BROOKINGS – The hand-carved Yellowstone cutthroat trout that Dr. Gary Vanderzee, a VA optometrist and Brookings resident, holds up for inspection looks like it might have just jumped up out of a stream in the Big Horns in Wyoming.

It’s pretty much a clone of the real thing, caught by Vanderzee, an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 13, during a Scouting outing there. He caught the trout, measured it and took photos prior to carving.

“The Big Horns were an inspiration for me to start carving trout,” the doctor said. 

This carving was good enough to place second in the employees’ category at the Sioux Falls VA Health Care Veterans & Employees Art Show on Jan. 25. He has been a frequent participant in this annual event.

Vanderzee has won other VA competition in the past for his fish carvings and has been encouraged to enter his work in other fish-carving competition. 

He’s thinking about it, but family comes first. He and his wife Maria have four children: the oldest is in college, the youngest in middle school.

“It’s my intent,” he said. “It’s hard for me when I’ve got kids that are still involved in sports and swimming. For me, I’ve just put it on the backburner. Maybe once they’re done and out. It’s hard for me to say I’m front burner and more important. It (fish carving) is not that important to me. I just like doing it.”

Just try carving it

Vanderzee was born and raised in Sioux Falls. He took an undergraduate degree at Dordt College in northwestern Iowa and followed that with studies at Southern California College of Optometry at Marshall B. Ketchum University  (Fullerton).

The doctor completed a residence in hospital-based optometry at the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center. He’s been in the VA health care system for 18 years. 

During those years he’s been practicing and perfecting his fish-carving skills. He’s carved a total of about 20 fish.  

“It’s a hobby,” Vanderzee explained. “It started, I suppose, about 18 to 20 years ago.”

He shows off a perch, the first fish he carved. He caught it ice fishing.

“I was young at the time and was afraid to ask my wife’s permission to get one mounted and spend the money on it,” Vanderzee explained. “So I figured I’d just try carving it.”

As he went through that first carving, he came up with ideas on how to do things better; but he was up against time constraints.

“I didn’t have a lot of time with four kids and being involved in their activities: swimming and Boy Scouts and such,” he said.

“If I got about one fish finished in a year, I was doing pretty good.” 

Vanderzee pointed out that the size of the fish being carved doesn’t necessarily determine how long it will take to complete.

“The first fish that I do of a particular species, the longer it takes,” he explained. “If I do a second or third one, it gets faster and faster.”

The first time carving a species, he’s likely to work from a two-dimensional picture or measurements. Following that, subsequent carvings of that species turn out better.

“My next fish I carve, I think I’m going to go back to a perch,” he said. “It should be considerably better than this one of 20 years ago.”

“I’m embarrassed by this one,” Vanderzee said, laughing a bit. As he holds up a carving done about 10 years later, the improvement in his carving skills is evident.

Fish pretty forgiving

Vanderzee uses basswood for all his carvings. For a while he had met with a group called Dakota Prairie Whittlers, but he came back to fish.  

“I’ve done a few other things,” he said. “But fish? I just like doing fish. For me it’s easy to do fish. The other thing, I think, fish are pretty forgiving.”

As an example, he cited the differences in color between walleye in South Dakota, in Canada and in Minnesota.

“So if you really get off on your colors, it probably looks like a walleye – from somewhere,” Vanderzee said, again with a laugh. “A mallard is a mallard no matter where you’re at. You mess up a mallard, it doesn’t look like a mallard.”

The biggest fish he’s ever carved is a bass measuring about 20 inches long.

A difficult question for Vanderzee to answer is how long it takes him to carve a fish. “Sometimes you’ve got three or four of them going on at the same time. But I would hazard a guess and say maybe somewhere in the 50 to 70 hours range.”

As to how many hours he works at a stretch, he said,” I can do three or four, but then I’ve got to walk away or do something different or I’ll pick up a different thing. I can’t do one thing that long (eight to 10 hours).”

Painting is the toughest part of the job. As an example, he explained that two weeks ago he finished painting a bluegill, the second fish he carved. 

“That fish went unpainted for probably 18 years.”

Persistence and passion

From his carving collection, Vanderzee had kept several unpainted fish in his VA office. One of his long-time older patients, himself an award-winning carver of fishing decoys, noted that his doctor’s fish weren’t painted and persistently encouraged him to paint them.

“Wonderful guy, mentor to me,” Vanderzee said. “Just a wonderful man. Now he sees my fish painted.“

As to the other tools of the trade before a carving is paint-ready, he explained, “You start out with a band saw to rough them out. Then sanders, then when I get down to the fine stuff I use carving knives, sandpaper, Dremels.

“I’ve even made a couple tools when I couldn’t find stuff that I thought would work. I came up with ideas. I made a couple little tools for making scales.”

And when the sculpting is done, it’s time to paint.

“I’m still learning how to paint,” Vanderzee said. “It’s a bit tricky,” because of the many colors and their range for use. He does have an air brush, but most of his painting is by hand, using a water-based acrylic.

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.

Register photo: Dr. Gary Vanderzee, a VA optometrist and award-winning woodcarver, shows off the array of freshwater fish species he has sculpted and painted by hand.