Festival, members of the public will be able to bring their dogs to enter into the competition.

The dogs will be judged based on three competitions: big airwaves, speed retrieval and extreme vertical.

“Anyone can bring a dog,” Jones said.

Online preregistration for the DockDogs event closes Monday and is $20 per dog per event. On-site registration will be $25 per dog per event.

To register online, visit www.dockdogs.com and click on the link for the 2009 Havre de Grace Decoy Festival. The full event schedule for each competition is also listed online.

Registration on site will be 3 p.m. on Friday, 8 a.m. on Saturday, and 9 a.m. on Sunday.

At Havre de Grace Middle School, autographs from the festival’s honorary chairman William Veasey will be available for all in attendance from 12:30 to 2 p.m.

There will also be artists and carvers with their work on display.

If you miss some of the carvers at work at the middle school, you can wander over to the Decoy Museum where more carvers will be at work in the museum’s workshop all weekend.

The gunning rig decoy carving competition and the river gunning decoy carving competitions will also take place at the Decoy Museum.