Ducks Unlimited Podcast

00:00 Katie Burke Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. It's your host, Katie Burke. And today on the show, I have the author of the Minnesota Duck Camps, 160 years of history and tradition, Steve Knudsen. Welcome to the show, Steve. Hi, Katie. This book of yours, it's hefty. We'll get more into it to begin with, but one thing I like to know beforehand is what was your introduction to the outdoors and waterfowl,

00:29 Steve Knuston and how did you get into the waterfowl? So I grew up in West Central Minnesota in Otter Tail County, and that's about 25 miles from the North Dakota border. And I grew up on a farm and in Otter Tail County, we've got a thousand lakes. And so when I was a kid, I would just walk from pond or a pothole a pothole before I was old enough to drive, I guess. And I had a borrowed 16 gauge single shot shotgun that, as I remember it, sometimes when you pull the trigger would go off and sometimes it didn't. But that's how I got my start. And I would sometimes walk for miles, I guess, as a kid, walking from one place to the next. I wasn't a very good shot in those days for sure. So I didn't have the problem of carrying back a whole lot of ducks to begin with. But I grew up on a farm in a great area for duck hunting. And so that's how I got my start. Yeah. Did your dad hunt at all or were you kind of just doing it on your own? Yeah, my dad did hunt. But when I was sort of getting to that age, because we were on a farm in the fall, anybody that was old enough to help. And at that age, I wasn't quite probably that helpful. But so I had time to go hunting and my dad didn't. So I started duck hunting mostly by myself. And then I had a lot of friends from school and stuff that they were interested in duck hunting. And so we got together and once we had our driver's license,

02:08 Katie Burke then we were really on the road. Yeah, I understand. Like my cousins grew up and they would go with us a lot or they primarily became deer hunters because of that same reason. Like it was easier to do on their own and you know, like so because their dad was a farmer and duck hunting was always difficult for that reason. So I know that you did some work on obviously did all this research on camps. But I know with Doug Lodermeier's book, you helped him with research on, I think carvers

02:39 Steve Knuston and like decoys as well. So are you a collector on top of being an historian? Yes. And I sort of got into the collecting decoys. When I saw an advertisement one time in the middle of the winter for the annual decoy show that Minnesota has in the Twin Cities. And it was sort of like after hunting season, it's it's sort of like, well, okay, now what do I do until the next hunting season rolls around? So I thought it'd be interesting to go to the show. So I went there that that show is in February. So I went there because it was, you know, duck hunting related. And it was kind of mind blowing to see what they what they really had available there for decoys and such. And so yeah, I got into the decoy I have some birds. I'm not a huge collector. I'm particularly interested in Minnesota decoys and and I grew up in Ottertill County. So I have a particular interest in Ottertill County decoys. But anything that's decoys that were made by carvers or came from camps

03:54 Katie Burke in sort of historic hunting areas in Minnesota are areas that I'm interested in. So when was that first show for you? How old were you then? Oh, wow. That's a that's a good question. That's oh, I'm sure it was 30 years ago, probably. Okay. So it's changed a lot since then. So at the time when you started collecting, were you just kind of in all of everything? Or did you know what you wanted to collect? Like you knew what your interest

04:24 Steve Knuston was? I made the mistake that I think most people make and I just started collecting stuff. Right. And you know, if it looked interesting, I was I was going to collect it, partly because I felt that unless I actually had it had one of those decoys and I could handle it regularly, I wouldn't get knowledgeable enough to recognize, you know, similar decoys and such. So that was part of the reason I just had sort of a general interest. So yeah, yeah, I was collecting things from all over the country. And, you know, that's that's the way it was. After a while, I sort of, I guess, wised up a little bit. I decided, well, you know, I need to concentrate on this. So that's when I kind of narrowed it down to Minnesota decoys. And if they had history behind them, that was even better. Yeah. Do you remember what your first decoy was? Yeah, I bought a Mason, a Mason painted eye mallard from a guy who happened to I bought it off of eBay and he happened to live only about three miles from my house. He still have it? I do still have it. I really like that decoy. And it was kind of interesting when I went over there to pick up the decoy from that gentleman. He was a collector and he had some really nice decoys. And all of a sudden I'm handling a fifteen thousand dollar Mason decoy, not the one I bought. Right. But in his collection, and

05:52 Katie Burke it was sort of like, wow, this is this is even more amazing than I thought. Right. So something that's common among collectors that have talked to so many after buying that decoy, did that form do you form a relationship with that collector? And did that influence you? Or was it another collector down the road? Yeah. Like, did you have any significant relationships

06:12 Steve Knuston to help you with collecting that particular first decoy that I bought? Didn't really turn into a personal relationship or anything with that particular collector. Although I did run into him at shows and things. It was more so when I was at the show at the different shows because I would go annually every time they had the show. You'd you'd run into different collectors and folks that were selling their decoys and such. And when you're first learning, it was sort of, you know, kind of an eye opening experience and you talked to a whole bunch of different people. And, you know, certain folks just seem to you seem to connect with even more so than the others. And so that's sort of where I've I think I got into kind of refining what I was interested in. And then along the way, I I met up with Doug Loeder Meyer, who's written the books on Minnesota duck decoys and duck calls. And he was extremely helpful in in me sort of getting a handle on that. I met with him when he was doing his first first decoy book. I brought some decoys over and got to meet him and see what

