Bear Grease - Ep 37: Bear Grease [Render] - Waterfowlers, AGFC Director, and Guarding the Gate

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

On this episode of the Bear Grease Render, the crew is joined by the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, Austin Booth and the waterfowl biologist for the state of Arkansas, Luke Naylor. Both of these guys were on the last Bear Grease podcast but came in to discuss waterfowl hunting and the agency's plan to become more accessible to people. Austin is a marine,a lawyer and public land duck hunter and is hoping to bring some change to the agency. He talks about the unique public meetings they've been having regarding the Green Tree Reservoir issues in Arkansas and we talk some more about the culture of waterfowl hunting. Aside from an intriguing conversation about footwear, the Render begins with a stand alone section by Clay regarding the recent attacks on hunting and what we can do. You'll enjoy this one!Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Hey guys, I want to take a minute and talk about something that I think is really important.

Right now in the United States, the spring 22 legislative agendas and public comment periods for state agencies are coming out. And as I hope you've heard, many have strong anti-hunting and specifically anti-preditor hunting agendas. Washington State recently canceled the spring 22 bear season despite it being recommended by their fish and wildlife. Colorado Bill SB 22-031 is set to ban Mount Lion, Bobcat, and Links hunting. Arizona is experiencing a strategic push from the animal rights crowd to change current regulations about lion and bear hunting by flooding the public comment process. California has petitions filed to suspend bear hunting in the state until further population studies can be done. In Vermont, anti-hunting groups are pushing for a full ban on the use of hounds in hunting. And the list can go on.

Years ago, if you told me that hunting was strategically under attack, I would have called you an alarmist, cry and wolf when there wasn't one here. We all live in some version of cocoons with limited visibility of the wider nation. That cocoon is partly geographic, but mainly the cocoon is our own interest. When I started working with Bear Hunting magazine in 2013, my eyes popped wide open when I saw bear hunting in the crosshairs of many states,

and I saw how the tools of bear management and the methods of take that make bear hunting viable had already been banned in many places. Just as a short, non-complete overview, California banned bear hunting with hounds in 2013 and mountain lion hunting in the 1990s. Washington State banned hounds and bait for bear in 1996. Oregon banned bear hunting with hounds and bait in the mid-1990s. Colorado banned bear hunting with hounds and bait in 1992. In 2021, New Jersey,

banned all bear hunting completely on the basis of public opinion. Several years ago, we started saying that we've got to guard the gate, guard the gate, because predator hunting is the gate of the anti-hunting community to come into the space of the North American model of wildlife conservation, which I might add is the most successful act of wild animal and habitat management on planet Earth. Since the frontier days of America, there has always been a political and ideological divide between the urban and rural areas. The masses often have the attention of the politicians because of money and votes. And as I've always said, it's a one-phase cell to convince someone with no history or knowledge of hunting that killing a bear or a predator is bad. It's a much more

complex story to convince them that it's a good thing. And this is why we as hunters have to work harder than those that oppose us. And we should because we actually have stock in this thing. There is something that we've now seen work twice in the last year. And it's when hunters from all over the country, hunters of every stripe and creed, participate in communicating with legislators and the powers that be. Last year, a California bill was submitted to ban bear hunting, and the legislator was bombarded by people who love wildlife enough to know that hunting is good, and it swayed the political process, and the bill never made it to the floor. In just the last few months, the public outcry of hunters to reinstate the spring bear season in Washington got the spring bear hunt back on the agenda of the commission and was recently discussed again.

Inside of a democracy, the main tool that we have is our voices. We all know that. And I urge us all to become more active participants in every way by making our voices heard. I've found the easiest way to do this is by following the lead of the wildlife organizations that have all this communication stuff dialed in. Most of them are a one-stop shop for letting your voice be heard. I have zero affiliation with any of these groups that I'm about to say, but I want to give you some groups to check out. And what you have to do is just get dialed in with these guys' systems

and the way that they communicate with legislators and just do it. A good group that I love is Sportsman's Alliance. I would say do whatever they say. It's just that simple. A new group that I really like so far, and they are brand new, is a group called Howell for Wildlife. They seem to be really streamlining the process of communication. There are many other groups that are fantastic, Hunter Nations, Safari Club International.

And the list goes on, including a bunch of state agencies, which are essential that you be members of, whichever group allows you to easily and consistently communicate, use them. You know, years ago and when I was a kid talking about being a public land hunter wasn't cool. I mean, that's where everybody hunted and it's kind of the place you didn't want to hunt. In the last 10 years, it's become cool to talk about and to hunt public land. Well, I can tell you, the new thing that we're going to make cool is defending hunting. I love it that some people are calling into account social media influencers to use their voice in a positive way. I mean, it's really a modern issue that we are going to have to deal with.

And if we really love hunting, we will and we'll joyfully, unite our voices in very productive, educated, classy ways will say hunting is good. Wildlife management in this country has worked. We are the good guys that love wildlife and want to see all species of wildlife thrive. We're the guys that are putting our money towards habitat conservation inside of a country where urban sprawl is just devouring habitat. We are the good guys. Where an animal has cultural value through hunting that animal and its habitat is protected. And lastly, the best thing that we can do to protect this lifestyle that we love is to clean the inside of our own cup and make sure that we're representing this lifestyle with honor and dignity

in every aspect of our life. So right on, guys, let's get to the render. Speaking of boots, you caught Brent on a good day and he's not wearing his footflops. Wow, this is the first time. Crocs or flip-flops, I think, is all I've ever seen Brent Reef them. Well, the last time we went out to the mule barn is squishing between your tub. Well, no, I just didn't have access to everything. Yeah, this is the first time I've seen Brent wear. They ain't the first thing you see we wear boots.

We've been all over the country together. Brent, not. And I'm not scared of coronavirus. He's just worried about getting worms. Yeah, being worms. Wait just a second. Did you? Well, I'm scared of getting them again.

Yuck. Did you forget your boots whenever you all went hunting at bear camp? What did y'all come back for? He forgot his bow. Oh, I forgot my bow. Your bow. I remember it was important. Yeah, I would have hunted and his clothes. I would have been barefooted, but I got to head the bow.

