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Stamp 2002 - 2003 Federal Duck Stamp Poster By Joe Hautman

The 2002 - 2003 Federal Duck Stamp print by Joe Hautman depicts a group of black scoters flying in front of a mountainous seascape at sunset. "On a trip to Kodiak Island in Alaska my brothers and I took a boat out to a small rocky island to hunt sea ducks. We sat on the ice and snow covered rocks, surrounded by sheer drops down to crashing waves, watching hundreds of ducks flying around both above and below us. Some of them, like Steller's eiders and black scoters, were ducks that we had never seen before. I shot a drake black scoter that day, which I kept frozen for eleven years before using it as reference for my duck stamp entry. One of the things I noticed about the anatomy was the pronounced ridges along the side of the bill. I hadn't been able to see them in any photos, but they were so prominent 'in hand' that I had to put them in the painting. I won the contest in a tense tie-breaking vote between the top two entries. Afterwards one of the judges said that he gave my painting a higher score because it clearly showed the 'ridges' on the scoter's bill. So I was happy not only for the memory of a spectacular day in Alaska, but also that I had kept that frozen black scoter with me all of those years." - Joe Hautman

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