Joe Weirick and Bob Johnson interview
Item
Title
eng
Joe Weirick and Bob Johnson interview
Description
eng
Microsoft Word document, 13 pages
Creator
eng
Weirick, Joe and Bob Johnson
eng
Montanez, Nathan
Relation
eng
Britto Club
Coverage
eng
Fresno, California
Date
eng
6/19/2015
Identifier
eng
SCMS_brto_00002
extracted text
>> Colby Tibbet: We’re ready to roll.
>> Nathan Montanez: He’s going to step out for a bit and I’m going to sit
right here behind the camera just to get everything going. So just speak,
when you’re talking if you look over you don’t have to look over at the
camera, just look over at me.
>> Bob Johnson: Gotcha.
>> Colby Tibbet: Because I haven’t [Inaudible] the conversation.
>> Nathan Montanez: Alright then, for the first thing can I have each of
you say your names and then spell it for the camera.
>> Joseph Weirick: Joseph Weirick, W-E-I-R-I-C-K.
>> Bob Johnson: Bob Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N.
>> Nathan Montanez: Okay well how old are each of you gentlemen?
>> Joseph Weirick: I'm 76.
>> Bob Johnson: 77.
>> Nathan Montanez: And how long have you been involved with the Britto
Duck Club?
>> Joseph Weirick: Well, I hunted with my farther there in the 50's,
probably 1956 and then I became a member in 1971.
>> Bob Johnson: My first experience was the duck station of 1960 with my
father-in-law.
>> Nathan Montanez: What kind of involvement do you guys have with duck
club?
>> Joseph Weirick: Well, I'm a member from 1971 forward and I've been
hunting out there in that area since about 1949.
>> Bob Johnson: I -- Joe, is also on the Board of Directors for the duck
club, I'm the Secretary-Treasurer of the duck club. And I'm no longer
hunting, I relinquished my hunting to my son and my son is now a hunting
member. I have the rights to shoot should I choose to but I found it's
kind and nice to sleep in in the morning.
>> Nathan Montanez: As like, uh, Secretary-Treasurer you said?
>> Bob Johnson: Yes, uh, huh.
>> Nathan Montanez: What kind of duties does that entail?
>> Bob Johnson: I pay all the bills; I take care of the minutes of the
meetings. I have all of the records as far back as the date of
incorporation. We were incorporated April of 1928 and prior to that, there
are no records. At a garage sale I did come across a membership
certificate for the 1918 - 1919 season, so I know that the club goes back
far beyond the date of incorporation and that's really what we're
interested in is finding out the history prior to the date of
incorporation. So, with all of the minutes that I have, I have pretty much
everything recorded that's happened since 1928, it's prior to 1928 that
we're really trying to put together. That the membership -- the economy
was so bad that they were having a hard time keeping the duck club afoot,
so if you were going to be a provider or a vendor to sell to the Pine
Logging Company one of the conditions was you had to buy a membership in
the duck club. Rodman, Jess Rodman, owned Rodman Chevrolet, he was my
father-in-law's partner, in order to sell them Chevrolets it was necessary
for him to become a member of the duck club. And he became a very
influential member of the duck club; my father-in-law was president of the
duck club for probably 30 years.
>> Nathan Montanez: He had such a deep involvement. What kind of
involvement do you have?
>> Joseph Weirick: Well, back in the time that Bob was talking about
almost the entire membership was made up of automobile dealers in the
valley, there was some from Hanford and Visalia, Fresno and ->> Bob Johnson: Merced.
>> Joseph Weirick: And my dad was one of the first members that was not,
he joined in about 1956 and he was –- and at that time the membership kind
of turned over and there weren't nearly as many automobile dealers after
that time. When my dad got ill in the early 70's, he passed his membership
on to me and I don't know, Bob, do we have -- are there any automobile
dealers in the club anymore? Well, the Roths are all gone.
>> Bob Johnson: The Roths are all gone, no we have no, no dealers are
left, no automobile dealers are left. Jess Rodman -- Rodman is something,
that the Rodman scholarship here at Fresno State, Jess Rodman donated a
big part of your farmland over on Bullard Avenue to Fresno State. His
house is still there very well maintained, he no longer owns it however,
but there is a Rodman scholarship and I've had several friends of mine who
have had -- their offspring have been participants in the Rodman
scholarship. Jess Rodman was very influential in the Valley, very
influential in the automobile business, many of the Chevrolet dealers in
the Valley were sponsored by him.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now the last time I interviewed Mr. Chandler, I guess
I’ll call him William, he mentioned a Bill Crossland can you guys tell me
a little bit about Bill Crossland?
>> Joseph Weirick: You got a lot of time [laughter]?
>> Nathan Montanez: Hey, we’re rolling, we’ve got time.
>> Joseph Weirick: He was the Secretary or Treasurer, the job that Bob
holds now and he never actually became a member of the duck club either.
But his legacy was passed on from Pine logging, wasn't that correct?
>> Bob Johnson: Yes.
>> Joseph Weirick: He had been the legal representative and paid the bills
and did all the legal work for the duck club up to the time that Jess
Rodman bought it and it became -- was no longer associated with Pine
Logging. And he was a real character, he was a Fresno attorney, very small
man in stature but considered by many to be one of the very finest
attorneys that was ever in Fresno County.
>> Bob Johnson: He and I were cabin mates, my father-in-law and he shared
a cabin, when my father-in-law passed away, he passed his membership on to
me, so Bill Crossland and I were cabin mates. And Bill Crossland would get
up every morning, he wore slippers and he'd drag those slippers around and
slip, slip, slip, slip along the linoleum floor and then he would make
scrambled eggs. And for some reason the scrambled eggs were never
completed, they never did get cooked thoroughly so I would take my kids
out there and they would say well are we going to get Uncle Bill's wrecked
eggs. He —- he was a character, he could recite limericks, he could recite
poetry, he was a fantastic mind, fantastic man.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now both of you, are you originally from the area,
like the whole Central Valley area?
>> Joseph Weirick: Yeah, I'm a native from Fresno.
>> Bob Johnson: I was born in Norfolk, Nebraska and moved to Des Moines
Iowa when I was two, lived there until I was 10 and I've lived in Fresno
since age of 10.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now what interests either of you in duck hunting, what
is it about the sport that you enjoy?
>> Bob Johnson: The camaraderie, the camaraderie it’s -— there are —- the
club is limited to 21 members and we are officially chartered as a social
club and it's a social club who also happens to hunt ducks. It's the
camaraderie, if I can say anything it's kind of like golf, people don't
play golf so much for the score as to sit around with their buddies and
talk and laugh and joke and the same thing with duck hunting. The actual
shooting of ducks on the day may take three hours out of a 24 hour day,
the other 21 hours of the day are spent enjoying the camaraderie. Swapping
stories getting away from the pressures of business, getting away from the
pressures of everyday life.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now what's like -- a day out there duck hunting, like
what's a normal day for you guys out there?
>> Joseph Weirick: Well, you get up about five in the morning, have a cup
of coffee, pull on your boots, then we all meet in a central cabin and we
draw for blinds, we have a draw every hunt day which is normally
Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. And then sometimes on holidays like
Martin Luther King Day or -- a duck season lasts approximately 90 days and
starts usually the third Saturday in October and goes to about the third
Sunday in January. And then after you get all booted up and get your -know where you're going to which blind and then with a series of Jeeps and
other small vehicles we drive out on the levees and the people are
deposited onto the blind pathways that they're going to hunt. Then you
usually will hunt until -- the birds tend to fly real early in the
morning, before shooting time, but you can't shoot until a half an hour
before sunrise or is it after sunrise?
>> Bob Johnson: Before sunrise.