Welcome to the Bear Grier Shrinder. We're doing that? We have some, man, this is a big day at the Bear Gros Render. We have some real guests with us, stay, boys, okay? I could tell when I walked up and I saw you in your dress clothes. He don't stink. He's dressed clothes. He's plays in dress clothes and Bryn's got shoes on.

Brent did wear his faded overalls today. Hey, man, check out the zip tie. He has to balance it. Very nice. I hung that on a barbed wire fence. Brent has a zip tie in lieu of a button. So I zip tie together. Beautiful.

That's custom. Custom. Custom work there. Yeah. Well, we're going to do something to little. little bit different today. I'm going to introduce my guest right off the bat. Oh. Whoa, they go first. Well, I just, I don't, I just, I'm just so excited. I just want people to know who's in the room. He's just going to blurt it out at some point if he tries to introduce us. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. No,

usually I talk for 10 minutes before I introduce the mystery guests. Right. Austin Booth. That's right. Austin Booth, director of Arkansas Game of Fish is with us. Awesome to have you, man. It's really good to be here. Thanks for coming to North West Arkansas. Thanks for having me. Austin has excellent boots. Yes. Yeah. Tell us about these boots, Austin. So these are Danner lights. I like them because they're very similar to what I wore on the Marine Corps for eight years. Super comfortable, can't tear them up, you can resell them.

Really? Apparently Santa brought them to you. Santa Claus did indeed bring them. Hey, let me tell you my problem with boots like this is I really like what you're doing here in that you're using them like dress boots almost. I mean, like, you know, they look nice. there's not a scuff on them. But you're going to walk out of here, and because you have those on,

you're going to be like, you're going to like run across a ditch or you're going to go do something and you're going to scuff them up. And then you've built, you've built this idea in your head that these are the boots I wear, like these are like my church boots.

But then they're beat up in no time because they're not church boots. It messes with my head. Because I can't keep a pair of boots, I mean, it's a problem. I just heard you say your shoes make you do things. Yeah, they do. And I don't wear crocs.

I got crocs for, I got crocs from my children. Your kids listen to this podcast. I know, and I love them. I love my children. They were inspired by you. And I will wear those crocs at different times, but I will not wear them when my family's honor is at stake. Well, let me tell you. I've never seen them wear them.

Where I'm back? Like the fight that happened often? Are they cross? Or are they I firmly Here down here in Arkansas We have We have an ancient civilization

There was You know sometimes you're around someone And they say something That you're like That's what I've been trying to say my whole life And you just take it from them Ron Bain The Hunting Dog podcast

He says you should never Not wear shoes That you couldn't protect your family In a volcano Why couldn't you? Paz. When have you, why is the volcano relevant? Volcano is a metaphor.

I mean, volcano, if you're a human. I would like a metaphor that is more culturally relevant. Well, I get it, though. When you say that, it's like, yeah, you don't want to be wearing flip-flops. You want them to be wearing these. I'm wearing leather boots. Okay. So, Austin, I like your boots.

That's all we're trying to say. Thank you. That's a really backwards way of saying. Okay. You're not recording this. Austin, did you anticipate this was going to start off this way? I knew it was going to be something similar. I didn't know that they didn't mean about my boots,

but something meandering and humorous. What's Clay wearing? Oh, photo evidence. Yeah, those are. Are those main brand or are those mock crocks? That's kind of like the paparazzi. Yeah, that was a paparazzi shot. So our other mystery guests that we're very honored to have,

Luke Nailer. Arkansas Gaming Fish Commission, Waterfowl Biologist. Luke was on the main Bear Gries podcast last week. Yep. I told him he carried the weight of it. Carried the weight of it. As usual. Yep.

He did great. Now, I still stand by my analogy that you being the lead guy for the Arkansas Game of Fish Commission, lead waterfow guy, in the duck hunting capital of the world. He is essentially like, I said Steph Curry of the Golden State Warriors. It's appropriate. Yeah. Yeah, my jump shot's not that good. I don't think that's going to work. I'm surprised.

Your shoes are acceptable. You would have gotten it. Typically, I'm about the only guy showing up on a WMA to change in and out of hunting boots and wearing my chaco sandals. That's pretty much how I drive to and from a hunting location. So I'm I got problems in a volcano, I guess. Yeah. But it works out of the way. You got all kinds of problems if you're wearing chocos.

I'm a big fan of chakos. I mean, they're basically the only shoes that I've worn. Hey, Clay. I think there's something that we need to get out of the way with Luke. Okay. About a certain object that falls from trees. Uh-oh. It's true.

Yeah, I wanted to make a public apology to all my listeners from the South about the way Luke pronounced the word acorn. Acorn. You know what? Now, stop right there. I listened to it twice one time on the way up here. The only thing I could get over was you saying pronounce again. I know. I knew it would come up.

I knew it would come up. I didn't hear Luke say that. We're going to give Luke a pass. I don't, you know, I honestly didn't remember him saying it either. He did. He's a head in the truck, too, on the way here. Why are you from? I'm getting a lot of really.

You're from Kansas. You're from Kansas right now. Yes, I'm a native Kanssen. They don't even have trees. We don't have trees. State trees at Cottonwood. They get some place. I thought it was a telephone pole.

Right. Yeah. It pretty much is. So, yeah, there's a few. Acorn bearing trees in Kansas, but not near the number there are down here. Just have some respect for where you're at. Just go ahead and call him Acron. He's good.

He's in the 80%. Be true to yourself. He's in the 80%. He's kind of got to go. I've been here for a while, and I can kind of, you just got to kind of read the room. Yeah. And if it's particularly hostile, you go with Acron. You just avoid the subject altogether.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, present company accepted. You gave us some great knowledge on the podcast. So I have on my notes here. Are you going to introduce the rest of us? Yes. I was going to say, so the regular crew that's here, to my right, Misty Newcomb, great to have you, Misty.

Does you guys know that most of the comments we get about the Bear Grees Render are about Misty? Yeah, because she's better than us. Yeah, very much so. Brent Reeves, great to see, Brent. Great to be seen. Josh Spillmaker. Here. I'm glad to be here.

