As already mentioned, a small boat is almost a necessity for hunting here. There's very little walk-in duck hunting. You'll probably have to hunt from your boat, too, since water depth in most of the Sunken Lands is above wader height. Unlike most other Arkansas WMAs, permanent blinds are allowed here, but most of the better hunting is where the blinds aren't. For maximum effectiveness and versatility, avoid the blinds -- use a boat blind instead.

Decoys may or may not be necessary. In open water, they're a big help, but in flooded timber they're usually more trouble than they're worth. However, there's no question that a Sunken Lands hunter needs some skill as a duck caller. Competition from other hunters is probably going to be considerable, and you can rest assured that most of them are going to be good callers.

Unless you have permission to cross adjacent private ground, almost all public access to the Sunken Lands is via the St. Francis River. The AGFC maintains seven ramps that provide access to the Sunken Lands. Stevens Landing, Oak Donnick, and The Siphons provide access to the lower portion of the area in Poinsett County. The Iron Bridge, Cocklebur Slough, Lake City and Williams accesses provide access to the upper portions of the area. The locations of all these ramps, as well as the locations of the parcels of land that make up St. Francis Sunken Lands WMA, are found in the Arkansas Outdoor Atlas, available for $18 postpaid from the AGFC at 2 Natural Resources Drive, Little Rock, AR 72205.

HENRY GRAY/HURRICANE LAKE WMA
Located at the junction of the White and Little Red rivers, a half-dozen miles southeast of Bald Knob, this overflow area contains more than 17,000 acres of prime bottomland hardwoods. It has been a popular duck hunting spot for many years -- since long before it became a WMA. An old newspaper account from the 1890s tells of four Chicago hunters who hunted the "Hurricane Bottoms" of Arkansas for a week and shot more than 1,000 mallards.

Those meat-hog days are long gone -- and good riddance. However, the Hurricane Bottoms still provide some fantastic mallard hunting when the river is flooded and the bottoms are inundated, and the place is a trifle easier to reach than when the Chicago hunters came here more than a century ago.

Today, a well-maintained road system off Highway 64 provides access to the interior of the area and to both the White and Little Red rivers. When the area is fully flooded, however, the access road becomes the boat ramp where it drops off the high ground just inside the management area boundary. There's a second boat ramp on the south side of the Little Red at Nimo, off Highway 36 near Georgetown.

Most of Henry Gray/Hurricane Lake WMA lies north of the Little Red, but approximately 4,000 acres lie to the south near Georgetown. This area doesn't flood as regularly as does the north part, but when it does, it provides some fantastic and usually uncrowded hunting. A ramp on the White River at Georgetown provides access to this portion of the WMA, and to the east side of the management area as well, following a five-mile upstream run.

Boating in is the best way to hunt here, although a limited portion of the west side of the area can be reached by walking in from the gravel access road on the west boundary. There are several primitive campgrounds along this gravel road, as well as another primitive campground at the boat ramp at Georgetown.