4 Named to Arkansas Waterfowler Hall of Fame

The Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie announced four new inductees into the Arkansas Waterfowler Hall of Fame.

The four will be honored at an induction ceremony May 23 at The Grand Prairie Center in Stuttgart.

This year’s honorees are: 

• John Stephens, owner of president of RNT Calls. Stephens began calling at age 11 with lessons from RNT Calls founder Butch Richenback. He was the youngest to ever qualify for the World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest at age 13, and eventually went on to win the World’s Championship for the maximum of 3 times in 1995, 1998 and 2005. In 2015, he became the Champion of Champions. His custom, handcrafted and private line of calls, J. Stephens Calls, are some of the most sought after calls in the industry.
• Jody Pagan, founder and owner of Ecosystems Protection Service. His experience ranges from working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service as a biologist for nearly a decade, to revitalizing the hunting scene at Five Oaks as the chief biologist. Pagan builds and rehabilitates hunting ecosystems throughout North America and South America, including significant work in the Arkansas Grand Prairie. Pagan’s goal is to impact at least 1 million acres of ecosystems in his lifetime.
• Otis McCollum, who is considered one of the fathers of Stuttgart’s commercial duck hunting industry. He pioneered the strategy of building levees to hold water for green tree reservoirs, 15 miles of which still stand today. At his peak, McCollum had built more than 7,000 acres of hunting lands, most of which had previously been farmland. 
• Joe Mosby, a professional writer who covered Arkansas outdoors for decades. Mosby wrote thousands of newspaper articles, most of which he published as the outdoor editor for the Arkansas Gazette. After the Gazette closed in 1991, Mosby went on to write for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission until his death in 2015. He also produced the Arkansas Outdoors newsletter and wrote countless other articles for magazines, brochures, books, and publications. Mosby even wrote his own obituary, saying, “I was something of a different kind of outdoor writer because I was a newsman assigned to the outdoor beat instead of an outdoorsman becoming a writer.”  

Proceeds from the ceremony will benefit the Museum of the Arkansas Grand Prairie in Stuttgart, which houses the Arkansas Waterfowler Hall of Fame.

The event is organized by committee members including chair Jim Ronquest, Brent Birch, Michelle Blasengame and Greg Churan. The event was previously coordinated by Arkansas Business.

“Arkansas’ waterfowl industry is known as the best in the nation because of the investments made by these individuals,” Ronquest said in a statement. “The Waterfowler Hall of Fame is an opportunity to highlight the significant efforts and impacts of the inductees while honoring their legacies.”