As traditional as the Dallas Cowboys playing every Thanksgiving at home is the team’s owner, North Little Rock native Jerry Jones, hustling back home to Arkansas after the game’s conclusion to enjoy the state’s duck hunting and big events surrounding the first week of the season. It’s not unusual to see Jones at Stuttgart’s Wings Over the Prairie festival and the party scene of the Duck Gumbo Cook-off. Mostly, though, it marks a return for Jones and his sons, who are also involved in the Cowboys’ day-to-day operations, to Red Hill, the family’s hunting club a few miles south of Stuttgart, as they add to the memories of lives spent around hunting. “Before the Cowboys my principal activity — in fact, I intertwined it with work — was hunting and fishing,” Jones said during a recent visit to Little Rock. “I return to Arkansas a lot now and usually 90 percent of it I’m involving a hunting or fishing outing when I come.” Jones found a bond with his father, Pat, through hunting and fishing while growing up in Rose City. Similarly, Jerry Jones has spent special times in the duck woods, on a deer stand or in a fishing boat with his sons, Stephen and Jerry Jr., and his son-in-law Shy Anderson. “I think it’s healthy for youth, hunting,” he said. “I got to grow up with a dad that exposed me to hunting and I got excited about it. And consequently, we’ve done that. All four of us are avid hunters.” Nine years ago, Jerry Jones was the recipient of the Central Arkansas Duck’s Unlimited chapter’s first Sportsman’s Award, in which the organizers asked the Cowboys owner if they could name it in his honor. The award, honoring contributions to the state’s outdoors, has since gone to such avid state sportsmen as former Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Arkansas Game and Fish commissioners Sheffield Nelson and George Dunklin. Jones has been helping many of the local Ducks Unlimited chapters in Arkansas for many years, donating the use of his hunting lodge or trips to see the Cowboys to help generate funds for the chapter. But few people outside Stuttgart may know of his efforts to help boost the Wings Over the Prairie Festival. Sheffield Nelson said Stuttgart’s main annual festival that now draws 30,000-40,000 a year during the Thanksgiving weekend was suffering financially with no sponsor when Jones, who had bought the Cowboys in 1989, rose up to help. “He stepped in with the strength of the Cowboys, his name, brought the [Dallas Cowboy] Cheerleaders up, brought the Cowboys [memorabilia] bus up, and was instrumental in getting people attending again,” Nelson said. “They continue to flow money into it. The Cowboys are
“Before the Cowboys my principal activity — in fact, I intertwined it with work — was hunting and fishing,”
a major sponsor and Jerry helped revive it, and Stephen has continued that. Jerry came up with making it a big deal. Of course, he had close ties being out of North Little Rock. He loves it and he means a lot to the operation of that event.”
ON THE HILL Jones and his sons are only about a 15-minute drive south of Stuttgart when they encamp at Red Hill — it truly is the only elevation of note in Arkansas County, hence the name — which is in close proximity to George Dunklin’s Five Oaks Hunting Club. Jones says that before he bought the Cowboys, duck season had his complete attention. “Sometimes, I would go down to the club and just stay there for days on end, not even shaving, just hunting all the time,” he said. He intended to call the lodge by a different name, and he even sent out invitations to a first event there inviting friends to “The Magnum Club.” But he soon learned that everyone referred to the area where the lodge sits as Red Hill, and that name stuck. Jones leases a reservoir not far from the lodge and in close proximity to the Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area for duck hunting Red Hill became the traditional site for the Jones Family Thanksgiving, and it stayed that way even after he purchased the Cowboys. “These guys have hunted up a storm there,” Jones said of his sons and son-and-law, who were with him in October during a visit in Little Rock. “It’s a big part of our lineage. We’ve been hunting it for years. It just feels good to be there, to be at the Gumbo Cook-off, to be a big part of the whole festivities that are there. It’s an important part of our life.” Nelson said of Jones and Red Hill, “He used to spend a lot of time there. I never thought of how many days he was there, but he loved to hunt and had a lot more time back then. More critically he was bringing up his boys at the time and got them into hunting. “I’ve gone hunting there many times through the years with Jerry, Stephen and Jerry Jr. and the people they would bring or that I would bring. He has a great operation there, great people working with him. It’s a tremendous place to hunt and to have fun. It’s really matured through the years. There are a lot of ducks on it and it’s a great place to get away.” Now, with the Cowboys, the Joneses don’t get away as much during the late fall, they admit. Having to maintain “America’s Team,” they have to take their free time when they can get it. Jerry Jr. said, “I have an annual trip with members of the [Catholic High School] class of ’88, about three or four of them, and they bring their wives or their sons and daughters. It’s a memory that you get to share not only of Continued on page 32 Winter 2013 Arkansas Wild | 29