EP 507. The Maggie Williams, Arkansas Public Land Duck Hunter

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where today I’ve got Maggie Williams all the way from Arkansas. Maggie, how the heck are you?

Maggie Williams: I am wonderful. How are you doing?

Ramsey Russell: I’m doing fine. I’m very glad to have you here. We got a lot of mutual friends in the industry, and they all describe you, Maggie, as a duck hunter. Well, first and foremost as a duck hunter. And he said, no, I mean a real duck hunter.

Maggie Williams: That’s what I like to say, I am. That’s what I strive to be every day during duck season. So I appreciate that. Those are kind sentiments. Now, I’ve heard everyone speak very highly of you as well. On my way down here, I texted Ryan Yarnell and Ed Wall both asking about you, and they both just had the highest regards for you.

Ramsey Russell: Well, I think the world of both them boys, too. You talk about being a real duck hunter, you grew up where? Where are you from, I’ll start there. Where are you from? What are your earliest memories in hunting?

Maggie Williams: I am from heaven on earth, I’m from northeast Arkansas.

Ramsey Russell: Northeast Arkansas.

Maggie Williams: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: And how did you grow into this hunting thing? How does a northeast Arkansas girl get into duck hunting? Does all the girls in northeast Arkansas get into duck hunting?

Maggie Williams: It’s funny you say that, because no. So I’m a 4^th generation public timber hunter. I always just say that my daddy’s generation was the first just not to have a boy. But he was taken by his daddy, and he was taken by his daddy, and then it was just my turn, and my daddy had two daughters. But know that there’s not a ton of women around Northeast Arkansas that duck hunt. I mean, my dad told me the story. He said that he had duck hunted every day at duck season for years, and the first girl that he saw on the WMA that we hunt was me. It was the one that he brought.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. You don’t see a lot of women on public land duck hunt. I mean, honestly, you don’t.

Maggie Williams: Not at all.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t. Do you remember your first hunt or your first duck? Can you remember that?

Maggie Williams: Yeah. Oh, yeah. My very first duck hunt ever. My dad took me to a hole that he’d hunted all his life, and so where I like to duck hunt, where I’ve always grown up duck hunting. We’ve got slough boat parking and everything. So he loaded me up in our riverboat and he loaded me up in our slough boat with me and my daddy and a dog and he had me propped up on a dog stand. I was just wearing cheap neoprene waders, that’s all we had back then, and I’ll never forget that I had a snicker bar in my top wader pocket, and we killed one duck that day. One duck. I got to shoot my first Mallard. I was 10 years old. I said, daddy, this is just the greatest thing ever. I said, we got to eat candy bars, we got to pet on dogs, I mean, it was just great. It was awesome that, we were up for the sun rose, and we got to hang out and ride boats. I just thought that was the greatest thing ever. And I really think that my dad thought that would be a short lived hobby of ours. And I just told him, I said, hey, I’m ready to go back whenever you are. And I’ve been going with him ever since.

Ramsey Russell: When did it dawn on him that that wasn’t just a passing fad, that he had a duck hunting buddy with you?

Maggie Williams: I mean, really, it was on from then on. So, he realized that he had to keep buying waders every year, because I was growing out of them as fast as he could buy them.

Ramsey Russell: That’s the problem having kids at duck hunt.

Maggie Williams: Yeah, that’s right. But, yeah, he knew I was in it with him. And it was important to him to treat me like a duck hunter, not a little girl. And I credit him a lot for my success as an adult in my personality, and it made me a lot about who I am. Just because he didn’t hold my hand in the woods, he didn’t baby me. He always told me, if you want to hunt with the big boys, you got to act like a big boy. I mean, I was 13 or 14, shooting a 12 gauge because he didn’t want to carry two kinds of shells for me. He said, I buy one kind of shells, I’ll get you this gun, if you want a duck hunt, that’s what you got to do. I mean, but, hey, he made sure I was always involved in the hunt, throwing out decoys, picking up decoys as early as I could learn to blow a duck call. If I was going, I had to blow a duck call. I mean, that was the way it was. He let me be one of the “boys” with him, and he and his best friends took me under their wing and included me, and that’s just what we did.

Ramsey Russell: Duck hunting is a hands on sport.

Maggie Williams: It is.

Ramsey Russell: It really is. You get the most out of it by being hands on. I mean, whether you’re interacting with the ducks or interacting with the people or putting out the decoys or slogging through the mud, it’s just kind of what we do anywhere you go in the world. What are some of your fondest memories of being raised in the swamps by your daddy?

Maggie Williams: That’s funny you say that, because that’s the first time that’s ever been publicly said, that’s where I’ve been raised. I’ve kept that under wraps all these years of where I duck hunt. But that being said, the older I get, the more I tell people it’s not just one great WMA. We travel all up and down the state now that I’m older. But if I’m just a memory of growing up with my daddy, I don’t know, being a dog handler and having a dog as a woman, it’s been so great. It’s been something that me and my dad enjoy. He loves my dog as much as I do, and that’s just been really fun, that’s something that we’ve been able to bond over. But besides being a retriever handler, blowing duck calls with my daddy, that’s just so much fun from a very –

Ramsey Russell: Did he teach you to duck call?

Maggie Williams: Yeah, he did.

Ramsey Russell: Do you duck call?

Maggie Williams: Yeah, absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: Same kind of duck call that he blew.

Maggie Williams: Well, he had me blowing J-frames as a kid, but now that I’m an adult, I love to blow a cut down.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Maggie Williams: So I posted on Facebook one time, I said, hey, I need a PSO, I need to buy one. I was in high school and my papa called me, he said, why are you posting on Facebook for a duck call? You know where to come get one. So I drove half a mile down the road to his house and he had his little display, and he let me pick out my oak. So I got my first cut down nut call from.

Ramsey Russell: What kind of call does he still blow?

Maggie Williams: My papa no longer duck hunts due to age and health. But my daddy likes to blow J-frame. Just single reed J-frame. He’s not real picky.

Ramsey Russell: It’s kind of an Arkansas thing.

Maggie Williams: That is an Arkansas thing. But I like to blow a cut down.

Ramsey Russell: I think the cut downs sound good. I was blowing some of them at the Delta Waterfowl expo where we met, and it takes them long to blow a cut down.

Maggie Williams: It does, but it’s so crunchy. I love that pop.

Ramsey Russell: I do too.

Maggie Williams: As I’ve gotten older, that’s all I like to blow. I was running around and I blew some of Devin Singletons there, and they were great. And I went over to power calls and they had a neat one, too. I really like. So I loved blow cut down.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve been born and raised hunting public land in Arkansas?

Maggie Williams: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: What are some of the good, bad and ugly of public land? Because I do believe some of the best hunting anywhere is on public land. And I believe some of the best hunters I’ve ever met are public land duck hunters. I think just the competitive nature of it all. You either win or you lose. You sink or you swim.

Maggie Williams: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: So what was it like growing up hunting public?

Maggie Williams: I saw a boy get punched in the face on a levee for the first time when I was 15 years old, if that tells you what it was like to grow up on public land, but it’s not all bad. It’s not all bad, but you ask me what it was like, I tell you, man, I got so many memories of going on public land.

Ramsey Russell: You never punched nobody in the face, have you?

Maggie Williams: Oh, no. If there’s every altercation I’m watching from afar, I can assure you that. But you asked me what it was like growing up. But my earliest memories is me and my dad and his buddies. And you can see me looking at me right now. I mean, I’m a bean pole. And you need to imagine me in high school, real skinny little thing, and we’d be trying to pull a boat from wherever he got it stuck that day, there wasn’t enough water to run it, but we were always just not running into trouble. But it seems like it’s always something on public land. But the older I get, I realize that it’s just – the trouble now is running to people more than anything.

Ramsey Russell: It’s the people.

Maggie Williams: It’s the people. And I have really unfortunately seen that kind of become the downfall of Arkansas duck hunting. And it’s sad because my dad always said, ducks ain’t what they used to be, the people ain’t what they used to be either. It’s a changing game.

Ramsey Russell: You’ve been hunting since you were 10. You’re 22 years old, that’s 12 years. Has it gotten worse in that 12 year period? The people problem? I hear stories about 70, 80, 90 people on opening day in a duck hole, which sounds like a circus to me. Does that really happen?

Maggie Williams: Oh, yeah, it happens. It’s terrible. The people thing is getting worse. Last year, opening weekend, it was opening morning, I had some really good friends of mine invited me to come hunt, and we planned on probably hunting, like 15 that morning, and that’s a busy morning. 15 people in a hole is arguably too many. But it was a great big hole, and everyone wanted to bring a friend, myself included. We knew we were probably going to get into them. So it was a big group, that’s what it was. I left my dog at home just because I knew it was going to be a crowd. And the boy we had run the hole for us, great hole runner. Won the hole fair and square, left it 04:00 on the dock, got the spot, we’re all celebrating, and we’ve got three more boats pull in the hole, and we’re like, man, hey, what are you doing? They said, oh, it’s the only place we’ve ever hunted in Arkansas, and we’re going to hunt here this morning, too. And it’s public land, you can’t turn people away. But I always try to give people an alternative.

