Sandy Roark

Sandy Roark, the Outlaw, has hunted black bear in these mountains since the 1980s. He started guiding in 2005, and he has not stopped.

Arkansas was once known as the Bear State. The population crashed, then over decades it came back, and the Ouachita Mountains are now some of the best black bear country in the South. The Outlaw was hunting here long before most people noticed.

He started guiding in 2005 and has run Outlaw Guide Service out of Royal ever since, hunting the country around Lake Ouachita. It has always been a family operation. There is a lab around the skinning shed, and the Outlaw answers his own phone.

For the hunt of a lifetime contact the Outlaw Sandy Roark and his guides. From our magazine ad

Twenty years in, the pitch has not changed and neither has the phone number.

A guide holding a compound bow beside a black bear, photographed for an Outlaw Guide Service magazine advertisement.
From the magazine ad that ran for years. Scanned from the original print copy.

The archive

The card and the sign

These are the real thing. The business card that has been in trucks and tackle boxes across Arkansas, and the hand painted sign that still goes out to every bear. Same number then, same number now.

The Outlaw Guide Service business card, printed on pale green stock with two black bear engravings and the phone number 501-622-7410.
The business card, flattened from a photograph of the original.
Two guides sitting either side of a black bear laid across a log behind the hand painted Outlaw Guide sign, one of them holding a compound bow.
The sign that goes out to every bear.

Talk to him

501-622-7410

Season opens September 9 and archery hunts start at $2,500. The fastest way to find out whether this is the hunt you want is to ask the man running it.