Serving as president of my hunting club has been a fascinating study of group dynamics, organization and logistics.
The club elected me president in 2022. Also elected treasurer was PJ Spaul. Spaul was a longtime spokesman for the Corps of Engineers Little Rock District. Before he retired, we were frequent sparring partners on the job. I’m the guy who looks at the big picture and tries to figure out how to keep this whole thing going three, five, ten years from now. Spaul handles the details. He’s the guy who keeps everything going month to month.
We are a large club and lease approximately 4,400 acres from four landowners. This means that we have to write four large checks to four different tenants each year. If our payments are a day late, the leasing agent charges us a large fee. We learned this the hard way in our first year in office when a bank error delayed the processing of our checks. We were shocked when the leasing agent charged us fees of several thousand dollars.
Fortunately, our bank admitted the mistake and a bank representative wrote a letter absolving the club of responsibility. The leasing broker waived the late fees, but Spaul and I learned our lesson. Now we pay the leases with cashier’s checks.
These are lonely jobs. Hunting is secondary to us. The president has to settle disputes among members, many of which are petty and irrelevant. For example, we strictly maintain a distance of 275 meters between hunting stands. This is primarily for safety, but also to ensure that members do not feel crowded. We have about 50 members and each is allowed three stands. I only have two, but most members are very keen on their third stand. This makes it difficult for new members to find a place to hunt.
A new member set up a stand 230 meters from my main stand. The solution was simple. 45 meters further and everything is perfect. It was completely friendly.
Other conflicts are not so peaceful. A group of new members have set up camp on a fresh wooden deck on a main road, about 320 meters from the stand of one of our oldest members, who has exclusive use of this part of the property.
“This camp is cutting off the deer from my stand,” he complained.
“There are at least 150 stands on this property,” I said. “Each of them affects the movements of the deer. They are outside the 300-yard limit, so they have every right to be there.”
This member pointed the new members to a new spot to camp. Unfortunately, it had been unofficially occupied by another group for about 20 years. Now we had two big problems. The existing camp had never paid the landowner the required fee to maintain camp at that spot. The new group had paid the fee and therefore had a legal claim to the spot. Ultimately, I moved them back to their original spot. The old group paid their fee, but the guy who feels harassed feels disrespected too.
Previously, lease fees remained stable for two to three years. Now they increase every year, and the agent told us they will continue to increase annually indefinitely. This makes budgeting more difficult, but also means our members have to pay higher dues each year.
When we expressed our concerns to the broker, we were told that there are many hunters in Texas looking for leases in Arkansas because the price per acre is much lower here. If our members are priced out of the market, there are many others lining up to replace us. Sorry, but that’s the way business works.
This is happening at a time when landowners are aggressively logging. We have very little mature timber. We have a lot of new and recently logged forests that have grown into thickets that are no longer huntable or soon will be unhuntable.
At the same time, Benton is growing from the north and Sheridan from the south. New housing developments are being built all around us and new utilities are being laid. Our days are numbered.
I would even say that many clubs are in the same situation. People need new places to live and shop, but this means the end of an era and a lifestyle.