Ramsey Russell: Why can’t you turn people away, though? I know I’m a lot older than you are, but back in the day, when I was closer to your age than mine, if 3 or 4 of us got into a public duck hole fair and square, it was yours. You hung up lights, and people respected that. People left you alone to go do their thing, and they won another day, and they got to get into where they wanted to get. When did that change? How did it change?

Maggie Williams: The honor code in Arkansas is just, the honor system, I’d say is evaporating as I get older. But I really think that part of the problem is, and I will preface this by saying, I am pro out of state hunter. I’m an out of state turkey hunter everywhere I go, I like to travel to duck hunt. So I think everyone needs to enjoy the resource.

Ramsey Russell: Same here.

Maggie Williams: But that being said, there’s a lot of people that come a real long ways, and they feel entitled, well, I came this far, I didn’t come this far not to get mine, I didn’t come this far to get beat, I didn’t come this far to back down. There’s also kids that are local that I grew up with that I call my friends, and they have the mentality that, oh, man, my granddaddy cut this hole in 19 blah, blah, and I have every right to hunt this hole. And it’s really, it’s a pissing match you can’t win.

Ramsey Russell: No, we all lose.

Maggie Williams: Everyone loses. So, I mean, my daddy always says, you always got to follow your own moral compass. But I think if we would respect each other more, I mean, it would go so far. And I think one thing that my generation does not realize because we’re young adults is that we are only hurting ourselves because I tell them, I said, if you think the Game & Fish doesn’t have a slideshow of all the altercations that happened this winter, they got called about, you’re wrong. Acting a fool only makes them put more restrictions on us as duck hunters.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve been halfway across the world, all the way in Australia, and been asked about the Arkansas boat races. Everybody in the world, because of YouTube and social media, seen that foolishness.

Maggie Williams: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s crazy.

Maggie Williams: Well, that’s the name of the game. I mean, if you want to participate, that’s just what you do. You got to get it there at 04:00 and respect takeoff time and get to where you want to go. But I think there’s also no point in racing if you’re just going to go hunt with whoever gets. If you’re going to invade on someone else who earned the spot right, then, heck, come in right before shooting with breakfast for everybody at least.

Ramsey Russell: Make friends, not enemies.

Maggie Williams: Make friends, not enemies. Yeah. There’s no reason to get up early and race if you’re just going to hunt wherever you want to anyway.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You spend almost 60 days a year duck hunting in Arkansas, does your daddy hunt with you all the time? You all still a number one hunting buddies?

Maggie Williams: We’re still a number one hunting buddies, but he works more now than he did then. We’ve had a couple really dry years, which is bad for duck hunters, but it’s great for dirt hollers. My daddy has a land leveling business, so if it’s dry, he’s working, unfortunately. But that being said, when I was a kid, wintertime was our time. He’d work all summer like a dog. I mean, 80 hours a week or more. And then wintertime, he had to block off his schedule. But he became the mayor when I was in high school, so for 4 years of my life, he had a desk job. And so by the time I could drive was the time that he became the mayor. So I was like, I kind of had to learn to make hunting buddies and hunt without them for the first time in my life.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Does he ever talk about back in his day when he was your age, or back in his daddy’s day when he was your age, how things have changed or when things changed.

Maggie Williams: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: In terms of duck hunter behavior, you know? Because you said somewhere along the way about how a lot of this negative behavior affects Arkansas Game & Fish, putting the reins on these hobbies of ours and limit. And we really need less limit, not more. Less rules, not more. We need to learn to police ourselves.

Maggie Williams: Correct.

Ramsey Russell: Because it’s us against them, meaning everybody that ain’t a duck hunter that’s trying to take our habitat and take our time and take our hunting seasons and everything else, we need to band together and know. Maggie, I’ve had people tell me, Arkansas hunters, that they make friends more readily with out of staters than they do with their own fellow statesmen.

Maggie Williams: I see that some. I got some great mentors in my life that are older men and they’ve been fighting over the same duck hunting spots for 50 years. So, I mean, they’re all from Arkansas, but I have lots of friends that hunt from out of state. I have lots of friends that are locals, I just think that people get really hot in the moment, and people kind of realize that this is what we do for fun, you know what I mean? We don’t need to make it life or death. I mean, the boys at Felsimthal, that we’ve got their heads beat in with a push pull. I mean, that’s just not necessary, you know?

Ramsey Russell: Arkansas was one of the first states to pass an anti-hunter harassment law, and one of the first people in America prosecuted under an anti-hunter harassment law was an Arkansas duck hunter fighting over a duck hole.

Maggie Williams: I believe that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, it’s a true story.

Mallards Only: A Time of Selective Hunting.

And my dad said that in all of his years of duck hunting, he cannot remember being a kid before he was old enough to drive and being late for church on a Sunday. He said, they’d hunt every day at duck season, they’d get their ducks, their mallards, no scrap ducks, but they’d get their mallards and leave.

Maggie Williams: I believe that wholeheartedly. But you ask about my dad’s stories from how it’s changed, my dad’s, his earliest memory, duck hunting, he was carried in, he was 4 years old, hunting with his dad, and he’s been going ever since. And whenever he was a kid, they hunted what they called the Piggott hole. And the boys from across town or in the next county over, they’d be in the Paragould hole, and the boys from Jonesboro would hunt the Jonesboro hole. And it is so on and so forth. Everyone had their respective spots, and it was just an honor system. You left your decoys there, people didn’t shoot at wood ducks, people didn’t try to mess up your hunt. People just went and got their mallards and left. And my dad said that in all of his years of duck hunting, he cannot remember being a kid before he was old enough to drive and being late for church on a Sunday. He said, they’d hunt every day at duck season, they’d get their ducks, their mallards, no scrap ducks, but they’d get their mallards and leave. And that’s just what they did, that was their way of life. And it’s crazy because the ducks are a lot different, the pressure’s a lot different, the people are a lot different. It’s a changing game. And that’s also a big factor in why my daddy does not duck hunt near as much anymore. He saw the golden days of Arkansas, and he’ll tell me, call me when it’s good, but I don’t want to hunt with 20 people. And it’s hard.

Ramsey Russell: What about you? Would you rather go out with 20 people and shoot and say shoot a limit with 20 people? Would you rather go out by yourself and shoot 3 ducks for just you and Kate?

Maggie Williams: I love to just go out with my dog. My daddy gets so worried about me being out there by myself, but I tell him, I said, hey, out here on this river, if someone sees a blond ponytail and I don’t need help, I’ll be fine. I mean, I know everybody. They all know me. We’ve all grown up around each other, so, I mean, I feel safer out there, and I feel a lot of places, but I love spending time alone with my dog, but if I can get 2 or 3 good friends with me, I think that’s, like, the golden number for people. I think that’s just so much fun because it’s still intimate, but it’s a social sport, and that’s what makes it so special. So I love spending time with people I care about out there, but just the same, if I can’t find anyone to go, me and my dog will go.

Ramsey Russell: I don’t mind hunting by myself sometimes. And I like the relationships and the connection with people in a duck blind it’s different than anywhere else. You meet a lot of people at an expo, but you don’t meet them at the level you do is just sharing a good morning or bad morning in a duck blind. I don’t know what it is about it.

Maggie Williams: You can bomb with someone a whole lot on a terrible morning and a great morning in different ways. My good friend Lauren, we were in Arkansas, I was taking him to a spot, but anyway, we got lost in the dark and it was just a whole deal. My phone died, so I didn’t know where we were going on my little onyx map because I didn’t have it. And anyway, we had no service, so I couldn’t download it on her map. And we got daylight, we got to where we were going, and we actually were lucky enough to still get our ducks. And it was a great story to tell, but I thought she was going to kill me walking around just lost and tired and it was just a long day, but I thought we bonded a lot more than we would have if it was a great morning everything went smoothly, it’s a better story to tell.

Ramsey Russell: Do you ever do that? Do you ever just take off through the woods and with a couple of decoys in tow, just walk aimlessly till you find the ducks? Is that a thing?

Maggie Williams: I mean, we’ll scout. I’ll scout just till I find the ducks. But I mean, typically, if we’re hunting, I like to have a game plan in mind, I like to tell my daddy at least where I’m going, or at least the general area where I’m going that way, if I’m not back at noon, somebody knows where to come look for me. But, yeah, I mean, if I’m by myself, I like to kayak if there’s enough water, I like to kayak.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. How many days are those 60 during the duck season, how many of those days do you get to, do you have to share with the crowds versus just, you get to get away and do your thing and experience magic with a few friends.

Maggie Williams: Oh, man. Out of 60, I hunted all 60 last year.

Ramsey Russell: Half the time you got away from the crowd, maybe.

