Oral History Program Clarence Hewlett Interviewed by Carmen Anderson 10 July 1972 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Clarence Hewlett Interviewed by Carmen Anderson 10 July 1972 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Clarence Hewlett, an oral history by Carmen Anderson, 10 July 2012, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Clarence Hewlett Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Clarence Hewlett, conducted by Carmen Anderson, on July 10, 1972 at the Duckville Gun Club near Brigham City, Utah. Mr. Hewlett worked at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge from 1950 to 1953 as a mechanic. In this interview, he discusses tourist damage to the refuge, illegal hunting on the refuge and other violations of refuge laws. Mr. Hewlett discusses the need to protect the refuge from future damage and to preserve the natural habitat of the birds. CA: Mr. Hewlett, would you please tell us about how you got to the position you have now and a little bit about yourself? CH: I transferred from the General Depot in Ogden to the Bear River Refuge in 1950, as a mechanic and worked there at that time. In 1953 I quit and went to the Bear River Gun Club. Then in 1960 until the present time now, I've been at Duckville Gun Club as the manager. At the Bear River Duck Club, I was caretaker and Don Davis was the boss at that time. Don Davis had been at that club since he was a little boy, better than forty-five years, and he finally died with a heart attack. At that time, I transferred from there to come down here to this duck club. A man by the name of Mr. Brewer hired me. He was one of the all-time members of the Duckville Gun Club. CA: Could you tell us how the Duckville Gun Club is situated in comparison with the Bird Refuge? CH: The club borders the Bear River Refuge on three sides and we have our grounds set in a closed area and we depend entirely on their water for our club grounds. If they'd take away the water right-of-way, which they own, then our club would be dry. But they're very good on giving us water any time that they have it to spare. They'll even divide water with 1 us. Without them, this whole country would be dry now. They built dikes around the refuge to hold and impound this water and make more duck habitat. If they hadn't done that, then it would just be a series of two or three channels and the water would have gone right on to the Great Salt Lake and would have been of no value to the ducks at all, so I think the refuge is a wonderful thing. I don't think it gets credit for what they really do. They maintain a hospital to study the sickness of all birds. Botulism is their worst sickness, which kills ducks by the thousands. It's a food poison but they don't know how to control it. But they're learning and they had plenty of water where they could flush and dilute this terrible poison, they could control it. We don't have the water. The last two years we've had good water years and our marshes are good and there is very little sickness in anything. It was just a small affair until the C.C.C. boys came in and they built the buildings and the dikes. I think it is one of the greatest things that ever hit this northern country. Now the amount of tourists that come here is a big asset to Brigham City. I don't think that they realize how much these people spend and I don’t think the people realize how much these members spend coming from their homes as far away as California, Denver, Minneapolis, and Chicago to come here to hunt ducks. I don't think we'd have any ducks if it wasn't for our refuges. It helps us in every way. We now can hunt on forty percent of the refuge. The other is closed and in rest areas. Without those rest areas, why it'd all be tromped over, and I think that's a good thing. I still think they could do better if they would make a wilderness area where no one went in, not even these students studying the birds or the students going in and banding the geese. They know what the geese do and they know what the ducks do. I think if they'd just make a wilderness area of about half of it, then we will have duck hunting for our kids to come. 2 CA: Are there any things that take place on the Bird Refuge— other than people going into it— that hinder it? CH: Yes. I don't think there are areas where they should let the tourist or the public or the duck hunter run over it. Now it's got to be where it's more of a recreational affair than it is for the duck hunter or the birds. It's not only the ducks; it's all the birds that we've got to protect. Now tourists can come and they'll let them go take pictures. In taking that picture, they destroy some bird nests so I think there should be a stop put to that. I think they should give them a tour. There is a twelve mile tour and they'll see plenty, but I don't think they should ever let them go into the closed areas. Those were meant to be closed when the refuge was built. Now they're opening it up more to recreation than they are to hunting. The reason for that is that they get more recreation hours than they do hunting hours, but it's not doing our duck population any good. Our wetlands are getting to the point where we've got to take care of what we've got. When we first came out here to work at the refuge, I think the limit on ducks was twelve