Hidden behind the blind’s branches, burlap and leaves, I watched as the group of five gadwalls angled toward us and started dropping lower. They were locked in on our winding pocket of water, located a few miles from our accommodations at Cypress Island Lodge in eastern Arkansas. Our decoy spread, comprising a smattering of mallards, wood ducks and ringnecks, drew the birds in like moths to a flame. As they pumped the brakes and dropped their landing gear some 20 yards in front of the blind, our guide Collin Hornbeck issued the command to take them. Four of us poked through the blind and unleashed a barrage of steel and bismuth.
The outburst shattered the placid stillness of the small, meandering bayou, but we were too focused on the ducks to notice. I missed a rushed first shot, then connected on a second. Other birds dropped, and as the lone survivor of the group pushed toward the skies, I tracked him, swung through and fired. This final bird splashed down just beyond the far edge of the hole, past some short, spindly trees. Five birds in, none out.
Almost as soon as we all reloaded, we saw another group of ducks crossing high from right to left. Our three-day December hunt was off to a good start in the renowned duck waters of Arkansas’ Grand Prairie region.
RISING FROM THE DIRT
Sandwiched between the bottomland hardwood forests of the Arkansas and White rivers, the Grand Prairie is a unique sub-region of the larger Mississippi River Alluvial Plain, or simply the “Delta,” as the portion in Arkansas is called. It extends north to south from Searcy to