>> Joseph Weirick: Before sunrise, and then after you shoot and you pick
your birds up, then you walk back on that same pathway, get picked up or
have your vehicle there and take them back to the clubhouse. And then we
normally would clean all of our birds immediately after getting back to
the clubhouse and then you've got the rest of the day. Some people will go
back out and hunt in the afternoon and then there's people that maybe
didn't show up for the draw, they get there and they can go out and hunt
until half an hour before sunset.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now besides duck hunting and wading out there, what
other things does the club provide, like what do you guys do out there
besides that?
>> Bob Johnson: Well we, you know, as far as providing, being a social
club we have different social events such as a fried chicken feed one
night, and another time we may have a big lasagna feed. The neighbor that
owns the duck club next to us owns a fish company in San Francisco on the
wharf. And so once year we’ll have a big crab feed and he sells us the
crab cracked and cleaned at a wholesale price and we'll eat maybe 125
pounds of crab in that one sitting. That's one night when all of the
members are there unless they’re on their deathbed.
>> Joseph Weirick: And they always -- most people bring a guest for that
so there might be close to 40 ->> Bob Johnson: Correct.
>> Joseph Weirick: -- people there for the dinner.
>> Nathan Montanez: Are they—are they regularly allowed to bring guests
or?
>> Bob Johnson: Yes, you can bring a guest anytime except the opening day
of duck season, that's when we have our annual meeting the Friday night
before is our annual meeting, and that's when we discuss anything that
needs to be done it's all private and personal and then we limit the
opening day to members only. The opening morning shoot to members only so
they each have an opportunity to have a good shoot. The afternoon, they
may have guests come out in the afternoon and they may be able to shoot
then and that's the only time that there's any restriction on guests is
just the opening evening meeting and the opening morning shoot, other than
that guests are welcome. And the guest limitation is one guest per member.
>> Joseph Weirick: No gambling and no women, which is -- are both really
enforced and that goes back to Mr. Rodman, that was part of his thing. He
did not want any women on the club and he thought gambling would also
bring some, I guess, angst between the members so they —- I've never seen
anybody -- very few people even play cards.
>> Bob Johnson: I've never seen it. Rodman believed -- there was a Greek
philosopher said that men's relationships can be patched, a
misunderstanding can flow off of a problem like water off a duck's back,
so to speak. And the only two things that this philosopher said that could
come between a relationship with men would be women and money, so the no
gambling rule is because of the money issue and the no women is because of
the attraction or whatever you may have -- you looked at my wife wrong or
you said something about my wife. So we just tried to eliminate those
problems it's not in writing, it's not in writing it's just understood.
>> Joseph Weirick: And women are allowed to hunt at certain times it's on
Sundays but they cannot stay at the club, they can come out to shoot with
a relative for instance a daughter, a granddaughter or a wife can come out
and hunt on a Sunday as long as they don't sleep over at the club.
>> Nathan Montanez: I was actually about to ask about that
actually mentioned that too about how women are allowed to
there and he said it's become more progressive now because
allowing that. Now was that always something that the club
that something that's just recently?
cause, Bill
come shoot out
you guys are
allowed or was
>> Bob Johnson: It's been fairly recently, one of our members has a
daughter and he said you know I don't like this rule because you guys can
bring your sons out, I don't have a son, I have a daughter I would like to
bring my daughter out. And so that's when the rule was amended and that
had to be may be in the last six or seven, eight years, prior to that it
was just understood that there were no women allowed.
>> Joseph Weirick: You'd be amazed at how many women hunt ducks, not so
many in our club but I know other, some clubs allow women to hunt anytime
like a wife can come with her husband or the children or relatives.
>> Nathan Montanez: Oh, I got a note here saying, Wives Night. What is
Wives Night?
>> Bob Johnson: Well about -- they'll have after the season closes one
week after or maybe two weeks after, they'll have a wives night and there
will be certain members that will invite their wives and it's just a
little gathering. I don't know how it's done now, but when we were
involved with the wives night we would come out and have a little social
hour then we would go into Los Banos to the Wool Growers, have dinner and
then come back and we would all then socialize, spend the night, we all
have cabins out there. So we’d socialize and spend the night at the cabins
get up the next morning and the morning of that wives night is just
amazing on Saturday morning, the women can get an opportunity to see what
the duck club looks like when we're out there shooting in the morning and
they could see the flocks of geese, the snow geese and so forth it's
really spectacular. But I have yet to have any of the women who've been
there express a desire to want to hunt, more than likely they say well
thanks for bringing us out but I don't care to come back until next
season. It's just -– it’s kind of rough, it's kind of tough, it's clean
but it's not something that you would expect a woman to want to enjoy.
It's kind like camping, but you're not camping and you know the men out
there when the men are around the men are just around men and their
language becomes the language of men. It's not unusual for person to go
outdoors in their underwear, it’s certainly not prohibited but it's just
so relaxed and so comfortable that's another thing that if somebody
brought their wife out that would be another freedom they have to give up
so ->> Nathan Montanez: Now we talked a lot about the club as of recently,
what's your understanding of the inception of a club from its very
beginning, what do you know about it?
>> Bob Johnson: My understanding is that, as I mentioned before, that the
club was founded by the owners of the Pine Logging Company. And, uh, there
-— I have the minutes going back to the date of incorporation, the economy
was really bad and we have situations where a member may be for $30
couldn't make the payment, so he was extended the opportunity to make
payments to pay this $30, wasn’t able -— was unable to pay the $30 and had
to give up his membership because he couldn't afford to be in the duck
club any longer. The owners of the Pine Logging Company in an effort to
finance and keep the club alive thought it necessary to do a little
payola, if you want to call it that, that if you want to sell us your
product then you first of all need to buy membership in a duck club, that
gave them the financial wherewithal to keep the club alive. This is all
pretty much by rumor, the things I've been told by Jim Shelburn
[phonetic], Jess Rodman, John Roth who is one of the old-time members out
there. It's just most of what Joe and I know are what we've either
experienced or overheard.
[Background noise]
>> Nathan Montanez: Microphone slipped. Let me adjust it.
>> Joe Weirick: Oh, lost my microphone.
[Background noise]
>> Bob Johnson: The membership of our club has been, well it was $4000 to
join, that was the initiation fee for a number of years. And back in the
sixties or back in the seventies they raised it to $7500 and it’s still
$7500 to join our club today. You can't sell the membership to just anyone
you want to, we have a waiting list of members so when you get ready to
sell your membership you have to sell it back to the club. The club in
turn then will sell it to the next person on the waiting list. The waiting
list has to be approved 100% by all members, one blackball and that member
cannot be a member of the club or that applicant cannot be a member of the
club. Our dues, gosh it was $700 a year for years and years and years, as
the cost of maintenance has gone up and so forth our dues for the last few
years have been right at $2250. What we do is at our annual meeting, we
set the budget for the year and that's when we establish the assessment
for the year. The —- again the membership is frozen at 21.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now, since we have both of you here, how do you two
gentlemen really know each other, like how far do you go back, is it just
something you guys met each other through the duck club or you guys knew
each other prior to that?
>> Bob Johnson: I think we met each other at Shaver Lake. Joe used to own
the ski resort at China Peak and prior to that we socialized, we had
mutual friends and that's how we met. Joe lived at Shaver Lake and just,
just became friends. The duck club, we had been friends a number of years
before we ended up joining the duck club.
>> Nathan Montanez: What do you see in the future for the club for each of
you, like what do you think the future holds for the club and what do you
think the future holds for the club?
>> Joseph Weirick: I see no reason that the club won't endure. We've got a
bunch of -- Bob and I are some of the older members and but we have some –a lot of good, young people. You know, years ago Bob and I did all the
work when we were young and healthy and of course we're out there
supervise them but we have a lot of kids that they're in their late
thirties and early forties that are terrific workers and really avid
hunters.