and everyone could go out and get the limit of ducks. Of course, we don't have the hunting pressure or the tourist pressure. I think the tourist pressure does more damage than the hunting pressure because each one of these clubs that's situated here nest and raise more ducks than we shoot. With the clubs and the refuge and closed areas, we'd be a lot better off. Each year the duck population is dropping. More land is being taken up for farming, more water is being used for something else, more tourists are tromping the marshes and the ducks are getting more scarce. Now we have a pretty good limit on both ducks and geese—two geese per day and six ducks per day. I think that's plenty and maybe the season should be shorter because along the end of the season the ducks congregate and when a duck hunter gets into them, they kill 3 them and they kill too many. I think they're too liberal with the length of the season and that's for the state to get money and more money. When the first ice comes the food is covered and the duck is easy to get because they congregate. When they get into puddles, they're shot and left. They'll shoot anything because duck hunting is hard. I think thirty or forty-five days is plenty. CA: How long is it now? CH: Well, it runs around ninety days. They had to do it to the deer and they've had to do it to the pheasants. I think a lot of it is our state's fault. It's a money deal—they sell more licenses. The law enforcement is worst at the end of the season when the ice is on. It's so much easier to get to them and so much easier to kill them and then the Game Warden can't get to them and watch them. Most of the violation is at the end of the season and shooting at night. I think they arrest the kids they catch and fine them, but when they find the bigger men violating regulations, they don't seem to bother them. I don't know why but they just don't. They can talk themselves out of it or they have lawyers that can get them out of it. They don't appear in court if they're fined and the minimum fine that they put on them doesn’t amount to anything. CA: You mentioned Canvasback. Could you explain a little bit about the difference? CH: The Canvasback is a deep water feeder and so is the Redhead and it's quite a rare duck and it does its nesting in the far north. The same as they did in Canada, they're doing the same here—taking away a lot of the wetland and the deep ponds. The Redhead have very poor nesting up there. Well, they come down here and as they go through, they nest again. I think that if they would quit trying to eliminate each duck make all ducks count the same in the limit. I've seen Canvasback and I trap rats in the spring. When the ice melts, 4 they come up and there's hundreds of them shot and left because the hunters are afraid to take them in or the hunter didn't know what it was when it flew past. There are so many people hunting that can't identify a duck. I think when a man goes out he kills his six ducks regardless of what they are. He picks them up and goes home if he kills some, but there's the Redhead and Canvasback that look a lot alike—they can be shot accidently in the air, but when he gets ahold of it he can tell he's got a different kind of duck. He will throw it away or tromp it in the mud. I think they waste more, actually, than they conserve. Then, when they band the geese, I don't think that's right, they chase these young geese up in the mud flats, catch them, put them in a pen, and then band them—a band on their foot. They expect the hunter to take that off and mail it in. Well, some do and some don't. I think they kill more and separate the birds more than they do good. They know where the geese nest. The last few years, all the bands we've sent in are born and raised right here in Utah and the farthest away is in Idaho. Once in a while, you'll get Pintails out of Canada and Idaho, but most that we kill here are born and raised here. If the ducks that come down from the north are here, most of them are gone on south before we get to kill them. The ones that stay are what we raise—so why band them and chase them when they're babies? I say leave them alone, the same as the state makes you leave the deer alone. That's my idea. That's the only way I know the refuge hurts us. Other than that, they're very easy to get along with. I think Mr. Wilson was about the best refuge man they've ever had in this country. He stuck to the book and nobody went on his marsh if he didn't know they were there. He didn't care whether they were great photographers or reputable personnel. He knew they were there and if he told them no, then they didn't go. Now it's gotten so they want to turn it over to recreation too much. And some of those people with 5 cameras are pretty gutty. They'll take a chance. They don't care and when they come they're molesting babies. That's what they want is a nest and to watch it hatch, if they can get it. It's commercial. You know they're not doing it just for their own good, they're selling those pictures. That time is a very bad time to be messing with the little birds or the geese nests or anything, because you go to a goose nest and she goes off and if you don't let her back within thirty minutes, then you might as well tromp it. They'll set up those picture machines and maybe leave them there for