07:27 Katie Burke his book was looking like and so forth. So that was a that was kind of a big, big influence. Yeah, that's usually common, I find with collectors. And it's also one of the like main pieces of advice people give to new collectors is forming those relationships and going to shows and meeting those people to kind of help them figure out where they want to go with their collection. That's so that's why I asked that. When did you turn? So you're starting to collect decoys in your waterfowl hunter. At what point do you turn and get interested in the duck

08:05 Steve Knuston camps of Minnesota? That was sort of an accident. I never had an intention or thought I had an interest in writing a book. That's for sure. But actually was almost exactly seven years ago. I went to the National Decoy Show in Chicago. And getting back to Doug Loeder Meyer, he was giving a presentation at that show on the history of Minnesota duck decoys. And I thought I always had always wanted to go to that show and never quite gotten around to it. And I thought that'd be a great, a great reason to go to the show and then hear what Doug had to say. So in in his presentation, he mentioned that he was starting work on a new volume of duck decoy books and duck call books. And in his decoy books, particularly, he's always had some history of duck hunting and duck hunting locations and so forth in there. And he mentioned that in the new book he was working on, he wanted to get more history and more information on Lake Christina, which is located in central Minnesota. It's, you know, one of the most historic duck hunting lakes in Minnesota, great, historically a great canvas back lake. And as I mentioned before, I grew up in Ottertell County and we still we have a cabin up in that area. And I hunt in Ottertell County area all fall. And so I'm driving by the Lake Christina area all the time. So I got together with Doug and I just mentioned, if you ever need anybody to do some research on decoys from Lake Christina area or any kind of history, you know, let me know. So anyway, he took me up on that. I started doing some research on some particular carvers that were thought to be from the Lake Christina area. And that sort of evolved into some other research Doug asked me to do. And while I was doing that, the decoy carver research, I kept running into information on old duck camps, you know, history of camps on Christina, and then that expanded into some counties around that area. And I thought, well, this is pretty interesting. But I just set the information aside, put it sort of in a binder or folder. And after a while, it got to be a real big pile of information. And I showed it to Doug Lodermeyer one day and I said, boy, somebody should write a book on this. And he said, Yeah, why don't you do that? And I'll help you. I'll show you what you need to do and, and help you along the way. And that was that started seven years ago. And, and the last few

10:55 Katie Burke months is when the book came out. And so it gradually evolved into that. Yeah, you know, I find it interesting. There aren't a lot of books on duck camps. But I feel like in most decoy books, there are mentions of camps of famous camps, because either carvers, you know, either were guides for that camp and carved decoys for that camp or the camp bought decoys from certain carvers. And they're always like, a part of the story. But they're never rarely are they the focus of the story except for I mean, there's a couple books here and there, but not to the extent that your book is. And the reason I find that surprising is because often it's one of the requests I get for the podcast is to talk more about old duck camps, people find it interesting, not necessarily collectors find it interesting, but waterfowlers find it interesting. And you would think there would be more work done on it. But there's not. Yeah, I just find that surprising that this is kind of one of the only ones. This is the biggest, the most extensive one I know of, right? Certainly got to be one of the biggest. I never intended it to be that big. That's for sure. But it's big. Yeah, I can think of like, Dr. Wayne Kaput does one that's not just on camps, it's on duck hunting and like around we are, it's got, you know, a little bit of everything in it. And then I was trying to think there's a couple other that are on specific camps, but there's not the just the volume of camps in this country that are still around. That was surprising when I was going through your book of how many that are still in operation. How many do you do even have a number

12:41 Steve Knuston on that? Like how many are still in operation in Minnesota? Well, you know, we've got there's a lot of camps identified in the book. Yes. And about 400, I would say that over time that we've identified, there's about 400. And for the camps that are identified in the book or covered in the book, 200 of those camps are still active. Wow. You know, there's certainly more camps than that that are active. As I found out since the book came out a couple of months ago, because people are calling me and telling me about camps I was not aware of. Right. But one of the things I learned, which I thought was pretty interesting was how many really old camps are still active in Minnesota. There's over 50 active camps in Minnesota that are over 100 years old. That really surprised me. I

13:33 Katie Burke hadn't expected that. No, that is surprising because a lot of the times these camps that are that old are now, you know, a refuge or some sort of protected property. They usually aren't still

13:46 Steve Knuston operating as a camp. That's amazing. Yep. You're exactly right about the refuge part. There's a lot of camps that are identified in the book and were eventually turned over. I mean, there were great hunting areas, obviously. And then over time, the refuge sort of took over the whole area. And so a