Maggie Williams: No, less than half. I mean, it’s still magical sometimes when there’s a crowd, but it’s just a tiring time of year. You got to beat them every day. You got to beat the crowd every day and try to get away, as far away from it as you can. Try to get your ducks before they realize where you’re getting them. But, I mean, there’s a crowd. And I think that Arkansas Game & Fish tried to limit what days out of staters could hunt on state ground. And I don’t know if there’s even a benefit to that because yeah, they can hunt federal land as well, great for them. But that just means that there’s more in staters to come on the days that out of state hunters can’t hunt, more in staters, hey, I think I’m going go, we have to fight the out of state crowd.

Ramsey Russell: Won’t be the crowd.

Maggie Williams: Yeah, well, they make the crowd, and then the out staters come, and it’s just a fight no matter what. Like I said, I’m not anti out of stater by any means, but I think limiting days people can hunt only just selectively changes the pressure.

Ramsey Russell: How has duck hunting shaped your life from such a young age? I mean, and gosh, it’s funny how – just think about this, Maggie. There’s a lot of folks, myself included, that got real jobs, that if we’re lucky, we get to go out every Saturday and Sunday for seven weeks, 14, 15 days, maybe take a holiday, maybe we get crazy and take a week, now we got, whatever, 20 days. That’s a big difference between folks like me and you hunting way more than that. How else has it shaped your life?

Maggie Williams: Well, I’ll be honest with you, my high school principal can attest to this. I was a real good kid in school, I made good grades, I wasn’t no trouble in class. But that being said, I wouldn’t show up for school. And I thank God I was a 2020 senior, because I may not have graduated either way. I was salutorian in my class, I had the grades to pass, but I didn’t have the attendance. Because if it was duck season, I was duck hunting. And the good Lord said, all right –

Ramsey Russell: Did your mom and daddy know or were you just ditching class?

Maggie Williams: I mean, they knew, they just couldn’t do anything with me. I mean, it was duck season, I was going duck hunting. But I had actually, I figured out a good system because I became a pageant girl in high school. And at my high school, if you were doing community service, it did not count against your days of attendance. It was like sports days. You know what I mean? You were out, and it was excused. So my community service initiative as a pageant girl was getting more girls involved in duck hunting. So I’d go duck hunt and bring a little girl with me, I said I was doing community service and get extra credit.

Ramsey Russell: Is that what got you into beauty pageant? Was that extra credit that way of getting out of playing hooky?

Maggie Williams: It wasn’t.

Ramsey Russell: Was that by design?

Maggie Williams: It wasn’t by design, but it was really convenient, to say the least.

Ramsey Russell: I hate to say I skipped so much school, especially my senior year, that if I had a legitimate excuse that my mother had to sign, I had to get my friend Lana to write the note, because that’s the only signature they would have recognized. Yeah, they wouldn’t recognize my mother signature, I skipped so much school.

Maggie Williams: I skipped a lot of school. I just wanted to duck hunt. That’s all I wanted to do.

Ramsey Russell: What did you think you wanted to be when you were growing up? When you were in high school? What did you think you wanted to do? When you go to college, what did you think you wanted to do with your life?

Maggie Williams: All I knew was I wanted a duck hunt every day, and I wanted to be able to afford it. And looking back now, my dad –

Ramsey Russell: What ideas were you thinking about? I mean, Maggie, you could have been a doctor and afforded duck hunt a lot. I mean, a lot of these doctors play golf all the time or you could have been a .com entrepreneur. There’s a lot of different ways you could have made the money. People ask me, for example, I want to do what you do, I’m like, look, don’t do what I do. Go make a lot of money, and then hire people like me to arrange for you to live that lifestyle.

Maggie Williams: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Make money. I mean, so what other ideas were you thinking about? How are you going to finance this duck hunt?

Maggie Williams: Well, I mean, that’s what they say, to channel your strength. And I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t the smartest kid in school, I didn’t enjoy going to school, I struggled showing up to school, I knew I wanted to be my own boss and I spend money on anyway is duck hunting. So I thought, if I can figure out a way to make a money at duck hunting, then I’ll have it made in the shade. And I’ll be honest with you, I did not have a plan b. I did not have a plan b. I went to college, I got a degree, I’m actually still working on this degree, I can’t say I got it. I got three more classes left, folks, I’m almost done.

Ramsey Russell: Did duck hunting sidetrack you?

Maggie Williams: Turkey hunting sure did. I did really well during duck season. But this turkey season, I just quit going to school, but not without finishing the semester. But I just didn’t go back in the summertime. But I’m going to finish that this fall, with that being said, I went to college, and I joined a sorority trying to do the whole college thing, and I was in that for two weeks, and they told me that there was, like, a non negotiable event for new members. And I said, what’s early teal season? I got to be in Venice, Louisiana, that day. And they said, no, if you want to be a part of this, you have to be here. And I said, okay, where can I turn in my resignation paper? So I quit the sorority, and I went duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Maggie Williams: Yeah. I just went duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: You all kill any teal that weekend?

Maggie Williams: Oh, we whooped them. It was worth it. It was so worth it. That was one of the most fun trips I’ve ever had in my life.

Ramsey Russell: What’s your major in college or do you almost have a degree in?

Maggie Williams: It’s technically strategic communications with an emphasis in social media marketing.

Ramsey Russell: That’s a thing?

Maggie Williams: That’s a thing.

Ramsey Russell: If you handed me a business card, when you walked in, if you handed me a business card, what would the job title read? What do you do for a living? You’re an outdoor marketer. Is that the same as social media influencer?

Maggie Williams: I think it’s a less arrogant way of saying it. I don’t like calling myself an influencer, I don’t. I feel like that toots your own horn. Maybe it doesn’t. But I don’t like to say a lot of it.

Ramsey Russell: There’s a lot of people don’t mind doing that.

Maggie Williams: I don’t want to do that. If you meet me, I say I do outdoor marketing.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Maggie Williams: I guess technically it is influencing.

Ramsey Russell: How did that come to pass? How did what you do now as an outdoor marketer, how did that come to pass? I know you were single minded. You want to get into this. You want to duck hunt a lot. You want to find a way to pay your bills and duck hunt a lot. How did it come to be? How did you put two and two together? Peanut butter and chocolate, I’m an outdoor marketer. And for a young lady, you’re off to very resounding success doing it.

Maggie Williams: Well, thank you. It actually, I’ll be honest with you, it started with being a pageant girl. I realized I could make a living at this. I won Ms. Arkansas Teen USA in 2019. And after that, they sent us to Dallas Boot camp and Dallas, Texas. They sent us through a social media marketing course, and they taught us how to market.

Ramsey Russell: Pageants have social media marketing courses. I didn’t know pageants had bootcamps. I thought you just showed up and put on a swimsuit or something.

Maggie Williams: No. And I was a teen, so we didn’t even do swimsuits. We did activewear, but I was a teenager. But they sent us through Dallas Bootcamp. They taught us how to market ourselves to the judges. And I used that information on a professional level and just said, hey, I forget selling myself to the Ms. Teen USA organization, they don’t want to country kids from Arkansas anyway. But I know what I want to be. So I took that information, I took all the experiences I gained from that, and I’ll be honest with you, pursuing that title of Ms. Teen USA, I did not have a ton of support from the pageant community. I was backstage with girls that were representing PETA and arguing with them, not arguing, but they would say they love the animals. And I said, well, as much as you love them, I promise I love them more, and I promise I donate a lot more money to them, too.

Ramsey Russell: Did you ever convert any of them?

Maggie Williams: I actually took a vegan girl from Arizona duck hunting for the first time.

Ramsey Russell: You are kidding.

Maggie Williams: I’m not kidding. I took her duck hunting through all that, I decided that I was better off duck hunting, and that’s what I wanted to do. But I did, I took a girl from Arizona, and she had the best time. She’d never shot a gun before, so I taught her how to shoot a shotgun, how to load it, the whole 9 yards, and had her in a pair of my daddy’s waders out there.

Ramsey Russell: What did they teach you in that bootcamp about marketing yourself? Do you remember some of the specific things they taught you? How do you sell yourself to a judge? Because it’s a beauty contest, that ain’t what you sell unnecessarily.

Maggie Williams: I think the most important thing they taught us was branding, was how to brand yourself. And that’s before you could buy all these social media courses that taught you how to do it. But they taught us branding, and I said, okay, well, this is easy. I know what I like, and I’m going to stick to it. So I just kept branding myself as that girl at duck hunts. And now people know me as the girl at duck hunts, but just being persistent and showing that that area of my life online, they obviously taught us how to be good role models. That was a very important thing. They taught us how to write proficient captions and be more, I guess, literate, which, as a girl from Arkansas, I needed all the help I could get. But they really taught us branding, and that was the biggest thing for me.

Ramsey Russell: Is that what’s lacking with a lot of people that want to be – because everybody, I don’t care who they are, everybody wants to be a social media influencer, it seems like. And all you got to do is walk around one of these expos? And everybody wants to be that person.