>> Bob Johnson: I see no reason with the -- it's interesting because we
have an easement with the government and in this easement it says that we
have to maintain a water level at certain times of the year, even when
we're not hunting. And I mentioned to the person that was dealing with on
this easement that does that mean that we're going to have to drill a well
to keep the water at this level. He said you will never have to worry
about water; this is wildlife. You will always have water for wildlife. So
I see no reason the club wouldn't perpetuate, I see no reason why -unless something came along and they outlawed hunting but the club is
dedicated perpetual to be a duck club. We can't graze animals in there in
the off-season and so forth, it is a duck club and I see no reason why it
would ever be anything but a duck club, I see no reason why it would not
perpetuate unless they disallowed hunting.
>> Joseph Weirick: And then even then it might continue as a social club
because all those younger people are all close friends like Bob and I have
been for so many years and it -— it is a wonderful place to get away, you
know when the sun comes up in the morning and there's no -- we can see I-5
from our property, but it's five miles away or six miles away but there's
no noise and it's beautiful sunrises and beautiful sunsets, it's a very
enjoyable place to spend time. Those times that I can take my wife out
there and Bob's wife too, they never miss. My wife comes from an old duck
hunting family up in the Bay Area and so it's just second nature to her
she loves it out there. In fact, before I left this morning she wanted to
know when we were going.
>> Bob Johnson: I have just -- I am just completing putting a remodeling
on the cabin that I mentioned earlier and making it comfortable, not
anywhere near Van Ness extension but it's comfortable and clean, mouse
proof, bug proof, dust proof and comfortable. My son now uses the cabin,
I've dedicated my interest in the club, in the cabin to him so it's now
his cabin but I'm making the investment to make sure that it's comfortable
and he will pass it on to -- he has no sons of his own. I think his intent
is that when he is through he'll pass it on to his nephew, my grandson.
>> Nathan Montanez: [Inaudible section] a couple of things [inaudible].
>> Joseph Weirick: Hey, could you speak up a little bit?
>> Nathan Montanez: Oh yeah sure, I thought he was trying to get a word in
or something like that I didn’t hear what he was saying. I guess not. Now
there's a lot of experiences that Bill told me about that he had up there,
is there anything memorable that either of you had happen to you out there
that just always sends you back there whenever you think about the club or
you think about the good times you had there?
>> Bob Johnson: Oh, I remember, one thing I'll never forget, the prime
bird at the time to shoot was a pintail or a sprig duck and the prime
would be a male sprig duck and I remember one of the opening mornings that
Joe and I, the limit was 15, he and I brought in each a limit of bull
sprig and there we had 30 bull sprig hanging on the rail of my cabin, it
was a fantastic sight. I'll never forget that one.
>> Joseph Weirick: Yeah, I remember one, I had come in early and Bob's
father-in-law had lost his leg, but he wouldn't give up hunting and so we
put him in a blind and he was a crack shot and so I was at that time one
of the youngest members in the club and he asked me, he said would you
mind going out and picking up my birds for me. So I went to Mr. Crossland
and I said now am I going to get in trouble with the game warden if I go
pick up his birds and I've already got my birds in here. And Crossland
said absolutely not, I'll defend you in court and if you lose and you have
to go to jail I'll visit your wife for you once a week. So, he and I had a
chuckle over that. So they drove me out to the pathway where Jim Shelburn
had hunted and I walked out to the blind and before I left, I don't know
why, it was a windless day, just absolutely still. Probably 8:30 in the
morning, 9:00 and he had drawn me a map where his birds were and I thought
that was kind of odd because they wouldn't have floated away or been blown
away. But all within 40 yards of the blind, which is the -- a shotgun is
good to about 40 yards and here were these birds floating just absolutely
in the still water and it was just nothing to go pick up. I think at that
time the limit was seven and I picked up his seven birds for him and
brought them in, but even on one leg he refused to give up and some of the
old-timers that we've had hunt, they'll become incapacitated they won't
quit, they love it so much and the camaraderie -— the camaraderie with the
other members that right up to their dying day they'll hunt. In fact we
had a member that uh, Phil Hanna [phonetic] from Prather passed away a few
years ago and he had himself cremated and had his kids load his remains
into shotgun shells and passed out at least a couple to every member, so
you could remember him.
>> Bob Johnson: Yeah, his instructions were, load your gun and make this
be your first shot fired and it was his cremains that were shot into the
air. So you would fire the first shot knowing that you weren’t going to
hit a duck with it and then the second shot would have BBs in it so you
could shoot the duck. He had a T-shirt, I had a picture of him and I made
one for most of the members out there, it's a picture of him wearing a Tshirt it said, if it flies it dies. There's just a lot of stories if you
were to get all 21 members in here and start talking, you wouldn't have to
ask questions it would just start flowing and just one guy would remind
someone else of an experience and it was a lot of laughter. I don't
remember any bad times out there, we've had a couple of members who were
misfits and so we just have a rule in our bylaws that says if they do
something damaging to the club that they have reason for expulsion. As an
example, when they went from the lead shot to the steel shot, that's BBs,
from lead BBs to steel BBs, it's a law that you had to use steel BBs.
Well, the steel BBs weren't as effective, they didn't have the distance,
the effective distance or the impact range that the steel -- that the lead
shot did. We had a member that just refused to shoot the steel shot and so
he continued to use the lead shot and he was arrested -- or cited for
using the lead shot and he was booted from the club. We had another member
that was just a misfit, he wanted to change everything at the club, it had
to be his way and it just was not a comfortable situation, it ruined the
morale of the club. And so he was given the opportunity to resign and he
did. Other than that, those are the only two negative experiences I can
recall.
>> Joseph Weirick: I don't remember any others.
>> Nathan Montanez: Is there anything else you'd like to add on that we
haven't covered that you feel is important to people who ->> Bob Johnson: Well, I think what's really important right now is to, as
I said I have all of the records from 1928 to date and of course our
memories are from 1928 to date. I have been told things such as there -—
we had a game hunter, a couple of game hunters that lived there during the
hunting season and they would go out and they would shoot ducks and they
would take them down to the end of the levee and there was a railroad
track that went through their. The train would stop, they would load their
birds that they had shot on the train, their wives would be meeting the
train in San Francisco, they would take the ducks and then deliver them to
the restaurants. That's one of the old stories, another story is the road
on the levee was so bad it was never maintained by the county, it is now
maintained by the county, but prior to this it wasn't. And the members had
a military 4 x 4 vehicle parked at an old hotel this is in a town called
South Dos Palos which is nearest to where the duck club is and it was
pretty much a railroad camp. And there was a boardinghouse there that was
also rumored to be a brothel, the members would park the 4 x 4 there, they
would come back to the club, excuse me, come back out to go hunting, they
would pick up the 4 x 4 and they would take as long as eight hours to get
the three miles to the duck club to spend the weekend shooting ducks.
>> Nathan Montanez: It was that bad, huh?
>> Bob Johnson: It was that bad, it was that bad.
>> Joseph Weirick: In the old days, the stories that I remember from Bill
Crossland was that when he was doing the work for Pine Logging was that
they were doing it by horse and wagon, prior to the four-by and you got
there Friday night and they would go out to the club and the gamekeeper
would have dinner ready for them. And then the next morning he would wake
everybody up at 5 o'clock and then they would all have breakfast before
they went out. And then, because they didn't have access to the levees in
those days because there wasn't any motorized vehicles that could
negotiate those things, that at a certain time the gamekeeper would come
around and pick everybody up either that or you walked back. And it was a
pretty good walk say up to a mile and a half back to the clubhouse
carrying your gun and your jacket and in those days the limit if you go
way back the limit was 25 ducks well, you can imagine carrying 25 ducks
and your weapon in your jacket and sloshing through the mud in waders. And
because of that they usually hunted two days, they would go out Friday
night and they wouldn't come home until Sunday evening. But that whole
west side, Henry Miller, the famous cattlemen that owned approximately 1
million acres between the Oregon border, Mexico, Nevada and he had
considerable holdings in southern Oregon.
