SQUAW LAKE, Minn. _ At the end of a winding, two-rut driveway under a canopy of maples just turning orange and red, past the black lab running in the yard and before you get to the lake where teal, wood ducks and mallards are flying over miles of wild rice, you'll find Plushville.
Officially known as the Squaw Lake Bird Watchers Society, it's the kind of place that should be in the photograph next to "duck camp" in Wikipedia, or maybe on the cover of Ducks Unlimited magazine.
Bigwigs from the Great Northern Railroad (James J. Hill may have been one of them) built the place back in 1913 on the shores of what's now called Nature's Lake, previously known as Squaw Lake.
The railroad executives apparently liked to hunt ducks which have been stopping here on their southward migration for centuries thanks to the lake's ample wild rice. The Minnesota DNR lists the 2,885-acre lake as having 2,499 acres of wild rice, a favorite food of many waterfowl species.
The founders designed the duck camp after a traditional northwoods logging camp with a main lodge, a cookhouse and dining room for meals and a bunkhouse for guests, and then filled the lodge with trophy mounts of big game from the Rocky Mountains _ bighorn sheep, mountain goats, moose, elk and deer (word is Hill himself shot the animals from the caboose on his trains).
The trophies are still here, but the railroad moguls sold the camp in the 1920s to the Andersen Window family who held it until the 1950s when a group of Duluth duck hunters bought it and named it the Squaw Lake Bird Watchers Society.
The name remains the same, and although members have come and gone, the tradition lives on.
"It's still mostly Duluth members, or guys who were from Duluth," said Bob Owens, one of the eight current members that also include Doug Lewis, Clancy Dokmo, Clay Sederberg, Dan Markham, Tom Conrad, Tony Bauer and Marty Espe. "There's a lot of history here. The names change but the camp history, the camp culture, goes on."
"I've been hunting the lake since I was in college in 1969," Lewis said. "I've been a member the longest out of this current group, since 1992. But I'm not the oldest ... That's Owens!"
The camp has traditionally had a full-time cook on site during hunting season with gourmet meals served after a day in the marsh.
"We don't eat pizza," Lewis said. "We've had some great cooks."
There's a huge stone fireplace in the main lodge, a sauna building and a garage for all manner of canoes and duck boats. Officially a state waterfowl rest lake, motors of any kind are prohibited during duck season. Propulsion is by paddle or pole.
Espe is the newest member _ this is his third season _ but he's already cemented to the place. A duck hunter as a kid, he had been away from the marsh for many years.
"It wasn't hard to get back into it here. The whole ambiance and the history. It's the quintessential duck camp ... and a great group of guys," Espe said. "Even if you didn't like duck hunting it would be a great place to hang out ... But this place also has ducks."
Lewis agreed.
"There's good camaraderie. What can be better when you finish a cold, wet day of duck hunting than taking a sauna and then sitting in front of a huge fireplace and enjoying a beverage?" he said.
The Plushville nickname came from members of another camp just down the lake, the Schoolhouse Camp, that had more spartan quarters. (Eventually the two camps merged.)
The club member truly seem to enjoy one another's company, almost as much as they love their dogs. Owens breeds, trains and sells Labradors. And most members have well trained retrievers, several of which have earned their stripes in hunt tests or field trials.
"Almost everyone at the camp has a pretty good dog," Lewis said. "I wouldn't' hunt if I couldn't watch the dogs work."