Maggie Williams: And I think it’s funny because whenever I was in high school, I was trying to be one, I caught so much flack for it. Everyone made fun of me so they would never work out. And I was in ag class, my ag teacher stepped out of the room, and one of the boys had taken my phone underneath the projector, and they were making fun of me on screen. And now I make a living at it, so, jokes on them. But I think now it’s become more mainstream, and it’s actually a career that people respect now. But that being said, I think the biggest thing that people are missing now is authenticity.

Ramsey Russell: Amen.

Maggie Williams: I mean, I don’t try to put on, I try to be who I am and share that and if you like it, great. And if you don’t, that’s okay, too. I think a lot of people my age are trying to curate this perfect life. Well, no one’s perfect. Just do what you love and show people.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Beyond the beauty pageants, beyond duck hunting, beyond influencing, beyond social media, it doesn’t matter what your job is or what you’re doing or what your position in life is, life is all about communications.

Maggie Williams: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, even if you’re an entry level employee in a big company, you got to brand yourself to your boss and to his boss, that’s how life works.

Maggie Williams: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: It’s like a bank. You get in what you put out. That’s just how it is. And people can smell inauthenticity if you’re not authentic they can smell it. You can smell it a mile off when you get older. We’ve been so bombarded by fake ads and fake news, you can smell it a mile off. People just want genuine.

Maggie Williams: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: That’s very interesting stuff. I was surprised when you walked in, you didn’t have your dog Kate with you?

Maggie Williams: Kate is at the trainer right now. I dropped her off with Bo and Molly at Ridgemark retrievers. She was running some spring hunt tests on the UK sea circuit this year, and she did really well. So we’re going to try to get her some more ribbons for duck season, and I’ll pick her up in October.

Ramsey Russell: How did you end up with a golden retriever? I’m just guessing your dad and his boys had – the folks you grew up hunting with probably had black labs.

Kate’s Background: A Blend of Hunt Test and Meat Dog Lines.

And the first thing that popped up was a golden retriever puppy. And she was the runt. She was the last one left, a little female, and she was just the cutest thing I’d ever seen in my life. She was just so precious.

Maggie Williams: That’s right. So we had a black lab named Sissy growing up, that was my first duck dog, and I loved her to death. And Sissy got arthritis, tore her ACL, and she kind of had an early retirement, she was retired by 8. Unfortunately, pretty short lived for a duck dog. And after that, I just kept saying, okay, I’d like to get my own dog, I want to have another dog again. And Sissy is just a house dog now, and I was a senior in high school during 2020, during COVID. So you couldn’t find a puppy anywhere during COVID but I was just convinced I was going to find this dog for college. And I was getting myself a black lab, and I was calling people all over the United States looking for a black lab, a female black lab puppy. And I couldn’t get one with a decent pedigree for anything. So I was on the AKC website, and I had searched retrievers near me, and I think I’d set the radius to be like 500 miles because I was just struggling to find one. And the first thing that popped up was a golden retriever puppy. And she was the runt. She was the last one left, a little female, and she was just the cutest thing I’d ever seen in my life. She was just so precious. And I had been interrogating these lab people, I’m like, all right, tell me their hunting background, tell me about their mom, tell me about their dad. And I called the lady that had Kate, and I said, hey, how much do I owe you? I’m coming to get this dog. Does the mom and daddy hunt? I said, dad’s a good hunt test dog, and the mama’s just a meat dog hunting in the backyard. But, yeah, this dog will hunt. And I said, all right, I’m coming to get her. So that’s how I got Kate.

Ramsey Russell: No regrets?

Maggie Williams: Nope, no regrets. That’s the best dog. I’ve joked that she’s the best dog in America. Everyone says they have the best dog in America.

Ramsey Russell: You don’t really see many field bred lions like her anymore. You really don’t. Because that’s one of those breeds like Springer spanner that we grew up hunting with, that most of them are house dogs or something different. You got to really look hard to get into a field line of a non-lab.

Maggie Williams: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: And expect them to perform. She’s very athletic, she looks like.

Maggie Williams: She’s an athlete. I think she hung the moon. I got really spoiled. She’s a great dog. She’s real smart, really obedient, just eager to please. And she’s a sweet dog. So I’m really lucky because I get to take her places like Delta Waterfowl, NWTF, my sister’s a speech pathologist, I can take her to her clinic. Kate went to the sorority house for those short two weeks. I mean, she went to college with me, and that dog has just got the best off switch. But she is a great working dog, and I could not have ever asked for a more perfect dog for myself. So I think I’m spoiled. They say you get one good dog, and I’m afraid it don’t get any better than this for me.

Ramsey Russell: You get a lot of good dogs, but I think you do get that one, I’m seeing that. I’ve had some dogs, they’re all different, like kids, but they’re all different in their own right. But there are some standout qualities in some of them.

Maggie Williams: I’m proud of mine.

Ramsey Russell: You mentioned earlier, I heard you say something that was very Arkansas, Maggie. You said something like, they got their duck, not their scrap duck, but the Mallard. But for the longest time, I mean, to this day, if the Mallards are flying, I get 4 Mallards, it’s hard to hold me down. I’m about ready to go to house, we get our 4 Mallards, that’s kind of Arkansas thing, I think.

Maggie Williams: Oh, yeah, it is. That’s the way I was raised. I mean, literally, my dad had a rule that if you wanted a wood duck, you’d get one a season if you were going to mount it. That is the only reason you were ever allowed to shoot one.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about that. That’s what I was kind of getting at. I mean, wood ducks are a big thing to a lot of us in the deep south. We don’t give wood ducks a pass here. Shoot, if a wood duck flies, then I’m shooting, but I’m not hunting that flooded timber environment, either, the way.

Maggie Williams: I was raised, and this has caused a lot of controversy when I posted online, but this is the truth. Being an Arkansas girl, the way I was raised, the way my daddy was raised and his daddy was raised, it was poor etiquette to shoot a wood duck because everyone comes to Arkansas to shoot my Mallards. That’s the whole sport.

Ramsey Russell: The duck.

Maggie Williams: The duck.

Ramsey Russell: The duck that wrote the book.

Maggie Williams: Yeah. So it just makes sense that everyone has the same common goal. Well, no one can achieve that goal if you’re shooting every woody on the fly. And so you just didn’t do it back then, and people do it all the time now, but it’s crazy because even as a younger kid, it wasn’t near as common practice as it is now. But it’s kind of a rude thing to do. And I say, if you were –

Ramsey Russell: Is that because the shooting just makes the ducks up in the air that are still working the timber skittish?

Maggie Williams: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, we’re all so close. There’s only so much water. There’s only so many ducks, there’s only so many holes. So, yeah, I mean, if you’re working ducks and someone shoots a wood duck, but there goes that big bunch.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Maggie Williams: I mean, that’s the way it goes. But I’m not anti-wood duck by any means, they taste great. If you’ve got a private wood duck hole, burn them up, live your life.

Ramsey Russell: But the Arkansas flooded timber, public flooded timber etiquette is greenheads.

Maggie Williams: Greenheads, yeah. Just get your Mallards and leave. You want there to be, as everyone complains about there being a pressure problem, well, get your mowers and leave and there’s less pressure in the woods.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Maggie Williams: I mean, you don’t have to run around the whole woods in your boat. You don’t have to run and try to fill your every last limit of your scrap ducks, get your mowers and go home.

Ramsey Russell: One of my first duck hunts, and I was way closer to your age of my own, it wasn’t one of my first duck hunts, but it was the kind of hunting that hooked me into who I am now to say. And I was hunting with some friends, fraternity brother over in Arkansas, Arkansas public. And the ringleader was a man named Mr. Boyd, who I thought hung the moon. He knew those woods because he’d hunted them since a barefoot little boy shooting squirrels, he’s hunted in woods his whole life, and he knew where to go and what to do. And he rallied the troops, and he was our fearless leader. Man, I shot ducks before I shot wood ducks too late or too early or whatever you want to call it. I duck hunted, I killed a few ducks, but I never duck hunted like this. This was my first real duck hunt. The limit was 2 Mallards, and there was a crowd of us. I’d say there was 6 to 10 people by the time you added fathers and brothers and cousins and friends and everybody else got off in the little John boats and got the timber, the water was new, the water was muddy, the sky was clear, the wind was from the north, it was everything you want to get those ducks in that timber, and here they come. And the first big bunch come in, and they got eyeball level, I unloaded, and Mr. Boyd just very calmly said, now, son, don’t shoot till I call the shot. Yes, sir. But I did it again. And this time, he’s a little more firm. But he spoke to me like Andy Griffith talking to Opie. He was so understanding, such a wonderful human being. And he began to explain the whole sport of the ducks coming in and working the ducks. And he says, Ramsey, by the time the ducks get eyeball level, Ray Charles could shoot a duck. He said, that ain’t the sport, the sport is landing, and we want to own them. We want to own those ducks.