>> Bob Johnson: And Kern County.
>> Joseph Weirick: And Kern County, his headquarters were Bakersfield and
he allowed those game keepers to hunt waterfowl on his property and his
theory was that the rustlers wouldn't come and steal his cattle if these
guys were out there on the property and a typical game hunter would have
probably would have a quarter of a section, a half section or a full
section of land and then he was hunting for the market. Well, in the 30's
when the government outlawed game hunting those guys were allowed to stay
and they would lease a blind or take in people on a weekend to come out
and shoot ducks and that kind of is all gone now, I don't know of any
clubs that operate that way but that was probably started to go out by
1940, somewhere along in there. Because I know my dad belonged to a club
about a mile and a half away, he didn't belong, he leased a blind and when
I was young, probably 1948 or so, after the war when those guys had all
come back from the war, then they -- I went out there with my dad and the
gamekeeper was still there. And he had, same thing he fixed us, when we
got there on Friday night fixed us dinner, woke us up in the morning, had
breakfast for us and we went out and hunted and came back we had lunch.
And there were little individual cabins that he had, but I don't think
anybody owned them but they were mostly people from Fresno that leased and
then my dad got the opportunity in the mid-fifties to join the Britto.
>> Bob Johnson: I had mentioned earlier about the initiation fee, the
initiation fee was established to be as low as possible and the idea was
to keep young people interested and make it affordable for young people.
When I tell other people, other duck hunters what our initiation fee is,
they almost think I'm lying because it's not unusual for an initiation fee
to run $50,000 and up. We had one of our members get a divorce and in his
assets he claimed his membership fee and he claimed his membership as
$7500. His wife's attorney disagreed with that and I had to provide
minutes of our incorporation proving that our assessment –- our initiation
fee was $7500. Her attorney was sure that it was a $50,000 fee and he was
hiding money somewhere. The other thing is the membership is originally
was limited to members of residents of Fresno and Merced County. One of
our members moved to Tulare, so they expanded the border to the San
Joaquin Valley. So to be a member of our club you have to be a resident of
the San Joaquin Valley, again the reasoning was to keep it affordable, to
keep rich people from the Bay Area and other prominent areas from owning
memberships and only coming down when the hunting was really good. So it's
-— it’s -— it’s set up the way it is to perpetuate the club and to keep
young people involved, keep young people interested and make it as
affordable as possible for young people. Another thing that's interesting
because this may be a question that people wouldn't ask but if you really
think about it, you're going to go out to your blind, the blind is in the
middle of water, the water could be as much is two feet deep, how do you
find your duck club how do you find your blind? While leading up to every
blind there are gravel paths and in your rubber waders you can feel rocks
under your feet so as long as you're following the rocks it's going to
take you to the blind. If you get off of that rock blind walkway the mud
is very soft and very squishy, you can sink into the mud up to your
ankles. So you know that if you get off that rock you better get back on
the rock because you’re lost, so if you stay on the rock it'll take you to
the blind. And by the same token to leave the blind, if you stay on the
rock it'll take you back to the levee.
>> Joseph Weirick: That was another rule that we omitted was Jess Rodman
would allow no dogs and it wasn't until the early seventies that we had
the first dogs out there to go retrieve your birds. And boy that –- you -—
if you've never hunted with the dog you appreciated the job they do for
you.
>> Bob Johnson: And they love it you know, it's the most humbling or
embarrassing thing is to be sitting in a blind, now blind would be like a
piece of concrete pipe lowered into the mud and with water coming up to
within maybe two inches of the brim of this piece of concrete pipe. So
you're looking right out over the water when you're sitting in the blind.
So you're sitting in the blind a duck flies over and you shoot at the duck
and you miss it and to have a dog look at you and without saying a word
tell you you're really stupid. Very embarrassing, and it's also
interesting watching these ducks -— these dogs because they will actually
scan the horizon and they'll be able to spot the ducks coming in before
you can see them. So if you keep your eye on the dog you will find out
where the ducks are coming in.
>> Nathan Montanez: Do either of you use dogs when you hunt?
>> Bob Johnson: No, my son had a dog and he had to put it down about three
years ago the dog was 16 at the time. But it's really a beautiful thing to
watch, watch a dog work and they love it. My son would get up to go to the
duck club, grab his camouflage gear and his gun and the dog would just
start howling because he knew it was time to go play.
>> Nathan Montanez: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
>> Joseph Weirick: I'm sorry, what?
>> Nathan Montanez: Is there anything else that either of you would like
to add?
>> Bob Johnson: Oh, I'm sure if we had 16 of us sitting in this room it
would go on all day, you're going to be interviewing Dan Bonillas today,
and Dan is a world champion skeet and trap shooter and he has told me that
he and his uncle used to be able to shoot ducks and there would be well
wealthy men hunters that would either bring their girlfriends from San
Francisco or they had a girlfriend in the Los Banos area and they would
actually come down and take care of their girlfriends over the weekend. So
then they needed ducks to take home because their wives would say well how
come you not bringing any ducks home if you've been duck hunting. So he
would, and his uncle would go on shoot ducks and sell them to these people
from San Francisco that were playing around and he became a very good
shot.
>> Joseph Weirick: My wife told me that one of her dad's highlights of his
life, they lived in the Martinez area which is a big duck hunting area
mainly on the Suisun Bay. And out on the San Francisco Bay and she said
one of her dad's highlights was, he got on that train from San Francisco
and was let off at the Britto pump station and he had made arrangements to
hunt with one of those game hunters and she said that even though, I'm
sure the duck hunting was wonderful in the bay because I've seen the
pictures, she has of her dad’s —- her dad was a very avid hunter. Whenever
he had a free moment he was out on the bay but that was one of the
highlights of his life was riding that train down there and being able to
shoot in the grasslands area.
>> Bob Johnson: Our club is located pretty much in the center of the south
grasslands, and we really do a good job of managing the club. There is a
California Waterfowl Association biologist who is counseling us and we've
been rumored to be one of the better clubs in the area, but we work at it.
We have a gamekeeper and a -— a groundskeeper if you want to call it that,
who is just an avid, avid hunter and is really interested and knows how to
take care of this. And so with the help of the biologist and so forth we
have some of the best duck hunting in the area. We've also been accused by
other clubs of perhaps baiting or throwing corn and grain out to bring the
ducks in because our hunting is so good. But no, we're just doing good job
of following the law and doing habitat management.
>> Joseph Weirick: And under that easement we have, we have one also with
the federal government and we meet with them every year and they'll send
their biologists down and make suggestions of how we can improve on
things. And every year we -— they'll give us, in fact I think they’re out
a couple years of projects that they want us to try, you know to bring
more waterfowl into the, in the whole area not just our area.
>> Bob Johnson: The ducks will -- in the summer time will be, and they
nest in the northern area, Canada, etcetera and then as the weather
changes, and gets into winter, they start moving south to Mexico. So we
are hunting ducks, we're shooting ducks but we're also harvesting ducks,
it's an idea of doing a good job of habitat management and doing a good
job of waterfowl management so that the birds that we are, the birds that
are existing are healthy birds. They are not diminished due to
overpopulation, etcetera.
>> Nathan Montanez: Well thank you gentleman, that’s a wrap.
