Arkansas Sports 360 - ArkansasSports360.com

10/6/2011 at 12:00pm

Image by Gabe Holmstrom

My first duck hunting experience in January was memorable and gave me an appreciation for what friends had been talking about all these years.

It’s tough to find an Arkansan without a duck hunting story. Many folks have a favorite memory of their first or most recent trip with friends and family.

In the Natural State, hunting is as much family tradition as business or recreational pursuit, a legacy passed down through generations. From the rice fields of Northeast and Southeast Arkansas to the flooded timber regions in between, the state is full of duck hunters with stories to tell.

This year’s Greenhead: The Arkansas Duck Hunting Magazine again contains many cherished memories from avid hunters. It’s a fantastic read for anybody who enjoys duck hunting and folks who just enjoy beautiful photos and great storytelling.

Not surprisingly, my earliest memory of hunting isn’t included in the gorgeous 68-page, full-color magazine [click here for the digital edition]. For years the first thing that popped into my head when the subject came up was … geometry class.

Geometry class?

Yep. Any mention of hunting used to take me back to Jonesboro High School in 1994. An early morning math class is the first place I remember my first real exposure to duck hunters.

As you’ll find in this year’s magazine — or in a conversation with avid hunters — the sport is often passed down from generation to generation. That’s why we chose “A Sport of Legacy” as this year’s theme.

My father, Robert, passed down many things to me: his appreciation of music and an interest in sports are two that impact my life daily. Also shared between Bahns is a less than favorable opinion of cold weather and earlier-than necessary wakeup calls.

While I have always appreciated what the state’s rice fields meant to our local economy — today $1 billion and thousands of jobs are produced thanks to rice farming in the eastern portions of Arkansas — the idea of spending time in a flooded, frozen field at an unreasonably early hour did little for me.

So when the classroom bell rang at 8 a.m., a healthy number of students at Jonesboro High would roll into the second floor classroom dressed in camouflage and my sleep-deprived classmates did little to sell me on the enjoyable aspects of hunting.

They were dressed for extreme wet and cold. When they were awake enough to provide details of their trips into the local fields, they spoke of 4 a.m. wakeup calls.

Sounded awful.

Now I know better.

Thanks to my buddy Denver Peacock, vice president and director of public relations at CJRW, I have an actual duck hunting memory of my own. Geometry class is no longer the first thing that pops into my head when duck hunting comes up in conversation and I feel — after 34 years of calling this state home — more like a full-fledged Arkansan.

Peacock helped arrange a hunting trip for me in January. Jordan Johnson and Gabe Holmstrom of CJRW and former Congressman Marion Berry and his son Mitch Berry, all seasoned duck hunters, joined us and gave me a fantastic introduction to the sport.

We arrived the night before the hunt and stayed at the beautiful Lonoke Club lodge. Johnson’s father-in-law, Ed Staley, is among the club's member/owners along with Whitt Hall, Roger McNeil and Bill McNeil.

There was an abundance of conversation. More than enough Old Charter. Not much sleep.

Still, I found getting up before dawn surprisingly bearable. I didn’t even need my morning coffee to be fully awake, the anticipation of the hunt was that invigorating for me as I slipped on mostly borrowed gear and was prepped on what to expect.

From a pure hunting standpoint, it wasn’t a successful morning. (You can tell I’m not a regular hunter. Offering an honest assessment of a day’s hunt is a sure sign of an amateur, right?)

Most days that flooded timber near the Lonoke Club is a prime hunting spot. But when it rains — and it rained on us all morning — ducks tend to hang out in the nearby rice fields. We might have seen 15 that morning and, just between us, I never fired my gun. Not a single shot.

Being the new guy I wanted to get a feel for the action before I went in shotgun blazing. That would have been fine if there had been more opportunities to shoot, but there weren’t. There’s a good chance I hold some sort of record for least-productive outing in the club’s rich history.

Still, it was an outstanding experience. It gave me a sense of the camaraderie that is part of the draw for so many people from inside and outside the state.

Congressman Berry was able to convey the legacy aspect of the sport as well as anybody I’ve ever met. I first got a sense of how engaging Berry is while interning one summer for his office in Washington, D.C. Berry, who underwent surgery to remove a tumor this past summer, has always come across as extremely personable, but the boat ride back to the lodge after our hunt might top the list of time I’ve spent around him. That includes him guiding a tour for me and another intern to the top of the U.S. Capitol rotunda in 1998.

Berry shared some of his favorite and earliest hunting memories. He talked about family hunts as a child and how much it meant to pass that on once he had a family of his own.

It was then I began to understand a little more the attachment and why so many Arkansans have such fond memories of the sport. Even better I finally have a real duck hunting story of my own to tell.

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Tagged: Arkansas Razorbacks, Chris Bahn, Denver Peacock, Greenhead, Congressman Marion Berry, Lonoke Club, Gabe Holstrom, CJRW, Jordan Johnson, Greenhead.net