14:09 Katie Burke lot of camps were lost that way. Yeah. It's interesting because, I mean, we just are looking at Minnesota, but I wonder, you know, there's lots of different states that had a very robust history of camps, right, all over. And I wonder what the survival rate is among states. I mean, we don't have an answer for that. But now that we bring that up, that 50 of them are over 100 years old, I wonder how that pans out across the country. Maybe someone listening can give us an answer. But that's really interesting. I wonder if Minnesota tends to be higher. The one thing I do want to ask, though, before we get into specific camps, which I have questions about, I mean, the railroad was significant in a lot of states, waterfowl and camps like North Carolina, you know. What do you think the railroad's influence is on how the land was developed because of this? Do you think, like, areas stayed more rural because there was waterfowling there because of where the railroad was coming in and bringing them in? Or did towns develop around that? Like,

15:14 Steve Knuston how do you think the railroad industry influenced the waterfowling in Minnesota and these camps? Well, I think in the early years, it was a huge influence because when the railroads would come in and they would come into an area that had good waterfowl hunting, the market hunters and the sport hunters would be there almost right away after the tracks were laid and the trains were coming through. It was really, really kind of amazing. Yeah, I wonder what that word of mouth was like. Who's the person telling them to come? Well, as an example, there's a club in Minnesota called the Railroad Gun Club. Right. And most of these camps, they had a physical location. They had a duck pass or they had a lake or a slew or property on a good hunting lake. The Railroad Gun Club didn't have any of that. They just hopped on the railroad and they had their own special car and they would go to where the good hunting was and then they would park the railroad car and then they would go off and hunt. The sort of founder or the main guy in that club was the station agent in Minneapolis. So they had that connection of all the employees on the trains and the people, the passengers coming through. So I think that sort of word of mouth like you described is

16:45 Katie Burke probably how that would get started. Yeah, that's a really interesting club. And I didn't realize I've seen that picture, which we're podcast, so it's hard to describe, but it's in the museum of that railroad car and it's probably, I don't know, a few hundred ducks in that picture.

17:02 Steve Knuston I believe it's 634. What? I didn't know anyone knew the answer to that. 634. Yep. I'll double check the number, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is. Yeah, that word, did you say it's in the museum? Are you referring to the museum in Memphis? Yes, it's in the market hunting section on the timeline. That picture is on the wall. Yeah. Yep. I think I saw it there. That's a, that's a, yeah, that picture has made its rounds. That was, you know, that was in New York papers

17:32 Katie Burke way back in the 1880s and that's, that's a, that picture is taken in St. Paul. Oh, wow. Well, I'm glad I can tell visitors that there were 634 ducks in there. Yep. That's a, that's a lot of ducks and there's only probably like eight hunters in that picture. Probably, yeah, probably about that number. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. That's such an interesting, I didn't realize that, that I always assumed that, you know, cause the market hunters, they would ship the ducks back on rail, on the

18:02 Steve Knuston railroad to cities. I just assumed that was that, not the railroad gun club. No, that was the railroad gun club. The, because of the picture, I was able to identify most of the, the, the members in that picture that they were, that were in the gun club. There's a few that I'm not positive in that picture,

18:21 Katie Burke but most of them we've, we've got identified. Oh, wow. So how many members were of the railroad gun club? Was it like more conducive to have more members because it was, you know, something that

18:31 Steve Knuston went in and out or? I think there was probably about, probably around eight that were sort of steady members. And then it seemed like they had sort of a, a variable number of additional hunters that would sort of come and go over time. So it wasn't, it wasn't a real big club and maybe because they were pretty much, you know, relegated to being in, in one railroad car rather than having

18:57 Katie Burke a, you know, a real big clubhouse somewhere. Yeah. That's a really interesting one. That's pretty unique to your area. I haven't really, I don't think I've heard of anyone having that as well, but so in your book, you kind of like, I find the Minnesota area, because it's so different from where I, I grew up hunting in Mississippi. There's all these sections and they're all very, they can be very similar or they can be all very different types of hunting in Minnesota of what you're hunting because the railroad came in and then the start, the camp started to develop at that point as the railroad came in areas of Minnesota started to, where'd the camps start to

19:32 Steve Knuston kind of, what were the hotspots of where camp started to develop? Yeah. So Minnesota became a state in 1858 and by 1861, what was the first real duck hunting club that, that we were able to identify. And that was right in the twin cities, you know, Minneapolis, St. Paul metro area, because it was such, it was, you know, really lightly populated at the beginning. It was where the Mississippi river flows through. And then just north of St. Paul, there was a location, actually on a stagecoach. It was a way station. It was a road house called Van Ellsbergs. It was on the stagecoach that went from Minneapolis, St. Paul up to Duluth. And that was right on the shore of a lake that had a, was on a string of lakes that were attached to Rice Creek. And it was some fantastic hunting. And so even by 1861, the club was going by 1862, there was a, this way station, Van Ellsbergs was a, was a destination where duck hunters would go for hunting. And so, so that was sort of the start, the metro area. And then as the trains would start to go out through Minnesota, that was happening mostly in the 1870s and into the 1880s. And so by 18, about 1876, there were actually records of, we got pictures of special railroad cars that had hunters that came all the way from Massachusetts. And they were going, again, kind of surprised me. I didn't realize it would be that early, but they had special railroad cars were made up for hunters. You know, they had kitchens and game lockers and kennels for their dogs and, and so on. And they were going through, you know, shortly after the tracks were laid, they were going through Minnesota into these areas and not only duck hunting, but, you know, hunting other game as well. And continuing out even into North Dakota, into Dakota territory. And then a little bit later in the 1880s, again, the railroad started emanating from the twin cities and going North and West and Southwest. And as they went to new areas, if there was good duck hunting, you know, as we talked about the market hunters and the sport hunters would be there almost, almost right away. In the 1880s, the train was going Northwest out of the Minneapolis, St. Paul area up towards where Fargo North Dakota is these days up to the Red River Valley. They were, you know, heading towards the Bonanza farms where the grain farms were for railroad traffic, but they went right by Lake Christina, which was a fantastic canvas back lake. And in the 1880s, they had a, again, East Coast hunters and hunters from like the Michigan area would come in these special hunting cars. And some of them were made by the Pullman sleeper car company. So they were pretty fancy, pretty fancy cars. And they were again, modified specifically for hunters. And they would have usually porters and cooks along with, you know, providing assistance for the hunters.