>> Bob Johnson: Okay. As I said, we had 15 of us, we’d go on all day.
>> Nathan Montanez: Oh I’d love to see that. I’d love to get that. We have
three cameras and three operators going.
>> Bob Johnson: You’re through then, eh?
>> Nathan Montanez: He’s going to step out for a bit and I’m going to sit
right here behind the camera just to get everything going. So just speak,
when you’re talking if you look over you don’t have to look over at the
camera, just look over at me.
>> Bob Johnson: Gotcha.
>> Colby Tibbet: Because I haven’t [Inaudible] the conversation.
>> Nathan Montanez: Alright then, for the first thing can I have each of
you say your names and then spell it for the camera.
>> Joseph Weirick: Joseph Weirick, W-E-I-R-I-C-K.
>> Bob Johnson: Bob Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N.
>> Nathan Montanez: Okay well how old are each of you gentlemen?
>> Joseph Weirick: I'm 76.
>> Bob Johnson: 77.
>> Nathan Montanez: And how long have you been involved with the Britto
Duck Club?
>> Joseph Weirick: Well, I hunted with my farther there in the 50's,
probably 1956 and then I became a member in 1971.
>> Bob Johnson: My first experience was the duck station of 1960 with my
father-in-law.
>> Nathan Montanez: What kind of involvement do you guys have with duck
club?
>> Joseph Weirick: Well, I'm a member from 1971 forward and I've been
hunting out there in that area since about 1949.
>> Bob Johnson: I -- Joe, is also on the Board of Directors for the duck
club, I'm the Secretary-Treasurer of the duck club. And I'm no longer
hunting, I relinquished my hunting to my son and my son is now a hunting
member. I have the rights to shoot should I choose to but I found it's
kind and nice to sleep in in the morning.
>> Nathan Montanez: As like, uh, Secretary-Treasurer you said?
>> Bob Johnson: Yes, uh, huh.
>> Nathan Montanez: What kind of duties does that entail?
>> Bob Johnson: I pay all the bills; I take care of the minutes of the
meetings. I have all of the records as far back as the date of
incorporation. We were incorporated April of 1928 and prior to that, there
are no records. At a garage sale I did come across a membership
certificate for the 1918 - 1919 season, so I know that the club goes back
far beyond the date of incorporation and that's really what we're
interested in is finding out the history prior to the date of
incorporation. So, with all of the minutes that I have, I have pretty much
everything recorded that's happened since 1928, it's prior to 1928 that
we're really trying to put together. That the membership -- the economy
was so bad that they were having a hard time keeping the duck club afoot,
so if you were going to be a provider or a vendor to sell to the Pine
Logging Company one of the conditions was you had to buy a membership in
the duck club. Rodman, Jess Rodman, owned Rodman Chevrolet, he was my
father-in-law's partner, in order to sell them Chevrolets it was necessary
for him to become a member of the duck club. And he became a very
influential member of the duck club; my father-in-law was president of the
duck club for probably 30 years.
>> Nathan Montanez: He had such a deep involvement. What kind of
involvement do you have?
>> Joseph Weirick: Well, back in the time that Bob was talking about
almost the entire membership was made up of automobile dealers in the
valley, there was some from Hanford and Visalia, Fresno and ->> Bob Johnson: Merced.
>> Joseph Weirick: And my dad was one of the first members that was not,
he joined in about 1956 and he was –- and at that time the membership kind
of turned over and there weren't nearly as many automobile dealers after
that time. When my dad got ill in the early 70's, he passed his membership
on to me and I don't know, Bob, do we have -- are there any automobile
dealers in the club anymore? Well, the Roths are all gone.
>> Bob Johnson: The Roths are all gone, no we have no, no dealers are
left, no automobile dealers are left. Jess Rodman -- Rodman is something,
that the Rodman scholarship here at Fresno State, Jess Rodman donated a
big part of your farmland over on Bullard Avenue to Fresno State. His
house is still there very well maintained, he no longer owns it however,
but there is a Rodman scholarship and I've had several friends of mine who
have had -- their offspring have been participants in the Rodman
scholarship. Jess Rodman was very influential in the Valley, very
influential in the automobile business, many of the Chevrolet dealers in
the Valley were sponsored by him.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now the last time I interviewed Mr. Chandler, I guess
I’ll call him William, he mentioned a Bill Crossland can you guys tell me
a little bit about Bill Crossland?
>> Joseph Weirick: You got a lot of time [laughter]?
>> Nathan Montanez: Hey, we’re rolling, we’ve got time.
>> Joseph Weirick: He was the Secretary or Treasurer, the job that Bob
holds now and he never actually became a member of the duck club either.
But his legacy was passed on from Pine logging, wasn't that correct?
>> Bob Johnson: Yes.
>> Joseph Weirick: He had been the legal representative and paid the bills
and did all the legal work for the duck club up to the time that Jess
Rodman bought it and it became -- was no longer associated with Pine
Logging. And he was a real character, he was a Fresno attorney, very small
man in stature but considered by many to be one of the very finest
attorneys that was ever in Fresno County.
>> Bob Johnson: He and I were cabin mates, my father-in-law and he shared
a cabin, when my father-in-law passed away, he passed his membership on to
me, so Bill Crossland and I were cabin mates. And Bill Crossland would get
up every morning, he wore slippers and he'd drag those slippers around and
slip, slip, slip, slip along the linoleum floor and then he would make
scrambled eggs. And for some reason the scrambled eggs were never
completed, they never did get cooked thoroughly so I would take my kids
out there and they would say well are we going to get Uncle Bill's wrecked
eggs. He —- he was a character, he could recite limericks, he could recite
poetry, he was a fantastic mind, fantastic man.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now both of you, are you originally from the area,
like the whole Central Valley area?
>> Joseph Weirick: Yeah, I'm a native from Fresno.
>> Bob Johnson: I was born in Norfolk, Nebraska and moved to Des Moines
Iowa when I was two, lived there until I was 10 and I've lived in Fresno
since age of 10.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now what interests either of you in duck hunting, what
is it about the sport that you enjoy?
>> Bob Johnson: The camaraderie, the camaraderie it’s -— there are —- the
club is limited to 21 members and we are officially chartered as a social
club and it's a social club who also happens to hunt ducks. It's the
camaraderie, if I can say anything it's kind of like golf, people don't
play golf so much for the score as to sit around with their buddies and
talk and laugh and joke and the same thing with duck hunting. The actual
shooting of ducks on the day may take three hours out of a 24 hour day,
the other 21 hours of the day are spent enjoying the camaraderie. Swapping
stories getting away from the pressures of business, getting away from the
pressures of everyday life.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now what's like -- a day out there duck hunting, like
what's a normal day for you guys out there?
>> Joseph Weirick: Well, you get up about five in the morning, have a cup
of coffee, pull on your boots, then we all meet in a central cabin and we
draw for blinds, we have a draw every hunt day which is normally
Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. And then sometimes on holidays like
Martin Luther King Day or -- a duck season lasts approximately 90 days and
starts usually the third Saturday in October and goes to about the third
Sunday in January. And then after you get all booted up and get your -know where you're going to which blind and then with a series of Jeeps and
other small vehicles we drive out on the levees and the people are
deposited onto the blind pathways that they're going to hunt. Then you
usually will hunt until -- the birds tend to fly real early in the
morning, before shooting time, but you can't shoot until a half an hour
before sunrise or is it after sunrise?
>> Bob Johnson: Before sunrise.
>> Joseph Weirick: Before sunrise, and then after you shoot and you pick
your birds up, then you walk back on that same pathway, get picked up or
have your vehicle there and take them back to the clubhouse. And then we
normally would clean all of our birds immediately after getting back to
the clubhouse and then you've got the rest of the day. Some people will go
back out and hunt in the afternoon and then there's people that maybe
didn't show up for the draw, they get there and they can go out and hunt
until half an hour before sunset.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now besides duck hunting and wading out there, what
other things does the club provide, like what do you guys do out there
besides that?
