A Hundred Years of Texas Waterfowl Hunting: The Decoys, Guides, Clubs, and Places, 1870s to 1970s

11. Espiritu Santo and San Antonio Bays

 205  Extending from Matagorda Bay to San Antonio Bay, and tucked between the mainland and Matagorda Island, narrow Espiritu Santo Bay is six miles across at its widest point. The estuary makes a bend at Welder Flats into San Antonio Bay where, at its north end, the rich Guadalupe Delta is fed by the San Antonio and Guadalupe Rivers. Sloops and shallow-draft steamers once connected the early port landings and town of Alligator Head, later Port O’Connor, the German settlement of Upper Mott near what became Seadrift, and the seaport of Saluria on the north end of Matagorda Island.1 Port O’Connor Port O’Connor is perched at the edge of a marvelous ecosystem. To the east is Matagorda Bay and Matagorda Peninsula, to the southwest Espiritu Santo Bay, and across the bay, Matagorda Island. This corner of Calhoun County was once Alligator Head Ranch, owned by Victoria’s Thomas O’Connor. O’Connor hosted San Antonio and Victoria hunters throughout the 1890s, his ranch wetlands holding sprigs, redheads, teal, and canvasbacks in flocks sometimes numbering over fifty thousand. Alligator Head began to compete with Port Lavaca for the attention of northern sportsmen when it became Port O’Connor in 1909. Sportsmen ’s headquarters was the LaSalle Hotel, which opened in 1910. Its proprietor, Joe Mathews, chartered hunting parties for seven dollars a day on Charles Kertel’s gasoline launch.2 Hunting parties arrived each day by rail, and Texas newspapers boasted of their large numbers. One of the more prominent visiting sportsmen was Chicago’s Fred H. Teeple, who came by yacht in 1909 and leased seventy thousand  espiritu santo and san antoniobays chapter 11  206  COASTAL TEXAS HUNTING CLUBS, GUIDES, AND PLACES acres of O’Connor land as his private hunting preserve. Each winter Teeple entertained guests such as Texas governor-elect O. B. Colquitt and Fish and Game Commissioner R. H. Wood for weeks at a time on his yachts Bunco and Bunco 2. A group of seven northern sportsmen visited Port O’Connor in 1914 and returned home with enough ducks and geese “to fill six large barrels.” Joseph Pulitzer of Saint Louis arrived in the Pulitzer yacht to hunt Port O’Connor in 1920.3 New duck hunters came to town in 1925 when Shearn Moody purchased fourteen thousand acres of the LaSalle Ranch on Espiritu Santo Bay west of Port O’Connor. The Moodys hosted politicians and businessmen from throughout Texas and the United States at their new private game preserve with its opulent LaSalle Lodge. They hunted freshwater windmill ponds on the shore, and Stewart Campbell, a later owner of part of LaSalle Ranch, says, “Those ducks had to wait in line to get into that fresh water.”4 San Antonio and Espiritu Santo Bays as they looked in the early 1900s.  207 ESPIRITU SANTO AND SAN ANTONIO BAYS After World War II, cars brought even more sport hunters to Port O’Connor. Harvey Evans made the drive almost every weekend from Houston, hunting First and Second Boggy Creeks by walking the shoreline from town. He says he could have gone by power boat outside the jetties, “but the bay could be so rough in the wintertime that the shrimpers, they used to sit in that little ol’ café that’s almost to the [Port O’Connor] jetties and make book on whether the duck hunters were gonna make it that morning or not.”5 A number of guiding operations catered to the growing volume of hunters. One of the best known was Payne Boat Docks, opened by Houston’s Ed Payne and partner Frank Flood. With several cottages and a restaurant, by the late 1950s Payne booked as many as forty hunters a day. Everything about Ed Payne was big—his pot belly, ten-gallon hat, airboat, and way of hunting. He put clients deep into the mud flats on Espiritu Santo Bay with tunnel-sterned skiffs and his large, covered airboat called Sprig. Stewart Campbell remembers Sprig as “a great big, old, horrible airboat. It got stuck a lot.” By 1960, with new partners, Ed Payne’s place was renamed Lewis Marine Station. Payne lost every boat and structure in Hurricane Carla in 1961, but within a year he had rebuilt. After Payne died in the mid-1960s, guides J. D. and Howard Lewis took over Lewis Marine Station.6 Former Houstonian Lee Richter guided hunting...