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Hy Dahlka Waterfowling Collection

This collection consists of documentation of the waterfowling traditions of Southeast Michigan, the “downriver” area where the Detroit and Huron Rivers enter Lake Erie. The collection focuses especially on the traditions of a downriver shoal delta known as Pointe Mouillee (“wet point” as named by French settlers), an area considered by many as one of the most important waterfowling locations in the Great Lakes region and home of the legendary Pointe Mouillee Shooting Club.

Hy Dahlka of Gibralter, Michigan, was an avid waterfowler, a community scholar and activist, who played a major role in the preservation of the Pointe Mouillee game area and the public recognition of downriver duck boat making, decoy making, and duck hunting. In 1983, Hy Dahlka donated newspaper clippings, photographs, and an unpublished manuscript on regional waterfowling to the MSU Museum.

Donors and Fieldworkers

Hy Dahlka

Exhibitions

“Downriver and Thumb Area Michigan Waterfowling: The Folk Arts of Nate Quillen and Otto Misch,” Michigan State University Museum, January - June, 1981.

Festival of Michigan Folklife, 1988

Publications

C. Kurt Dewhurst and Marsha MacDowell. Downriver and Thumb Area Michigan Waterfowling: The Folk Arts of Nate Quillen and Otto Misch. East Lansing: Folk Culture Series, Michigan State University Museum, Volume 2, No. 1 (January 1981).

C. Kurt Dewhurst, “Decoy Making in the Downriver Traditions: Recollections of Hy Dahlka 1973,” Ware Foundation News, Volume VIII, No. 3 (Summer 1984), pp. 6-9.

C. Kurt Dewhurst, “Sneakshooting in the Downriver Tradition: Hy Dahlka on the Art of Gunning at Pointe Mouillee,” Wildfowl Art: Journal of the Ward Foundation (Summer 1985), pp. 16-19.

C. Kurt Dewhurst, “Blind Faith: Michigan Waterfowling Duck Blinds,” 1998 Festival of Michigan Folklife (Annual); East Lansing: Michigan State University Museum, 1988, pp. 49-53.

Decoy used by Hy Dahlka, Gibraltar, Michigan