Megabucks Louisiana Duck Guides Facts
Owner: Johnny Wink
Location: 15228 Kilbourne Hwy., Jones
Acreage: 1,400 acres of flooded rice fields and over 5,000 acres of dry fields, rice, wheat and beans.
Lodges: 2
Phone: 318-823-3217

By Marq Mitcham
Bastrop Daily Enterprise Sports Editor

One bitter cold day, a teenager and his dog, a black labrador retriever, were walking down a country road returning from a duck hunt. On the surface, it was an ordinary scene in Jones in the late 1970s.

"I was hunting at a place across the ditch from the Sheinley Duck Hunting Club. This was before four-wheelers, so me and my dog would walk down Sheinley Road instead of wading," recalled Johnny Wink, the teenager who was hunting with his trusted dog, Max, that gray, winter afternoon. "I just knew the day was coming when they would eat me out for walking on their property. One day, I saw a Hustler (an all-terrain vehicle) coming toward me with four people in it, and I thought for sure I was about to get chewed out. I had a Croaker sack full of ducks, and those people stopped and wanted to see my ducks.

"One of them was a woman, but all I could see was some blonde hair sticking out of her hood. Max, my dog, kept trying to sniff her and I had to keep knocking him off of her. They looked at my ducks and said, 'See you later.'" Although he did not know it at the time, Wink had just had a chance encounter with two of TV's hottest celebrities.

"The next day I was walking out and saw the same Hustler coming toward me, but there were only two men in it," Wink said. "When they stopped, one of the men said, 'You have the luckiest dog in the world.' I asked, 'Why's that'? "He told me the woman was Farrah Fawcett and the man was Lee Majors. In 1976, Charlie's Angels (starring Fawcett) was the No. 1 rated TV show, and the Six Million Dollar Man (starring Majors) was No. 2. "We used to have a lot of people come in here from the movie industry. I don't know who got the ball rolling on that. But I saw that as a vision. I thought that would be the ultimate goal, to guide movie stars for a living."

Today, Johnny Wink has 35 years of experience as a professional duck guide. Wink has developed quite a track record over the years. With an 85 percent rate of repeat customers, it's hard to dispute Wink's success as a duck guide. But Wink, the owner of Megabucks Duck Guides in Jones, doesn't guide the rich and famous. Instead, Wink attributes his success to staying small. Wink houses his customers in two lodges, a main lodge which doubles as his residence, and "the old camp." Both lodges are equipped with full kitchens.