Eastern Arkansas is known for being home to some of the finest duck hunting south of the Canadian border. Greg Brasher can attest to that, having haunted its hunting grounds since he was just 12 years old.
“I started hunting at a young age,” Brasher says. “My dad took me on my first hunt. We hunted everything in Paragould.”
Brasher grew up in the thick of the conservation world, attending Ducks Unlimited banquets with his family alongside regular hunting outings. (The family also enjoys deer and turkey hunting.) That early education gave him the tools he needed to be a steward on his own land now as an adult.
Brasher and his brother, Blake, have managed three properties in the Jonesboro-Paragould area under Ducks Unlimited easements; two, they still own. The perpetual agreements represent a trade-off: the landowner gives up some land uses in exchange for conservation support from the nonprofit.
“You can’t do anything to those lands without their blessing, and they’re perpetual,” Brasher says.
Habitat loss is the biggest conservation challenge facing Arkansas, Brasher says, and that’s why he wanted to take a proactive approach on his own land. He’s growing a 5-acre nursery for hardwood oak trees to be transplanted into the main woods when they’re large enough.
“When we bought our woods, they were in pretty rough shape with water damage,” Brasher says.
Growing the new trees is a long process: “Once we get them up to 10 to 12 feet tall, we try to transfer them out to our woods. We’re trying to re-timber some of the stuff that’s died with trees that put out a lot of feed for ducks,” he says.
His dad was an influence as well, and Brasher is now passing the sport down to his own children, Belle and Skylar.
“I want them to see that you get back what you put into it, and you’ve got to respect the resource,” he says.
His son’s childhood experience at a Ducks Unlimited junior camp at the Five Oaks Duck Lodge was inspiring, Brasher says. The camp gave Skylar the opportunity to become a conservationist-in-training and showed Brasher what is possible on private land.
In the Hole
What do you think is the greatest conservation challenge in Arkansas right now?
“Habitat loss. If places are getting pumped up, it’s getting hunted, so we need to do a better job of putting water out there for the ducks.”
How does duck hunting today compare against the sport of your youth?
“It’s gotten worse. There’s too many people, an overpopulation of people. I think our Game and Fish needs to do a better job of regulating public areas. Those are huge to our duck population in Arkansas, and there’s so many people in the public areas that ducks can’t rest there anymore.”
