| Bob and Harold Travel to Arkansas to Hunt Ducks By Bob Kruger As many of us saw, the end of the 2008-09 waterfowl season in California was somewhat of a disappointment. The weather just wasn’t there for a good shoot much of the time and many water fowlers didn’t even go out for the last weekend. My partner Harold Whitmore bought an Arkansas duck hunt off the internet, on e-bay for the end of the duck season; I was fortunate to have a place to hunt. Even though we had to fly to Dallas then catch a flight to Memphis Tenn. and then drive a couple hours to Weiner, Arkansas. Our guide picked us up at the airport and drove us to Weiner where we had reservations at The Mallard Inn, the only motel in Weiner. It was a real no-tell-motel in a very small town. Weiner had a gas station, a couple stores and a couple restaurants. We were hoping to hunt some flooded timber and have Mallards diving in on us all day as we have seen on the outdoor channel but we were told a couple weeks ahead of time the guide had no flooded timber to hunt and he suggested we hunt rice fields, where he had blinds available. What could we say?????? As it turned out, our guide was a real nice guy and an avid duck hunter. He had several blinds leased for the season and other places he was able to lease for day hunts. He also had a nice garage as a home base where he makes duck calls, and a recent vintage Polaris 700 quad, which we only rolled once in the flooded rice field. Harold was quick to point out to our guide Sean, “no big deal, Bob and I always wreck something when we go play”. Sean wasn’t very amused. Before we went I checked out the map and saw that Arkansas was about even with San Diego. I expected similar weather, warm and pleasant. No way, it was super cold in Arkansas the last weekend in January. Our third morning out, it was 16 degrees and the wind made it feel like about -16 degrees. There was over ½” of ice on the water that took all our energy and the quad to break and create an open area for ducks to land. That day we lasted about an hour and gave up. It was a three day hunt and the first two days were pretty good. On day one there was no rain but the wind blew and ducks came in. Harold his son Jim and I shot 2-3 boxes of shells each and managed to get our limits of nice birds, mostly mallards. The limit is only 6 birds. That afternoon we went out to again to see what was flying, thinking we might get some geese, or ???. The afternoon shoot wasn’t much but we were pretty happy to have a limit for the day. The motel was full of duck hunters who didn’t do as well as we did. The next morning we went to a different blind and did kind of poorly. The weather was clear and no wind and the birds just didn’t come in. We then drove around checking out other places. One place we checked out was Sean’s brother-in-law’s catfish and crawdad ponds. I had a hard time believing people actually make a living off raising catfish and crawdads in ponds dug out with a tractor. Well Sean had an afternoon shoot set up at a day-lease blind for us. We hunted another rice field and had a great shoot. We even shot a little better and managed to get our limits with only about a box of shells each. After two days we had a respectable bunch of ducks back at the garage. Harold, Jim and I set up a cleaning station and breasted out all the birds. We ended up with about 25 mallards, 5 teal, a couple widgeon, some gadwalls and only one or two laughing mallards. One nice thing about shooting in Arkansas is we didn’t need to go through customs, as we do returning from Canada. No one checked our birds coming home so we were able to bring home only breast meat, no wings. We had some great meals consisting of deep fried food. Catfish, frog legs, shrimp even deep fried Oreo cookies. One night we went to a garage turned into a weekend BBQ where we had some great rib steaks. When we ordered here they never asked what we wanted, only how we wanted the steak cooked. Guide Sean was great, even though we rolled his nice quad in the water. We applied the 30 sec. rule. We told Sean that since we up righted the thing within 30 sec, then it never happened. We also worked on it for a while back at the garage and fixed it. Sean showed us his duck and goose call manufacturing set up, back at the garage. The set up was a “Shopsmith” (lathe tool). He had a bunch of pieces of hardwood, corian, and acrylic to make calls from. Actually we were very impressed with his efforts and we each ended up with new duck calls. Since the trip was very inexpensive (e-bay purchase) we provided an appropriate tip and were very satisfied with Sean’s work. He hauled us around every day, joined us for breakfast, lunch and dinner, showed us everything he could about Arkansas and provided a great hunt. Sean was an excellent duck caller and was able to bring in the birds. If anyone is interested in such a trip, get in touch with me or Harold and we will provide contact information for Sean. |
| Arkansas Duck Hunt |
| Foster City Rod and Gun Club |
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| Click to enlarge photo |