I’m Madelynn Schabert, and I’ve been drawing wildlife ever since I could pick up a pencil. My passion for waterfowl was sparked while I was attending college to study Natural Resources Management, on a campus settled beside woodlands and ponds. I had an incredible professor named Rick Wittsell who instructed nearly every class in the program, and he taught me the fundamentals of waterfowl ecology. As students, we had the privilege of applying what we had learned in lectures at a wildlife refuge that was a stone’s throw away. I banded woodies as part of a wood duck box program, and visited refuges that were teeming with ducks. I knew I was hooked the moment I saw thousands of them flare at my approach.

I started to shift my focus from painting hummingbirds to creating stippled drawings of waterfowl. My professor could see that a fire had been lit, and he encouraged me to go public with my artwork and give duck hunting a try. A year later I shot my first duck, a hen goldeneye, and became obsessed with hunting waterfowl. Nothing excited me more than packing blind bags in the early morning to hit the marsh. 

Hunting helped me tremendously in improving my artwork because there are so many nuances to a bird’s anatomy and behavior. When I harvest a bird, I get to see every detail up-close and personal. And even on the days I come home empty handed, I still spend hours observing my subjects in the field. 

When I pick up my pen, I’m illustrating with my own experiences and the hunter in mind.