days with a camera running in a blind. Well, that goose is not going to come back to those eggs. They go off and the nest sits there. The geese won't nest the second time. Ducks sometimes will, but not geese. But it isn’t only the ducks we've got to protect. We've got to protect our owls, our eagles, our hawks, and our fish-eating birds because that's what makes the marsh. You’ve got to have fish-eating birds to keep the fish population down and you've got to have the fish to feed those birds. You've got to have owls and hawks and that to pick up the rodents. We're just coming to that now. Before, if they saw an owl or anything fly over, they'd kill it. Well, they shouldn't do that because they clean the marsh and make the balance. It's getting so you can go out on the marsh and you can't see those things like you used to. They've killed almost all the hawks. I don't think they don’t do damage, but the damage they do is to help something else. Even to the muskrats, I think they do a lot of good. I think they should protect them, not just go in and wipe them out. They don't do anything to the hunter, but that isn’t all that the duck hunters go out for. We've got duck hunters that'll come clear from back east and they'll go out. They like to shoot ducks, but they also like to look at the mountains change colors. They like to see the sun go down, they like our fresh air and the noise of the birds at night. Some don't care if they never shoot a duck, but they want that 6 boat ride and they want to get out and see this country. We've got country here below the refuge and on the refuge which is the only country like that in the whole world. Well, they don't care whether they want to shoot a few ducks. Maybe the worst deal is the limit to ship home maybe two to a friend or someone. That's all they take. They get the word around. They aren't game hogs—there's some, but very few of them. They know what the story is, because when they're back east or down in California, they hunt on a control game farm. They don't get this type of hunting and this is just about the last there is. You hear the eastern people talk of how they have to hunt and what they have to pay to hunt and their land was taken away from them. They come out here and see what we've got—thousands and thousands of acres. Their only thought is to protect it. I think what they have to get on a refuge is a man like Van Wilson, not a college student who knows it all out of books because that isn’t where a man learns to really understand it. Politics is a big thing in working for the government. I think if they'd take that out, they'd get a hard-nosed contractor that's made his life and had to make the company he worked for pay. If he's a duck hunter and likes birds, he'll do more for them than all the college books we can pile up. When they come here, it takes them a couple of years to learn what it's all about. They read books and maybe that book's on something on the east or someplace else and it's just in a book. Now there's a lot of difference in the earth, in the way ponds fill up with mud, the flushing-out of disease. There's so much difference that isn't in that book. A good refuge manager has got to be able to get along with his men, he's got to be able to run a dragline, he's got to be able to run a grader, and he's got to be a little bit of a mechanic and a little bit of a carpenter so he knows what the men are producing. Van Wilson was that man. He was an engineer, he could run a level and do survey work. He 7 didn't do carpenter work but he knew what was supposed to be done and knew how to tell them to do it and see that they did it. And another thing, if they put a man out there—this is a good refuge and they all want it—well, he is just waiting for the day he retires. His heart isn’t here. You've got to have a man—maybe a student—that grew up from laborer right on up and let him be a refuge manager. You can’t transfer him in out of an office or some place. You have to let him grow up. After you live with these birds a while you get so you like them, but when you first come out here—I was the same way—we'd just shoot them. We didn't care. After you get to working with them, you go out there hunting like some of these old-time hunters and you don't shoot. I'm that way now. I like to go out, but as far as killing them, I don't care to. It makes you feel kind of bad sometimes. I think our old-time hunters are gone. They've either quit and gone into gold, or they're disgusted. They'll hire these game wardens and stand and watch them maybe a half a day with a pair of field glasses. Well, they don't like that. They're not crooks and they've got to teach game management agents that every duck hunter is not a crook. He should talk to them if he has any suspicions. I say arrest them if they're violating but don’t sit and hound them. The men don't have to take that and they aren’t about to take it, either. I've had them come in the club and say, “What's that guy think we are?” He won't get out and talk to them—he's too damn lazy. He's a student, see, and he doesn’t like to get in the mud. Some of them will, but he will hound them and try to scare them. Well, you can't scare some of those men. One told me, “We have a lawyer in every state in the United States.” He said, “If we wanted to violate, we