Hey, Daniel Rup couldn't be here. His mustache is excellent. I have that in my notes. What did you guys think? First thing I thought of was Catfish Hunter. Should we possibly get some context for why we're talking about Dan's mustache? Go ahead. Well, he posts, we would not out this information because we follow HIPAA guidelines here at the Bear Gries podcast.

I've got rabies. We probably should talk about that. Well, Dan just couldn't be here. Yeah. So last week, Daniel saw my mustache. And Daniel. Was that the inspiration? No doubt.

No, I mean, it's not really debatable. Has he seen your shoes? It is, I have to say, it's the most fake looking real mustache I've ever seen. Daniel Rooms, go to his page, you'll see it. It looks great. It's fantastic. So Daniel couldn't be here. And then unfortunately, Gary Newcomb couldn't be here.

That's very unfortunate. Yeah, dad couldn't be here either. So, uh, so we've got a great crew, though. Yeah. Settle for us. Getting along. Hey, while we're taking care of some business here, I want to two meatyter-related things. So, Meteeter's coming out with a whole big waterfow deal.

You can go to themedeater.com forward slash waterfowl and see all the stuff that they're doing. So one of my guests on the podcast was Sean Weaver, who is Meteor's waterfow guru. Sean is a cool guy. Sean's 28 years old. he put 70,000 miles a year on a truck, which is true and has for like the last 10 years. And he travels all over the country and is just a genuine good guy.

And so he came here and I interviewed him. And I thought he was so good on the podcast because he wasn't from Arkansas. Everybody else was from Arkansas, including me. And so we were establishing that Arkansas is the duck hunting capital of the world. And I was kind of playing the, why is it? I don't understand. And Sean, to me, kind of sealed the deal

because he's got no stock in Arkansas. And his, I liked what he said about, he just kind of gave an outsiders look into Arkansas. I say that to say, Meteor's coming out with a new series called Duck Lorre. Oh, cool. And it's Sean traveling all over the country, hunting with people.

Nice. And so it's pretty cool. And one of the episodes will be in Arkansas. Good. Maybe, maybe, maybe not with me. If there's not an episode in Arkansas, we've got big problems. Concour. Because this is the Duck County Capital of the world.

So you can go to the Meteor.com forward slash waterfowl, and you can see First Light has a new waterfowl gear system coming out. And you can sign up for our newsletter. That's good. The only other thing on my Meteor agenda is, how many of you guys know Spencer Newhart? You probably don't know Spencer Newhart. I know.

Okay. Our guests here, Spencer Newhart works at Meteor. He's our hunting editorial guy. Got a good beard also. Yes. I had a dream the other night. And I remembered nothing about the dream other than that Spencer Newhart walks past me. And I call him Beech Nut.

And you're going to make this public for poor Spencer. You're going to release this on the podcast. Hey, Beachnut. I just remember addressing him very seriously. Like Mr. Beech Nut. Beachnut. Come here. know something. So I just am doing my part to just make sure that that's what everybody calls

him. I think that's a moniker that. Pretty sure Steve Rinell is on this wagon too, as is everybody else a meat eater. So Beachnut? Yeah, we really like, we really appreciate what he does for us. Okay, moving right along, moving right, it was weird. It was very weird, okay? That's why I made it a point, I, you know, made it a point to make this very public. Okay, moving right along. I almost lost my, eye yesterday. Yeah, I feel like that story. I feel like I had to, I rode with these guys for like 20 minutes before I told them that I wasn't like, you know, like either sick.

Either, you know, Clay's got pink eye or Clay is not well. Yeah, that's my first thought. Great. Great. It's like, because I've got small kids. And when you got kids my age, like, oh, if your eyes red, you just assume somebody's got pink. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I didn't want it to be the first thing I said. guys um no so yesterday i had two of my buddies from oklahoma come up here um alvin grigg and brian wringles very nice very nice guys they they they are really good guys they ride horses they wanted to come up and squirrel hunt on their horses me on the mule and we hunted yesterday and about 11 o'clock yesterday i was riding to a tree so when you when you're squirrel hunting on mules part of the deal is that you can get to the tree quick so the dog's tree and the squirrel especially this time of year they're going in dens really quickly usually the quicker you can get there the better and going to a tree and i mean just like we've done for lots of miles riding

through thick forest you just kind of put up your arms and just go and stuff's brushing across you and you know and i just took a stick you know i didn't see it happened i don't know how big it was It was strange. It was in your eye and you didn't see it. Yeah. I just took a stick in my right eye. And for a minute there, I really thought, I'm going to open this eye and I'm going to see black. You know, I was envision what I'd look like with a glass eye and like what I was going to put in glass eye.

That's actually. A bear track right in the middle. I wish I would have thought about that because I was just picturing walking around everywhere. Because you wouldn't have taken them to the hospital? No, I was picturing walking around with them with a patch. I also had visions. and I, and, because Clay is so descriptive in text message, I'm shaking my head and now. He's like, had an issue with my eye, heading to the doctor, may need to ride.

And my response is on a scale of one to ten with ten being blindness, where are we at. What did he text back? He didn't text back. You never saw. I mean, we called, we talked on the phone. I gave you a number. You didn't. On the phone you did.

But when I talked to him on the phone, I was a little concerned, to be honest, because you can usually hear it in Clay's voice that everything's all right. And it's usually a good story or whatever. And I couldn't hear that when I, when I, I just got on the phone. It's like, well, I mean, it might be hard for him to text if in fact we are in blindness. So I just picked up the phone and called them and said, what's going on? And I could tell he wasn't quite sure. Well, it, it was a little worried. And at first I just thought it would just kind of go away. And so we just kept hunting, kept hunting, and I just kind of squinting, and it was watering. And about four hours later, it was worse than when it happened, you know.

And so we had to call off the hunt, and I just was like, man, I can't even see you out of either eye. Because when you squinch up this eye so hard, this eye started watering, too. And you just, it was, it was pretty painful. Went to the eye doctor, and I took off a chunk out of my cornea. Yeah. Nice. And, uh, it makes me hungry. He said if it had been two millimeters further, as I'm sitting right now, to the west, he said it would have caused permanent damage.

