At 5 a.m. sharp, Jim “Jimbo” Ronquest, Rich-N-Tone duck guide, is scouring the skies over the flooded bottomlands near the White River in Monroe County, just north of Stuttgart.
He plays a tune on the duck call while the Green Lake Duck Club sportsmen hold their shotguns pointing skyward.
After 10 years as a guide, Ronquest knows that the extra rain of the last couple of weeks will benefit both ducks and hunters as the cold weather moves in to Arkansas.
Rich-N-Tone works hard to give hunters what they want: “the perfect duck-hunting day.” Ronquest said for most of his customers, including this morning’s group from Atlanta, “It’s not just about the kill but the total experience.”
Back at the lodge near Holly Grove, club owner Ed Thompson and a big breakfast of ham, eggs and grits await the returning hunters. After the meal, the group plans a trip to Mack’s Prairie Wings at Stuttgart — a one-stop duck-hunting emporium.
“Successful hunters are happy and tend to spend a little more money,” Ronquest said.
Ronquest, Thompson and countless others are banking on getting a big economic bang out of those little ducks.
Growing Popularity
“There’s nothing prettier than a group of ducks gliding through the trees at the first light of day,” said Joe Mosby, an outdoor writer for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission.
Duck hunting permits in Arkansas neared the 100,000 mark in 2003, but the sport is still dwarfed in popularity by deer hunting — an annual pastime for some 300,000 Arkansans. But deer hunting is available in many geographic areas of the United States, while Arkansas has the distinction of being in the neck of a geographical funnel called the Mississippi Flyway, a specific migration route for ducks.
Len Pitcock, G&FC; communications director, said the Mississippi Flyway begins narrowing at the northeastern border of Arkansas. At the neck of the funnel, the Arkansas, White and Mississippi rivers converge near Stuttgart.
Only in Louisiana are more ducks killed than in Arkansas, but the Arkansas hunting experience — centered around mallards and flooded bottomland, is unique.
There are a lot of crossover hunters, Mosby said, but most hunters either prefer deer hunting — the silent watch in a deer stand — or duck hunting, a far more social event.
“When you’re out in the duck blind, you have an opportunity to talk to your buddies, tell stories and catch up on old times,” Pitcock said. “That makes a real difference.”
The travel and lodging costs associated with duck hunting also put it out of reach for lower-income hunters.
“Duck hunters tend to be a little higher on the economic scale, with more professionals involved with the sport,” Pitcock said.
Rice Eaters
Ducks have been making their economic impact on Arkansas for a century — but it hasn’t always been a positive impact.
Arkansas County farmers first planted rice at about the turn of the last century, and by 1919, there were approximately 143,000 acres in rice production. The early crops were left in the fields after cutting to dry. That’s when those rice pioneers learned the hard way that the annual duck migration coincided with the harvest. Ducks could easily wipe out an unprotected rice field overnight.
“The first duck hunters were hired by local farmers and paid $5 a night and all the shotgun shells they could shoot,” said Stephen Bell, executive vice president of the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce.
That has all changed, of course. Instead of being part of the cost of producing a rice harvest, duck hunting is now a second source of revenue for rice farming communities lucky enough to be in the Flyway. And Stuttgart, the center of the rice-growing universe, has become a tourist destination by carefully turning those quackers into media darlings.
The Associated Press picks up the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission’s waterfowl reports and sends local duck-dollar stories worldwide. Little Rock television stations and newspapers begin following the birds and quoting experts as soon as the southward migration from Saskatchewan begins each October.
The World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest was featured as Arkansas’ premier sporting event in the December 2003 issue of Sports Illustrated. As an added bonus, the Food Network’s “All-American Festivals” covered last year’s Wings Over the Prairie Festival’s Duck Gumbo Cookoff, Bell said.
Even the British Broadcasting Co. has covered the fun.