could, but we don't do that.” They're the type of men who put up the money for Ducks Unlimited in Canada, which is a great thing. They can't spend it in the United States. They won't allow it, but there's millions of dollars spent in 8 Canada and that's where our duck factory is and where our birds come from. If it wasn't for them, Canada wouldn't spend that kind of money. I know ‘cause those men up there, they'd all come up and shoot a limit of ducks and then they'd put them all in one plane. The damn crazy laws. You've got to put them in a locker here and you have to ship them by public carrier. Well, they're spoiled before we ever they get there. There's no guarantee that the express company or the airplane company will deliver them fresh. They come up in a plane, some of these men, and they’ll take everybody's ducks home. Well, they go down there to some big club and they're cooked and they have dinners on that for Ducks Unlimited. They’re maybe five hundred or a thousand dollars a plate and that money isn't taken out for expenses. That all goes up there and is spent. I think they should let them do it in this country, too. Those kind of men spend two-to-one what our government spends or what our state spent here. CA: You mentioned earlier that you trap muskrats here. Is there a special purpose for doing this? CH: Yes, money. Money's the main thing. CA: Does it help the birds in any way? CH: Yes, if you have a good year with muskrats, you know you've got a good marsh. They irrigate this marsh and they eat out the heavy vegetation and they'll dig ditches through. They do a good job. By irrigating that extra marsh maybe it's an acre, maybe five, ten acres. They'll dig a ditch, you know, as they go down. They have to rustle for them. They'll irrigate the marsh and make a better marsh for the baby ducks, and for nests and things. I think they're very essential for that. CA: Can you get too many in the marsh? 9 CH: If we get too many of anything in, nature will take over and kill them like flies. I think if they should just forget the botulism, take the money, get more marshes, and let nature take care of that botulism. When our ducks are getting as scarce as they are, there is less sickness. When we get a flood year where we've got more ducks than we've got food, we got an outbreak of them and it'll clean it but it doesn’t seem to hurt the population. It's just an overburden and it'll do the same thing with muskrats. That's a big industry when you stop to think of it. It's mostly young kids— farmer boys and young people that trap the muskrats in the marsh. The marsh makes a better man out of everybody. You can see things there that you'd never see any place else. But you've got to have so many of each one of them. I think they forget this big hospital deal because it's terribly expensive. Just let that marsh take care of herself and get the other refuge personnel to buy more land and wet more land. They have the money. They have the water to do it where the individual can't. They own all the water in the river. If they'd buy the land, open forty percent to hunting and change back and forth, we'll always have ducks. Forget this hospital business that brings in a lot of people who don't produce anything—study bugs. CA: Do you feel that it's best if they open one area one year and change areas? CH: Yes, I do. I think they should have areas that are never opened—wilderness areas. Maybe refuge personnel might ride over but it not go into it. They could fly over it and see what was carrying on. Then, if they see a thing, maybe need a little dike across, then do that work. But don't let anyone hunt in it—don't let anything go into it, just wilderness area. We've got ground that could be done that way. It'll make a few duck hunters scream, but it'll help their kids and it'll help it along, I'm sure of it. They got closed areas here now, but really not closed. Maybe all summer there'll be a half a dozen of these students going 10 down there and wallowing around in it. They're not producing anything and they're not finding out anything. Keep them out, let them go to some other place. Then change it from one year to the next. Maybe put in a wilderness area that will never change. Fresh water is coming in on the top end of this lake. I say let the mineral companies go to hell. Protect our duck population. They've crowded us quite bad and if they open that causeway then our water's gone. If we get dry years and a south wind…all that they've produced down here, miles and miles, one south wind will blow that salt water up here and kill that marsh and all there is with white alkali. I say let it stay the way it is. They got plenty of the lake down there. If they want to pump it, not to open that causeway, ‘cause when this refuge was first built, it was built on white alkali and just the water channeled off. They ponded it, flushed it, and worked with it. Now they got vegetation out there for ten or twelve miles. We'll lose that if they don't keep fresh water on this end. I think we'll get more out of our ducks and our birds even with the tourist and the hunter than we will out of them big companies ‘cause their money doesn’t stay in Utah. Maybe a few wages, but the rest of it doesn’t stay in Utah. They even ship their ore out of Utah to be processed. So I say, let's keep it. 11