>> Bob Johnson: Well we, you know, as far as providing, being a social
club we have different social events such as a fried chicken feed one
night, and another time we may have a big lasagna feed. The neighbor that
owns the duck club next to us owns a fish company in San Francisco on the
wharf. And so once year we’ll have a big crab feed and he sells us the
crab cracked and cleaned at a wholesale price and we'll eat maybe 125
pounds of crab in that one sitting. That's one night when all of the
members are there unless they’re on their deathbed.
>> Joseph Weirick: And they always -- most people bring a guest for that
so there might be close to 40 ->> Bob Johnson: Correct.
>> Joseph Weirick: -- people there for the dinner.
>> Nathan Montanez: Are they—are they regularly allowed to bring guests
or?
>> Bob Johnson: Yes, you can bring a guest anytime except the opening day
of duck season, that's when we have our annual meeting the Friday night
before is our annual meeting, and that's when we discuss anything that
needs to be done it's all private and personal and then we limit the
opening day to members only. The opening morning shoot to members only so
they each have an opportunity to have a good shoot. The afternoon, they
may have guests come out in the afternoon and they may be able to shoot
then and that's the only time that there's any restriction on guests is
just the opening evening meeting and the opening morning shoot, other than
that guests are welcome. And the guest limitation is one guest per member.
>> Joseph Weirick: No gambling and no women, which is -- are both really
enforced and that goes back to Mr. Rodman, that was part of his thing. He
did not want any women on the club and he thought gambling would also
bring some, I guess, angst between the members so they —- I've never seen
anybody -- very few people even play cards.
>> Bob Johnson: I've never seen it. Rodman believed -- there was a Greek
philosopher said that men's relationships can be patched, a
misunderstanding can flow off of a problem like water off a duck's back,
so to speak. And the only two things that this philosopher said that could
come between a relationship with men would be women and money, so the no
gambling rule is because of the money issue and the no women is because of
the attraction or whatever you may have -- you looked at my wife wrong or
you said something about my wife. So we just tried to eliminate those
problems it's not in writing, it's not in writing it's just understood.
>> Joseph Weirick: And women are allowed to hunt at certain times it's on
Sundays but they cannot stay at the club, they can come out to shoot with
a relative for instance a daughter, a granddaughter or a wife can come out
and hunt on a Sunday as long as they don't sleep over at the club.
>> Nathan Montanez: I was actually about to ask about that
actually mentioned that too about how women are allowed to
there and he said it's become more progressive now because
allowing that. Now was that always something that the club
that something that's just recently?
cause, Bill
come shoot out
you guys are
allowed or was
>> Bob Johnson: It's been fairly recently, one of our members has a
daughter and he said you know I don't like this rule because you guys can
bring your sons out, I don't have a son, I have a daughter I would like to
bring my daughter out. And so that's when the rule was amended and that
had to be may be in the last six or seven, eight years, prior to that it
was just understood that there were no women allowed.
>> Joseph Weirick: You'd be amazed at how many women hunt ducks, not so
many in our club but I know other, some clubs allow women to hunt anytime
like a wife can come with her husband or the children or relatives.
>> Nathan Montanez: Oh, I got a note here saying, Wives Night. What is
Wives Night?
>> Bob Johnson: Well about -- they'll have after the season closes one
week after or maybe two weeks after, they'll have a wives night and there
will be certain members that will invite their wives and it's just a
little gathering. I don't know how it's done now, but when we were
involved with the wives night we would come out and have a little social
hour then we would go into Los Banos to the Wool Growers, have dinner and
then come back and we would all then socialize, spend the night, we all
have cabins out there. So we’d socialize and spend the night at the cabins
get up the next morning and the morning of that wives night is just
amazing on Saturday morning, the women can get an opportunity to see what
the duck club looks like when we're out there shooting in the morning and
they could see the flocks of geese, the snow geese and so forth it's
really spectacular. But I have yet to have any of the women who've been
there express a desire to want to hunt, more than likely they say well
thanks for bringing us out but I don't care to come back until next
season. It's just -– it’s kind of rough, it's kind of tough, it's clean
but it's not something that you would expect a woman to want to enjoy.
It's kind like camping, but you're not camping and you know the men out
there when the men are around the men are just around men and their
language becomes the language of men. It's not unusual for person to go
outdoors in their underwear, it’s certainly not prohibited but it's just
so relaxed and so comfortable that's another thing that if somebody
brought their wife out that would be another freedom they have to give up
so ->> Nathan Montanez: Now we talked a lot about the club as of recently,
what's your understanding of the inception of a club from its very
beginning, what do you know about it?
>> Bob Johnson: My understanding is that, as I mentioned before, that the
club was founded by the owners of the Pine Logging Company. And, uh, there
-— I have the minutes going back to the date of incorporation, the economy
was really bad and we have situations where a member may be for $30
couldn't make the payment, so he was extended the opportunity to make
payments to pay this $30, wasn’t able -— was unable to pay the $30 and had
to give up his membership because he couldn't afford to be in the duck
club any longer. The owners of the Pine Logging Company in an effort to
finance and keep the club alive thought it necessary to do a little
payola, if you want to call it that, that if you want to sell us your
product then you first of all need to buy membership in a duck club, that
gave them the financial wherewithal to keep the club alive. This is all
pretty much by rumor, the things I've been told by Jim Shelburn
[phonetic], Jess Rodman, John Roth who is one of the old-time members out
there. It's just most of what Joe and I know are what we've either
experienced or overheard.
[Background noise]
>> Nathan Montanez: Microphone slipped. Let me adjust it.
>> Joe Weirick: Oh, lost my microphone.
[Background noise]
>> Bob Johnson: The membership of our club has been, well it was $4000 to
join, that was the initiation fee for a number of years. And back in the
sixties or back in the seventies they raised it to $7500 and it’s still
$7500 to join our club today. You can't sell the membership to just anyone
you want to, we have a waiting list of members so when you get ready to
sell your membership you have to sell it back to the club. The club in
turn then will sell it to the next person on the waiting list. The waiting
list has to be approved 100% by all members, one blackball and that member
cannot be a member of the club or that applicant cannot be a member of the
club. Our dues, gosh it was $700 a year for years and years and years, as
the cost of maintenance has gone up and so forth our dues for the last few
years have been right at $2250. What we do is at our annual meeting, we
set the budget for the year and that's when we establish the assessment
for the year. The —- again the membership is frozen at 21.
>> Nathan Montanez: Now, since we have both of you here, how do you two
gentlemen really know each other, like how far do you go back, is it just
something you guys met each other through the duck club or you guys knew
each other prior to that?
>> Bob Johnson: I think we met each other at Shaver Lake. Joe used to own
the ski resort at China Peak and prior to that we socialized, we had
mutual friends and that's how we met. Joe lived at Shaver Lake and just,
just became friends. The duck club, we had been friends a number of years
before we ended up joining the duck club.
>> Nathan Montanez: What do you see in the future for the club for each of
you, like what do you think the future holds for the club and what do you
think the future holds for the club?
>> Joseph Weirick: I see no reason that the club won't endure. We've got a
bunch of -- Bob and I are some of the older members and but we have some –a lot of good, young people. You know, years ago Bob and I did all the
work when we were young and healthy and of course we're out there
supervise them but we have a lot of kids that they're in their late
thirties and early forties that are terrific workers and really avid
hunters.
