For The Hautman Brothers, the Secret to Duck Stamp Dominance Is All in the Family

On a frigid Might morning simply west of Minneapolis, three brothers of their 60s—Bob, Jim, and Joe Hautman—peer by means of a chain-link fence on the ranch-style home on the opposite facet. Tarps cover a lot of its rear face. The grass is overgrown. A lawnmower and a motorboat sit uncovered to the weather. “I can’t consider how decrepit that’s,” says Jim, a contact of melancholy in his voice. It’s their childhood house.

Again then, the forest the place the brothers stand, now a part of a 160-acre nature middle, was simply “the woods,” a defunct golf course reclaimed by nature and the setting of a lot Hautman lore. Right here hung the rope swing that got here aside beneath Bob, launching him on a surprisingly swish flight. Over there’s the place he and Jim returned drenched from an ill-fated canoe voyage on Westwood Lake. And this former fairway is the place the younger Hautmans hunkered like prairie canines in holes they’d dug—a spot, they’re mystified to recall, they named Gopher Bazaar.

All that point in nature proved formative. For greater than three a long time the Hautmans have dominated the Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest, a juried competitors sponsored by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) that includes work of waterfowl of their pure habitat. Annually’s winning artwork is printed on $25 stamps that duck hunters should, by regulation, buy. Stamp collectors covet them, and birders and others purchase them to achieve entry to nationwide wildlife refuges or just to assist conservation; about 98 cents from each greenback spent on stamps goes to habitat tasks. Duck stamp purchases have raised greater than $1.2 billion since 1934, enabling the FWS to preserve greater than 6 million acres within the refuge system. Concentrating on wetlands the place waterfowl breed, this system has performed a big function in serving to populations rebound from habitat destruction and overhunting, says Steve Adair, chief scientist at Geese Limitless: “It’s one of the vital environment friendly sources of federal funding on the market.”

For painters, the competition is critical enterprise; they could spend months meticulously fine-tuning every feather and cattail, striving for perfection in each inventive composition and anatomical element. Winners obtain no direct monetary prize, however they earn identify recognition and the best to promote prints of their design, which collectively can deliver life-changing wealth.

Should you aren’t a wildlife artwork buff and also you’ve heard of the Hautmans, it’s doubtless due to one other set of inventive brothers who grew up down the road: Joel and Ethan Coen. The filmmaking duo name-dropped their neighbors in a facet plot of the film Fargo: The husband of police chief Marge Gunderson is intimidated to be taught that the Hautmans have additionally submitted to a contest he entered. “Oh, hon,” Marge reassures him. “You’re higher than them.”

He isn’t. Perhaps nobody is. With six prime finishes every as of this writing, Jim and Joe are the winningest artists within the contest’s historical past. Bob has received 3 times, a feat that in every other household would astound; just one non-Hautman has surpassed him. The trio have additionally racked up a mixed 50 wins in state competitions. “They’ve the genes; they’ve the background; they’ve the attention that catches everyone else’s creativeness,” says Suzanne Fellows, who retired in 2024 as FWS duck stamp program supervisor. “Not taking away from anybody else, however their model—there’s simply one thing about it.”

A lot has modified for the reason that Hautmans started competing. A as soon as ravenous public urge for food for wildlife artwork has waned, as has participation in duck searching. By means of all of it, although, the brothers have come out on prime with superb regularity. One can’t assist however surprise: Why are these guys so good?

When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the 1934 Migratory Hen Searching and Conservation Stamp Act into regulation, waterfowl numbers had been depressed from an period of unchecked slaughter and wetland draining. The Mud Bowl made issues worse, drying up the prairie pothole breeding habitat often known as America’s duck factory. To boost cash for conservation, the regulation required waterfowl hunters ages 16 and older to buy a duck stamp. The FWS commissioned works from established painters for the primary stamps, however in 1949 it invited others to compete. Now any American 18 or older can enter the competition, held every September to find out the next yr’s stamp. Since 1993 a separate contest has welcomed youthful artists to compete for the Junior Duck Stamp.