22:56 Katie Burke And again, that's an 18 early 1880s. Right. And it would have to be, I mean, if you're coming from Massachusetts in 1880, you're paying a lot of money to get to Minnesota. And I would think you

23:10 Steve Knuston would not expect, you know, you'd expect it to be pretty nice at that point. Yeah. And the railroads had had figured out even by that time that there was a market for this of customizing these railroad cars, and then leasing them out or renting them out to these hunting groups. Mostly, like you say, from the East Coast, where there was probably more money to be able to afford that, but they would come through and hunt in Minnesota and continue on into Dakota territory. And the Pullman cars were kind of particularly interesting because they actually had names that the Pullman company gave them. The hunting car was called the Davy Crockett. And that was a car that I ran into some information where years later, this was in the 1880s when it was they were hunting on Lake Christina. Years later, in the 1890s, I think it was down in South Carolina with an ex president of the United States. I can't remember which one it was, but they obviously got a lot of mileage out

24:16 Katie Burke of those specialized hunting cars. So you have all of these, you know, more wealthy hunters and forming camps and duck clubs. But alongside that, as you mentioned, you have market hunters. And how were they interacting at this time? And was market hunting kind of interfering with the

24:38 Steve Knuston camps or not at all? Was it just enough ducks that it didn't matter? You know, it was another thing that was kind of interesting in reading a lot of old newspaper articles. Again, this happens to have been from the Lake Christina area. Early on, when the newspapers first were being published in that area, early 1880s, probably, they talked about even in 1882, I think it was, that they were getting all these hunters from the East Coast, you know, from New York State and Massachusetts. The interesting part was, you know, they didn't come and stay for a weekend, obviously. Some of them would stay for six weeks. But in those real early days, even then, the writers or the publishers of those newspapers did not particularly like market hunters. I thought it would probably be the case where it was sort of, you know, they could co-exist and not be an issue. But it was generally the case that it didn't take long before the market hunters were not enthusiastically looked upon by the sport hunters.

25:48 Katie Burke All right. I mean, it makes sense. We've talked about it on here before, because it comes up in Ducks and Limits history, that, you know, when they were making policies and things like that to change towards a more conservation-focused kind of to rein the market hunters back, you know, they weren't that concerned about the duck clubs and the camps, because they were already implementing some forms of restraint and conservation. So the first policies kind of almost excluded them, or used them as an example to kind of form new ways of thinking. So, I mean, it makes sense, because the clubs and camps were already pretty early on thinking along that way, along that more, I guess, conservation, because they wanted to conserve what they had, and they wanted to keep it. They wanted to keep the hunting good, and they didn't want, you know, they didn't want any too much change with ducks coming in and things like that. Yeah. All right. I have a question about market hunters, but let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back. Thanks for sticking with us. My question about market hunters pertains to, it was the Heron Lake, I think I read in yours. I loved about the 1901 market hunters that were arrested, and they like, it was, I think it was one was charged, the leader was charged with $65, and the other one was charged with $35. And then the part that I was like, I was really curious about, and I'm sure you don't have an answer, but 480 decoys were taken. And I really want to know

