Henry Gray/Hurricane Lake WMA preserves 16,888 acres of prime bottomland duck habitat along the White and Little Red rivers. Some 7,000 acres of pin-oak flats are flooded annually to attract wintering mallards. Sunny “bluebird” days are perfect for green-timber hunting, and you don’t need lots of decoys. At most, use a dozen. Local hunters believe in high-decibel, continuous calling for pin-oak action. Enter the area from U.S. Highway 64, 5 miles east of Bald Knob.

Nearby, Steve N. Wilson/Raft Creek WMA (4,200 acres) in eastern White County is one of the state’s newest waterfowl hotspots. Thousands of ducks winter here each year, and this management area promises to be one of area’s top hotspots for waterfowling enthusiasts. Check current regulations for this year’s hunts.

Federal lands in the northern Delta include large portions of Bald Knob National Wildlife Refuge in White County and Cache River NWR in Jackson, Woodruff, Monroe and Prairie counties.

Bald Knob NWR covers 14,800 acres lying roughly 2 miles south of Bald Knob. Formerly a rice farm, the refuge is quickly earning a reputation as one of the top Delta duck-hunting hotspots. Mallards, pintails, teal and wood ducks are abundant most years, providing great gunning for savvy waterfowlers. Call the refuge at (870) 347-2908 or log on to www.fws.gov southeast/BaldKnob/ for a map, regulations and more info.

Cache River NWR currently encompasses 64,000 acres in numerous tracts. The river basin contains some of the most intact and least disturbed bottomland hardwood forests in the Mississippi Valley region. This certainly is one of the northern Delta’s best duck-hunting areas, but access to refuge lands is limited, and hunters have to do some homework to find top hunting sites. For more detailed information, call (870) 347-2614 or visit www.fws.gov

THE GRAND PRAIRIE
Southeast Arkansas’s Grand Prairie is world-renowned for its excellent duck-hunting opportunities. This area includes lands south of I-40, bounded on the south and west by the Arkansas River and on the east by the White River. The area includes all of Arkansas County and portions of Jefferson, Pulaski, Lonoke, Prairie and Monroe counties. Major cities include Stuttgart, England, DeWitt, Lonoke and Gillett.

Hunting on the Grand Prairie is best when early winter storms to the north coincide with heavy rainfall and good acorn production in overflow bottoms and public hunting areas. The combination of large river bottoms, extensive acres of rice, soybeans and private reservoirs, clubs that pump water during dry years, and almost 250,000 acres of prime duck habitat in Bayou Meto WMA and White River NWR assures that ducks will be somewhere in this area every year. A hard freeze-up is about the only factor that shuts this area down. Even then, if there’s good overflow water and mast production in river bottoms, fine hunting can be found.

Bayou Meto WMA, in the heart of the Grand Prairie, is one of the AGFC’s most popular duck-hunting areas, and White River NWR, a migratory waterfowl sanctuary wintering hundreds of thousands of ducks each year, falls in the eastern portion of the area. A huge network of rivers, bayous and sloughs crisscrosses the area, providing abundant duck habitat and outstanding gunning.

At 33,700 acres, Bayou Meto is the largest of the AGFC’s many WMAs. Each year about 13,000 acres of green timber are flooded to attract ducks. These grounds are in the heart of the Big Bayou Meto basin, a major waterfowl flyway. The basin has always been a winter paradise for ducks. Throughout its length -- from Lonoke to the bayou’s mouth near Gillett -- excellent duck hunting is enjoyed by thousands of sportsmen. Bayou Meto WMA is in the lower portion of the basin.

Big Bayou Meto flows alongside the eastern boundary of Little Bayou Meto. Another large bayou, Wabbaseka, enters the WMA from the west, and numerous sloughs and oxbows within the boundaries add to Bayou Meto’s overall attraction to waterfowl. Nearly all the area contains big timber, and the pin-oak flats hunting is a unique feature that draws thousands of hunters annually. Hunters can walk in with waders, or travel to interior hunting spots via boats, from several access areas around the WMA.

White River NWR falls partially within the Grand Prairie and partially in the southern Delta. It represents the largest remaining tract of bottomland hardwood forest in Arkansas. As might be expected, this bottomland forest provides habitat for huge numbers of wintering waterfowl. Because hunting is very restricted, the refuge bottoms become one gigantic rest area, covered annually with hundreds of thousands of ducks.

White River’s surroundings and internal arrangement make it a natural for ducks. Dotted with harvested grain fields and naturally flooded by river overflows, thousands of acres of flatwoods are covered by acorn-strewn backwaters during duck season. More than 200 oxbow lakes scattered throughout the area and adjacent agricultural lands provide food for the hordes of ducks. As the ducks trade back and forth from farmland to woodland, they fly over the thousands of acres of flooded timber across the hunting area within the refuge. Many of them drop into these woods, coaxed by decoys and duck calls, and many of them wind up in the hunter’s bag because of that decision.

The portions of the refuge open during waterfowl season offer excellent hunting for mallards, which are the dominant waterfowl species on the refuge. Nearly every duck species using the Mississippi Flyway can be found here, however, and hunters take good numbers of gadwalls, widgeon, wood ducks and green-winged teal.