BRINKLEY — Through the luck of the draw, a group of teenagers found the perfect spot to wrap up their duck season on the Youth Special Hunt weekend Feb. 8-9: a field in eastern Arkansas that was part of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Waterfowl Rice Incentive Conservation Enhancement Program.
One of the youngsters happens to be the son of Jason Miller, an assistant chief of fisheries for the AGFC who lives in Lonoke. “Man, if it wasn’t for the hunt on the last weekend on the WRICE field, our season would have been just absolutely terrible,” Miller said.
Miller, who also hunts a private field near Cotton Plant, says he’s applied for a WRICE permit “half a dozen times, and I think we’ve drawn, maybe, two or three? I’ve gotten fortunate on drawing, but that was a pretty solid last weekend for those kids.”
Youths under 16 are allowed to hunt the special hunt weekend after the conclusion of the 60-day regular season, and they are eligible to apply for a WRICE Program field for the entire weekend. They can take an adult mentor who can call ducks and help retrieve the harvested ducks, and they may also take a veteran or active-duty personnel on the day designated for the vets and active duty hunt, which this year happened to be Feb. 9.
Miller served as a nonhunting mentor for the boys. “One interesting thing was that it was youth only on Saturday and then you had youth and veterans on Sunday, so we were able to bring my dad along as a veteran. So he got to hunt with the kids.”
Zachary “Lunchbox” Miller applied for and drew a hunt among a group of fields near Blackton, not far from Brinkley, though the Millers and their party could have hunted their private land near Cotton Plant. Jason Miller had hunted the Blackton WRICE fields before.
“It gave us another option,” he said, adding that his private land “just didn’t have any birds on it the day before that youth hunt.” So, knowing that his son had drawn the WRICE permit at Blackton, Miller drove the highway past the fields and noted that “it was just full of birds,” probably upwards of 500 ducks. “So we switched gears and said, ‘Yep, we’re going to do that in the morning.”
Zachary was joined by Dylan Atchley and Clay Simpson. Then, Jason’s father, Dewayne Miller, joined the three boys for Sunday.
“Saturday started real early because we had to work on a big spread, jerk strings, getting everything set up,” Jason Miller said. “I've hunted there before and knew there would be nothing on the top of the blind, it’s a roll-top pit. So we got grass and had it loaded on the side-by-side. We had a pump just in case it was full of water, and a battery for the pump. I’ve been there before and not been able to hunt because the pit’s too full of water.”
So, the gang carried all that gear, including 75 decoys. “We had everything done in plenty of time, so we had a good 10-15 minutes before shooting time for the kids to just sit there and watch the show because it was just waves of ducks trying to get in that field and the fields next to us before shooting time, so it was pretty cool.”
They got their mallard limits Saturday and left just after 9 a.m. to let the field rest. On Sunday, the wind had completely switched from south to north, Jason said. The temperature had also tumbled from Saturday’s mild, T-shirt day to wintry cold. They switched up the blind top so it would open in the opposite direction and set the decoys up in the opposite direction.
“We had way less birds Sunday because, you know, of how much the kids shot Saturday, and I mean they shot and shot and shot Saturday. And I mean these kids usually are pretty good shooters. But for whatever reason, out of that pit they struggled. So Sunday, it was a lot less birds. But the shooting was a lot closer with that north wind. And they were just a little bit more effective.
The boys typically hunt together during the regular season, and their dads are buddies with Miller and hunt with him. For Clay and Zachary, who both turn 16 this year, it was their last youth hunt.
They will never forget that WRICE hunt weekend. Jason Miller said. “For whatever reason, they just haven’t landed on anything this year. We’ve had a few good hunts sporadically where we have killed some ducks, but things like on the weekends when they show up (at the duck club), it’s not been all that great. Zachary’s been on a couple of good hunts in the snow, but that’s about it. … Their expectations were pretty low. It was great for them to end on a high note.”
