Duck Hunting

Once again we finished last season with outstanding bag numbers. It’s not to say we didn’t have a tough day every now and then, but with a duck limit of six and a per hunter/per day bag average between 4.3 and 4.4 ducks per day/per hunter … we are well pleased.

Maintaining a per-day bag average between four and five ducks per hunter, for the past five or six years is a new record. Jackie and I, along with our staff, are proud of this accomplishment. Certainly a part of that success comes from a professional staff, who knows how to read and work the birds. Another factor in our continued success is our voluntary “Rest Days Program”, described in more detail below. Rest days and resting locations have long been used by various state and federal agencies and we’re proud to have been able to implement such a program on our private hunting ground.

In addition to our voluntary “Rest Days Program”, we added numerous rest fields for last season. Since the beginning of last season was relatively dry in this area, having plenty of rest fields for the birds to use during hunting times helped keep more birds in our immediate area. Since several of the rest fields are adjacent to or less than a mile from our flooded timber, I feel confidant the rest fields helped increase the number of flooded timber hunts we conducted last season, not to mention the high success rate on those timber hunts. In fact, the improvement in our timber hunting has resulted in the addition of a rest area within the largest tract of timber, for this coming season.

Hunting in the south provides different opportunities than many of the northern states and provinces. I know when I have an opportunity to travel north for a film shoot, I always try to work in a dry field hunt while I’m there. However, once those ducks make it to the wintering grounds, they seek out water. Be it a dietary change the ducks go through or the fact they have grains available in the south that aren’t available to them in the north, seldom do we ever have an opportunity to hunt dry fields for ducks in Arkansas. In fact, water is crucial to a successful duck season in the south and with the high price of diesel fuel, needed to power the deep well pumps; you can count on there being less surface water than ever before.