From 1966 to 1970 Bill Priddy and I were members of an “exclusive” hunting and fishing club south of Danbury, Texas. The club catered to Duck hunters, but allowed fishing and frogging, when it didn’t conflict with the hunting.

My Dad and I show off a Wood Duck we had recently shot over our decoys. Bill Priddy took the picture and we gave him the Duck for mounting.
The club offered a nice air conditioned and heated lodge that slept twelve, a complete kitchen, including a cook and caretaker during Duck season, game cleaning facilities and six, flat bottomed, aluminum boats and, on top of all of that, family members could use the facility for fishing, etc. without the member being present.

Besides the camp house and a hundred acres of thick woods, the club had three, 20 acre, lakes that served as rice field reservoirs. A deep channel was cut all around a square impoundment with the excavated dirt piled up to form a type of dam, or levee. There was about ten feet of shallow water along the dam’s inside, before the excavated channel dropped off to over six foot depth. The channel, the only structure in the lake, was approximately thirty feet wide, sloping up to a large, shallow flat, two feet deep, that covered the center of the lake.
The lakes were over twenty years old and the aquatic vegetation flourished in and around them and provided some excellent hunting and fishing memories for my family and me!
Plenty of snakes but, strangely, no ‘Gators!