If that happens on your pupil, like it's basically, I mean, from what I could tell, like, not fixable. Yeah. But it's no big deal. Will it grow back? It's almost already healed. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy. But if I hadn't gone to the doctor, he said what happens is it's when you get it.

when you get an eye injury, it abrades your eye. And then when you blink, it tears the scab off your eye. Every time you blink. So what did they do? Take a Dremel? They put a contact lens,

like a medicated contact lens over it. Interesting. And then. So that went, it was like it. But, but yeah, to get rid of the worms. But it.

But it... Brent stays on Ivermectin. For a pink eye? Your eye heals very quickly. And I'm serious. Like right now, I feel perfectly fine. That's crazy. And yesterday I can hardly see it out of it.

So, yeah. Miracles of modern science, folks. Well, what my buddy Alvin says is he said, we take for granted how often stuff just goes normal. Yeah. Like, you go, you go squirrel hunting and you don't get hurt and you come home. You just think that's normal? Yeah. It's like, no, so anyway.

Lost another tooth today. Yeah. Yeah. Austin, man, you, so you've, you've been at the game in fish now since July? July 1st. July 1st. So, yeah, sir. A little over six months.

That's right. So give us a little, uh, the walk through of your career and kind of where you've been and how you got here. Grew up in a small town in Lone Oak County, uh, left in. 2004 to go to college. Dad was an engine builder. Mom became a nurse after she put her kids through college. But anyways, went to college at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. Then went to law school at the University of South Carolina.

Okay. And then took a- So start taking notes here. He's a lawyer. Okay, that's one finger. Check. Yeah. Okay.

Then took a commission in the United States Marine Corps in 2010. He's Marine, number two. Check. And served on active duty in the Marine Corps for eight years. Got out in 2019. Came home and was the chief of staff for the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs. Okay. Did that for about 18 months.

And then I started at Gaming Fish in July. Wow. Okay. So in the Marines, you were a lawyer for the Marines? Yes. Really? So my first three years, I did nothing but basically prosecute cases. Oh.

What kind of cases? I mean, like, what, I don't understand why the, I mean, are the Marines defending themselves? Yeah. Or is it stuff that happens inside the Marines? Well, so the Marine Corps is a cross-section of society, right? So it's very interesting cross-section of society. But we have Marines that break the law. Are you serious?

Yes, actually. Yes. And in the Marine Corps, you know, we have the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which 80% of it is very similar to what we would see in civilian jurisdictions. But we hold them accountable. And there's a Marine Corps jury, Marine Corps judge, Marine Corps prosecutor, Marine Corps defense counsel. And it's very similar to what you would see out in town. Okay. So it's like its own.

own internal own criminal justice system wow so you were just prosecuting just regular stuff it wasn't like you name it all over the place okay yep for nine years is the jury selected at random like they are

except for within a smaller yes now mostly at random there's some guidelines on if you're a certain rank you know there can't be anybody of junior rank on on the panel

Oh, okay. And there has to be a certain officer to enlisted ratio. So we can't just reach them to a hat and pull people out. Wow. But then we get this big panel and then we go through the Vodair process where each side, you know, tries to kick people off if they think they'll be unfair. Wow. That's very similar to what happens out in town. So I did that for three years and then went to Afghanistan.

Did some operational stuff over there. and then came back and went to the hill for three years. So in Afghanistan, you were like on the ground? I was on the ground still as a lawyer, but doing what we call operational law, which is, I mean, use of force, drone strikes, rules and engagement, you know, vetting, targeting packages, stuff like that. Wow. And then, okay. And I tried to get out of the Marine Corps after Afghanistan, but that really just wasn't a marketable skill to law firms.

Really? Yeah. It seems like it would be. That's all right. And you're married and have three kids? Married and have three kids. Excellent. Eight, five, and three.

And, hey, I just want to say this because this was news to me. The director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, that position is a hired position. It's not an appointed position. That's good intel to know. I mean, because for someone who's lived in this state his whole life, I could not have told you that. I thought, I knew that the commission was governor appointed by the governor. Right. And I just kind of lumped all the leadership together in some way. But the director of the agency, I mean, you applied for the job and got hired.

That's right. That's good. And when we were doing our GTR public meetings, I don't want to spoil anything. But someone would always ask me, they were like, so you're 35 years old, how exactly did you get to be the director of the Arkansas game fish? And I was telling the same thing. I said, do you really want to know? They're like, yeah, of course. Give us the inside. Yeah. And I tell him, I'm like, I went online.

I googled the headowner. I found his website, and I sent him my cover letter and my resume. And they said, well, did you know any of the commissioners? I was like, yeah, I knew one. And we had lunch. And there was his end road. And we had lunch and he told me not to apply. So, yeah, it's hired.

That's great, man. So Austin, did you grow up hunting? I did. Mostly duck hunt. A little bit of deer hunting, but mostly wing shooting dove and ducks. Hunting public land in Arkansas, mainly. Public land in Arkansas. We had some leases every now and then if we could find them.

Let me ask something. Brent, you're not a hillbilly. You are a. Flatlander. So is Austin also a flatlander? Absolutely. Okay. It's helpful.

I just think it's helpful to categorize. Just so you know, people that tightly in the room. Just so you know, if you call me a hillbilly. or him a hillbilly now that there's two of us here you better have the right shoes on crocs I've had to threaten him to quit calling me a hillbilly because Clay throws a term around kind of loosely yeah yeah now Luke we we got into a little bit of your history on the main podcast but you've been with the game fish since 2006 correct yep about 15 years you went where'd you go to school I went to undergrad at Kansas State and then graduate school at the University of California at Davis. So spent some time out there. So

yeah, grew up in Kansas and just my wife and I went west for graduate school for a few years and then decided to come back east as the California people say once you cross this here in Nevada, you're back east. East arena is back east. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anywhere out here. You know, that's, I like what you said there because directional descriptors are totally based on your perception of where you're at because Austin was asking me about Gerstocker a minute ago. He saw a painting that we had hanging. That was a guy fighting a bear with a knife. In crox.

