Duane G.

MLBob Furia

MLBob Furia

Well-known member
I had the big volume on the history of The Winous Point Club sent down from the OSU library recently.
Before returning it, I snapped this picture of Duane that appeared in the chapter on Punters. Some nice comments about him in there too. How neat to be part of the history of a storied club!



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Bob, Very nice picture and nice to be a part of the history of Winous Point for Duane. I have two punt boats from the club that date back to the late 1800's with hot brands from
two of the members that was documented in there records recorded in the book on Winous Point. The club was established in 1856. If you like history and like
duck hunting this is a great read.

Tom
 
Bob, was this the duck club that Tom Kondrk belonged to? I recall him stating that he belonged to a Lake Erie marsh duck club when I first picked-up my TDB, just don't remember the name if the club.
 
Bob:

Still kicking myself. In the late 70s I was living with my Dad in Cleveland going to graduate school, and an old friend of my father's was a Winous member. I knew something of the background of the Club from Connett's "Duck Shooting in the Mississippi Flyway." Anyway after dinner with him one night, knowing of my love of gunning, he asked to me to be his guest for a weekend. With the pressures of graduate school then, I declined.

Still kicking myself.
 
RLLigman said:
Bob, was this the duck club that Tom Kondrk belonged to? I recall him stating that he belonged to a Lake Erie marsh duck club when I first picked-up my TDB, just don't remember the name if the club.
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[size 4] Rick,
I picked up my TDB at the cabin Tom lived in at that little sportsman's club (trout club?) complex he lived at. Can't remember what the place was called, but that cabin was cool. He may have belonged at one of the Lake Erie clubs, but I don't think Tom had the coin to even get close to becoming a member at Winous. [;)] Those folks are some high rollers! Just being lucky enough to get selected for a gig as a punter is really something that a highly successful businessman would covet.

Traditional club policy is that punters never shoot with the members they take out, but they do get to gun the club marshes on Sunday afternoons. Some pretty famous names in waterfowl conservation have done stints as research grad-assistant/interns at Winous or served as the manager of the club. I'm sure you'd enjoy the documentation of all the twists and turns the never-ending efforts to preserve the marshes there have taken over the decades since the club was founded.
 
Tom was living at the private trout club when I picked-up my boat, which I think was about a year prior your purchase. I recall you stating on the old Mighty Layout Boys website that you had delrin grassing rails, which supplanted the red oak rails on my hull, only one of which has survived. The boat is now in the coastal Carolinas and spends time in north eastern Georgia as well. Had I not arrived with a trailer for a 14" in tow, I would have purchased the TDB-17 Tom had that he was using, but had up for sle. I was involved with our DU chapter at the time and Tom pitched me about taking a permanent job with them. He was an officer but he also claimed to have lofty connections via his membership in a Lake Eried duck club, parlayed through his DU connections. As we both well know, Tom could lay it o pretty thick... I did very much like the Kingyon calls, later buying two through Paul directly, both of them still in use. Steve Lewis has one, as well as Eric Ittner both of whom were goose hunting partners at that time. I know Steve still has his.

I do recall on aspect of the cabin that stood out to me, having lived through two UP winters in one of very similar design at MSU Dunbar Experimental Forest...it looked like it had zero insulation.
 
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Well, this brings back memories. I too picked up my TDB in 1993 at Tom's cabin. We left Elkhart on a sunny but cold saturday morning with my wife, ten year old son and five year old daughter and an empty trailer. We hit ice on the Indiana Toll Road and snow at the Ohio line. At Tom's cabin we dug my boat out of a snow drift, loaded it on the trailer in a snow storm. Found a hotel, ordered pizza and power lines came down in the storm. The next morning about two feet of snow. What an adventure.

Tom was quite a character. Ran into him at Fish Point Lodge on several occasions.

RVZ
 
"Tom's House of Adventures" was always interesting, since his sales approach was quite the antithesis of how I was trained.

The nut on my ball worked loose and fell off somewhere between Marquette and Cleveland discovered when I pulled-off the expressway to check my final directions. We found a hardware store that was open that sold them with a retention pin. Sometimes I think about what might have happened if I had driven down with no trailer and picked-up the TDB-17' he had on site... When I bought my current TDB-17' I got pulled over by the State police on the way back north outside of Lansing. He gave me a warning for a flickerying lailight, but mainly wanted to check the boat out up close... I hit a heavy snow band just before the Bridge north of Gaylord adding weight to the boat for the crossing into a stiffe northwest wind...not a big fan of towing stuff across the Bridge in a blow.

Bob, after twenty-five years of interacting with physicians, I have evolved into a very firm adherent of a classless society, particularly as it applies to hunting ducks. As a kid we hunted a section of the Kalamazoo River marsh immediately across from the Pottawatomie Gun Club's 1,500 acre marsh holding. We formed our own group led by Jeff and Kim Buscher, grandchildren of the property owner, Elise Hacklander. We exchanged chores, mainly firewood cutting and splitting for permission to hunt the Indian Point marsh for ducks, as well as pheasants. We had signs printed to become th Indian Poit Rod and Gun Club, which were ignored every opening day by the PGC folks, requiring us to spend most of opening morning tossing hunters out of the marsh and back across the river. When the State of Michigan put a public access ramp in near New Richmond, just down river and across from Indian Pt. things got even more exciting with guys setting-up right on the edge of the PGC's marsh boundary.
 
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Thanks for the post Bob.

Duane was a very good man and friend. I have many fond, and some very funny memories of him and all the work he did for the ODCCA. About as humble and helpful a man as I have ever met. He would always call prior to the Ohio show to assure me I would get the same room. Room 257, just like the PA deer slayer, the 257 Roberts.

Lots of waterfowl hunting history from the past... Duane was a touchstone of what was the present.

May he rest in peace.


VP
 
Duane is missed by all in the ODCCA. when others were enjoying the show he was standing at the check in desk taking care of rooms and all. Remember after a health crisis Bob Lund had to beg him to go home and rest.
He was able to get us into the Winonus club for our after show meeting then loaded up a group in a truck and took us for a ride over the dikes to see the marshes. He said as a kid he worked at a hardware store and a punter was needed so that began his relationship with the club. Considering where he lived and the early morning time he had to be at the club man he had to start out early.
Good man.
Ken
 
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