Seldom do hunters pair superlative upland gunning – pheasants, chukar and quail – with Sonoma County or the Napa Valley. The region’s reputation seems reserved for wines, but around 1900, about 50 years after the first commercial vintners were established, ringnecks were introduced to lowlands. Hunt clubs began to develop offering trap and skeet, bird shooting, and waterfowling on stubble fields and wetlands above San Pablo Bay, about 30 miles north of San Francisco.
As the population in the region exploded, public hunting lands began to vanish, and private clubs proliferated. With soaring real estate prices in the hills north of the city and the insatiable demand for new vineyards and housing developments, clubs devoted to shotgunning began to fade.
Among the last to go was Black Point Sports Club founded in 1964 by Mike Sutsos and his wife, Maria. Mike, a San Francisco dump truck driver of pure Greek heritage, loved dogs. 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, also named Mike, earned high regard 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.
Partnering with Darius Anderson of Kenwood Investments, Mike’s son and grandson, also named Mike, acquired 1,000 acres for Wing & Barrel Ranch. The ranch abuts the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge, which boasts the largest wintering population of canvasbacks on the West Coast. The ranch lies just below sea-level is surrounded by a low dike and veined with brush-lined drainage ditches providing thick cover for wild birds.
Wing & Barrel Ranch is the epitome of a mecca for shotgunners. Twenty-four fields are rotated through crops of wheat, oats and rye and fallow seasons providing stubble cover and low weeds easily hunted afoot. Its sporting clays course, designed by Chris Batha, offers almost infinite presentations from15 stations, each three different shooting. Pyramid five-stand is on the drawing board. It will offer conventional traps at ground level and wobble traps on the next two.
At the ranch, shotgunning will be paired with fly casting and instruction on an acre and a half pond stocked with trophy trout and striped bass. Guide service will be available for trips for stripers, sturgeon and sharks in tidal rivers nearby.
At the heart of the ranch is a 17,000 sq.-ft. two-story clubhouse now under construction. Planned for the top floor is a spacious dining hall offering stunning views of Napa and Sonoma Valleys, hunting fields, the wildlife refuge and the mountains framing them. Charlie Palmer, known for his steak houses in Manhattan, Washington D.C. and Las Vegas, will direct its cuisine pairing local game, meats, fish and vegetables with the finest vintages from Silver Oak, Chateau Montelena and other wineries in the region.
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. The medal is on display. Next door, members and guests will relax with cigars and their favorite craft spirits, brews and hors d’oeuvres. The second floor will also contain large and small meeting rooms for corporate gatherings.
Ground level will feature a shooters’ pro shop carrying top-of-the line Beretta and Purdey shotguns and offering expert shotgun fitting and gunsmithing. Because the ranch is located in a flood plain, the first floor can be sealed from high waters with watertight doors.
The ranch is a private club as were many of the shooting preserves in the region. Membership is limited to 400. Perhaps the club’s most unusual aspect is the Wing & Barrel Ranch Foundation, which is dedicated to ensuring the future of shotgun sports and conservation by introducing youth, veterans and the local community to shooting and hunting. A robust program of shooting and fishing instruction and habitat restoration is being planned.