He was not wearing crox. And so the book that that story is in is called Wild Sports in the Far West right here. There was a time when Arkansas was the Far West. Oh, yeah. That is neither here nor there. So, you, man, Luke was hunting public land this morning when the, you got the invite to come here. I was.

Nice. I was driving back from a little morning in Biomeda. How much do you think participation inside of the places that you're regulating helps you manage? A lot. I don't know how much. I don't know how you could do this job if you don't spend time in those places. I have the opportunity to speak to some college courses, you know, wildlife classes, conservation classes, whatever the name may be.

And I've kind of got a standard presentation. I give and tweak from year to year. And that's been some of my, I've been kind of hanging on that advice the last few times when I talked to students. I said, you got to, I think I've ordered somebody, you got to walk where you want to work. And I've, that was instilled in me early on. I was a public land hunter growing up in Kansas. A lot of, a lot of duck hunting, quail and pheasant, of course.

Had an uncle that had a farm for years out west of Wichita and had some awesome opportunities there with family over the years. but 90% public land. And that just instills a totally different perspective. And I don't know how I could relate to anyone else. Do anything, have any credibility, really, with all the stuff we're talking about with GTRs if I didn't actually live it myself.

Yeah. So, yeah, I like to just get out and I went out and just took a walk in the woods by myself this morning. And I may go out tomorrow morning with some friends. We'll see. But, you know, kind of, it's a refreshing to do that at least once kind of by myself every year and just go kind of wander around. And there's no pressure, no strings attached to anything, just go out and see what's going on.

Yeah. Again, coming into this topic and this world, not knowing a lot about it, which is, to me, interesting that you can live in a state like Arkansas and be as active in the hunting space as a bunch of us are over here and know nothing about duck hunting. but when you told me that you didn't you know everybody hunts private land sometimes but you were like man i pretty much hunt public land in arkansas and i mean you're you're the guy making putting a lot of your fingerprints on what's going on around here i i just thought that that did give you a lot of credibility you know well appreciate it yeah you got to walk a mile in the shoes right

so it's uh or i guess most people don't walk like i do but a lot of people maybe a boat something like that Put a mile in another man's crox. Yeah, well, right, right. Yeah, I might as well have been in crock today. My waiters were leaking, so it wouldn't have made no difference. But, yeah, you got to get out there and experience it just like other folks do. I do it. It's been turkey hunting here, deer hunting here.

You know, it's all public land. Yeah. And sure, I'm not afraid to go out and ask permission to snow goose hunt or go out and somebody invites me to a place. I'll do that. But that's a couple times a year versus to all the other. trip compared to all the other trips I do on public land. So yeah keeps you, keeps you kind of grounded on what's really going on out there.

Sure. Yeah. A little more connected. How feasible is it really to hunt ducks and all that in, on public land in Arkansas? Very. Very. It is most people,

I guess I'll start out by putting in perspective from somebody outside Arkansas. Uh-huh. Most folks coming from outside Arkansas come here and have a duck hunt. And we've got about 45, thousand people every year come from out of state to hunt ducks in Arkansas. And about 85% of those are on private land, but about 15% on public land. Invariably, those folks that come from out of state to duck hunt on public land, typically, and I've talked to a bunch of them over the years, that one day in Arkansas, they will see more ducks than they see in an entire season of hunting ducks

somewhere else. Big states for us, out-of-state hunters or Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, of course, coming across in Memphis a lot. But it's to a person. They say that this is, I mean, one day in the woods here when the water's in and this time of year, and they'll see more ducks and they'll see in a couple seasons sometimes. So it's just different. The intensity here is extremely high. The pressure is high.

You can't ignore it and pretend like it's some sort of wilderness experience to go duck hunting on public land in Arkansas. Okay. Because you're not typically going to find a lot of solitude. I found relative solitude this morning, which means there's somebody. I think Clay was asking me how close somebody was and, you know, a few hundred yards and you can barely hear their duck call. That's kind of solitude on public land in Arkansas.

But it works. And I think it's the folks can take off where I'm hunting. You just get a pair of cheap hip boots and a duck call and go walking. I didn't even have a decoy with me today. Really? Yeah, you just walk in and kind of the old-timer way of doing things. You just kick the water. Ducks key in on that.

Being in the woods, ducks really key in on the moving water, the splashes, and the sound, the call. So they're kind of hardwired to look for that. Did you take any ducks this morning? I shot two ducks. I shoot the two that came in and did it right like I like to shoot them. Mallards?

They had to be fully committed. Yeah. Were they mallards? Yeah. Okay. They were Drake. Well, he said he killed ducks, so they must be Mallard. That's what they are.

Right, that's synonymous in Arkansas. Yeah, exactly. Hey, compare this right here, what he's talking about doing on public lamb. How many vehicles were in the parking lot this morning? There's usually this, when it's like it is now, there'll be 50 to 75, sometimes over 100 at our major access points. Okay. And that's on, and in the area, you were hunting biometer, I assume?

It's probably 20,000 acres of water right now because we're on a major flood. 20,000 acres of water. acres, 50 to 70 vehicles? And is that what you said? Yep. What would you do if you pulled up? You can put six hillbillies in one truck. What would you do if you pulled up to a trailhead in Montana?

Well, there was a million acres in front of you, and there was 50 vehicles there. You'd go somewhere else. You turn around and go back home. Yeah. But you can do that here. Mm-hmm. That's pretty cool. Why?

The question, why? Because you can do just like what, what Luke did. You can get 250. yards away from somebody. You can hunt and tighten a little bit tight and you can do that. And still be successful. Absolutely you can. And that's just,

that's a big difference. And I just thought about how different that was than if you and I had pulled up somewhere with a trailhead that had 50 vehicles that we wouldn't even stop. Yeah. We'd just keep going. And he would be walking and he was walking. Yeah. I know a much smaller area. It is.

