In the 1930s, when duck hunters started coming to Stuttgart, Arkansas in masses, McCollum’s Hardware Store began stocking items to outfit them. Black rubber hip boots sold for $6.00, long underwear $1.50, a box of 12-gauge No. 6 or 7 1/2 shot $2.00 and a Winchester Model 12 shotgun $65.00.
Business was so good that in 1944 owner M.T. “Mack” McCollum decided to take the sporting goods out of the hardware store and open a separate store.
Mack acquired the building next door on Main Street and cut an archway in the wall between the stores. So began Mack’s Sport Shop. It’s been said many times that it was the first full-line sporting goods store to be found. In 1961, Mack’s son M.T. Jr., better known as “Marion,” joined his dad full time. In 1970, the business was moved to Highway 79 in a 3,200 square foot building decorated with various mounts and filled with every item a duck hunter could want. M.T. “Mack” McCollum passed away in 1979.
Mack’s became a tourist attraction for duck hunters, and by 1993, the space expanded to 18,000 square feet and added a mail order catalog by the name of Mack’s Prairie Wings. The attraction drew even more people when it began its Fall Festival.
M.T. would be proud to see that Mack’s now sits in its iconic Stuttgart Highway 63 location with over 104,000 square feet of space and has become known as The Waterfowl Mecca. Mossy Oak is proud to be a partner of this family-owned business that’s grown from a humble hardware store to one of the most iconic retail destinations in the hunting world.
And one last thing, Mack’s has been the leading worldwide dealer of Winchester steel shot for 24 consecutive years. As Mack said, “We walk duck, we talk duck, we are duck.”