27:41 Steve Knuston what happened to the decoys. I'm sure we don't have an answer. Boy, there's a whole bunch of people who would like to know what happened to those decoys. Those decoys probably ended up, you know, being used on Heron Lake for years, because Heron Lake was, you know, a lot of people would think Heron Lake was probably the most historic duck hunting area in Minnesota. It's got a lot of, there's a lot of famous hunting camps there. There's some, we talked about hunting camps that are over a hundred years old. Heron Lake has got several of those. It's just tremendous history there. So I'm not sure exactly what happened to those decoys. Boy, if we could have a picture of them too, to see what, which particular kinds of decoys they had, but we, there's sort of a general style of Heron Lake decoys. So we can sort of speculate, you know, what, what they did look like, but the Heron Lake, Heron Lake had, they really had some controversy, if that's the right word, or some interference between the market hunters and the sport hunters. It was such a fantastic hunting spot in those early years that market hunters, you know, would come up from Iowa and there were locals and locals would get hired and they had an ice house at the south end of the lake, you know, where they'd freeze the ducks and then they'd send them out a lot of times to Iowa, but other locations as well. And it got to the point where the market hunters apparently would, you know, be intimidating sport hunters because they wanted exclusive hunting and the best spots and, and, you know, it was, it was a moneymaker for them, obviously. So there got to be a lot of issues with that. And then what seemed to happen was around 1900, 1901, when, you know, the laws in Minnesota were changing on bird hunting, duck hunting and market hunting. And there was a lot of interest then by some wealthy businessmen in the Twin Cities to have clubs, private clubs on Heron Lake. Once those wealthy folks got interested in it, then any sort of interference by market hunters was really looked at in a different way because, you know, those hunt, those wealthy businessmen had, you know, had some clout and, and weren't used to sort of having to do business that way. So they, they came in and established several private hunting clubs. And then what was kind of interesting was those locals that had been market hunters previous to that, they ended up working as guides at these private clubs. And, and they were very successful doing that. And a lot of them did that for many years. And the other part that was kind of interesting was some of those market hunters on Heron Lake, some of them actually went on to become game wardens later on, which was really kind of interesting. That is interesting. Well, I mean, I guess they know the land really well, so that's helpful. Yep, that's correct. We just kind of just have an interesting sort of tidbit about how that all

30:53 Katie Burke evolved. Yeah, that's really interesting. Why do you think so many camps at Heron Lake have lasted for so long? Why is it one of the older, you know, what is it about that area that it's kind of stuck

31:05 Steve Knuston around? Well, I think originally, it was, you know, just a fantastic hunting location. It was, and it, and it was, you know, those early hunting camps, at least in Minnesota, maybe, maybe it was common everywhere, that their number one duck that they were really interested in was canvasbacks. And Heron Lake was a tremendous canvasback lake. There's reports that, well, they called it the Chesapeake of the West at one point, because the reporting was that, you know, more birds staged on Heron Lake at one time than anywhere other than Chesapeake Bay. So that's why they gave it the name Chesapeake of the West. But there were reports of 700,000 cans on the lake, you know, back in the late 1800s. And so that, that was the first attraction. What sort of helped that was there was a railroad that came right from the Twin Cities and went within yards of the north end of Heron Lake. And so there was a train depot right there. So it was very convenient for these businessmen from the Twin Cities to go to that location, tremendous hunting, hunting of the, you know, their most desired bird canvasbacks. And even the history of how that train came to, that railroad came to be, there's some write ups and descriptions saying that the original destination or where the path where that railroad was going to go was farther north than where it ended up. And the speculation is it was actually moved right to the edge of Heron Lake because the president of that railroad, Elias Drake, was a well-known duck hunter and he owned property right around the lake. And so there's speculation that the reason that railroad comes right along the edge of Heron Lake had something to do with the tremendous hunting. So that's how it sort of got started. It was always a tremendous hunting lake. And so these camps were established and they were very, in very early days, they were into the conservation part of it. They, even in 1906, they had some rules and regulations that they published that, you know, you couldn't hunt after two o'clock on the lake. And they had rules about what time you could start and, you know, how you handled yourself when you're retrieving birds. And it was a gentleman's agreement that everybody signed and the guides and these camp owners. And it's still actually in effect today. It's kind of an amazing early conservation agreement. It was probably originated by James Ford Bell. He was the founder of General Mills and he was a camp owner on Heron Lake and, you know, obviously conservationist. He moved up into Otter Till County later on and then eventually up into,

34:00 Katie Burke you know, Delta Marsh. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. So because of that, do you think with the early conservation, what is the hunting? I mean, I'm from Mississippi, so I don't know enough about it, but how has the hunting evolved and how are they still, what are they doing to still, I guess, keep those camps alive? I mean, is it some of the similar families that own these camps? Have they just been passed down or? So that's a lot of questions in one question, but yeah. So what is,

34:27 Steve Knuston why have they survived in the way that they have, I guess? Yeah, I think, you know, it is a tremendous, it's a big lake. It was a tremendous hunting location. It's still a very good hunting location, although I think, you know, the folks that have hunted there for years will say, and this is sort of a general situation, I would say in most of Minnesota is, you know, the hunting isn't what it used to be. That's what everybody says everywhere, Steve. Yeah, I understand. And so, I think that's the case, but it still can be a very good hunting location. And to answer, you know, part of your question there too, there is a lot of continuity of some of these camps that are on Heron Lake. And this is in other areas of the state too, but some of the areas on Heron Lake, these camps, they've still got some of the same families involved in these camps that were there probably a hundred years ago. I know of other camps outside of Heron Lake that are in that situation as well. So, I think there's, you know, there's the good hunting, but then there's also the history, well, the history and the tradition of, you know, our family was there and, you know, we sort of continue on with that same tradition. Yeah. So, what's the oldest camp? The oldest camp that's still active would be on Heron Lake, not surprisingly, I guess. And that would be the Windsor Farm, which started in the 1870s sometime. There's other camps that are close to that. In Otter Tail County, that was started about 1881. And that, and actually that's the location where James Ford Bell moved to from Heron Lake when the Heron Lake hunting slowed down in the, you know, 1916, 1920 timeframe. And that camp had Bell family members in it for a long time until maybe 20 or some years ago. And there's, but there's still a family from those early members, 19, probably a little after 1920, but some of those family members are still hunting that location. So, there's several camps that go back, you know, a hundred and, well, 140 years or so.

