The 17th edition of Greenhead: The Arkansas Duck Hunting Magazine is out, and editor Brent Birch calls it the magazine’s best yet. Rather than pick one story, we’re rounding up the highlights from this year’s issue — with links to each so you can go straight to what interests you. The full digital edition is also available at greenhead.net.
The editor’s letter: pressure is the story of the season
The Levers We Can Pull sets the tone for the whole issue. Editor Brent Birch digs into the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s new pressure-management rules for 2026-27 — new non-motorized zones on Bayou Meto, Black River and Shirey Bay, a fully paddle-only Galla Creek, new permit hunts at Prairie Bayou, Buckingham Flats and Wiville West, and non-residents shut out of the Dave Donaldson Black River WMA during the first segment. We covered this one in depth in a separate post if you want the full breakdown.
Conservation and policy
- Ducks Unlimited Presents: 2026 Conservation Champions — This year’s honorees are John Gay (Preserving the Homeland Hunt), Matt Graves (Mapping a Better Future), Chuck Smith (A Lifetime of Lessons), and Wayne Owen (The Science of Stewardship), presented by Ducks Unlimited.
- Asking the Right Questions: The Habitat Question — A look at where Arkansas stands at a crossroads on habitat.
- Asking the Right Questions: The Redistribution Question — The argument that Arkansas didn’t lose its mallards so much as lose the places that can hold them.
- Asking the Right Questions: Habitat or Redistribution — The companion piece tying the habitat and redistribution questions together.
- Friends in High Places — How Arkansas’s congressional delegation is representing hunters’ interests in Washington.
People and traditions
- Leaving a Legacy — The story of Andy Simmons, who gifted his family’s Pine Bluff farm to the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation before his death in 2021. It’s now the Andy Simmons Outdoor Skills Farm, hosting mentored duck hunts for youth, veterans, and first-time hunters every season since 2023.
- Generation Next — Gen Z hunters share their concerns about and hopes for the future of the sport.
- The Off Season — Following former Razorbacks slugger Camden Kozeal’s move from the diamond to the Arkansas duck woods.
- Forecast for Hunters: How Skot Covert Became Arkansas’ Go-To Duck-Hunting Weatherman — A Fayetteville meteorologist connects the dots between shifting weather patterns and Arkansas’s waterfowl numbers.
- Fine Tuning Man’s Best Friend — Retriever trainer Keith Allison’s decades of experience have made him “top dog” in his field.
- Feathers, Felonies and the Fine Art of Persuasion — The story of Johnny Riley, who built political influence the old-fashioned Arkansas way — with greenheads instead of greenbacks.
Gear and the Executive Q&A
- 2026 Guns & Gear — This year’s roundup of shotshells, calls, and other gear worth packing in the blind bag.
- Executive Q&A — Four Arkansas business leaders share their duck camp memories and blind-bag must-haves this year: Jillian Woodruff, Hunter Scott, Daniels Bynum, and Elliott Griffen.
Outstanding in Their Field
Two properties profiled in this year’s sponsored lodging feature stand out for clients thinking about the guided or retreat side of duck hunting: Caney Creek Kennels, a British Labrador breeding and training operation running on 30 years of old-school technique, and CrossHeirs Retreat Center, the 14,000-square-foot, 16-bedroom Big Jim’s Lodge on a 280-acre farm surrounded by Bayou Meto — once dubbed the “Taj Mahal of Duck Hunting” by the Wall Street Journal.
The visual side of the issue
Don’t skip the Photo Essay: My Best Shot, a collection of standout images from Arkansas photographers that sets the visual tone for the whole 2026 edition.
Why this issue is worth your time
Taken together, this year’s Greenhead is as much about the people and policy shaping Arkansas duck hunting as it is about the hunt itself — new regulations, a major land gift securing hunting access for the next generation, and honest conversations about habitat and pressure. For anyone who owns, hunts, or is evaluating Delta hunting ground, it’s a useful read on where the sport and the state’s public-land management are headed.
Read the full 2026 issue at greenhead.net, or subscribe to the Greenhead newsletter to get future editions as soon as they publish. Thinking about how any of these stories — new access rules, habitat pressure, land legacy planning — affects hunting property you own or are considering? Talk to Lile Real Estate.
