Walker Davidson for SPLIT REED
A dream turned nightmare would be a fitting way to describe Kirk McCullough’s career guiding duck hunts. From the good times to the bad, he always managed to kill ducks and keep his clients happy; it just got to the point where the ends were not worth the means.
He got into guiding mostly by chance. “I was hunting by myself on the Arkansas river and when I was younger I hunted by myself most of the time because I didn’t want anyone to know where I was at. After I shot my limit I was headed to the ramp and I ran into these two guys and they said they’d been hunting for a whole week and hadn’t killed anything and asked if they could hunt with me, ‘I said yeah yall can come with me’ and we went to the woods at Bayou Meto in the Snag hole the next day. We shot our limit and those guys were just flabbergasted and the next year they came back and brought paying customers and that’s how I started guiding. I hunted the Arkansas River, Bayou Meto, and some private ground I had. At my career peak some days we accommodated 60-70 people a day mostly on private land. I had a job making $800 a month and I could make a little extra money guiding. I bought a house in Sherrill, Arkansas for $8500 and I financed it. I took a construction company duck hunting for a week and paid that house off. I made more money in three days of duck hunting than I made working in 6 months.”
He and his crew kept an eye on the other people that hunted around the areas he did. They wanted to know where everyone was going and what they were doing in order to make their plans for their hunts. A typical day during duck season would consist of hunting in the morning and then going back to nap after shooting out. They would wake up and fuel up the boats and then go visit camps and boat ramps to figure out where everyone was going the next few days. They would clean and organize their boats, get it all hooked up, and then get a little bit of sleep. They went to the boat ramp early, around 2 am or so, so they could avoid the congestion and chaos public boat ramps bring. They always had a plan A, B, and C, and that worked very well. Kirk said they never went to plan C and rarely had to go to plan B.
“When you’re hunting on public ground, the art isn’t in killing ducks, it is in circumventing the other people, and in turn, you’ll kill ducks.”
The most memorable hunt he has ever had guiding was with a client that hunted with him for most of his career. His name was Joe Nimmer, out of South Carolina, and he owned a turfgrass farm. Here is what Kirk had to say about the hunt:
“He [Joe Nimmer] understood duck hunting. The first year he ever came duck hunting with me Arkansas was dry and what did have water was frozen solid. We were hunting private timber that has 6 inches of ice on the water. We had 66 people between our two camps and Robin and I were trying to make a plan. We decided to go to the woods and just see what would happen so he and I went out there and walked to the hole in our tennis shoes and I blew my call and a bunch of mallards came in and landed on the ice and walked around eating acorns so we decided to hunt there. We started hunting at 10:30. The first group killed 22 limits in 45 minutes. It looked like a warzone on that ice, hulls, feathers, and blood everywhere. We killed 66 limits by 4:30 that afternoon. We did that for three days.”
But, with all good things, there are bad. And for Kirk is came from every angle. From out of state guys, to the Arkansas Fish and Game Commission, to locals who hated him, the battles seemed never-ending for Kirk.
Because money was exchanging hands, it was different. If he were just taking 10-12 friends hunting every day there never would have been an issue. The other problem was jealousy. Day in and day out his clients were killing their limits when others were not. When people are willing to threaten your life, threaten your family, threaten to burn your camp down over duck hunting, it kind of brings things into perspective about whether you’re a true sportsman, and quite frankly, what kind of man you are. The biggest issue was the AGFC turning a blind eye to the confrontations. They failed to intervene when Kirk was receiving threats constantly. Another instance was when Kirk had a bunch of equipment stolen and the game warden knew where it was, but told him it was the sheriff’s problem and to get him out there. Once Kirk got the sheriff involved, the game warden confessed to knowing where the equipment was hidden and told Kirk where it was.
There was public pressure on the governor from the locals to outlaw guiding on public land. “After they got their paperwork and their money, they came after us.” Being checked every day, sometimes multiple times a day, in the woods or at the ramp, without ever receiving a citation it was obvious the orders were coming from the upper echelon of AGFC to make guide’s life’s hell. Guiding ended up being outlawed just before an election in order to gain votes for the governor at the time. However, after years of running the rat race, Kirk was not all that upset about it.
“I had just gotten to where I didn’t want to do it anymore. I felt like I spent too much time of my life there and I wanted to go hunt other places. When it was over with I felt relieved. No matter what we do in life people will criticize and interfere with our endeavors relentlessly and the more it happened the more it built us up, and then when they got rid of us there was nothing we could do.”
“No amount of money is worth the bullshit we had to put up with. I would never bend over for em or kiss their ass and I still won’t do it… ever.”
Tune in next month for Part III of the Kirk McCullough story! Remember to check out Kirk: Part I if you missed it!
