Sometimes life has a funny way of bringing in the right people at the right time. Such was the case when Jerrad Hicks met the late Dr. Doyne Williams; the pair seemed to share more differences than similarities when they met, but over time, became like family.
Hicks was only 15 when he took a job at the Remington Gun Club in Lonoke with his best friend Jody Bray. It didn’t take him long to notice the older gentleman, an exceptional trap shooter, who rarely looked up from his shooting station.
“He wouldn’t even speak to me because he was so zoned in on practicing skeet,” Hicks recalls of Williams. “One day, out of the blue, he started talking to me. He’s like, ‘Well, I heard you like to duck hunt.’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘We’ve got a pretty good club south of Humnoke.’ He said, ‘One day, I’ll get you down there.’
“That was Doyne Williams. That was at Bull Sprig. And so, for the next 22 years, I hunted with him.”
Meeting a Mentor
Williams — Doc, to Jerrad and Jody — was one of the preeminent heart surgeons in the country through the latter half of the 20th century. He led cardiac surgery at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and cardiovascular surgery at the St. Vincent Infirmary (now CHI St. Vincent) at various points while performing complex and difficult surgeries, like separating conjoined twins.
Williams served as a surgeon in the Vietnam War, and before he left, a friend mentioned plans to purchase land on the Big Ditch. On his return, he purchased a membership in what would become one of the premier duck hunting clubs in the state, Bull Sprig Hunting Club.
By the time Hicks started hunting with Williams, ‘Doc’ was president of the club and deeply involved in managing the land. He recruited Hicks to help in the off-season, and eventually had a small crew of young men eager to help out for a chance to hunt the historic land.
“We would brush and build duck blinds. There’s five holes in Bull Sprig, and we have five duck blinds, one duck blind in each hole, and every summer we would go out there and clean everything up, make sure the blinds were stable,” Hicks recalls.
Regular hunting trips at Bull Sprig are a rare privilege; Hicks says membership at the club has largely stayed with the original group of owners, passed down through generations. Members are held to high standards, with rules including a 24 mallard limit, a requirement to leave the woods by 9 a.m. and to pick up any decoys used every day.
What Williams provided Hicks was more than just a few fun days out, though; over the years, he became a mentor, confidante and friend.
“We had thousands of hours of time to talk, over either breakfast or duck hunting, and so me and him talked about everything. There was a period of time, 20 years probably, where I talked to him more than I talked to my family, because you’re just sitting out there every day,” Hicks says.
Describing Williams, Hicks paints a picture of a witty, offbeat individual who didn’t put much stock into what others thought of him. In addition to his impressive surgical career, Williams was a member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in recognition of his several Grand American trapshooting titles, and Hicks estimates that he saw more ducks in his lifetime than 99% of hunters.
“He had a real dry wit. Super, super, super smart. He could fix anything; he would make his own tools to fix — like if the boat motor broke, he could build the part,” Hicks says. “There were a lot of days it would just be me and him — because it’d be during the week, and I’d basically skip school to duck hunt with him. I was afraid to tell him no.”
“He wanted to give back,” Bray adds.
Becoming a Member
In 2022, Hicks got an unexpected opportunity to join Bull Sprig. He’s one of only a dozen or so to buy in (most other memberships have been handed down through families).
“I think it had been almost 20 years since a membership had sold. … A guy was wanting to get out, so I was able to buy his membership,” Hicks says. “Another membership came up soon after I bought mine, and my close friend, McCall Hogan, joined, so we’ve brought, maybe, a new set of eyes.”
Hicks says since he joined, club members have started implementing new strategies to maintain Bull Sprig’s reputation as a peerless club in Arkansas amid constant pressure on waterfowl populations.
“We kind of rejuvenated the place,” Hicks says. “We’re planting close to 90 acres of food plots for ducks. Now we’ve changed some of the rules on leaving the woods earlier, so we can give the ducks more time to rest.”
“Our goal is to make our 1,100 acres the best we can make it,” he adds.
Doc passed away in March at 89. These days, Hicks and the friends who joined him on hunts with Williams are working to live up to the ideals they learned from their mentor.
“He wanted to share duck hunting with people who might not get a chance to. Me and Jerrad get to take a lot of people, a lot of people, who probably wouldn’t ever get a chance to hunt that area. That’s what Doc did for us,” says Jody Bray, Hicks’ best friend and a regular guest at Bull Sprig.
“Bull Sprig is on another level, and he shared it with us. … He really didn’t have to.”
