You can imagine ten miles of tulies on both sides of the state’s largest river, the Sacramento River, and why the valley’s Butte Sink followed a different course and remained a waterfowl mecca. We see how the Sacramento Flood Control Project of the early 20th century finally led to the draining of the Sacramento Valley’s vast marshes. ![]() Now, as we bring this story to light, I want you to try to imagine the turn-of-the-century duck clubs and wetlands throughout what is now the urban development of San Francisco Bay and the urban conglomeration that is Greater Los Angeles. Beginning in the San Francisco Bay area, the range of shooting clubs expanded as railroads, especially-and later the automobile-rendered formerly remote locations more accessible. There are actually some 1,000 active duck clubs as recently as today, and some 2,600 over time. By the end of the 19th and the early 20th century, well before the establishment of refuges, duck clubs proliferated in California. Both the state and federal wildlife refuges were created to protect and restore as much of the state’s remaining wetland habitat as possible. Once California’s importance for providing migratory bird habitat-especially for wintering waterfowl-became well understood, the tide of reclamation began to turn. The process of reclamation carried on on even larger scales continued largely unchallenged until well into the 20th century, but the discovery of the Pacific Flyway and its importance to the migratory waterfowl of western North America began to change all of it. The same year, the Federal Swamp and Overflow Lands Act-which turned swamplands into the public domain, all over the states, to be sold and reclaimed-initiated the process of draining California’s vast freshwater and tidal marshes, primarily for agricultural development. As early as 1850, when California joined the Union as the 31st state, the state contained an estimated five million acres of wetland. In this story, we learned about the utter transformation of the state’s landscape, from the Pacific coast to the Central Valley to the desert interior. Yancey Forrest-Knowles: In California, the local history of duck and goose hunting is a story about hunting as an integral part of California’s environmental, social, economic, and even cultural history. ![]() Waterfowlers are, without question, the chief conservationists.Ĭalifornia’s Local Duck Hunting and Goose Hunting History Like one of those picture-perfect duck hunts, you’ll not want it to end.Ĭalifornia’s Storied Duck Hunting History: California Duck Clubs, Interesting Duck Hunters from the Past, and the Role of Duck Hunting and Duck Hunters in Wetland and Waterfowl Conservation ![]() What was duck hunting like when California became the 31st State and how’s it since changed? Who was Duck-A-Minute Bill Banta and how’d he earn that title? How many duck clubs are there in California and what’s the California duck club culture? What is the Butte Sink, and what befell duck hunting on the fabled Salton Sea? Why’d Clark Gable once get kicked out of a duck club? What’s the significance of the Klamath Basin to California waterfowling? This is a fascinating Duck Season Somewhere podcast episode, covering full-range California duck hunting topics from past and present, for the entire length of the state. A lifetime duck hunter and former director of California Waterfowl Association, he is an articulate storyteller, a passionate waterfowl conservationist. The orange sun melts slowly into the horizon on legendary Suisun Marsh, flocks of ducks are trading overhead and Yancey Forrest-Knowles speaks to Ramsey Russell from the heart of California duck hunting times past, present and future.
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