For a lot of hunters, what started as a required buy turned a ardour for amassing. That was the case for Tuck Hautman, who carved his personal decoys and took his boys alongside on hunts. His duck stamp assortment courting again to 1934, which Joe retains in his studio, fueled Tuck’s sons’ love of wildlife artwork. Tuck additionally painted, however he was too busy working as an lawyer and entrepreneur to dedicate himself to artwork. The true artist within the household was his spouse, Elaine.

Of all of the painters the Hautmans cite as influences—Rembrandt, Sargent, and the bird-focused New Zealand artist Raymond Harris-Ching amongst them—none looms as giant as their mom. Elaine Hautman in some way managed to color prolifically whereas additionally working as a industrial artist and elevating 5 boys and two ladies. She by no means gave her kids formal classes, however the artistic ambiance she fostered and the instance of her personal inventive life made a profound influence. Bob, Jim, and Joe every showcase her canvases of their properties, together with portraits, nonetheless lifes, and cave-style work impressed by a visit to Lascaux in France. Within the years earlier than she died at age 94 in 2017, Jim would go to her every Wednesday and so they’d paint collectively.

Together with her steerage and encouragement, the brothers experimented with artwork from the get-go. Issues received critical when, a number of years after Jim completed highschool, he and Bob purchased a home. They transformed the 2 largest bedrooms to studios and painted obsessively. Inside a number of years they had been netting sufficient from artwork festivals and galleries to stop their roofing and house-painting jobs. In 1987 Bob’s portray of a pair of Buffleheads on a quiet lake received Minnesota’s state duck stamp competitors, making him the primary Hautman to notch a victory. Two years later, Jim received the federal contest with a pair of Black-bellied Whistling-Ducks in flight. The child of the household, he was simply 25 and the youngest individual to have received the competition at that time. Accordingly, he partied all night time and hardly slept earlier than boarding a aircraft to fulfill President George H. W. Bush on the White Home, arriving with what he recollects as “a crankin’ hangover.”

In the meantime, Joe, the oldest of the three, had constructed a life as a theoretical physicist on the College of Pennsylvania. He’d all the time liked science and figured that having a strong job would give him the liberty to color no matter he happy in his downtime. “Which didn’t actually work out,” he says. “I’m not a multitasker.”  His brothers urged him to push himself artistically by coming into the federal contest. He took them up on it in 1988 and entered once more the next yr. Then, in 1991, he submitted a scene of a Spectacled Eider flying low over uneven Arctic seas. It was solely his fifth wildlife portray. It took the prize.

Conspiracy theories swirled: You’re telling me this “Joe” Hautman man simply occurs to materialize when Jim is ineligible? (Federal guidelines bar artists from coming into for 3 years following a win.) Contest officers went as far as to privately ask a current winner if he thought Jim may have painted the eider. No, he concluded; the kinds had been distinct. Joe finally left academia to color full-time.

When Bob received his first federal contest in 1997 with a detailed portrait of a Canada Goose, the Hautmans cemented their standing as what headline writers can’t assist however name a duck dynasty. Immediately their friends admire the Hautmans for each their inventive abilities and their humility. “They’re simply nice individuals,” says Scot Storm, a fellow Minnesota native who has received the federal contest twice. When Storm was sad together with his portray mere days earlier than the 2018 contest deadline, Bob inspired him to begin a brand new one. Storm laughed; duck stamp artists typically spend months planning and tons of of hours portray their submissions. Then he determined to go for it. The results of his feverish work was a Wood Duck that got here out on prime. “That was attributable to Bob,” he says.

Kira Sabin, a younger artist who started coming into the federal contest in 2019, was “a bit starstruck” after they met Bob and Joe on the 2023 competitors. Viewing a room filled with submissions, the Hautmans’ mastery turns into readily obvious, notes Sabin. “They’re extraordinarily proficient when depicting dramatic lighting in a pure means,” Sabin says. “They know learn how to do realism in a means different individuals don’t.”

That expertise retains corporations clamoring to print Hautman scenes on clocks, coasters, mugs, puzzles, and different merchandise, says Marty Segelbaum, their longtime licensing agent. “The Hautmans are in all probability the very best I’ve ever seen—probably the most sensible to element,” he says. “It’s simply astonishing the sort of response they get.” As for the way they obtain that diploma of realism, nobody—together with the brothers themselves—appears in a position to say. “Should you determine that one out,” Storm says, “let me know.”