And he had a space to do it. Brent, tell us about your duck hunting history. I mean, you used to be a guide. My brother and I got it for the better, probably 26 years, I guess. I think it's what I figured it up. And I've been hunting. I killed my first greenhead when I was 12, I think. And I can remember it just like it happened this morning.

And 12 years of, when I was 12, that was a few years ago. 1930? Yeah, it was right after the Great War. Spanish American? Yeah. Yeah, that's where I learned speak Spanish. I got caught. But we got it at Raydale.

We had a camp. We bought a camp over at Raydale right on the Arkansas River. We were 10 minutes from Buckingham Flats, which is. Now, why can we talk about all this public land and not, and it's okay to be specific? Or, I mean, it just is. I mean, that's it. But I mean, it's a serious question because can we, can we, like, if you, like, if you, typically we don't use names of stuff. Well, in Biomedia, I mean,

If you're duck hunting on public land in Arkansas, in that part of Arkansas, it's Biomeda. Right. Or if it's northeast Arkansas, it's Black River or Black Swamp or, you know. So we're comfortable saying that. It's just a serious question. Yeah. By me. By me does it.

If you ever talk about the places I hunt this cataly, it's over. I'm going to quit pointing your finger at me. I'm going to tell you. Yeah, if you all ask me like a name of a road or a nearest town where I turkey hunt, at Stoneface I don't know what you're talking about I'm not telling you One two three any street

This picture And you've already gone too far already With me We'd say I turkey hunt In the eastern deciduous forest This photograph that I brought My son wanted to come to a renter

But he couldn't come today He was 12 I think When I took this picture This was on the blue line And by Mita Luke may have heard That's where

That's where Luke hunts Yeah Is that a joke was standing right there. Is that Luke in the background? No, no, I don't think I was lurking back there. That's my brother back there. But we had this dog for 13 years that's in this photograph with him.

But that photograph says so much to me. And one reason I brought it today to show it was just for you all to look at was this was on the last podcast you talked about driving by. Luke, you talked about your dad said he drove by and every other house had a black dog in a boat and a tree. driveway. Well, this was my life right here for almost 30 years. It was, we, I deer hunted some for something to do until duck season opened up. I mean, and that, the whole community of people that I was around, that's what they did. Everything else was just to keep you out of jail long enough for duck season to open up. And then for the next, our 60, 70, 90 days, whatever it was going to be. that's what we did every day.

And it was the hardest job I ever had outside of law enforcement, the hardest thing I ever done in the most fun. I made the best friends. And you talked about people coming from out of state. We had clients from all over that hunted with us, from Pennsylvania and Georgia and North Carolina, South Carolina, like the big Sebastian majority of them come from there. And I remember one day we took a guy from Pennsylvania, from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

We took him into Buckingham Flats, and we went in there. And 9, 30, 10 o'clock, ducks just shut off. It was over with. And we liked, there was probably four or five of us in there. I'd say there was four of us in there. And we liked like two ducks having a limit for everybody. So we start picking up decoys and we're walking out. And the guy's, he's passed away now.

but the guy from Pennsylvania was walking right beside me, and I said, Mr. Roberts, I'm sorry it wasn't any better than it was today. And he said, what? I said, I'm sorry, it wasn't any better than that, because normally 10 o'clock, you're waking up from a nap, getting ready to get something because you've already limited out several hours before. And he reached and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and turned me around. I thought he's fixed to hit me.

He said, boy, you don't realize what y'all have here. he said, I saw more ducks this morning than I have killed than I have seen in two years at home. Wow. And he said, and I killed more ducks this morning than I have over the last two years at home. He said, you got something special here. And I never, and I would say that up until that point, I would always apologize to clients if we didn't kill a full limit. I never said it again after that because he was right. Yeah.

And it was, this would have been 98 or 99. And it was, you could go and you could put 250, 300 ducks in a hole in the woods right on top of you. I had them so close, they were blowing that their wingtips that touch you on the arm. My brother caught a mallard hen one time. You better not say that. The director's here. They're going to have to catch him. He let him go.

He caught a mallard hen. He didn't come in. I thought you were going to say, my brother once killed the duckling. Adelaide. No. Just fluttering by, looking for a place to light. And he reached out and grabbed it by the neck.

And he said, that duck went up his arm like a roasting ear. He said that he was clawing and biting. He turned it loose. Wow. But it was, I mean, you just get them in that close. And that's not. What's the most you ever just estimated? And we know your estimation is going to be 30% higher than the truth.

Well, I'll take 30. What's the most you think ever landed? in a set of decoys or came in in buckingham flats we had two guys from memphis we went in there on a tuesday morning and we were the only folks in there we had where's one vehicle in that parking lot on a tuesday morning this was in about 1994 93 or 94 and if it was one duck it was seven 800 i was going to say a thousand but you wasn't going to believe it so so that's 30 It's a reduction. Yeah, at least a hundred.

They started working ducks and 50 ducks became... I don't even know really what 800 ducks would look like. Luke, have you ever experienced anything like that? Most people don't. Yeah, not to that scale, but I've been fortunate to have been on some good hunts with some good friends. And I see that start to happen. It's strange what happens there. Something so fascinating about hunting in the timber that it does, as Brent started to describe,

They kind of just... They come from everywhere. There's just this cascade effect where they start coming, and I watched a few of them do it this morning, and I was about ready to leave, and a few ducks came in, they finally just found a spot,

and they broke through the trees, away from me and away from this other group, just kind of started settling in, and half a dozen of them started it, and really all it takes is a few to start the train. Right. And, I mean, just quickly, there's probably 60, 70 ducks

just pulled right in behind them. So if there's, enough ducks around it can build into the hundreds like that if the key is being patient enough to let it happen and they started lighting like a hundred yards away okay and they kind of and they just and it was just like a rolling carpet they just started just rolling right have you ever seen anything like that awesome sure yeah big big groups like that yep yeah hunting the white river bottoms one time and we had a group of six guys and one group came in about three minutes after shoot in time and we limit it out in one

in one volley one group of ducks yeah that's nice now how would that be would you have you'd had to have reloaded no but how would you limit out I mean I'm not a game warden or anything but if you only got three shells and the limits four how do you limit out because the ducks are that close and there's that many oh for real yeah sometimes if it gets right

