Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Grand finale
Last week of duck season brings back fond memories
By some accounts, the last week of duck season exceeded Arkansas’s lofty duck hunting reputation.
Wes McNulty of Pine Bluff hunted Tuesday, the last day of the season. He described the hunt as epic. McNulty, Jake McNulty, Brent Winston of Little Rock, Cooper Winston, 11, of Little Rock and two other hunters killed 14 mallards, 10 green-winged teal, 6 pintails and 6 gadwalls. Cooper Winston killed one of the pintails. It was his first duck, Wes McNulty said.
On Saturday Jan. 28, Jake McNulty and a different group killed 27 ducks, and they killed 20 on Jan. 26.
The hunts took place on a part of Wes NcNulty’s property that often attracts ducks late in the season.
“There’s an old slough that runs between two sets of woods that we let grow up naturally, an overgrown thicket,” Wes McNulty said. “It’s one of our better areas, but it has always been an afternoon area. If you see ducks start coming in there about 3 in the afternoon, you know its time to start hunting. You’ll get about a week of good shooting.”
The wind was wrong for the group’s preferred spot. They didn’t have a blind. Instead, they had panels with grass zip-tied to the frames. They moved the panels to the edge of the slough and hunted on dry ground, without waders.
Bad weather contributed mightily to the good hunting, McNulty said. Wind-driven sleet made road travel hazardous, and it made hunting unpleasant.
It also made ducks seek refuge.
“It was heavy sleet, enough that it stung you when it hit you in face,” McNulty said. Pintails circled quite a bit, but when you can decoy pintails, you know they want down.
“It’s hard to describe the number of ducks that I really had,” McNulty added. “We constantly had teal buzzing through the decoys and lighting in the decoys. We quit shooting them because of the other ducks that were circling. Sometimes gadwalls came down vertically like F-16 fighter jets. They never flapped their wings. They just lit in the decoys. When that happens, they just want down. You get one of those hunts per year.”
The northern pintail is McNulty’s favorite duck. He said he and his companions used to kill about 200 pintails per year, but they have been scarce in recent years. In 2021, McNulty’s farm logged only 13. They showed up in force Tuesday.
“Back in the day — 10 years ago and more — we just always had pintails and lots of them,” McNulty said. “There were days when the only thing you were going to get was pintails. That last day was like the old days. We started hunting at 3 o’clock, and we were through at 5. Not one time when there wasn’t pintails over us.”
Unlike mallards and gadwalls, which quack, pintails whistle. It’s a distinctive sound when one or two whistle.
McNulty said his group saw thousands of pintails, with flocks numbering 400500. To hear that many pintails whistle is unforgettable.
“One time we had so many [pintails] over us, one guy said it sounds like an Arkansas Razorbacks basketball game hearing so many whistles,” McNulty said, bursting into laughter. “I thought that was appropriate for this year.”
“Even the few mallards that we had were calling back to us. You just don’t get that very many times during the year.”
Pintails are usually very hard to land, while mallards readily come to decoys. McNulty said Thursday’s hunt was opposite. Mallards were shy, but pintails came in like cyclones.
“We didn’t have quite as many mallards as thought would be,” McNulty said. “We killed 14, but that’s a really good hunt for me. Pintails are still my favorite duck. When we have a chance to kill pintails, that’s a heck of a day.
Tuesday was Cooper Winston’s second duck hunt, McNulty said, adding that Cooper was rapt and engaged. He said Cooper gave his Remington 870 youth model 20-gauge a workout.
“He didn’t say a word, but there sure were a lot of yellow hulls ( 20- gauge hulls) all around his feet,” McNulty said, laughing. “His dad told me that night when they got home that he was still talking about it.”
McNulty said that for himself, it was like being young again.
“When I was younger I took it for granted there would always be plenty of ducks around,” McNulty said. “It’s just become very hard to find good hunts. It’s just been really hard. Having something come together like that, with weather that’s unusual and somewhat challenging, not being in a comfortable blind and being exposed to the elements, watching a kid get to kill his first ducks, and hunting with my son … We don’t hunt as much together as we used to. To get to spend the last day together on an epic hunt was really cool.”
MILL BAYOU
Jess Essex of DeWitt also had an epic hunt last weekend, but in typical Essex fashion it was an unconventional hunt. Instead of killing mallards, pintails, or teal, Essex and his bunch killed three gadwalls and 21 ringneck ducks, or blackjacks. They were finished by 8:30 a.m.
The morning was cold, Essex said, with a dense fog and light rain that made ducks fly close to the water.
“I promise you I had no idea such a hunt was possible,” said Essex, who had the misfortune of swinging on ducks that somebody else shot first.
“All morning long, I’d throw down on a duck, and before I could pull the trigger, Derek Kerns or Craig Sloate would shoot it first,” Essex groused. “I’d draw a bead on another in the same bunch, and Derek would kill that one, too! And if Derek didn’t shoot ‘my’ duck, his brother Curt would. I declare I didn’t do anything out there all morning except point at ducks. I’m gonna find me some slow old folks to hunt with, by cracky!”
To summarize the season, hunters experienced a week of excellent action from about Christmas to New Year’s, and another week at the end. Those weeks were reminders of how good it used to be, and how good it can be again.