Media coverage of any type provides the duck-hunting industry with the kind advertising money can’t buy. Maintaining media involvement is a conscious marketing effort on the Stuttgart chamber’s part, and every season it adds a new event or expands an old favorite. (Last year, preliminary duck-calling events leading up to the world’s championship contest were held in 38 states.)
Along with spending thousands of dollars each year on television and print advertising, the chamber intentionally fosters a sentimental attachment between hunters and the duck blinds, Bell said. And years of consistent promotion have kept hunters flocking to the area.
Wings Over the Prairie
The two-day Wings Over the Prairie Festival kicks off the duck-hunting season the day after Thanksgiving. As 100,000 annual visitors prepare to descend on Stuttgart, Main Street is transformed into a shopping paradise for sportsmen with 200 commercial vendors offering hunting and fishing gear. The “Off-Road Village” features trucks, SUVs, all-terrain vehicles and boats, while under the large tents nearby, arts and crafts and collectible items such as hand-carved decoys, rare and deluxe duck calls and limited-edition wildlife prints are available.
Since its inception the festival has grown and offers “something for the entire family,” Bell said. In addition to the World’s Championship, there are eight other duck-calling competitions, a World Championship Duck Gumbo Cook-off, a Sportsmen’s Dinner and Dance, the “Queen Mallard” pageant, a carnival midway, the World Duck Dog Championship and a 10-K foot race.
The first National Duck Calling Contest was held at Stuttgart on Nov. 24, 1936, in connection with the annual Arkansas Rice Carnival and sponsored by American Legion Post No. 48. There were 17 contestants competing for a hunting coat valued at $6.60, and Thomas E. Walsh of Greenville, Miss., took the prize home.
Eleven years later the pot was $1,000 cash — comparable in post-war dollars to today’s prize package worth in excess of $15,000.
“Duck hunting brings in about $1 million a day to the local economy,” Bell said. That figure includes duck dollars spent at area hunting lodges, motels, restaurants, sporting goods shops and other duck-related businesses.
When other duck-rich areas of central and east Arkansas are included, that number can easily double, Pitcock said.
“Conservative estimates are $2 million in sales per day,” he said — and duck season typically lasts 60 days.
Political Issues
With a multimillion-dollar industry depending on a free but finite resource like ducks, competition is already fierce. Add in the question of using public lands for commercial duck hunting, and you end up with political disputes as well.
Some hunters feel strongly that public lands should benefit only state residents, while others want public lands used to attract out-of-state hunters and their out-of-state dollars, Mosby said.
Commercial guides have been banned by the Game & Fish Commission from staking out prime spots on public lands. The only alternative: buying or leasing private lands.
“The price of good hunting land is skyrocketing and becoming harder to find,” said Green Lake Duck Club owner Thompson, who estimated the price at about $2,000 an acre.
For Thompson, location for the duck club was paramount. His lodge accommodates 11 hunters and is surrounded on three sides by 160,000 acres of the White River National Wildlife Refuge.
Each hunter pays $275 per day to stay at the clubhouse, a price that includes three meals, full use of the lodge, equipment and guide service, Thompson said.
He has built two additional facilities to accommodate a lower price point hunter.
“There’s a strong demand for less expensive facilities as well as deer hunting and fishing accommodations,” Thompson said.
Mosby said bird watching is also becoming a draw for clubs.
The starting dates of the designated duck season are also regulated by the state, and that has created yet another political dispute. Hunt club proprietors with access to pen-raised waterfowl want to start the season earlier; hunt clubs that depend on nature to provide the ducks want the season to coincide with the rainy season and migration.
In 2003, G&FC; issued 40 additional permits for game-bird preserves. “Nearly all were for duck hunting,” Mosby said.
The commission has now put a moratorium on new permits for game-bird preserves because it is concerned that tame ducks, possibly carrying diseases, will escape into the wild. Mosby said the commission would prefer for game ducks to remain wild rather than hybrids.
Duck Blind Chic
The Stuttgart chamber has seen tremendous growth in two areas — sporting goods and hunting lodges, Bell said.