Maggie Williams: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: He said, that’s what it’s about. And then when we call a shot, everybody shoots something. And I mean, and all these years later, oh, I’ve passed shot ducks, shot ducks at night from the ocean and moving boats from wherever in the world I am, or whatever the rules apply. But, wow, that is the ethos, the old school ethos, anyway, of landing those ducks and just owning them. How hard is it to do that with the crowds today?

Maggie Williams: My daddy always told me, you don’t know if you don’t go. My theory was just go every day and hope that you’re there when they’re there. But I’ve got an older man that I love to hunt with, he just turned 70 this summer, his name is Dennis, but he always says, we’re shooting wet ducks today, I mean, which is every day, that’s the goal. But some days you’re just in the right place at the right time. You got enough people with boats, we just all go look and try to find them. And if we find what we decide is the x and there’s not enough – we’re far enough away from people, or we think we can get on, and we will. We get our ducks. But to have it so intimate like it used to be is rare. But I’m telling you, during the thaw this year, after it got so cold in Arkansas, that was the most magical experience of my life. 2° in Arkansas, and it was just like the good old days. It was cold now we’re all freezing to death. I mean, everyone’s throttle cables are frozen, we got people paddling down the river, it’s a bad deal. But there was hardly anyone out there, hardly anyone was brave enough to go. I mean, I left my dog at home. It was so cold. But I’m telling you, there was no one around, and there were ducks everywhere. And that was the first time I had seen it like that in Arkansas in years. I mean, a decade. It was just that there were whistling wings everywhere, just falling from the sky, and used wet ducks every time that they wanted in there exactly where we were. I mean, we get lucky. I mean, we put the pieces together more time, not going to say more times than not, but we have some success as duck hunters. But being someplace with no pressure and hearing no one shoot around you on public land, that was the first time I’d experienced that in a long time. It was magical.

Ramsey Russell: It’s sometimes more than just the trigger pull, isn’t it?

Maggie Williams: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Because something about the way you were describing those whistling wings reminded me the very last time I hunted with them boys in Arkansas, very last hunt. I’ll never, ever forget it either, is the wind had shifted, and rather than move the decoys or do what we needed to do, we just rode it out, and the ducks kind of tried to tip over the hole into it, and they scooted on out. We got them back. About the third or fourth pass, they finally come in right where you want them. They weren’t going to land, but they were right there hanging, and nobody fired a shot till they were gone. And it’s like, it’s the most spectacular thing, it’s one of those memories you never can undo. You don’t want to undo. You just see it, and it’s magic. And I think it seemed like an eternity after the ducks had left, we all looked each other and just bust out laughing. We’d seen it, but we never thought, nobody thought to pick up a gun and shoot. We just watched it.

Maggie Williams: Magical.

Ramsey Russell: It’s magical. And if you don’t know till you go.

Maggie Williams: That’s right. Go ahead.

Ramsey Russell: No, go ahead. Born and raised doing that in Arkansas. Do you want to go anywhere else and shoot anything else but mallards in the timber? Do you want to go the rice fields? Do you want to go out west? Do you want to go run the river sink a boat with Yarnell like I did? I mean, do you find yourself wanting to do other things?

Maggie Williams: So I’ve got a cousin named Weston Horner, and he’s a huge fan of your podcast. He’s going to be tickle pink on the tractor when he hears this podcast, but he’s a rice farmer in the county I grew up in. So, growing up, if I ever wanted to hunt private, I had to hunt Weston. And he’s always been good to me. He let me come, let me bring my dog, whatever. But that’s the only private hunting I ever had access to. So, yeah, I love to hunt with my cousin, that’s a lot of fun. But obviously the timber is home. But that being said, I would love nothing more to go sink a boat with Yarnell. He is one of my favorite people. I love going out west hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Best person I ever sunk a boat with. We shot some ducks, we shot some geese, we sunk his battleship boat down the middle of dank Missouri river, we laughed about it afterwards.

Maggie Williams: Afterwards.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, afterwards. We didn’t laugh about it while it was sinking, but we laughed about it, when we got it back to the boat ramp.

Maggie Williams: I’ll have to call him. I’ve not heard that story. But I love hunting out west. I love Montana. I love Kansas. I love Oklahoma. I’ve had a lot of fun out west. So, I mean, yeah, I enjoy getting to travel, too.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Born and raised in the deep south like myself. And I think I heard you mentioned this somewhere. Have you ever had anybody in the beauty pageant industry or social media or anywhere else talk about your accent?

Maggie Williams: Oh, lord. It’s funny you bring this up.

Ramsey Russell: I bring it up because one of the very first times I was ever on a television show, there was folks from Maryland, folks from Pennsylvania the production crew was out of Colorado, and I’m the only one with our accent, and I found myself trying to talk correct, so I didn’t sound like a complete rube. And they still, they freaking subtitles when I talked on that episode. And it gave me a complex for a while.

Maggie Williams: It kind of hurts your feelings, don’t it?

Ramsey Russell: Well, no, it didn’t hurt my feelings, but it made me feel like, dang, people can’t understand me. And one time, years later, I was on the phone with a guy and he said, huh? And like, he didn’t understand what I said. I said, man, do you not understand my accent? He goes, I understand. I just didn’t hear you. He said, I understand you just fine. He said, Ramsey, people like me call people like you, because people like you with your accent, you all kill the hell out of ducks.

Maggie Williams: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: And I never looked back. But I just wondered if you ever had to cope with that in some of your dealings.

Preparing for Miss Teen USA: The Need for Speech Lessons.

Whenever I went to Ms. Teen USA, I was advised by a mentor of mine, really instructed, not advised, to get speech lessons. So I went to a speech therapist and I was taught to speak correctly, and it didn’t last long. And anyway, I had rules, I couldn’t listen to country music and there were so many things I couldn’t do that they said that I couldn’t.

Maggie Williams: It’s funny you say that, because whenever I went to Ms. Teen USA, I was advised by a mentor of mine, really instructed, not advised, to get speech lessons. So I went to a speech therapist and I was taught to speak correctly, and it didn’t last long. And anyway, I had rules, I couldn’t listen to country music and there were so many things I couldn’t do that they said that I couldn’t, I had so many voice exercises and they actually taught me to speak correctly. And if I got real tickled or excited or upset you, I talk normal and people would catch it. But that wore off pretty quick. But I think it’s funny now, looking back, I thought, if you’re going to get a girl from East Arkansas, I mean, it’s just pick someone from Walmart instead. You know what I mean? I say west side of Arkansas is Walmart. That’s all Walmart land. But those girls don’t have accents. East Arkansas girls, they always do. I thought that was so funny that why try to change my accent?

Ramsey Russell: Well, we talked about being authentic earlier, and you can’t be no more authentic than speaking like you’re from.

Maggie Williams: Well, no kidding. I mean, the girl from Hawaii had accent, the girl from New York had an accent, it was just like, why change my accent being from Arkansas, that’s where I’m from. I mean, and now that I’m older, I’m proud of it. I don’t want to change it. But I think some people really tried hard to kind of embarrass me for that. And as an adult, I’m like, I’m proud of where I’m from.

Ramsey Russell: Amen.

Maggie Williams: It is what it is.

Ramsey Russell: How long have you been in outdoor marketing? Technically, officially. When was your official start date or launch date? I mean, boom.

Maggie Williams: Well, when I was a little pageant girl, I really started trying to post what I was doing on social media because that’s what they encouraged us to post our life, because the judges needed to get to know us before we went to the competition. So I just posted duck hunting stuff, that’s what I like to do. That’s my hobby. And anyway, like I said, I didn’t receive a ton of support from the pageant community, but the hunting community ate it up. I had so much support from the hunt community, people were standing up saying, I love what you’re doing, keep going. And that just kind of lit my fire.

Ramsey Russell: That opened that door, didn’t it?

Maggie Williams: Yeah. I was 17 when that happened.

Ramsey Russell: And now you’re 22, you’ve been doing this a while. When you put yourself out there like you do, because you got to put yourself out there to do what you do, there’s going to be folks that love and embrace what you do, and there’s going to be folks that don’t.

Maggie Williams: Absolutely.

Ramsey Russell: And I have seen, and especially in the hunting community, where an anti-hunter – and I had this happen in the Newark, New Jersey airport, talking to a lady that just got back from Africa, killing stuff with spears. God, what a badass. Anti-hunters or haters or people that don’t do what we do or live like we live, they’re a lot more likely to criticize or attack females than males. Have you had to deal with or cope with any of that?

Maggie Williams: I get death threats once a week on some platform of some kind. I get people telling me that they ought to do to me what I do to ducks, turkeys. I mean, people are crazy.

Ramsey Russell: They’re crazy.