The hen’s neck is just too skinny. “I get sort of a snaky look right here,” says Joe, pointing on the feminine in a pair of Canvasbacks on a rippled pond. Bob introduced this unfinished portray over to Jim’s house studio, the place the brothers are holding considered one of their common critique classes. (It’s not for the competition, Bob says: “I simply needed to color some geese.”) Jim factors on the water’s floor. “I don’t like this reflection,” he says.

On this wet morning the brothers every supply blunt suggestions on each other’s works in progress. Jim’s wolf scene wants extra vegetation. The goldenrod skeletons are too scrawny in Joe’s portray of deer in winter. Removed from recoiling from candid criticism, the Hautmans welcome it from anybody; Joe lately requested his electrician what he considered a portray. However trustworthy assessments from each other are their secret weapon, an edge unavailable to their rivals. Effectively, normally. On uncommon events when Bob thinks his brothers have missed the mark totally, he’s been recognized to easily say, “Portray is difficult,” and go away the room. 

As exactly as they’ll diagnose what’s not working in a portray, the Hautmans have a tough time explaining what they accomplish that properly. “We by no means actually discovered approach,” says Jim. “We simply began pushing paint round till it appears to be like such as you need it to look.” Any particular expertise lies not of their brushstrokes or mastery of colour idea, they are saying, however of their information of the outside, their really feel for composition, and their insistence on nailing the small print. “I simply wish to paint what’s there,” says Joe in his tender however direct means. “The problem is to take care of your perspective so you possibly can nonetheless see it—see that it appears to be like proper or doesn’t look proper. That’s the toughest half.” 

The Hautmans use all kinds of methods to assist them see their work anew. They’ll set a portray apart for months and are available again to it with contemporary eyes. They’ll flip it the other way up on the easel or take a look at it in a mirror. However after they want a change of perspective, nothing does the job like getting roasted by their brothers.

They not solely tolerate each other’s barbs however appear by no means to tire of each other’s firm. They take up element from geese they shoot whereas searching collectively and from reference images taken on journeys collectively. When considered one of them paints a duck on a lake, the others typically know precisely which duck and which lake.

That isn’t to say they’ve mind-melded right into a single inventive entity. Every has his personal model, says their brother Pete, the oldest Hautman sibling and the one one to attend artwork college. (He gave up portray to develop into a National Book Award–winning novelist.) “Bob may be very free,” Pete says. “He paints from the intestine.” Jim is probably the most disciplined and constant; he is aware of what the judges are on the lookout for. Joe, then again, is a stressed experimenter: “Joe’s extra like Leonardo da Vinci.” 

One factor they do have in widespread is the sense of calm they exude. Perhaps it’s of their genes, or possibly it’s that their extraordinary achievements have left them with little to show. They’ve lovely properties within the Minneapolis suburbs, trip properties in wilder nation (Joe’s was beforehand owned by former Vice President Walter Mondale), monetary safety, and extraordinary freedom to hunt, fish, golf, and forage as they please. They are going to be simply positive in the event that they by no means win one other duck stamp contest. 

But they maintain portray. And as a sure artist as soon as stated, portray is difficult—particularly if you’re attempting to fulfill the duck stamp contest’s exacting requirements. (One purpose the Hautmans primarily use acrylic paint: They wish to work proper as much as the competitors’s postmark deadline, and oil takes too lengthy to dry.) Joe is mostly imperturbable until he’s on the golf course, however of their studios, frustration generally erupts by means of his brothers’ placid demeanors. Jim has but to comply with by means of on his occasional urge to make use of his shotgun on a piece in progress, however he has thrown a glass of purple wine at one. Even preternaturally mellow Bob says he’s tossed a portray or two: “It’s not all Bob Ross all day.”  

The world wherein the Hautmans started their portray careers is not any extra. Again then, the wildlife-art market was scorching. Federal contest winners may promote 1000’s of prints to hungry collectors at tons of of {dollars} apiece. “Within the ’70s and ’80s you might have painted a two-headed duck and it could have offered,” says Russell Fink, a retired gallerist and writer of an enormous duck stamp compendium.  

