Ron Henry Strait: Port Bay hunting and fishing camp offers a traditional setting
San Antonio Express-News ROCKPORT — The king of clubs in the Texas outdoors is a little-known diamond in the rough located near the heart of this Coastal Bend city. Known as the Port Bay Hunting and Fishing Club, the camp is a long line of neatly groomed and painted Army barracks that are only slightly younger than the club itself, which dates to early in the last century. The old-club atmosphere, like the camp's rural setting so close to civilization, is something from another time. Stepping inside the main barracks on a stormy, cold afternoon, a visiting duck hunter is greeted by a swirl of warm air flowing from a narrow hallway lined with tall, wide, military-style metal lockers, each bearing a member's name. Spaced at intervals between the blocks of lockers are numbered rooms named for ducks — Widgeon, Spoonbill, Sprig, Mallard. This is a hunting club, after all, and duck hunting is what happens here five months a year. It's also a fishing cub, which is good, because 100 yards in front of the barracks is Port Bay, a less-traveled finger of shallow water that points south out off the shoreline of better-known Copano Bay. Managing the operation is Jeff Kucera, a longtime coastal resident and fishing guide who, a few years ago, moved from the helm of his bay boat to the club's warm office near the mess hall. "There is so much tradition here," Kucera said. "This is the oldest, continuously run hunting club in the state. There is no other place like it." That is a mild understatement. Like the boxy ranks of yesteryear's lockers that line the hallways, this is a place of time-tested routines that bear the fine patina of functionality. Traditions here are worn like a mantel. Each hunting day starts at 5 a.m. with the cook walking the hallways ringing a hand-held bell. The ringing clapper is considered fair warning that dawn waits for no man, least of all waterfowlers. The cook walks the halls again at 5:15 a.m. That's considered last call to breakfast, which is served in the small, communal mess hall. On the menu is traditional pre-dawn waterfowler fare: pancakes, bacon, thick syrup, soft butter, orange juice, coffee and milk. There is a "Guide's Table," but club members are seated at random. They mingle and swap tales of previous hunts, pair up for coming hunts and work out the details with Kucera and the guides. The blinds, and there are dozens of them, all have names and/or numbers and members have favorites, but daily placement is handled by drawing, bird availability and recent hunting history. No blind is over-hunted and no concentration of birds is neglected. Guiding is a tradition at Port Bay, too. "Most of the guides are from around here," Kucera said. "They grew up in the area and have roots here." Beginning guides work their way up through an informal apprenticeship, working around camp, tagging along on a few hunts and maybe guiding three or four hunts their first season, Kucera said. They acquire knowledge of club rules and traditions, master hunting regulations and are judged by their peers on bird identification while learning the lay of the land, or water, as it were. Duck hunting is done over open bay water as well as in shallow marsh, and none of it is done more than a 20-minute boat ride from the cozy barracks. That mix of convenience and fertile habitats is user-friendly — at least as friendly as waterfowling can be — and it gives hunters access to more than a dozen species of ducks, which is a rarity in any hunting situation. Travel to and from blinds is done in homemade skiffs powered by small outboard motors, which are one of the few concessions to modernity. A concession not made to modern waterfowling techniques is the use of airboats. The V-shaped open-water blinds are made with bay brush limbs that are stuck in the mud so that the skiffs can motor directly into position. Hunters never need to leave the boat. For marsh hunting, the bay brush-lined blinds are on platforms that have solid floors, a wide bench and low rails. Each hunting setup is fronted by 30-60 decoys. Both morning and afternoon hunts are offered. And all the good hunting traditions are delivered in spades. My experience: I made an afternoon bay hunt and a morning marsh hunt with guide Frank Sifuentes. He is an efficient fellow of good cheer, who, like the other veteran Port Bay club guides, knows the lay of the land and can guide the visitor on the water as well as through the traditions of the oldest hunting club in Texas. Guide Jeremy Griffis and his retriever, Jade, accompanied us to the marsh. A pintail and a blue bill joined the redheads on the strap. rstrait@express-news.net
About Ron Henry Strait: |