>> Bob Johnson: I see no reason with the -- it's interesting because we
have an easement with the government and in this easement it says that we
have to maintain a water level at certain times of the year, even when
we're not hunting. And I mentioned to the person that was dealing with on
this easement that does that mean that we're going to have to drill a well
to keep the water at this level. He said you will never have to worry
about water; this is wildlife. You will always have water for wildlife. So
I see no reason the club wouldn't perpetuate, I see no reason why -unless something came along and they outlawed hunting but the club is
dedicated perpetual to be a duck club. We can't graze animals in there in
the off-season and so forth, it is a duck club and I see no reason why it
would ever be anything but a duck club, I see no reason why it would not
perpetuate unless they disallowed hunting.
>> Joseph Weirick: And then even then it might continue as a social club
because all those younger people are all close friends like Bob and I have
been for so many years and it -— it is a wonderful place to get away, you
know when the sun comes up in the morning and there's no -- we can see I-5
from our property, but it's five miles away or six miles away but there's
no noise and it's beautiful sunrises and beautiful sunsets, it's a very
enjoyable place to spend time. Those times that I can take my wife out
there and Bob's wife too, they never miss. My wife comes from an old duck
hunting family up in the Bay Area and so it's just second nature to her
she loves it out there. In fact, before I left this morning she wanted to
know when we were going.
>> Bob Johnson: I have just -- I am just completing putting a remodeling
on the cabin that I mentioned earlier and making it comfortable, not
anywhere near Van Ness extension but it's comfortable and clean, mouse
proof, bug proof, dust proof and comfortable. My son now uses the cabin,
I've dedicated my interest in the club, in the cabin to him so it's now
his cabin but I'm making the investment to make sure that it's comfortable
and he will pass it on to -- he has no sons of his own. I think his intent
is that when he is through he'll pass it on to his nephew, my grandson.
>> Nathan Montanez: [Inaudible section] a couple of things [inaudible].
>> Joseph Weirick: Hey, could you speak up a little bit?
>> Nathan Montanez: Oh yeah sure, I thought he was trying to get a word in
or something like that I didn’t hear what he was saying. I guess not. Now
there's a lot of experiences that Bill told me about that he had up there,
is there anything memorable that either of you had happen to you out there
that just always sends you back there whenever you think about the club or
you think about the good times you had there?
>> Bob Johnson: Oh, I remember, one thing I'll never forget, the prime
bird at the time to shoot was a pintail or a sprig duck and the prime
would be a male sprig duck and I remember one of the opening mornings that
Joe and I, the limit was 15, he and I brought in each a limit of bull
sprig and there we had 30 bull sprig hanging on the rail of my cabin, it
was a fantastic sight. I'll never forget that one.
>> Joseph Weirick: Yeah, I remember one, I had come in early and Bob's
father-in-law had lost his leg, but he wouldn't give up hunting and so we
put him in a blind and he was a crack shot and so I was at that time one
of the youngest members in the club and he asked me, he said would you
mind going out and picking up my birds for me. So I went to Mr. Crossland
and I said now am I going to get in trouble with the game warden if I go
pick up his birds and I've already got my birds in here. And Crossland
said absolutely not, I'll defend you in court and if you lose and you have
to go to jail I'll visit your wife for you once a week. So, he and I had a
chuckle over that. So they drove me out to the pathway where Jim Shelburn
had hunted and I walked out to the blind and before I left, I don't know
why, it was a windless day, just absolutely still. Probably 8:30 in the
morning, 9:00 and he had drawn me a map where his birds were and I thought
that was kind of odd because they wouldn't have floated away or been blown
away. But all within 40 yards of the blind, which is the -- a shotgun is
good to about 40 yards and here were these birds floating just absolutely
in the still water and it was just nothing to go pick up. I think at that
time the limit was seven and I picked up his seven birds for him and
brought them in, but even on one leg he refused to give up and some of the
old-timers that we've had hunt, they'll become incapacitated they won't
quit, they love it so much and the camaraderie -— the camaraderie with the
other members that right up to their dying day they'll hunt. In fact we
had a member that uh, Phil Hanna [phonetic] from Prather passed away a few
years ago and he had himself cremated and had his kids load his remains
into shotgun shells and passed out at least a couple to every member, so
you could remember him.
>> Bob Johnson: Yeah, his instructions were, load your gun and make this
be your first shot fired and it was his cremains that were shot into the
air. So you would fire the first shot knowing that you weren’t going to
hit a duck with it and then the second shot would have BBs in it so you
could shoot the duck. He had a T-shirt, I had a picture of him and I made
one for most of the members out there, it's a picture of him wearing a Tshirt it said, if it flies it dies. There's just a lot of stories if you
were to get all 21 members in here and start talking, you wouldn't have to
ask questions it would just start flowing and just one guy would remind
someone else of an experience and it was a lot of laughter. I don't
remember any bad times out there, we've had a couple of members who were
misfits and so we just have a rule in our bylaws that says if they do
something damaging to the club that they have reason for expulsion. As an
example, when they went from the lead shot to the steel shot, that's BBs,
from lead BBs to steel BBs, it's a law that you had to use steel BBs.
Well, the steel BBs weren't as effective, they didn't have the distance,
the effective distance or the impact range that the steel -- that the lead
shot did. We had a member that just refused to shoot the steel shot and so
he continued to use the lead shot and he was arrested -- or cited for
using the lead shot and he was booted from the club. We had another member
that was just a misfit, he wanted to change everything at the club, it had
to be his way and it just was not a comfortable situation, it ruined the
morale of the club. And so he was given the opportunity to resign and he
did. Other than that, those are the only two negative experiences I can
recall.
>> Joseph Weirick: I don't remember any others.
>> Nathan Montanez: Is there anything else you'd like to add on that we
haven't covered that you feel is important to people who ->> Bob Johnson: Well, I think what's really important right now is to, as
I said I have all of the records from 1928 to date and of course our
memories are from 1928 to date. I have been told things such as there -—
we had a game hunter, a couple of game hunters that lived there during the
hunting season and they would go out and they would shoot ducks and they
would take them down to the end of the levee and there was a railroad
track that went through their. The train would stop, they would load their
birds that they had shot on the train, their wives would be meeting the
train in San Francisco, they would take the ducks and then deliver them to
the restaurants. That's one of the old stories, another story is the road
on the levee was so bad it was never maintained by the county, it is now
maintained by the county, but prior to this it wasn't. And the members had
a military 4 x 4 vehicle parked at an old hotel this is in a town called
South Dos Palos which is nearest to where the duck club is and it was
pretty much a railroad camp. And there was a boardinghouse there that was
also rumored to be a brothel, the members would park the 4 x 4 there, they
would come back to the club, excuse me, come back out to go hunting, they
would pick up the 4 x 4 and they would take as long as eight hours to get
the three miles to the duck club to spend the weekend shooting ducks.
>> Nathan Montanez: It was that bad, huh?
>> Bob Johnson: It was that bad, it was that bad.
>> Joseph Weirick: In the old days, the stories that I remember from Bill
Crossland was that when he was doing the work for Pine Logging was that
they were doing it by horse and wagon, prior to the four-by and you got
there Friday night and they would go out to the club and the gamekeeper
would have dinner ready for them. And then the next morning he would wake
everybody up at 5 o'clock and then they would all have breakfast before
they went out. And then, because they didn't have access to the levees in
those days because there wasn't any motorized vehicles that could
negotiate those things, that at a certain time the gamekeeper would come
around and pick everybody up either that or you walked back. And it was a
pretty good walk say up to a mile and a half back to the clubhouse
carrying your gun and your jacket and in those days the limit if you go
way back the limit was 25 ducks well, you can imagine carrying 25 ducks
and your weapon in your jacket and sloshing through the mud in waders. And
because of that they usually hunted two days, they would go out Friday
night and they wouldn't come home until Sunday evening. But that whole
west side, Henry Miller, the famous cattlemen that owned approximately 1
million acres between the Oregon border, Mexico, Nevada and he had
considerable holdings in southern Oregon.