As curiosity in wildlife work grew, extra states launched their very own contests, yielding a surge of recent collectibles. Publishing homes cranked out bigger and bigger numbers of prints, eroding their worth. The market turned glutted, and by the flip of the century it had collapsed. The Hautmans had established themselves by then, nevertheless it was tough for different painters to make a dwelling. With diminishing monetary rewards, the competition drew fewer submissions. Practically 2,100 individuals entered the 1981 competitors; in the present day the typical is nearer to 200. 

Simply as there are fewer duck stamp painters, there are additionally fewer patrons. Federal gross sales have declined from round 2.4 million stamps per yr within the early Nineteen Seventies to roughly 1.5 million in recent times. That tracks with the dwindling of the one group required to purchase them: Some 2 million waterfowlers went afield in 1955, however by 2020 that quantity had fallen by half. To make sure that this system can proceed to place important quantities of habitat on the panorama, it’s essential to construct broader curiosity within the duck stamp and encourage nonhunters to purchase one, Adair and different consultants say. 

Fellows says that holding on to the duck stamp’s fading materials tradition is crucial to restoring its recognition. Some states not concern bodily variations of their very own stamps, and the federal authorities now permits hunters to make use of an digital certificates as their searching allow. They nonetheless finally obtain a stamp within the mail, however which means much less time to expertise the art work firsthand—time that Fellows says deepens individuals’s emotional connection to the duck stamp’s historical past and conservation influence. “Lots of people don’t know they’re lacking that,” she says. “So my worry for this system is that we go all digital.”

The Hautman brothers don’t have kids to hold on their legacy, however a youthful era has taken an curiosity in serving to the competition keep related. When Sabin was getting ready their duck stamp submission in 2021, they determined to elucidate how the competition works on TikTok. The put up went viral. Practically 3 million individuals watched the video, and Sabin and their twin sibling, Kess Fennell, who additionally competes, made the news, bringing contemporary consideration to the duck stamp. Sabin says they hope extra younger individuals, and girls specifically, will enter the competition: “If we would like this program to proceed, it has to stay as much as the recognition it as soon as did.” 

Amongst those that noticed the video was Bob Hautman, who despatched Sabin an e mail to thank them for getting the phrase out and serving to to guard habitat. The competition’s conservation influence is an enormous purpose why the brothers proceed to compete. Jim lately acquired property that he’s restoring to native grassland, and Bob says today he in all probability spends extra time engaged on habitat—he’s rebuilt native prairie on about half of his 115-acre farm—than he does portray. In fact, although, their foremost motivation for persevering with to enter is that they continue to be as aggressive as they had been in boyhood, when something may develop into a contest: Who can drink probably the most juice? Who can write the smallest? They wish to see each other succeed, however not as a lot as they wish to win. 

Jim and Bob each entered the 2025 contest, judged September 18 and 19 in Maryland (after Audubon went to press), however Joe was ineligible. Sitting out has given him extra time to suppose, and currently he retains returning to questions on time itself. For some time he didn’t even paint—simply sat in his studio, attempting to work out why the previous feels completely different than the longer term does, regardless that in idea they’re symmetrical. He’s nonetheless ironing out kinks within the conclusion he reached, and anyway, it’s impenetrable to a nonphysicist. However it has to do with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which holds that myriad futures and pasts lengthen ahead and backward from any given second. Given numerous universes, something that may occur occurs.

On this chilly Might morning, the home the place the brothers grew up is sort of a window into a distinct model of occasions. Its chaotic garden filled with rusting machines evokes alternate universes the place the Hautmans didn’t develop up with such safety and freedom, the place they didn’t have dad and mom who cared deeply about artwork—the place they didn’t have each other. However then, reassuringly, there are indicators of the childhood they bear in mind: the massive basswood that was only a sapling when Tuck planted it, the black paint that also lingers the place Joe created a “gap” within the fence. The one previous they know is the one which introduced them right here. Of all of the innumerable worlds, who may presumably ask for extra?

This story initially ran within the Fall 2025 concern as “Fortunate Geese.” To obtain our print journal, develop into a member by making a donation today.