36:51 Katie Burke Wow. One of the other areas that, well, it was one part of that you mentioned, and I didn't think about it in regards to Minnesota, but you talk about Swan Lake, which I'd like you to describe a little bit about Swan Lake, but if we're going to do about how, I mean, some of these camps had to survive the dust bowl years where these lakes almost dried up. And I don't, it's hard to think about, when you think about Minnesota and you think about the size of these lakes, it's hard to imagine them almost drying up, but that was the case. And, you know, they had to survive this time, plus, you know, the war comes quickly after. So it's amazing that some of these camps, you made it through these really hard years, but I'd like you to kind of describe that a little

37:37 Steve Knuston bit more if you could. Yeah. So Swan Lake, again, is one of the most historic areas. You know, some people would say Heron Lake, Swan Lake, and Lake Christina are, you know, maybe three of the most historic because there's been a lot written about them. But Swan Lake, which is located about 75 miles south of Minneapolis, St. Paul, that's a huge lake. It's 12,000 acres, I think. And it's a big marsh. It has open water on it as well. But it's a huge lake. And even back in, let's see, about 1920s, there was about a hundred duck camps. They always referred to them on Swan Lake. They called them shacks, hunting shacks. But there was a hundred hunting shacks on Swan Lake. Then, as you mentioned, you know, when you get to the drought years, what happens because Swan Lake was, you know, relatively shallow compared to some of the big lakes in Minnesota. So there's a lot of pictures. There's some pictures in the book of what Swan Lake looked like in the Dust Bowl years. They're pheasant hunting out in what used to be the duck hunting area in Swan Lake. Almost all of it got totally overgrown with vegetation, and it was dried up. The farmers would go out there, and they're planting potatoes and growing crops. I interviewed an older gentleman who grew up on a farm along Swan Lake. He was describing in the drought years, you know, it was so dry, they were always afraid of grass fires. So there would be grass fires around Swan Lake. While there was a big grass fire, and the wind was such that it was coming towards their farmstead. So his dad had to get out with a tractor to plow and plow a circle around the farmstead, you know, to get black dirt rather than have all that dry grass in between them and the, you know, the oncoming fire. And that's something that was actually kind of common back then is they would get farm equipment out and try to isolate the farmsteads because those grass fires and prairie fires in the drought years could be really destructive. So, but you know, in some cases after the drought years in Swan Lake, for example, other lakes as well, you had all that vegetation growing. And then when the water did come back, there was actually some fantastic hunting in years after that, you know, which isn't so unusual. You know, we see that in some of the other hunting sloughs and lakes and so forth around here where you get, you get a drought here and things dry out

40:26 Katie Burke and then the water comes back. It can be some great habitat. Right. I wonder, it makes me think, okay, so you're, you're dealing with all of that, the drought and then just kind of like this lack of resources, you know, it's hard to find food, water, all the things, right? And then all of a sudden you have all this abundance. I wonder if that helps because of the scarcity. I wonder if the abundance then just revived it in its own self because people were so happy to have all these

40:57 Steve Knuston things that they had been missing for those years, you know? Yeah. And I know for an example, in Swan Lake, there were some of those hunting camps then that sat empty for several years, you know, just because, you know, there weren't any, there wasn't any water, there weren't any ducks. And so, you know, there's a, there's a story of, there's a gentleman named Pell Johnson, who's written, you know, four or five books on stories about Swan Lake, some great hunting stories and his, his own family's camp, they had a shack on Swan Lake. And when they came back, you know, four or five years later, after the drought, when it was going to be hunting season again, you know, the, the farmer that owned the land had been running sheep on that property. And so they, they had to clean out what the sheep had left inside the hunting cabin over those four or five years. So it was quite an adjustment, you know, when, when the hunting did come back. But yeah, there was a period of time where essentially probably was no duck hunting,

41:56 Katie Burke which is hard to imagine on a 12,000 acre lake. Right. Yeah. So do you think the majority of the people who own those shacks or camps came back to their camp or that was abandoned? Or do you think,

