Though it may not have been where he was born or raised, Jim Ronquest is as much at home in the Natural State as any native-born Arkansan. The famed outdoorsman originally hails from the Missouri Ozarks, but his father’s job at a large construction company meant the family moved often. It was in the Mississippi and Ohio river bottoms of western Kentucky that Ronquest discovered what would become a lifelong love for waterfowl hunting.
After a stint in Tennessee, Ronquest’s family returned to Missouri, where he finished high school. At about that time, he took his first steps into the outdoor industry, working on guided hunts for a variety of different companies. In doing so, he became close friends with Butch Richenback, world champion duck caller and founder of Rich-N-Tone Calls, a duck call maker based in Stuttgart. Before long, he was running a business alongside Richenback, Rich-N-Tone Guide Service.
“Of course, being in Arkansas, we’re the duck hunting capital of the world, and that’s part of why I wound up here,” Ronquest said. “This has been home longer than anywhere. I grew up in a hunting and fishing family, and I just fell in love with waterfowl, calling and the communication between us and birds. That communication is why I like duck and turkey hunting so much and all that goes with it. The camaraderie, the people, the gear, the dogs — that all culminates into a good duck hunt.”
After Richenback eventually sold the company to John and Angie Stephens, the new owners expanded the business, rebranded to RNT Calls and introduced a new dimension: video production.
“That was one of my interests at the time,” Ronquest said. “I ran the camera some, though I was better in front of the camera than behind it. I helped produce the first couple of videos, along with kind of becoming the PR guy of RNT Calls. John was a great marketer, especially in conjunction with Blade Fisher, who joined not too long after I did. They did a really good job of that, but I got to be the guy upfront doing some of their sales. As the company grew, I stayed there, and that turned into starting a TV show.”
RNT-V first aired in 2006 and follows the RNT staff through waterfowl hunts, building game calls and taking part in Stuttgart’s famous World Duck Calling Championship. Originally on the Men’s Outdoors and Recreation Network, it eventually became part of the Sportsman Channel and is still ongoing today. For 16 years, Ronquest oversaw all aspects of show production, sponsor sales and relations, and network negotiations. At the same time, he did seminars at sporting goods stores around the country to spread the word about RNT.
“[RNT-V] was a great experience — getting to travel the country in pursuit of wild fowl, making new friends, seeing new country and being a part of the show production,” Ronquest said. “Some of the people I’ve gotten to meet and some of the places I’ve gotten to go, I would have never had those opportunities without doing what I do for a living. I’ve always tried not to take it for granted. There are so many good stories and good people that it’s hard to pick just one out. They’ve all been excellent. All the years that I was in the commercial guidance business, I made friends that I still communicate with fairly regularly — people that I met in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.”
Ronquest eventually left RNT in 2022 before being convinced to get back into the game as vice president of development at Drake Waterfowl, an outdoor apparel company that produces outdoor hunting gear and accessories, from soft goods such as jackets, waders and other clothing to hard goods, including duck blinds and dog stands. Though the company is based in Olive Branch, Miss., Ronquest has largely been able to work from home and remain in Arkansas.
“Nowadays I get to do a lot of different things,” Ronquest said. “It’s been really fun for me. I’ve enjoyed being involved in bigger business dealings, probably playing above my grade a bit. I get the opportunity to hunt with a lot of our accounts, dealers and other people we work with around the country to try to develop partnerships. It’s not just content development I do; it’s also product development and business development. I get to work with the product development guys pretty hand in hand, and I definitely work on the PR marketing side, kind of being the front guy. It’s kind of odd riding down the interstate out of Little Rock and seeing a billboard with my picture on it.”
A few simple qualities have allowed Ronquest to find the success he has had throughout his long career, including a willingness to work hard — particularly on things that other people might not be willing to do — and the dedication to pick a direction and stick with it while making the best of and learning from whatever came his way.
“Experience goes a long way. You can’t know what you don’t know,” Ronquest said. “You’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there and be honest. If you don’t know the answer, tell them you don’t know. If you need to go find it, go find it, but don’t try to be something you’re not.”
The actual number of duck hunters is relatively small — according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, only about
1.6 million duck stamps were sold between 2020 and 2021, compared to roughly 11 million deer hunters. Yet the number of hunters belies the true economic impact of the sport.
“If it was just one company, it would be a Fortune 500,” Ronquest said.
That outsized impact means that waterfowl earn a great deal of attention from government conservation organizations. Each year, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and numerous state organizations, such as the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, conduct surveys on factors such as breeding pairs, habitat and migration numbers. Thus the sport provides for the hunters themselves, the massive industry that has grown up around it, and the wildlife agencies that receive funding from the proceeds of that industry and keep the sport sustainable.
“You’ve got to take care of the resource before the resource can take care of you,” Ronquest said. “The No. 1 thing we have to do is take care of our waterfowl resources. Some of that’s out of our control. A lot of it comes down to the good Lord above and Mother Nature, but anything we can do to help, anything we can do to support good-quality habitat when the rains come back and we get water on the landscape is probably the biggest thing we can do moving forward.
“You can’t blame a guy making a living farming for planting down at the very edge of a pond or trying to get his fields ready to go for next spring. That being said, some modern farming practices don’t work really well with duck hunters. You can’t tell a farmer, ‘I know you’re making a living farming, but we really need you not to use this field. How about you just sit out a little bit and let us have more ducks?’ That’s not going to work, so we’ve got to find ways to balance and work together moving forward to ensure that we always have wild places where the wild ducks can go.”