you got to be careful one of the first times I have I have no mathematician but uh you better be I had my dad down here one of the first times we were in government Cyprus several years back 10 plus years ago and they finally started coming in they did it they broke through and if things are going right and I'm sound kind of arrogant I guess but if you're shooting them right which means they're down inside the tree right not flog skimming the tree tops and all that you know each is own that it's legal to make your own make your own decisions but um really shooting a secondary like if if ducks are doing it right in the woods shooting them

kind of an afterthought because it gets to the point where they're in so close and there can be so many of them and they really I mean they're acrobatts but getting that many ducks up out of the woods and out of gun range

a man can operate a gun much quicker that they can get out it really once it happens like that yeah it really is you're kind of like okay I guess we're going to shoot them now you start at the top and you work as they come up you just keep working the ducks now that's after they've landed yeah as they come in when the shooting starts you start high and then the duck as they work up

you take them as they're going out it could be the ducks are still coming in talking about that train starting you know and a bunch of them on the water they're just going to keep coming you shoot the ones here and the other ones get up you're just basically bang bang bang it's a safety thing it is yeah they're easy shots as far as link shooting yep you talk you all think y'all shot 20 gauges. That was my guide gun, wasn't over and under 20. Really? Wow.

So do you, like, as a duck hunter, when you're thinking about your duck hunting career, is that like killing a 10-point buck limit out and, you know, limiting out in one minute? So, look at out. How does that, give me a scale here? Luke and I were talking about that on the way up here. I think I'm in the minority here, but I would much rather. kill a few ducks short of my limit, but have a longer hunt.

I mean, I love being able to see those blue notches on their wings in the sunlight. And I love being able to see that green, that neon emerald green head in the sunlight. Sure, it's awesome to limit out really quickly, but I would much rather string that over a few hours. Yeah, that makes sense. We used to tell. Same way.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's really about seeing them. Yeah. If I can shoot some ducks, great. But I know if I've shot some ducks, that means I saw a lot of ducks. Yeah. And I had a lot of ducks close. That's way more important at the end of the day.

Seeing them and talking to them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That communication you have through calling. Yeah. Let me shush this dump. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use.

I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that goblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts.

Check out prime cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did. And you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. We would tell clients we can get this over with quick. At one point there was a point system where, you know, males and females, drakes and hens were a different point value. you went up to a hundred and hens were a hundred if you killed a hen whoever killed that hen

that was their limit so we would tell during that during that time and even after you know if we got close on if there was close on hens you know we'd say no you know we're shutting it down before we got a limit because we weren't going to walk out of there over the limit of ducks so i what we would always tell them now boys we can get this done quick or we can sit here and let the sun come up and we can shoot the boy ducks you know and and and see a show from that time on and everybody to a man was yeah we want to we want to stay here we want to watch it because it is the show and so then you try to you try to shoot the drake mallards just pick out the boys yeah boy that's harder to harder to do it's not every band i ever killed except for one i saw it on the duck's leg when i

shot him we're we're kind of different duck hunters you know Well, here's the deal. Correct me. Austin, tell me, there's a difference between a man that hunts ducks and a duck hunter. Am I right? That's true. Well, in all my experience. Yeah, you've got to be careful how far you take that.

Before you offend somebody, I'm necessarily. Well, I ain't worried about offending clay. Well, you know, I mean, I'm a pretty serious duck hunter. And I pretty much just hunt, you know, the timber. But these guys will tell you, there's amazing what you can see if you just look. You know, it was always, and we would tell new hunters, you know, pick out one duck. There's going to be, there may be 50 come in, but you can't shoot them all. You've got to find one.

And then being guides, we would always let the clients shoot first, start shooting. You know, they get their chance, and we'd shoot hours, and then we'd work them through. How does that work? And I'm not saying that's bad, but why does the guide get to shoot? Why does he get to shoot? Well, I'm out there hunting, too. I like to shoot them. I guess in a wing

you're not taking away anything from anybody by the guy because usually in a guided situation the guide's not hunting too but that's common practice sure you say that's pretty common and it gives you an extra limit for the picture bingo okay

got you so gives you an extra limit yes yeah you're taking novice hunters too it's nice to have I took them out just last week and I had my gun with me no intention of shooting first at all, but, you know, had to go, um,

cripple goes off something. You got to, you got to have somebody experienced that, kind of knows how to take care of things. And, uh, you know, hunting with novices and you got a dog,

for example, you tell everybody that, hey, once that dog's out, everybody else puts, nobody else shoots. Like, I'm,

I'm going to shoot because I know what the dog's doing. So it's important a lot of times to have a guide or have a, the more knowledgeable hunter, more experienced hunter. to be ready to help out with some situations like that. And yeah, it's a few more ducks for the picture, too. Yeah, a few more ducks for the picture. Put all the mallards up front.

Do you feel like this is all inside baseball, Josh? No, I have intentionally never duck hunted. That's unfortunate. On purpose. On purpose, because I have a bit of an obsessive personality. And I know that first, I love to fly fish. I mean, I get obsessed with fly fishing. Actually, tell you guys, I got my first trout fishing guide gig this weekend.

Good for you. I'm a good for some guys. I bought my guide license. All $25. All $25 for my god's like that. Everybody's really clarifying how they follow them. Yeah, that's nice. I'm obsessive about gear and about fly fishing and tying and all that kind of stuff.

I know the first time I go duck hunting, it's going to be like, I'm doing this. It seems like that. My brother-in-law loves, my brother-in-law loves, my brother-in-law, Scott Anderson duck hunts over and around the Tulsa area a lot and he's always wanting me to go and I'm like, I've never just been too gung-ho about it because of that reason. Okay, talking directly about the podcast, this is what we usually do. What was your favorite part that stood out to you? Anybody can start.

Yeah. I'll tell you, it has been my favorite of all the ones. He actually said this yesterday. It's been, surprise me. It's been my favorite since even Bear Hunting magazine when we first started. It's been because there was everyone that talked on there, I could relate to everything somebody was saying. You know, it was from Jimbo to the whole thing, the biology and the area.

