Wing & Barrel Continues California’s Rich Bird-Hunting Tradition
August 6, 2020
Hunting,SCA Articles
Surrounded by sloughs and a low dyke, Wing & Barrel Ranch is a shotgunner’s mecca.
How myopic we outdoor writers are. Until late last year when I visited Wing & Barrel Ranch in Sonoma County about an hour north of San Francisco, I believed that fine pheasant hunting was pretty much restricted to the Midwest with a finger pointing across southern Pennsylvania into Maryland. But lo, Mongolian ringnecks were released in California’s temperate grasslands in 1889. They thrived until agri-business mowed down their habitat.
Never had my wanders around San Francisco taken me much beyond the Golden Gate. On this trip to see friends, my route carried me north around the bay before hooking west to their house on a knoll overlooking the Napa River Valley. Much of the terrain not in vineyards was rolling grassland, great cover for pheasants but sadly bone-dry fodder for horrific wildfires.
A short drive south from their house took me down to San Pablo Bay Wildlife Refuge. Its 13,000 marshy acres are cut by myriad canals and creeks, prime habitat for pintails and canvasbacks. Just across Sonoma Creek lies Wing & Barrel Ranch’s 1,000 acres.
Surrounded by sloughs and a low dyke, Wing & Barrel is a shotgunner’s mecca. Pheasants and chukars are released on 24 fields that are rotated with crops of wheat, oats and rye. Some are allowed to lie fallow for a season or two. All provide stubble cover and low weeds easily hunted afoot.
Hunters can tune up on the 15-station clays course. Each station offers three different gunning positions. Three-tier pyramid five-stand features conventional traps at ground level and wobble traps on the next two. Designed by Chris Batha, internationally known for instruction in the Churchill style of instinctive shooting, the clays course caters to champion competitors as well as novices.
The core of the ranch will be anchored by a 17,000-square-foot two-story clubhouse now under construction. Because the ranch is located on a coastal marsh, the first floor can be sealed from high waters with watertight doors.
A spacious dining hall on the top floor offers stunning views of the Napa and Sonoma countryside, hunting fields, the wildlife refuge, all framed by picturesque mountains. Cuisine features pairings of local game, meats, fish and vegetables with the finest vintages from Silver Oak, Chateau Montelena and other wineries in the region under the direction of Charlie Palmer, known for his steak houses in Manhattan, Washington D.C. and Las Vegas.
Next to the dining room is the Trap Bar, so named for James Graham’s 1912 gold medal, the first awarded in Olympic trap competition, which is on display. Next door, members and guests can relax with cigars and their favorite craft spirits, brews and hors d’oeuvres. The second floor also contains large and small meeting rooms for corporate gatherings.
Ground level features a shooter’s pro shop carrying top-of-the-line Beretta and Purdey shotguns and offering expert gun-fitting and gunsmithing as well as supplies and accouterments. Along with traditional new and used bird guns, a few classic doubles may find their ways into the shop’s racks.
Mike Jr., the son of owner Mike Sutsos, is a fan of fine old side-by-sides and loves to exercise his mule-ear, Damascus-barreled Manton for which he loads black powder in brass hulls.
To the left of the clubhouse, a 1½-acre pond provides opportunities to hone fly-casting skills on striped bass native to the region. Instruction will be available from the pro shop. Guided ocean outings for stripers, sharks and sturgeon can be arranged.
Wing & Barrel is the dream of Mike Jr. and his dad, Mike Sr., and co-owner Darius Anderson. But it all began with the first Mike Sutsos who, with his wife Maria, founded Black Point Sports Club in 1964 near the mouth of the Petaluma River on San Pablo Bay. He was a San Francisco dump truck driver of pure Greek heritage who loved gundogs. His favorites were German shorthairs and wirehairs. He acquired land near the mouth of the Petaluma River on San Pablo Bay.
Over the next decades, he and his son earned high acclaim for training bird dogs. Their methods are profiled in Training your Pointer or Setter: The Black Point System for Selecting and Handling your Upland Game Dogs, co-written with Robert Behme and published by G. P. Putnam’s in 1987.
Wing & Barrel Ranch is a private club as are many of shooting preserves in the region. Membership is limited to 400. Perhaps the club’s most unusual aspect is the Wing & Barrel Foundation, which is dedicated to ensuring the future of shotgun sports and conservation by introducing youths, veterans and the local community to shooting and hunting. A robust program of shooting and fishing instruction and habitat restoration is being planned.
Just east of the entrance to Wing & Barrel, State Route 37 crosses Sonoma Creek on the Richard “Fresh Air” Janson Bridge. North of the span, in the middle of a vast stretch of otherwise empty coastal flat, stands a grey, weather-beaten outhouse containing a bright white ceramic commode. When I saw it from the highway, my first reaction was “What the hell?” Then I decided, Hey, this is California, weird humor!
Turns out, The Lone Toilet (Google it) is a one-holer with a head-level window, which enabled its owner, the late Joe Lourdeaux, to contemplate the westward view while scanning for migrating ducks.
Lourdeaux’s neighbor was “Fresh Air” Dick Janson, one of California’s premier decoy carvers. Janson carved his dekes and lived in his “ark”—a grounded, wooden hulled, tarpaper-roofed cabin cruiser remodeled so the 5-foot, 8-inch owner could stand up inside. Today, Janson’s decoys, known by their raised primary feathers, bring $1,000 and up.
Though he, Lourdeaux and their buddies bagged literally tons of pintails and canvasbacks while gunning over his blocks in the 1930s and ’40s, Janson couldn’t stand the taste of duck and subsisted only on fish caught fresh from the bay. He fried them in a skillet he never washed, preferring to let his cats lick it clean.
Wing & Barrel occupies a stretch of American pheasant and waterfowling history virtually unknown west of the Mississippi. The private club, slated to open fully early next fall, is well worth a visit. Prospective members can arrange a tour and, maybe, do a little sporting clays shooting as a guest.