Maggie Williams: People are crazy. I get people to tell me the most awful things, and they love animals, blah, blah. And I’m just trying to explain to people, if you love the animals and you want them to have habitat and you want their species to have longevity, you need more people doing what I’m doing, giving money back to them, caring about the wetlands. You don’t see where they live, I do. You don’t pick up trash where they live, I do. You know what I mean? But people don’t understand that. But I catch a lot of flack from non-hunters, and I catch some flak from men, male hunters. The male ego is a fragile thing, I’ve learned.

Ramsey Russell: Is it really?

Maggie Williams: The girls are very supportive –

Ramsey Russell: Because you shoot like a girl or you shoot better than a girl. And I’m being facetious there, but I’m saying, tell me about this.

Maggie Williams: Whenever I was a kid, I wasn’t treated any differently. It was my dad and his buddies, and it was just –

Ramsey Russell: You were just one of them duck hunting guy.

Maggie Williams: I was just one of them duck hunting guys. And as I’ve gotten older, I think I was probably, I had to be in high school when this happened. I got invited on duck hunt, it was me, another buddy of mine. He had a buddy that had a buddy anyway, it’s supposed to be a great banger hunt. And so I said, hey, come on. I said, okay. I said, well, hey, don’t bring a boat, you all are fine, we don’t want a bunch of boats in the hole, we’ll meet you at the ramp, and we’ll run trips back and forth because we got to get there early anyway. All right, great. And anyway, it was like we were the last two to get picked up, and the guy came to pick us up, and he said, oh, crap, I didn’t realize you had a girl with you, she couldn’t come hunting with us.

Ramsey Russell: What?

Maggie Williams: And he turned around and left us at the boat ramp. He said, we don’t want to have a little girl, we don’t want to bring a girl. And I was blown away. And anyway, that being said, there was another guy that saw what happened. He was loading up his decoy in his boat. He said, did they just tell you all you can’t go? And I said, yeah. He said, well, you can come with us. And anyway, we shot more ducks than they did that day, we made new friends, and I’m still friends with that crew today. But there’s a lot of men that disagree and say it’s a boys club. And I understand that to an extent. But it wasn’t a boys club for us, my daddy made that a family affair, and I’ll be forever thankful that he did.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, that’s the only way to do it. I don’t have a man bun, and I don’t vote Democrat. But at the same time, it is the year 2024. Who cares?

Maggie Williams: Who cares? And I hear people say all the time, oh, are you one of those huntresses or Lady Hunter? And I hate those terms.

Ramsey Russell: I do too, because you’re either a hunter or you ain’t.

Maggie Williams: I’m a duck hunter, that just happens to be a girl.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Maggie Williams: That’s how I identify.

Ramsey Russell: Do you ever get judged or held to a different standard because of the instafame huntresses out there that are but ain’t?

Maggie Williams: Oh yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’m not trying to offend nobody that is. But there are those that ain’t. There are those that are in it for the wrong reason.

Maggie Williams: That’s why I’ve tried to be authentic. That’s why I’ve tried to be a good role model.

Ramsey Russell: If you’re bow practicing with a G-string, I ain’t going to say, I ain’t going to stop and take a look. But you ain’t really a hunter.

Maggie Williams: My daddy has Internet like everybody else. You can’t find a picture of me in a swimming suit on the Internet. Not because I’m anti-swimming suit, I like to go to the beach like everybody else. But that’s not what I’m here to do.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Maggie Williams: I want to encourage more people to duck hunt. And I can do that with my clothes on. I feel very strongly about that.

Ramsey Russell: Well, when it’s 2 °, you better have some clothes on.

Maggie Williams: Well, and that’s not to shame anybody else for anything else. But that’s not my message. Being a female, you have to realize that, sex appeal has a shelf life. And I’m a Christian girl, I want to be a good example. And I think whenever you are in a position where – I’m not leadership, I’m no one’s boss, I am in a position of leadership. And I just think it’s important to be a good role model, and I didn’t have any female role models as a young woman trying to duck hunt, I knew who Eva Shockey was, and she was a bow hunter. I think she duck hunted once in her life. So, I wish then that I had seen women that could duck hunt or capable of duck hunting. Women that blew duck calls and drove boats and handled their dogs and did the whole 9 yards, and they didn’t exist. So that’s just what I try to do.

Ramsey Russell: How do you convey that message, though? Well, first off, let me ask you this before I ask that. Why aren’t there more women hunters? What’s holding women back? Is it a lifestyle thing? They don’t want to hunt, or they just didn’t go with their daddy enough or daddy treated them like a baby doll? Why aren’t there more legitimate hunters that are women?

Maggie Williams: Well, there’s not a ton of legitimate hunters that are men when you boil it all down to it. If you really look at it that much – I mean, I tell you this, it’s the resources. There’s a lot of girls that have not been taught, and there’s a lot of girls who, once you’re an adult and you’re a grown woman, it’s hard to find someone to take you and teach you. And I was just very lucky because you need resources to duck hunt in Arkansas. Going out there blind is a hard, challenging, expensive thing to do. Even though it’s public land, you got to have a boat to get there, you got to have the knowledge. I mean, it’s something that’s dangerous. I mean, there’s a lot of factors that go into that. And I would give all the credit to my father. He took me duck hunting from a very young age, and he made it important that I didn’t need anyone else to duck hunt with me. He wanted me to be an independent hunter, and that was important to me, so it was important to him. But that’s just something that’s hard to learn, whenever you don’t have access to a mentor.

Ramsey Russell: What would you tell anybody listening that feels like they want to hunt? They want to be like Maggie Williams. They want to have your autonomy and your skillset to go and do this. What would you suggest to them?

Maggie Williams: There are so many people in this world that are good people that will teach you the right way, you just got to find them. You just got to find them. I mean, and I’ve learned so much from older men. Like I said, Dennis has taught me so much, there’s a lot of men in my life that have poured into me as mentors. And like I said, I hope one day I can be a female mentor to other young women. But people are always, people that care about the same thing, and they love a common interest so much, they’re willing to share because they want the sport to live on. There’s a youth hunter that I love so much, he’s a freshman in high school this year, and we took him hunting all year. I let him drive my boat all over the river, that’s why I need a new prop. But I’ll tell you this, he’s a great kid, and he loves to duck hunt, and we have no relation, I don’t know him from Adam’s house cat, except he’s a kid, likes duck hunting, I always had room for him.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Maggie Williams: But that’s how the sport will live on. So I think it’s really important just if you are a hunter and people that say, hey, I want to go try to take them. I think, I took 4 or 5 new youth hunters, last year that I didn’t know, just told me they wanted to come. And I try to do my part, but you don’t have to be a kid to learn either. If you’re an adult, just try to reach out to somebody local, see if they’ll take you. The worst they can say is, no.

Ramsey Russell: I wanted to get you on my podcast, and Yarnell introduced us there at Delta Waterfowl, and we went over to one of the booths where you were, and there was a line of boys and men a mile long coming to meet you and get the autograph and take pictures with you and all that good stuff. Is that a new phenomenon, how comfortable you, or is it overwhelming? I mean, I can’t imagine.

Maggie Williams: Oh, I don’t –

Ramsey Russell: As a duck hunter like yourself, I can’t imagine.

Maggie Williams: I don’t think it’s overwhelming, I think it’s a blessing. It started happening whenever I first started doing the whole TikTok thing, and the first time it happened to me, I just posted one viral video. I was still in high school at that point.

Ramsey Russell: What was the video?

Maggie Williams: A video of me and my girlfriend just duck hunting, just having fun. And we didn’t think it was going to go anywhere, and it went viral, and it went from, like, 0 followers to 50,000 on TikTok overnight, it was crazy, but some girl in, like, Olive Garden recognized me and like, hey, are you the duck hunter girl? And I was like, yeah, where’d you see me? You duck hunt? And she’s like, oh, no, I just saw you on the Internet. And I was like, what? And it really kept going from there. But, man, I think it’s not overwhelming, it’s a blessing to just to think that people care enough to meet me and shake my hand, that’s just the most flattering thing in the world to me. So I like to give all those people, the time of day, talk to them, get to know them, I’ve made some great friendships that way. I went turkey hunting with a girl that stood in line to meet me last year, and we became the best of friends. I took her to Maine turkey hunting, and we’ve just got the most genuine friendship. So it’s great to meet like minded people, I love to meet them. I mean, if you see me in public, I don’t care if I look like I rolled out of bed, come say hi, we’ll talk about duck hunting.

Ramsey Russell: I feel the same way, I don’t have a line a mile long, I can guarantee you. But when I go to those kind of expos, those are my people inside that building.

Maggie Williams: Those are your people.

Ramsey Russell: Those are my people. I feel like a big extended family of sorts. I see people I know, I meet new people, I get to hear their stories, and I so love that. Getting to come to that, do you feel a growing sense as your popularity and your engagement level or your metrics grow in the social media spectrum, as your influence grows in this new digital world, do you feel an increase in sense of responsibility?