42:09 Steve Knuston or did some new hunters come into camps like that had been abandoned? I believe most of them probably came back, you know, because it wasn't, it was a few years, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a tremendously long time. So I think most of them probably came back and you know, so they had some continuity there. Right. Do they just mostly lease that property or were they technically owners of the property? How does that work? Yeah. And it's interesting, different parts of the state, for example, it's, it's, it's, they sort of treated different ways. The Swan Lake area, historically in the early years, it seems like they would always lease the property from the farmers and they might build a hunting shack. You know, the hunters might build that and that was their hunting shack, but they were typically leasing the property from the hunters. Swan Lake is, is really kind of unique in that it has, you know, a lot of hunting lakes in Minnesota, there's a, there's like a duck pass on a particular area of a lake or, or there's a marsh that's a great hunting right from shore. Swan Lake is very, very little as far as dry land duck passes. And so it's so big that everybody essentially gets out in a boat and goes and finds, you know, their favorite spot or finds a good spot to set up decoys. So there's little communities there where there might be 25 or 30 hunting cabins that are right next to each other, you know, 20 feet apart, for example. And so they have that little community of hunting shacks. And then, you know, in the morning when they're going duck hunting, everybody goes down to the dock, gets in their duck boat and heads off, you know, tries to beat their neighbor to their favorite hunting spot. And in those cases, I know of at least three communities like that on Swan Lake, where there's maybe 30 or so hunting cabins all together. In all, in all those cases, they were originally leasing from the farm owner. And in one case, I know they, the group got together and made form an association and bought from the, from the farmer. In another case, it's, it's still after a hundred and some years, it's still the farmer that owns the land and, and these hunting cabins. And there's some really nice hunting cabins in there, just lease, lease the property. So in general, in that area, Swan Lake, it was mostly leasing, leasing property. Other parts of the state, it's totally different. These cabins, or hunters would come in, sometimes they would lease from the farmer and other times they would actually buy the land outright. Yeah, that's really interesting. They're like little communities. I've heard of it in like a smaller way, like a camp will build that way, but not to that scale of 30. That's very different. Yeah, that's, that's sort of unique to Swan Lake. I know of one other area that does that, you know, Lake Christina, we mentioned before, they have, they have one community of maybe 25 and the rest of the lake is, is all sort of individually, you know, owned by different

45:25 Katie Burke properties. Okay. So let's talk, since we kind of hit Heron Lake and Swan Lake and we did Otter Tail County a bit, let's talk a little bit about Lake Christina a little bit more and about what those camps were

45:37 Steve Knuston like and how they evolved as well. So one of the earliest documented camps or hunting areas was the Palm Clist farm. And there was a the earliest documented, again, there were probably market hunters before this gentleman, but the earliest really well documented market hunter was a man named Sam Furtig and he hunted out of the Palm Clist farm. He was hunting by 1889. I'm sure there were market hunters there before that because the railroad came to Lake Christina in late 1879. So by 1880, there's, there would have been some market hunters and sport hunters there. But 1889 was when Sam Furtig was there. He made his living essentially as a market hunter. He was from St. Paul. He'd come up to Lake Christina in the, in the fall and spend all hunting months there and then go back at the end of the season. In fact, his, he spent his honeymoon at the Palm Clist farm. Apparently after that initial trip with Sam to the Palm Clist farm, his new wife didn't come back to that hunting, to those hunting trips anymore after that. But that was, that was one of the first locations and the Palm Clist farm, the railroad, the railroad on Lake Christina is like here in Lake in that it literally passes within yards of the shore of Lake Christina. So James J. Hill was the founder of Great Northern Railroad. He was a duck hunter. You know, there's records of him coming up with, as president of the railroad, he had his own private railroad car. There's records of him being at Lake Christina in the nearby town of Ashby with his private rail car and, you know, a lot of his business associates hunting on Lake Christina. And the fact that the train went right by the shore of the lake, it was common practice for the engineers to blow the, you know, there's, their steam engines had whistles. And so they would blow that as they went by, because that would scare up ducks and which was good for the hunter. And then the other thing about the railroad being right by the shore of Lake Christina, the market hunters, they would just flag down the train and, you know, load their ducks onto it and send it down to Minneapolis and St. Paul. So those were the starts, the start of that 1889 was a year that was the first duck camp that was identified on the lake. It was a camp called the Interlochen Club, which was right next to the Ponquist, again, right on the railroad tracks there. And there was some of the other camps, there was a camp called Millionaires Point and that was started in about 1920. And that was the, it's still a active duck camp. And so that would be considered the longest continually active duck camp on Lake Christina. So that's, you know, a little over a hundred years old, another one of those hundred year old camps.

48:53 Katie Burke Yeah, there's a lot of these hundred year old camps. All right, I'm going to get to my last question, which I'm embarrassed to ask, but I have a couple of coworkers that would be mad at me if I didn't ask, but I'm just going to let you know, it's not my question. I'm not a believer, but