>> Bob Johnson: And Kern County.
>> Joseph Weirick: And Kern County, his headquarters were Bakersfield and
he allowed those game keepers to hunt waterfowl on his property and his
theory was that the rustlers wouldn't come and steal his cattle if these
guys were out there on the property and a typical game hunter would have
probably would have a quarter of a section, a half section or a full
section of land and then he was hunting for the market. Well, in the 30's
when the government outlawed game hunting those guys were allowed to stay
and they would lease a blind or take in people on a weekend to come out
and shoot ducks and that kind of is all gone now, I don't know of any
clubs that operate that way but that was probably started to go out by
1940, somewhere along in there. Because I know my dad belonged to a club
about a mile and a half away, he didn't belong, he leased a blind and when
I was young, probably 1948 or so, after the war when those guys had all
come back from the war, then they -- I went out there with my dad and the
gamekeeper was still there. And he had, same thing he fixed us, when we
got there on Friday night fixed us dinner, woke us up in the morning, had
breakfast for us and we went out and hunted and came back we had lunch.
And there were little individual cabins that he had, but I don't think
anybody owned them but they were mostly people from Fresno that leased and
then my dad got the opportunity in the mid-fifties to join the Britto.
>> Bob Johnson: I had mentioned earlier about the initiation fee, the
initiation fee was established to be as low as possible and the idea was
to keep young people interested and make it affordable for young people.
When I tell other people, other duck hunters what our initiation fee is,
they almost think I'm lying because it's not unusual for an initiation fee
to run $50,000 and up. We had one of our members get a divorce and in his
assets he claimed his membership fee and he claimed his membership as
$7500. His wife's attorney disagreed with that and I had to provide
minutes of our incorporation proving that our assessment –- our initiation
fee was $7500. Her attorney was sure that it was a $50,000 fee and he was
hiding money somewhere. The other thing is the membership is originally
was limited to members of residents of Fresno and Merced County. One of
our members moved to Tulare, so they expanded the border to the San
Joaquin Valley. So to be a member of our club you have to be a resident of
the San Joaquin Valley, again the reasoning was to keep it affordable, to
keep rich people from the Bay Area and other prominent areas from owning
memberships and only coming down when the hunting was really good. So it's
-— it’s -— it’s set up the way it is to perpetuate the club and to keep
young people involved, keep young people interested and make it as
affordable as possible for young people. Another thing that's interesting
because this may be a question that people wouldn't ask but if you really
think about it, you're going to go out to your blind, the blind is in the
middle of water, the water could be as much is two feet deep, how do you
find your duck club how do you find your blind? While leading up to every
blind there are gravel paths and in your rubber waders you can feel rocks
under your feet so as long as you're following the rocks it's going to
take you to the blind. If you get off of that rock blind walkway the mud
is very soft and very squishy, you can sink into the mud up to your
ankles. So you know that if you get off that rock you better get back on
the rock because you’re lost, so if you stay on the rock it'll take you to
the blind. And by the same token to leave the blind, if you stay on the
rock it'll take you back to the levee.
>> Joseph Weirick: That was another rule that we omitted was Jess Rodman
would allow no dogs and it wasn't until the early seventies that we had
the first dogs out there to go retrieve your birds. And boy that –- you -—
if you've never hunted with the dog you appreciated the job they do for
you.
>> Bob Johnson: And they love it you know, it's the most humbling or
embarrassing thing is to be sitting in a blind, now blind would be like a
piece of concrete pipe lowered into the mud and with water coming up to
within maybe two inches of the brim of this piece of concrete pipe. So
you're looking right out over the water when you're sitting in the blind.
So you're sitting in the blind a duck flies over and you shoot at the duck
and you miss it and to have a dog look at you and without saying a word
tell you you're really stupid. Very embarrassing, and it's also
interesting watching these ducks -— these dogs because they will actually
scan the horizon and they'll be able to spot the ducks coming in before
you can see them. So if you keep your eye on the dog you will find out
where the ducks are coming in.
>> Nathan Montanez: Do either of you use dogs when you hunt?
>> Bob Johnson: No, my son had a dog and he had to put it down about three
years ago the dog was 16 at the time. But it's really a beautiful thing to
watch, watch a dog work and they love it. My son would get up to go to the
duck club, grab his camouflage gear and his gun and the dog would just
start howling because he knew it was time to go play.
>> Nathan Montanez: Is there anything else you'd like to add?
>> Joseph Weirick: I'm sorry, what?
>> Nathan Montanez: Is there anything else that either of you would like
to add?
>> Bob Johnson: Oh, I'm sure if we had 16 of us sitting in this room it
would go on all day, you're going to be interviewing Dan Bonillas today,
and Dan is a world champion skeet and trap shooter and he has told me that
he and his uncle used to be able to shoot ducks and there would be well
wealthy men hunters that would either bring their girlfriends from San
Francisco or they had a girlfriend in the Los Banos area and they would
actually come down and take care of their girlfriends over the weekend. So
then they needed ducks to take home because their wives would say well how
come you not bringing any ducks home if you've been duck hunting. So he
would, and his uncle would go on shoot ducks and sell them to these people
from San Francisco that were playing around and he became a very good
shot.
>> Joseph Weirick: My wife told me that one of her dad's highlights of his
life, they lived in the Martinez area which is a big duck hunting area
mainly on the Suisun Bay. And out on the San Francisco Bay and she said
one of her dad's highlights was, he got on that train from San Francisco
and was let off at the Britto pump station and he had made arrangements to
hunt with one of those game hunters and she said that even though, I'm
sure the duck hunting was wonderful in the bay because I've seen the
pictures, she has of her dad’s —- her dad was a very avid hunter. Whenever
he had a free moment he was out on the bay but that was one of the
highlights of his life was riding that train down there and being able to
shoot in the grasslands area.
>> Bob Johnson: Our club is located pretty much in the center of the south
grasslands, and we really do a good job of managing the club. There is a
California Waterfowl Association biologist who is counseling us and we've
been rumored to be one of the better clubs in the area, but we work at it.
We have a gamekeeper and a -— a groundskeeper if you want to call it that,
who is just an avid, avid hunter and is really interested and knows how to
take care of this. And so with the help of the biologist and so forth we
have some of the best duck hunting in the area. We've also been accused by
other clubs of perhaps baiting or throwing corn and grain out to bring the
ducks in because our hunting is so good. But no, we're just doing good job
of following the law and doing habitat management.
>> Joseph Weirick: And under that easement we have, we have one also with
the federal government and we meet with them every year and they'll send
their biologists down and make suggestions of how we can improve on
things. And every year we -— they'll give us, in fact I think they’re out
a couple years of projects that they want us to try, you know to bring
more waterfowl into the, in the whole area not just our area.
>> Bob Johnson: The ducks will -- in the summer time will be, and they
nest in the northern area, Canada, etcetera and then as the weather
changes, and gets into winter, they start moving south to Mexico. So we
are hunting ducks, we're shooting ducks but we're also harvesting ducks,
it's an idea of doing a good job of habitat management and doing a good
job of waterfowl management so that the birds that we are, the birds that
are existing are healthy birds. They are not diminished due to
overpopulation, etcetera.
>> Nathan Montanez: Well thank you gentleman, that’s a wrap.
>> Bob Johnson: Okay. As I said, we had 15 of us, we’d go on all day.
>> Nathan Montanez: Oh I’d love to see that. I’d love to get that. We have
three cameras and three operators going.
>> Bob Johnson: You’re through then, eh?