Ryan Barnes for SPLIT REED
It’s a cold winter day and you are on a hunt in the famous Arkansas green timber on public land. With hundreds and thousands of mallards circling overhead as it begins to break daylight. The ducks are seeing countless number of decoy spreads but they keep coming into your spread to land in your timber hole like they are on a string. After being the only timber hole shooting all morning, hunters start trekking through the woods to see what’s so special about your spread. Then they see it, the spinning wings, is all too familiar in decoys spreads today, although that wasn’t always the case.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be one of the only decoy spread in the USA from Canada down to Arkansas with a spinning wing decoy? Well Buster Cooper of Bust-A-Duck Guide service actually got the chance to have one of the first ever ROBO Duk in his spread, ROBO Duk was the mojo before mojo was even a thing. “I met this guy named Billy Williams out of Marysville, CA at a Ducks Unlimited festival in Memphis, TN. Everyone would walk by his booth that had spinning wing decoys and laugh at him, he was not selling any ducks that day. I introduced myself as a guide in Arkansas and he gave me two decoys to test out in Arkansas. He said that he invented it last year and they are trying to outlaw it in California because they are so deadly. I was the rep that got them into Mack’s Prairie Wings and once they started hunting with them it just went crazy. I even had to change my phone number after that because of the volume of calls I was getting about the Robo Duk. I was hunting on public ground and was landing hundreds of ducks all around us, hunters were sneaking through the woods to see what we were doing different.” The first Robo Duk was just a shell with a rubber band. You have to get creative to kill ducks, and before Dive Bomb Industries and previous businesses, Buster made and hunted over silhouettes he called ‘poor bombs’.
Buster got started duck hunting at a young age when his father introduced him to the activity that would turn out to be a lifelong passion and career for him. “My father got me interested in hunting, he wasn’t a big duck hunter but he would take me deer hunting and duck hunting occasionally, I got the burning desire of hunting from him.” He got into duck hunting in the 70’s and 80’s before it became as popular as it has become. Like many waterfowl hunters, he started out on public land and back then there just wasn’t a whole lot of pressure on the birds like there is today. Buster is from Camden, AR when he was older and able to drive he would head out to search for more hunting grounds, which led him out to eastern Arkansas, which is famous for the sheer number of waterfowl that migrate there every winter, flocking to the thousands of acres of flooded green timber and rice fields. This was called the duck capital of the world for good reason.
When he was 24 years old his guiding career started not because he wanted to be a guide at first, but as a way to fuel his passion of chasing mallards. “As a young 24 year old, father of one, married, and a firefighter on a budget, I would drive to east Arkansas to hunt but I would not have enough gas to drive back home. All my friends were wealthier than me so I started charging them to hunt with me in exchange for getting to use my boat, my spots, and my knowledge of the area which was the Black Swamp on the Cache River.” He started out charging $100 a head and would sleep in the back of his dodge ram charger at the boat ramp while his friends slept in a hotel. As he started hunting and guiding more, his set up got a little better- from a pop up camper to a 24’ camper and now he has a 3800 square foot lodge. All this was a result of a lot of hard work, blood, sweat and tears. “A lot of guys look at me and think that it just happened over night, but I have been the guide, the cook, and the cleaning lady. I have done it all!” It goes to show that even the most successful companies starts really small and as long as you have passion and drive it makes those cold nights sleeping in the back of your vehicle worth it in the end. Bust-A-Duck Guide Service is located in Gregory, AR, it was incorporated in 1997. They have 75% repeat clients that remake the trip every year, he went from $100 a person to $575 a person all-inclusive hunts. He has over 10,000 acres of prime hunting ground with 22 hunting blinds. He has definitely upgraded from sleeping in the back of his dodge ram charger.
A little History of Arkansas Duck Hunting
Bust-A-Duck has been through some tough times, much like any other outfitter who has to run their company in accordance with the state and federal laws and regulations. The changes that come along with those can have tremendous impact on the guiding business, as you see today with the COVID situation going on and the closing of the Canadian Border. “Primarily I was a timber hunter, but the state of Arkansas banned guiding on public land years ago. Once that happened I couldn’t guide on those public lands that I grew accustomed to hunting. I had to start leasing rice fields, beans fields, and now I have access to some flooded green timber.” Essentially, Buster had to start over from scratch and rebuild his hunting grounds. Having gone from hunting land that was free, to leasing fields, also meant he had another expense, one of the biggest expenses in the guide life. There were times when it was not worth it to hunt ducks or guide in Arkansas, they did not always allow the liberal bag limits and long season that we enjoy today. “Back then it was on a point system and if you killed a mallard hen it was 100 points and you would be done for the day. The limits and days were different it was a 30 day season with 100 points. I can’t remember how many birds but I think 1 or 2 drakes, and a wood duck until you got your 100 points then you were done. So people were not really interested in going out much less paying to kill 1 duck.” Thanks to some great conservation work, the waterfowl industry is booming with a long season and liberal bag limits, remember that the next time you kill a Susie at first light that your hunt could be over.
You don’t have to be the best caller to be successful out in the field, Buster knows this first hand and even his good friend, Rick Dunn of Echo Calls, told him this, Rick told me years ago when I wanted to enter a duck calling contest that he didn’t think I would do very good. I asked him then how come I can kill so many ducks and his response was ‘I know how you are, you go find them and 95% of killing a duck is finding where they want to be’ still to this day I work hard to find the ducks and I still blow a $20 Echo duck call.” Luckily, there are people like Buster Cooper of Bust-A-Duck to do all the hard work for us. All clients have to do is show up, eat some amazing food and hunt low pressure ducks near the high pressure duck hunting capital of the world. If you want to book your dream Arkansas waterfowl hunt then you need to check out Bust-A-Duck a premier outfitter with Split Reed, you will not be disappointed. “You haven’t been on a good hunt, till you have been on a B.A.D hunt.”