49:09 Steve Knuston are any of them haunted? Are there any haunted stories? If a person believes that things can be haunted, that there would certainly have to be some haunted duck camps in Minnesota, because there's some interesting stories of things that happened at some of these camps. And they're so old that I would think if you're a believer, there's probably some haunted camps there. All right, give me one interesting story. Boy, you know, I might be drawing a blank. I could come up with some interesting stories of people in different places and different camps, but I'm not sure I can find one. Well, there's one, I was talking with a gentleman, I interviewed a gentleman a few years back. His grandfather was a caretaker at one of the camps. Again, this happens to be up in Ottertill County. They got a lot of lakes, so we got a lot of hunting camps. And when this gentleman was probably nine or 10 years old, he would, you know, his grandfather would have him come out to the camp and help clean up, you know, clean up the pits and the clubhouse and things like that. And normally, his grandfather would have him come with him during the week when the hunters weren't there, because it was a big hunting camp. Some hunters from the Twin Cities had it. So then he thought it was kind of unusual when his granddad called him on a Saturday and said, come with me to the camp, we've got to go over there and do some things. So he goes over there. So they walk into the camp and clubhouse, it was in the afternoon, so all the hunters are sitting around a table playing cards or something like that. So they walk up to the table and his granddad says, I want to introduce you to my grandson. And the man who was back was turned to the boy as he walked up, turned around to look at him. And it was Matt Dillon from the Gunsmoke TV show. And you have to be able to certain vintage to maybe even be familiar with that show. But back in the 1960s, when this 10 year old boy was watching TV, this was the biggest hero we had in his life. And so he was sort of in shock. But then Matt Dillon, who was really James R. Nass, an actor from Minneapolis, this gentleman was 10 years old at the time said, so Matt Dillon stood up and stood up and stood up. Matt Dillon or James R. Nass was six foot seven. He was a big man. And he fit the exact mold of what this young guy thought Matt Dillon should look like, you know, bigger than life. And so when I talked to this gentleman a few years back, he was probably 70 years old. You could tell even at that point, it was still a big deal to have met Matt Rint's famous hero of his. So I thought that was just kind of an interesting story. Well, all right. So we've have taken up a lot of your time. So but before we go, is there anything that you want to add that you want our listeners to know about? You know, one camp we didn't talk about that might be of interest was a camp called the Rice Lake Syndicate. And Oh, yes. which actually got its start on Heron Lake. It was a camp that was started in 1906 on Heron Lake. And it had, again, some very prominent business, businessmen from the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul, and most of them were bankers or railroad presidents and things like that. I think we talked about James J. Hill, you know, was founded of Great Northern, his son, Louis Hill, took over for James J. Hill and was president of that railroad. He again had his own private rail car, which was great for hunting if you were a duck hunter. But when the hunting at Heron Lake slowed down, they looked for other areas to hunt as well. And they moved up into the north central part of the state, up into Becker County, and in an area called Rice Lake was one of the lakes, and they eventually control their own entire lakes in that area where they hunted. The Rice Lake Syndicate was probably the most reclusive or under the radar group that Minnesota ever had. And it was made up of all these prominent, wealthy gentlemen, and Louis Hill was one of them. And Louis Hill, for example, he had his own private rail car. And as time went on, what was typical with Louis was if he was going to go hunting, he would, like on a Thursday afternoon, contact his people and say, I want my car loaded up for four guests and we're going to go hunting up in Ottertill County, or we're going to North Dakota or wherever we're going, and hook it up to the correct train. And they would head up to that location and then he would park on a railroad siding somewhere. And then they'd hunt for their weekend or however long they wanted to and then come back. And then in later years, he had a garage installed in the back of his private rail car so he could load his Packard automobile into the rail car. So when he got to the destination, they'd have transportation. And Louis Hill, I would say, was probably from the 1890s to 1940, he was probably the most well-traveled duck hunter in Minnesota because he would be on the road, he would be on the rail a lot of time during hunting season, hunting all over the state of Minnesota and into the Dakotas. So he was an avid hunter and he was just an example of what the folks in this Rice Lake Syndicate were like. They had a Titanic survivor was in that group, an Olympic gold medal winner was in that group, the first airline pilot in Minnesota was in that group. Very interesting. But they're an example of this very large hunting area they controlled up in Becker County. The federal government came in to establish a refuge there in 1935, Tamarack National Wildlife Refuge. In addition to the Rice Lake Syndicate, there were other prominent hunting groups in that area too. And obviously, they didn't want to give up that great hunting they had up in that area. So those groups were able to hold off the federal government for about 30 years before they finally had to sell their properties to become part of the refuge. It's now a 35,000 acre refuge. But it was just another example of some of these hunting camps that, and I'm sure if that would have been taken over by a refuge, that would still be an ongoing hunting camp at Guam. Yeah, I wonder if it would still operate the same way, like hopping around like he did. Yeah, that would be a little different because obviously he had the advantage as did his father and several of these other businessmen back in the day. They had their own private rail cars and they would do that. They would go to these travel across these states and go hunting and stop wherever they wanted to on a railroad sighting and hunt for a while and then continue on. And I guess I've always thought if a person, if you were a duck hunter and you could go back in time, if you're in Minnesota, I think going back into one of these groups that had these early railroad car connections where you could go anywhere you want, as soon as those areas became open to hunting, that would have been some pretty

57:15 Katie Burke interesting times. Oh yeah, and then they have the like benefit of finishing the hunt and you have this railroad car that's very comfortable that you just hop right back on. Pretty good life. Well Steve, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been really great. Thank you for having me. It was great. Steve's book is Minnesota Duck Camps, 160 Years of History and Tradition. So please check it out. If you want to know anything about Minnesota Duck Camps, this is the book. Thank you Steve for coming on the show. Thank you Chris Isaac, our producer, and thanks you, our listeners, for supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.