7 Duck Season Traditions Arkansans Plan Their Whole Year Around
Thanksgiving weekend means a pot of gumbo for many Arkansas families, and for some, the main ingredient is duck.
Duck season gives locals a lot to plan around besides the hunt itself.
These are the duck season traditions Arkansans plan their whole year around.
1. Wings Over the Prairie Festival
Duck season includes Wings Over the Prairie Festival, held in downtown Stuttgart on Thanksgiving weekend.
The festival’s site lists Nov. 27 and 28 as the 2026 dates and says it spans six city blocks downtown.
The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says the festival began in 1936 and is the largest festival of its kind on the Grand Prairie.
On Friday, Nov. 27, you can browse an arts and crafts fair, commercial exhibits and a sporting collectibles show starting at 10 a.m.
A carnival and midway also runs Tuesday through Saturday.
If you’d rather run than browse, the Great 5K & 10K Duck Race is a 5K and 10K run that starts at 7th and Main Street at 8 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 28.
2. World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest
The World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest started on Main Street in Stuttgart on Nov. 24, 1936, during the Arkansas Rice Carnival.
Thad McCollum of Stuttgart started it after a dispute among local duck hunters over who called best.
American Legion Post No. 48 sponsored that first contest.
The Legion bought the winner a hunting coat worth $6.60.
The first contest had 17 entries.
If you enter, you have to perform a 90-second routine with a hail call, a feed call, a mating call and a comeback call.
Five judges score each routine, and the contest drops the high and low scores.
You can catch the 91st annual contest at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 28, on the Main Street Stage.
The festival’s calling-championship page names Pat Peacock of Stuttgart as the only woman to win the contest, in 1955 and 1956.
3. Duck Gumbo Cook-Off
You’ll find the Duck Gumbo Cook-Off in the Producers Rice Mill parking lot at 901 N. Park Avenue on Saturday, Nov. 28.
The festival’s page says the cook-off has become a Thanksgiving tradition for many people.
The field is 55 teams competing for bragging rights to the World’s Best Duck Gumbo.
Teams also compete for a Best Booth award and have been known to work all year designing an eye-catching booth.
What the Duck Gumbo Cook-Off Requires
If you enter the Duck Gumbo Cook-Off, you have to cook 3 quarts of gumbo.
Half the meat in your recipe has to be duck.
Teams start cooking at 10 a.m., and final judging takes place at 3 p.m.
4. Queen Mallard Pageants
Duck season in Stuttgart includes the Queen Mallard Pageants.
The festival’s pageant page lists titleholders from 1956 through 2025, and you can read the full list there.
2020 is marked as a pandemic year.
Pat Peacock is the 1956 entry, the same year she won the calling contest for the second time.
A separate Junior Queen Mallard list starts in 1991.
The 2026 pageants are on Saturday, Nov. 21, at 7 p.m. at the Grand Prairie Center.
That’s opening day of duck season, six days before the festival’s Nov. 27-28 weekend.
5. Ducks Unlimited Banquets
Ducks Unlimited chapters across Arkansas hold membership banquets, and the group’s Arkansas event listings name more than a dozen this fall.
If you’re near Van Buren, Nov. 2 is the Crawford County chapter’s 45th annual membership banquet.
The Hurricane Lake chapter’s 45th annual banquet is Nov. 7 in Searcy.
Little Rock’s banquet is Nov. 5, Stuttgart’s sponsor banquet is Nov. 12 and Paragould’s is Nov. 19.
On Jan. 3, 2025, and again on Jan. 2, 2026, the Stuttgart chapter hosted its membership banquet at the Grand Prairie Center.
The Jan. 2, 2026 event page invited you to celebrate duck season in Stuttgart with a live and silent auction and lots of guns and hunting gear.
6. Junior Duck Calling Contests
Stuttgart’s junior duck calling contests start with a Children’s Duck Calling Class for ages 4 to 8, at 10 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 27.
If your kid is 13 or younger, the Butch Richenback Memorial Junior World’s Championship is at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 28.
On Tuesday, Nov. 24, a Rich N Tone Youth Duck Calling Contest starts at 6 p.m.
If your teenager is 14 to 16, there’s an Intermediate World Championship at 11 a.m. on Friday.
The Chick & Sophie Major Memorial contest covers ages 16 to 20, at noon on Saturday.
7. Youth and Veteran Hunt Weekend
Duck season ends Jan. 31, 2027, and AGFC’s youth and veteran hunt follows the next weekend.
AGFC held its youth waterfowl hunt Feb. 7-8, 2026, and its 2026-27 page sets the next one for Feb. 6-7, 2027.
Youths 15 and younger may harvest ducks, geese, coots and mergansers on those days.
If your young hunter hasn’t completed a hunter education course, the mentor with them must be 21 or older.
As the mentor, you may call waterfowl but you may not hunt them.
There’s also a veteran and active-duty military hunt on the same Feb. 6-7 dates.
Psst! How much do you know about the Grand Prairie? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Duck Country Trivia
Answer these questions on wetlands, prairie, and the Mississippi Flyway. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Beneath the topsoil of the Grand Prairie lies a layer that water can’t get through. What is it?
Champions Without Calls
Calling champion Thomas Walsh of Greenville, Mississippi, won the 1936 contest without a duck call, producing the sounds in his throat instead, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
In 1942, Herman Caillouet of Greenville, Mississippi, became the only other winner to do it.
To compete for the title, you have to win a preliminary state or regional contest first.
A 2025 festival page from Arkansas's public television network lists 65 qualifying competitions across the country.
Wingmead's Formal Dinners
Wingmead, a duck club south of DeValls Bluff, expected guests to arrive for dinner in formal dress.
If you pictured waders at the table, the dress code was black tie and dinner jackets for men and long dresses for women.
Edgar Monsanto Queeny established the club in 1937.
Guests arrived on Friday for a formal dinner, hunted ducks on Saturday and Sunday mornings and left on Sunday afternoon.
Guests included Walt Disney and outdoors writer Nash Buckingham.
The National Register of Historic Places listed Wingmead on May 23, 2011.
Greentree Reservoirs
AGFC's greentree reservoir page says greentree reservoirs were developed in the 1950s to offer reliably flooded bottomland hardwoods and provide habitat and duck hunting opportunity.
Renovation projects are listed for Bayou Meto, Black River, Bayou DeView, Hurricane Lake, Wattensaw and Harris Brake wildlife management areas.
If you hunt one of those areas, check the page for project details before you go.
Season Calendar
AGFC set the 2026-27 duck season in April.
After the opener, the second split runs Dec. 10-23, and the third runs Dec. 26 through Jan. 31, 2027.
If you're planning around the splits, you'll have a 10-day break from Nov. 30 through Dec. 9.
Together the three splits total 60 days: 9 in the first, 14 in the second and 37 in the third.
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