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Duck Stamp Artists Turn to Spent Shotgun Shells to Meet New Pro-Hunting Mandate
Audubon SocietyThe paintings submitted for this year’s federal duck stamp contest feature familiar images of wildlife art: A Cinnamon Teal bobs on a mountain lake. Two Brant tuck in to land in coastal chop. A placid pair of Red-breasted Mergansers float side by side, their jaunty crests aglow in early morning light.
But a closer look at the contest entries reveals other, less expected details. In scene after scene, wooden duck calls—which hunters use to lure in the birds—drift along the water or rest in the reeds. In several others, empty plastic shotgun shells litter the shallows and the shore.
This unusual abundance of hunting paraphernalia is the result of the Trump administration’s recent rewrite of the rules for the annual competition sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Unrelated to the Postal Service, the federal duck stamp is a permit required for hunting waterfowl. Each year’s contest determines the winning art that appears on the following year’s stamp. In May, the FWS changed the competition’s rules to make its permanent theme “celebrating our waterfowl hunting heritage.” And it added a requirement that all submitted artworks “must also include appropriate waterfowl hunting-related accessories or elements.”
To meet that new mandate, artists did what artists do: They got creative. Entries in the contest, which was livestreamed late last month, included scenes with retrieving dogs, duck blinds and decoys, hunters hunkered in boats, and even a trained Peregrine Falcon about to strike.
But a closer look at the contest entries reveals other, less expected details. In scene after scene, wooden duck calls—which hunters use to lure in the birds—drift along the water or rest in the reeds. In several others, empty plastic shotgun shells litter the shallows and the shore.
This unusual abundance of hunting paraphernalia is the result of the Trump administration’s recent rewrite of the rules for the annual competition sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Unrelated to the Postal Service, the federal duck stamp is a permit required for hunting waterfowl. Each year’s contest determines the winning art that appears on the following year’s stamp. In May, the FWS changed the competition’s rules to make its permanent theme “celebrating our waterfowl hunting heritage.” And it added a requirement that all submitted artworks “must also include appropriate waterfowl hunting-related accessories or elements.”
To meet that new mandate, artists did what artists do: They got creative. Entries in the contest, which was livestreamed late last month, included scenes with retrieving dogs, duck blinds and decoys, hunters hunkered in boats, and even a trained Peregrine Falcon about to strike.
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If they are going to celebrate hunting, they may as well show the result.
they literally combed through every agency and found even the most obscure programs to get involved in and fuck up, shows how craven they are. And the various Philatelic organizations should protest politicizing stamp categories that were NOT designed to be "political". 
