The words "Bayou Meto" are magic to the ears of ardent duck hunters.
"For one of the most well-known places in all of duck hunting, Bayou Meto had inauspicious beginnings," Brent Birch writes in his book "The Grand Prairie: A History of Duck Hunting's Hallowed Ground. "The headwaters originate in an area few ducks use in north Pulaski County. Traditional duck territory doesn't truly begin until Bayou Meto angles to the southeast just south of Lonoke. The stream meanders diagonally across the Grand Prairie for roughly 150 miles until it dumps into the Arkansas River near Gillett."
In a book titled "From the Scatters to Buckingham Flats: A History of Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area," longtime Arkansas journalist Carol Griffee wrote: "Bayou Meto is a product of nature--a wetlands wilderness where bayous and sloughs draining an unusually large watershed begin to say 'howdy' to each other en route to the Arkansas River. During high flows, water in the streams intermingled across the flat terrain, causing natural but intermittent winter and spring flooding that lasted for days, weeks or months."
Bayou Meto is best known for the wildlife management area operated by the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission. It's among the greatest public duck-hunting areas in the country. But the bayou is also home to some of the South's most famous private hunting clubs.
"The Bayou Meto watershed establishes the western edge of the Grand Prairie through Lonoke, Arkansas and Jefferson counties, with more than half a million acres of duck habitat," Birch writes. "Within the Bayou Meto flyway, much like the entire Grand Prairie, the mallard is the most plentiful and pursued. The habitat suits the mallard's desire to loaf and cohabitate during its time in the region. To a majority of waterfowlers on the Grand Prairie, there's the mallard and then there are 'scrap ducks.'"
A 1952 report by the Stuttgart-based engineering firm Fricke & Kazman noted: "Ducks using the Stuttgart area or the Bayou Meto bottoms are predominately of the mallard species. This is recognized as the best of the ducks: carrying more meat over North America than any other species. It is good meat--an important source of food--and becomes better in quality after fattening on the feeds available in the Stuttgart area and consumed on the migration flight southward to Stuttgart.
"Customarily, Stuttgart-dressed mallards are smoothly plumped out with fat, which permits preparation of toothsome delicacy. Rice-fed mallards are the sweetest."
At the time, Fricke & Kazman was helping landowners build a system of levees, pumps, ditches and reservoirs that's still in place.
Among the clubs near Bayou Meto is Button Willow. Vernon Jackson Sr. of Little Rock began assembling property in 1952. Along with Guy Maris Jr., he ended up buying 674 acres to begin the club. There have only been two membership meetings since 1955.
"The club is governed by the do-right rule and a three-man committee, whose membership is unknown," Birch writes. "Button Willow's hunting, like most clubs at the northern end of Bayou Meto, is best the first half of the season. The best-producing blind is known as The Pothole. The blind will easily hunt eight guns and accommodate four flatbottom boats. The location of the blind was selected because of a low-lying area in the middle of the south reservoir. Always the first spot on the property to flood and last to dry out, the blind sits in the middle of a large open area surrounded by willows, cypress and buckbrush.
"The property consists of nearly 200 acres of green timber and 425 acres spread among three reservoirs. Remaining acreage comes in the form of a 12-acre bass pond and 50 acres of hardwoods, pine thicket and a pasture-like area where the seven owner homes reside. A concerted effort has been made to improve the ability to hold water via a revised levee system as well as selective timber harvest that has significantly improved the green timber shooting. The owners of Button Willow have dedicated one-third of the south reservoir as a rest area."
The first part of the Grand Prairie to attract mallards each year is an area west of Bayou Meto in southern Lonoke County and northwest Arkansas County. The area is known as the Big Ditch Bottoms and Buffalo Ditch.
"If not for Stuttgart's Otis McCollum, the consistency of this area may have faded long ago," Birch writes. "McCollum was a visionary in his efforts to transform the low-lying, soggy timber ground to a duck-hunting paradise. McCollum was already a fixture in the area, as he leased more than 7,000 acres. Many consider him the father of commercial duck hunting on the Grand Prairie.
"In his early days of guiding, McCollum was at the mercy of natural flooding (or lack thereof). When the water was right, duck hunting was remarkable. Dry years forced McCollum to shift his attention to lakes in the White River bottoms to provide shooting for his clients. To be more in control of the water in his preferred hunting grounds west of Stuttgart, McCollum developed the 15-mile leveed canal dug by a large steamshovel floating on a barge."
The work was done in the 1920s, and the majority of those levees are still in use. When the work was completed, landowners could pull water out of Bayou Meto and Big Ditch Canal and retain it until duck season was over.
A South Dakota visitor wrote in 1951 after a hunt with McCollum: "It's worth the 1,000-mile trip just to see the mallards blacken the sky."
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Senior Editor Rex Nelson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He's also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.