Regular duck season ended in Arkansas at sunset on Sunday, January 31. We hosted our annual one-day Youth and Veterans hunt on Saturday February 6. We had two guides take out two groups of youth and a third guide had a group of veterans. With no hunting pressure on our fields over the past week since regular season closed, the ducks had returned to the places they’d been shot at for three months. From all the photos I’ve seen, everyone had a great hunt. Everybody was wearing big smiles with large harvests on their stringers.
While duck hunting is all over but the flying, goose hunting is really taking off. We have more geese this month than I’ve ever seen before. From all the calls I’m getting from hunters wanting to lease ground from me, the popularity of the sport is growing by leaps and bounds. It’s almost phenomenal how many more hunters are calling me this year to try and get to the geese landing on our fields.
Apparently, there aren’t that many geese using fields around Stuttgart; they seem to all be in Jefferson County. As a result, the guides from further east are competing to find places to take their clients around Altheimer and Wabbaseka.
This year we are booked up with goose hunters right to the end of February. I can’t really afford to let hunters keep using our fields after March 1 because our farmers need to start prepping fields for spring planting.
One farmer that leases from us didn’t realize how busy we’ve gotten with goose hunting in February because we hadn’t thought to call and tell him. He was out last week disking up a field where the geese were using to roost every evening. He learned pretty quick how serious our post-season waterfowlers are about their goose hunting. My farm manager Randy had to step in to unruffle some feathers.
I don’t deal directly with goose hunters. Instead, I lease the fields to the goose guides and they bring clients to and from the hunting grounds.
As for next year’s duck season, my four main guides have already locked in their fields for 2021-2022. You might say they are already “getting their ducks in a row.”
All in all, our guides and clients had great hunting success during the duck hunt and continue to do the same with snows, speckled and blue geese.
So, stay tuned for more from your Duck Diva, reminding you, as always, that I call the shots!