About the Authors

BRENT BIRCH

Birch is a lifelong waterfowler that cut his teeth duck hunting in the White River Bottoms at Crocketts Bluff as well as rice fields and reservoirs across Lonoke, Prairie and Arkansas counties. Birch is co-creator and editor of Greenhead: The Arkansas Duck Hunting Magazine and founder of the Arkansas Waterfowler Hall of Fame located in Stuttgart, Arkansas. Starting in 2023, Birch became a co-host of The Standard Sportsman podcast and was appointed to chair the AGFC Director's Hunting Advisory Council. 

As an avid outdoorsman and a proponent of getting youth active in the outdoors, he serves on the board of the Arkansas Game & Fish Foundation. 

CONTRIBUTORS

JEFF CHURAN

Jeff Churan owns a farm in Missouri that is managed intensively for crop production and waterfowl habitat. He belongs to a duck club in Manitoba and owns a home in Arkansas adjacent to the White River National Wildlife Refuge. He has served on the Missouri Conservation Commission and as Ducks Unlimited’s senior vice-president for conservation programs. He was named the Budweiser Outdoorsman of the Year in 1997 and Quail Unlimited’s Landowner of the Year in 2006. In 2014 he was inducted into the Missouri Waterfowlers’ Hall of Fame.

JOHN GORDON

John Gordon works in media relations for Banded Brands and Avery Outdoors. His lifelong pursuit of waterfowling led to a career in the industry with more than twenty years’ experience as a professional guide. His writing can be found in numerous periodicals on both the local and national level.

DWAIN HEBDA

Dwain Hebda, president of Ya!Mule Wordsmiths, is a veteran writer, editor and journalist. Nebraskan by birth, Southern by the grace of God, he lives in Little Rock with his wife, Darlene, and their three pampered dogs, Hootie, Oakley, and Cash.

KENNETH L. KIESER

Kenneth L. Kieser, a veteran writer with more than fifty awards in outdoor journalism, was inducted into the National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame as a Legendary Communicator in 2010 and into the Missouri Waterfowlers’ Hall of Fame as a writer in 2013. In 2014, the Conservation Federation of Missouri honored him as Conservation Communicator of the year, and the Kansas Wildlife Federation gave him the same honor in 2015.