Maggie Williams: Oh, yeah. I mean, like I said, I feel like, as Christians were responsible. No matter what level of influence you have, whether it’s to the two people you see in your small group or the classroom you teach in school, it’s just your circle, and my circle just happens to be bigger than I ever anticipated it ever be. But I do feel some responsibility, and that’s why I just try to do the best I can, and try to represent my family and my state with respect, and I try to respect the game the best I can, and just be a good influence because that’s all you can do.

Ramsey Russell: As you become a well known hunter, anybody listening? Does anybody becomes a well known hunter other people begin to ask you, what product are you using? How do you use this product? When do you know, whatever. And they begin to – so I can get that part of influence. Well, I shoot this brand shotgun, so they want to shoot a Benelli, or I wear this product, so they want to wear this product. But how do you possibly influence young women into hunting more or influence more people than just the one vegan in the beginning to accept what we do as not only a way of life and a cultural identity, but as a benefit to society at large and to the natural resource itself? How do you begin to influence? How do you influence some of the toxic behavior we talked about happening on Arkansas public to a favorable outcome? That’s got to be daunting. I mean, do you think about that stuff? Is that looming in the background, or is it -?

Maggie Williams: I think about it all the time. I mean, there’s a lot going on there. But that being said, my biggest thing has always been representation matters. I think it’s really important to see people that look like you do what you love, that’s very motivational. So I like to encourage women to do it by doing it, by doing it correctly, by having success at it, by working hard, by learning the hard way, by being able to blow a duck call, by being able to do all of these things that make you a duck hunter? I think by displaying that, showing, hey, you can do it, too, and you can do it good. You know what I mean? I think that’s empowering just in itself. But that being said, I think the best way to lead is by example. And so I’m not saying that I am some gold standard perfect human by any means, but I do the best I can, that’s all you can do. And I hope that I’m leading folks correctly when I do that.

Ramsey Russell: What effects would you like to change? Are there any specific categories or changes that you’d like to affect in the modern duck hunting community?

Maggie Williams: Absolutely. Growing up in Arkansas, we’d always call it the season of hate that was a joke, but it’s not really a joke anymore. We need to realize, I know that we’re not going out there to Kumbaya, we don’t want to see each other, and that’s great. I mean, you want to go out and get your ducks and go home, but that’s not reality. There are so many duck hunters, there’s so little resource now that is untouched, that you’re going to run into people and you got to be a decent human being whenever you do. I mean, I know so many friends of mine, so many, I say that I can name a handful of people on one hand right now that have had their tire stems cut at the boat ramp. I put my boat in last year and I thought that I filled up my gas tank, I was good to go. And I’m in the Wyatt River and I’m probably 200 yards from the boat ramp floating, wondering what’s wrong with my gas line. Someone cut my fuel line. I mean, it’s little things like that. I mean, that’s not helping anybody as hunters, even though duck hunting is a competitive thing and like you said earlier, it’s win or lose, that’s true. But at the end of the day, we’re all on the same team. We’re all hunters, we’re all advocates for the sport. We’re all on the team of being conservationists, and we’re not going to do that by shooting each other in the foot, so I wish I could change that. It does not have to be just a competition of being who’s more hateful to who, who can put out the other the most. I mean, I wish there was some way to get that down. It’s my generation that’s doing it, it’s kids my age. I wish we could somehow eliminate that mindset.

Ramsey Russell: Do you shoulder that responsibility? Do you feel that beholding as your popularity gains to say, I’m going to try to affect that change? Because if not you, who Maggie?

Maggie Williams: That’s a deep statement. If not me, who? I don’t know. And like I said –

Ramsey Russell: You got the trust, you got the adoration, you got the respect of this community of your age, of your generation. And I don’t know how you do it, but something’s got to be done. Because it’s bad for the resources, bad for hunting, it’s bad for everything.

Maggie Williams: It is. It’s really, it’s bad for the resource, it’s bad for hunting, it’s bad for everybody involved.

Ramsey Russell: It’s bad for your own mental health, carrying that kind of baggage around.

Maggie Williams: I don’t know, I think this behavior, I don’t think it starts in the Duckwoods. I think this is a mindset that, I mean, I don’t know if it’s a generational problem, I don’t know what it is. But this is the sense of entitlement and hatefulness and I don’t know, I wish it would go away, but I’m doing the best I can just to be positive and be kind to folks, and I hope that that inspires them to do the same.

Ramsey Russell: I got faith you’re going to have some change, I really do. I think, given time, you’re going to have a lot of change I think you’re going to become a spokesman for not only your generation, but possibly for your generation of duck hunters when it comes to meeting with maybe the people in power. Somebody’s got to speak to them.

Maggie Williams: Somebody’s got to speak to them, ain’t that the truth.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. You’ve mentioned turkey hunting several times and I’m a one trick pony, I like to duck hunt, I’ve killed a few turkeys, and I need one turkey in the world, not the Merriam’s. And my buddy, our buddy Yarnell, has been inviting me to come out there. The problem is, I can go down to Argentina and shoot the f bomb out of ducks, or I can go hunt one turkey with Yarnell. And I always choose the ducks. But you’re a turkey hunter, too. Did your dad bring you into the turkey hunting part?

Maggie Williams: That’s a funny story, no. But my daddy’s not a turkey hunter. Being from East Arkansas, there’s not a lot of turkeys where I grew up. So, no, my daddy was the turkey hunter. I’ve told the story before on another podcast, I was in ag class, I was in high school, just old enough to drive. And some boys in school were talking about they wanted to go turkey hunting, we were all duck hunters, so we were like, hey, let’s all go together, I guess strength of numbers, what we thought, that’s what we were used to, said, hey, 4 of us can go. And one guy said, yeah, my grandpa’s got a tree farm and he saw a turkey out there one time years ago. And I was like, all right, let’s go hunt them. So we went out and we all had our own calls and we had a spread, I mean, it was ridiculous. It was insane. We were just duck hunting kids trying to duck hunt turkeys, it didn’t work, we didn’t see them, but we tried to teach ourselves. And I finally was taken under the wing of one of my really good friends, she was like 10 years older than me, and I was still in high school, and her husband and her took me turkey hunting. And after that, I said, I love this, teach me how to be a turkey hunter. And I lived on their couch for weeks, and I watched them take more people turkey hunting, and I was filming it all and trying to learn, and we did that for a couple more years. I’d go stay with them on their couch during turkey season and try to learn and they turned me into turkey hunter.

Ramsey Russell: And how many places have you turkey hunted? How mad are you at them, as compared to mallard? That’s what I’m asking. Because my son, I don’t know where he gets it from, it wasn’t his daddy, he is mad at turkeys, and by God, he’s a good turkey hunter. And he don’t just travel and go hunting, he goes to public. Pick a state, he goes there and hunts public and goes after them, and he’s good, I’m proud of him. But he didn’t get it from me. I wouldn’t walk from here to your truck, shoot the biggest turkey in the state of Mississippi, I just don’t care. Unless they’re flying, if they’re flying by, I might be interested in shooting.

Maggie Williams: That’s crazy. I wouldn’t say I’m mad at them. I’ve got a real genuine love and admiration for the wild turkey, and I admire mallards, and I love mallards so much, but I’m kind of mad at them. Turkeys are just something that I tenderly care about so much, and I’ve shot turkeys in 24 states now. And I always say, if cake could turkey hunt, it’d be all over with. I mean, that’s not true, I’d love to duck hunt, but it’s a magical special thing to me. I love turkey hunting because it doesn’t like duck hunting, it’s intimate. You can go by yourself and you can duck hunt by yourself, but turkey is, one on one.

Ramsey Russell: There’s not the circus of people in the turkey woods. There may be some other people, but it’s not 70 people.

Maggie Williams: Right. It’s between you and that turkey at the end of the day, I just think that’s so magical. It’s so magical. I love it. I love a turkey hunt.

Ramsey Russell: Tell me about the turkey hunt you went on with Ryan this year. I’ve heard it was – well, just tell me about the whole thing. I’ve heard it was less than pleasant. It wasn’t like a beautiful sunshiny mountain day with dandelion flowers and butterflies, it was a tough hunt.

Maggie Williams: Yeah, it was tough. I hate the word hard hunting, though. Hunting is inherently hard by nature, that’s why we do it.

Ramsey Russell: It should be.

Maggie Williams: If it was easy, everyone would do it. So I hate that saying it was even tough because it was just unpleasant conditions, but we elected to be there. That’s what we enjoy to do. It was just rain, and it was 40 miles an hour winds, it was 30° outside, it was snowing, it was just less than favorable conditions for a turkey to gobble. But that being said –

Ramsey Russell: Sound like you should have been duck hunting.

Maggie Williams: We should have been duck hunting. We weren’t very far from good duck hunting either.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

The Challenges of Wet Hunting Clothes and Limited Gear.

We had no power in Montana for 3 days after a snowstorm. Keep in mind, the first day, we get poured rained on, so all of our hunting clothes are wet. I flew in from Pennsylvania because I was just where I was hunting at the time. So I just flew in from Pennsylvania, and I literally, everyone knows if I’m turkey hunting, I wear my turkey suit.

