Quail, Pheasant Attract the Big Dogs

Gary George, president and CEO of George’s Inc. in Springdale, said he pheasant hunts because he’s a bad shot and the birds are the easiest to hit. r

“You can usually be telling jokes, and when one gets up, two or three will get to shoot and I can claim I hit it,” George said.r

He’s actually serious about getting to the Dakotas to spend time with his sons hunting pheasants. George’s best pheasant hunt was a 200-yard walk in which his party killed 46 birds.r

Tim Kizer, director of the Center for Management and Executive Development at the University of Arkansas’ Walton College, is mad about any kind of bird hunting. The Pine Bluff native said he grew up on a rice farm hunting ducks and has spent time as a fly-fishing guide in Montana.r

He can talk for hours about pheasant roosters’ “escape and evasion tactics.”r

“I don’t do much hunting that doesn’t involve dogs,” Kizer said.r

The passion for birddogs that the late Sam Walton described in his autobiography has apparently been carried on by his son, Jim Walton, and grandchildren. r

Former Tyson Foods Inc. executives Buddy Wray and Leland Tollet could also be penciled in as pros for any hunting category.r

“If it flies, I like to hunt it,” Wray said. “I love watching them big ol’ green heads glide down through tree limbs in flooded timber.”r

Greg Lee, Tyson Foods’ chief administrative officer, has a cabin near Kingsland where he’s been hunting deer with a group of friends for more than 20 years. He shoots a pump-action Browning and is as apt to take off for the Dakotas to hunt pheasant as he is to head to south Arkansas for white-tail deer.