Ten years ago, Thompson — who is also member of the Chamber of Commerce’s Wings Over the Prairie Festival committee — said there were only 22 ads for duck hunting clubs in the chamber’s annual publication, the Sportsman’s Guide. That number has tripled.
According to writer Mosby, at least 1 million mallards fly through the state each year. According to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, about 300,000 of them are killed in the state each year.
The number of hunters going after ducks — legally, anyway — has ballooned. Before an Arkansas resident can shoot a single duck, he must buy a $15 federal stamp, a $7.50 state stamp and a $10.50 hunting license. Nonresidents pay higher fees.
Twelve years ago, approximately 38,000 duck stamps were sold, Mosby said. Last year, the number reached 93,000.
The sheer “chicness” of the sport has spilled over into the gear hunters use.
“Twenty years ago, duck hunters wore old Army fatigues,” Bell, of the Stuttgart chamber, said. Nowadays hunting apparel companies are making clothes for warmth and changing camouflage patterns every year.
And Mack’s Prairie Wings — called Mack’s Sport Shop until 1993 — is both a creator and a beneficiary of that fashion.
According to Deena Fisher, marketing coordinator, the company that was started in 1944 by M.T. “Mack” McCollum now employs 150 at the 104,000-SF Stuttgart retail and distribution location.
With 32,000 SF dedicated to retail, the store caters to duck hunters primarily but also carries products to entice deer and turkey hunters. The store is now offering upscale casual clothing and home décor, Fisher said.
“We’re considering adding fishing equipment to our line,” Fisher said, with a goal of increasing revenue during those hot months of the Delta summer when it is hard for customers to remember the cold dampness of a duck blind.
Mack’s catalog now hits 2.5 million homes each year, Fisher said, and the company contracts with Marketing Concepts of Spicer, Minn., to fulfill orders. For duck hunters, no trip to Stuttgart is complete without a stop at Mack’s.
“Mack’s transformed the town,” Bell said.
Shrinking Season
Unlike many other cities in the Arkansas Delta, Stuttgart has been able to keep its economy stable. Its unemployment rate has hovered at 4.5 percent. But a shortening of the duck season is viewed as virtually inevitable, with economic effects yet to be seen.
“We’re flying high with a long run of 60-day [duck] seasons,” Bell said.
The length of the season is based on biological analysis and computer modeling by the Mississippi Flyway Council, a group of biologists who make recommendations to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The USFWS in turn sets the season’s length in hopes of managing the overall number of ducks killed.
Mosby described the process as “bio-political.” The council is represented by 15 states, eight Northern and seven Southern, all with an economic stake in duck hunting. Federal mandates prohibit the season from starting before Oct. 1, and it must conclude before end of January, Mosby said.
“Eventually we will have a 30- or 45-day season,” Bell predicted.
While that may not mean fewer hunters will travel to Stuttgart and the surrounding area, it will mean an intense season with fewer meals eaten at local restaurants and fewer fill-ups at the gas pump.
To hedge against the impact of shortened seasons and to attract tourists year-round, Bell said the chamber constantly is looking for the next big thing.
“In April we’re hoping to have a Stuttgart sportsmen’s film festival,” Bell said. A committee will screen homemade hunting videos and hand out awards.
Everything’s Ducky
Stuttgart is duck-crazy. Employees at Mallard’s Restaurant serve duck-shaped waffles, and at the Stuttgart Agricultural Museum, visitors can watch the sun rise over a pond filled with different species of ducks.
The local radio station is — you guessed it — KWAK.
Stuttgart’s three-term mayor, Harold “Butch” Richenback, is a duck-calling legend. He took the world championship title in 1972. Four years later he began selling duck calls under the name of Rich-N-Tone, which he has also lent to Ronquest’s guide service. His product has received national acclaim in Ducks Unlimited.
“We’re the Mecca of the duck-hunting world. If you’re a duck hunter, at least once in your life you have to make the pilgrimage to Stuttgart,” the mayor said.
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