Maggie Williams: But it was beautiful country, but it was pretty demanding landscape. We were in the mountains of Montana, and Ryan and I have something in common that we really bonded over is that we do not have any quit in us. And so we were just like, all right, you ready to keep going? All right, let’s keep going. And we kept trying to find them, and we finally found them, and we had a lot of fun doing it. But I really think that experience, enduring that together made it so much of a better story, a better friendship, and that we had a great crowd with us. We had my friend Macy and her boyfriend Slade, and a great camera girl named Mac and we had a great time together. But we lost power. We had no power in Montana for 3 days after a snowstorm. Keep in mind, the first day, we get poured rained on, so all of our hunting clothes are wet. I flew in from Pennsylvania because I was just where I was hunting at the time. So I just flew in from Pennsylvania, and I literally, everyone knows if I’m turkey hunting, I wear my turkey suit. I caught my turkey suit to the airport, and in my bag, I had my vest and my calls and a couple extra pairs of socks and a pair of rain boots, that’s it. I travel light, and I’ll check my gun. So I didn’t have a ton of clothes on me, so I am literally, Ryan’s like, hey, my wife’s got some clothes that might fit you, I’ve got something for you. And we were all just scavenging each other’s clothes, and we made it work, but it was a great time. Beautiful hunting, Merriam’s are fun. They just like to talk. It’s fun to hunt them.

Ramsey Russell: You got your turkey?

Maggie Williams: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Have you shot all the North American species?

Maggie Williams: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Do you want to shoot the world species? Is that a think?

Maggie Williams: Not North America, just America.

Ramsey Russell: Just America.

Maggie Williams: I’ve not gotten either –

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s what I meant to say to the United States. The 4.

Maggie Williams: Yeah. I did that twice in one year.

Ramsey Russell: What’s your favorite?

Maggie Williams: Easterns.

Ramsey Russell: Easterns. That’s what everybody says.

Maggie Williams: That’s the truth. That’s the gospel truth.

Ramsey Russell: That kind of like the mallard of the turkey world.

Maggie Williams: That is the mallard of the turkey world. No true words ever been spoken.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, you start lighting up and smiling when you start talking about eastern turkeys in a different way. You really got a thing for turkey, don’t you?

Maggie Williams: I really do. They are so magical. I love it. I am ate up with it. And my friends know. I took off the last week of February this year, turkey hunt and I came back the first week of June, and I was sleeping in my truck the whole time.

Ramsey Russell: If your dad’s not a turkey hunter and he got you into duck hunting, have you thought about getting him into turkey hunting?

Maggie Williams: It’s funny you ask, because I did. My dad, he’s a dirt hauler, so, I mean, he’s got a demanding schedule of work. If it’s dry, he works. So in the springtime, if it’s a dry spring, he’s got to be hauling dirt.

Ramsey Russell: But dirt don’t wait.

Maggie Williams: Dirt don’t wait. But this year, I found a spot that I thought I was really going to get into him that thought it was right, and I got mine, and so I called daddy, and I said, hey, you going to go on your first turkey hunt? And he’s like, yeah, I think it’ll be cakewalk for you. And by the time that he could get his schedule and take care of all his business, he was like, a week too late to the party. And these turkeys just weren’t gobbling like they were a week ago. And the pressure had changed, and we had taken a few more people out the spot. I was like, man, we burnt this place up, but we obviously leave some for seed, but there had been too much pressure in the area itself, not necessarily that property we were hunting. But I was like, man, we got to get out of here. We didn’t go south, where they’re actually gobbling hard again. So I’d been scouting around. He’s like, all right. So we just jumped to a different state, and turkey hunting is a physically demanding sport, it was really hot outside, it was like 95° this day. And my dad’s like, Maggie, I love you, but I’m not really interested in climbing a mountain in 90° weather for a turkey.

Ramsey Russell: I know the feeling.

Maggie Williams: So, long story short, he’s like, do you just want to try to get one here? He’s like, you’ve got your license. I just outeat mine because I’m not in the mood to go walking. And it was a treacherous walk we had. We were in the mountains. And anyway, he’s like, you check it out, and I’m going to run the gas station. And I was like, all right. So anyway, about time I get to the bottom of this mountain, and I’m just listening at this point, I don’t even make a sound. And I hear one gobble. And I was like, oh, it’s on. So anyway, I went and I killed this turkey, he gobbled, he was hot as he could be. And I didn’t even yelp at him. I yelped at him twice, I think. And got right there beneath him, scratched at him, and he just came strutting, 2 of them did, just came strutting down the side of this hill, and I shot this bird, like, 10 yards. Anyway, I called my dad because I was in there by myself in this mountain, I said, hey, it’s going to take me longer to walk out than it’s going to take me to kill him. I got him come pick me up, and he was like, ain’t no way, you just went in there, just killed that turkey 15 minutes. I swear I did. But anyway, so my daddy has been –

Ramsey Russell: He should have been with you.

Maggie Williams: He has been turkey hunting. He’s heard him gobble with thunder, he’s heard the whole nine yards. But I’m like, daddy, you taught me duck hunting, you don’t know if you don’t go. And he’s like, he ate that up. But I think I’m going to try to get him on a Midwestern bird this year, if I can get him to Missouri or Kansas somewhere that it’s kind of like a cakewalk. That way he can get the true experience without hiking his butt off.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Michigan’s got a bunch of good turkey. I mean, they’ve got such a – I got some friends that hunt up there that run guide services up there and it’s a one bird limit and lots of turkeys, not much hunting pressure. I mean, it’s just one of them states.

Maggie Williams: Have you hunted up there?

Ramsey Russell: I told you I wouldn’t walk from here to your truck, I sure ain’t driving to Michigan to shoot a turkey, but no, my son has. A lot of people who hunt up there were countered, sound like a cakewalk to me.

Maggie Williams: I really enjoy hunting the northern states, that’s a lot of fun. It’s like a treat after hunting southern easterns all year. It is such a treat just to go out there and hunt some hard gobbling birds. I love it.

Ramsey Russell: You’re a young lady. You’re in the outdoor marketing. You got your whole life ahead of you, Maggie, have you given thought to where do you want to be? Or where do you think you want to be in 5, 10, 20 years down the road?

Maggie Williams: All I want to be in life is happy, and right now I’m doing a really good job of it.

Ramsey Russell: Amen.

Maggie Williams: I don’t know what I want to be in 5, 10 years. I know I probably can’t do this forever, but I’m going to do it as long as I can. I’ve been very blessed to be in this position. It beats going in 9 to 5. So I’m going to keep hunting as hard as I can and enjoy it while I can because tomorrow isn’t promised. But I don’t know what I’m going to get into after this. But I hope whatever I’m doing, I can duck and turkey hunt as much as I want. So let’s see if I can figure something out between now and then.

Ramsey Russell: You ever think about getting married and settling down and having a family and bringing your own kids?

Maggie Williams: Eventually, yeah. Yeah, eventually, I would love to have a family, and I’d love to raise little hunters myself, but that’s a long way from now.

Ramsey Russell: It is a long way from now. I just wonder.

Maggie Williams: Yeah, eventually. I would love to do that. I think that’d be so much fun. I’ve got some really great friends, Brittany Moorey is one of them. She’s a great example, she’s a great duck hunter, great duck caller, she’s got two sons, and she killed 150inch deer in a ground blind with her son in a car seat sitting next to her sleeping a new born baby. I mean, now her sons, I think, are like 7 and 9, If I’m wrong, I’m sorry, Bo and Heath, my apologies. But she’s just been a great example of how mothers can also be awesome mentors in the outdoors.

Ramsey Russell: Absolutely, they can be.

Maggie Williams: So, yeah, I would eventually love to have that for myself. I’d love to have a couple kids and take them hunting one day.

Ramsey Russell: How can everybody connect with you?

Maggie Williams: You can find me on Instagram and TikTok at themaggiewilliams and you can find me where you listen to podcasts @themaggiewilliams podcast.

Ramsey Russell: Amen. Thank you very much, Maggie. I appreciate you coming down. I’ve enjoyed the conversation, I’ve enjoyed meeting you, and of course I follow you. Hopefully one day we’ll get in a blind, maybe put red beard in the middle and teach them how to shoot, that’s what I call Yarnell red beard and everybody else calls him Tex, I call him Red Beard. Somebody said, why you call him Red Beard? I said, you ever been running down a Missouri River with that fool and that long hair and that beard like a pirate going down? I said, I can’t think of nothing but Red Beard when I see him. Maybe we’ll put him in the middle and teach him how to shoot or shut him out.

Maggie Williams: That’s a man of many nicknames. I call him Yarnell. I hear people call them Tex and Redbeard both. But that’s Yarnell to me. But we’re going to Canada, so you ought to come up there with us.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, I will. Let’s talk about that when we get done. Thank you very much. Folks, thank you all for listening this episode of Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, we’ll see you next time.

[End of Audio]

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