Because this, you know, these were questions that clients were asking me. I had people from New Jersey. They wanted to know. Some of them never seen stars. at night. They were standing outside in front of camp in Raydale on the bank of the Arkansas River and look up at the stars and be amazed. And they were, it was just one question after another, what kind of tree is this, why do ducks come down here, the things that you addressed in that thing. And it was from me lying to them and tell them that the pit cotton field was the remnants of

where they raised grits at, that I never corrected that. But to, wow, to actual tell them the truth about things that I could actually answer. But all of those things were just an intrinsic part of their experience. And it made me realize, like, the guy that snatched me out of my waiters there from Pennsylvania of what we had, you know, and what we have and what we were. What we were able to do that those guys were just going to be able to see for like three days until the next year. From start to finish. It's nostalgic for it. Yeah, man, brought back a million, million memories.

Now, there was one thing. I listened to it the second time when it actually came out. And I thought, man, I bet I've offended a bunch of people. Well, here's what. I don't think so. This was the only thing that garnered my attention other than you say in pronunciation was. I don't know how to pronounce the word. The first duck hunting podcast.

And as far as I know, I'm the first duck guide you ever knew. And my reference was cornbread, which was really kind of good anyway. Cornbread trumps everything. got called out for your love of corporate, which is true, which is true. No shame in that. No. That's right. I loved it.

I've listened to every single one of the Bear Grease podcast and Bear Greas renders except for the most, for the most recent render. Okay. Way to go, Austin. Yeah. He's on the train, man. Nice. I had some special perspective on it, not because I worked for a game of fish, but because I grew up Arkansas, Dunk Hutton. Right.

And then I left it. And I did it in South Carolina, did it in Virginia. Was it different? Oh, my. The look of disgust on his face. Where to begin? But I tell people it was so much different, but it made me such a better hunter. Not just because I appreciated it, but because I had to pay attention to so many more variables.

Sure. When you're on public land off the Potomac River with, you know, you got to worry about tides. You've got to worry about, like when the timber. or falls into single digits, big water, just a million different variables. And I had my boat inside my garage out there one winter. And my dad came out there. We're standing in the garage talking. And he looked in it in my boat and said, son, why in the world do you have blue bill decoys?

Blue bill decoys. You have shamed the family. Forget the crox. Forget the crooks. That's worse than cross. Yeah. Much worse. And, you know, he, you know, I was like, what to have?

It's just, that's just what we have out of here. He's like, why even go? Now, what is the blue bill decoy? It is, so a blue bill is a type of duck. Okay. It's a diver, not a dabbling duck. Oh. And Luke's going to correct me if I get anything wrong here.

It's a fun bird to a chase. They fly very erratically, so they're fun to shoot. They're not quite as tasty and not near as pretty as a mallard. Okay. I mean, the blue bill kind of sounds nice to me. It's not. I'm more of a mallard guy. Right, right.

You always have been. Always have been. Since last week. I'm outed the one mallard I've ever killed. So I loved it from that perspective. And then the second thing that I really liked about it was the outro. Your description of, it's a good thing when North American hunters love a critter so much. that they chase it for its feathers,

it's fur or it's meat, because we'll do whatever we take to try to preserve that. And as I've kind of approached the game of fish as an outsider, but as a lifelong beneficiary of it, I'm very focused on trying to restore that connection between consumption and sportsmanship. Awesome. Yeah.

Yeah, man, that statement is so true. And I mean, that's really the message that we're trying to send to the broader world. is that, man, the best thing that could happen if you were a game species is that guys like this would sit around in a podcast, one beautiful lady. My stashless lady. Would talk about hunting that species.

It came up in the last gender. Yeah, inside baseball again. Okay. I mean, that's the best thing that could happen because where an animal has cultural value, and see, these are the things that I think need to be on all of our tongues just to intuitively be able to say it. I want my kids to be able to say this.

Is that where an animal has cultural value, it's protected and its habitat is protected. And when you can't hunt something, when the common man has no incentive because he cannot partake of that resource, he has no incentive to protect that. And I mean, that's the North American model, is that we've given people, the common man, incentive to want to protect wildlife and we've built this culture this hunting culture into our families and north america oddly enough has the most big game animals of anywhere on the planet and the strongest most robust hunting culture of anywhere on the planet and other places but they do not fishing and fishing we got our slot limits that we observe yes exactly so brent would you say

in light of clays remark that the mallard is valued culturally in southeast targets off. Yes, I would say. I would say it'd be Jesus and then the mallard duck. Pretty close. No, it's not even close, but the mallard duck's the next one on the rung. Yeah. No, I thought that was an interesting question because it's so, it's like, there's no question.

I mean, like you guys that are in it deep that never, I mean, has it ever crossed your mind that why are we targeting this animal? So, why is this one so special? I mean, these guys, they're all looking at me like I'm crazy. They're like, uh, it's a no brain. It's just ingrained. Yeah, it just is. Yeah.

Well, that's interesting because that, and that's why I wanted to talk about it. And I thought that was a cool section of the podcast. And it answered my questions because there's always functionality. There's always function behind something that seems just totally cultural. You know, they're the vocal duck. They're the biggest duck. They're the most widely geographically distributed duck. So it's a no-brainer once you understand these pieces of science behind it, you know, that it's like, yeah, the king of ducks, man, the malleard duck.

Makes a lot of sense. There is a cultural connection. I mean, we just kind of denigrated bluebells here for a second. You know, if you go out like the legendary people here again, they kind of, like I might get struck by lightning. But, you know, Waterfowl Honey didn't start in Arkansas. I mean, just. What? Yeah, right.

So, but you think about the... We got to talk when you get back. I know, I know. I'll have my letter on your desk in the morning. Yeah. But there's... But if you think about, you know, the diving dust, canvas bag, scop, blue bills, you know, decoy carving.

That's an East Coast tradition and Great Lakes tradition built around totally different species, largely different life histories, different behaviors, different ways of pursuing them. It's all duck hunting, but much different techniques. techniques used, you know, my timeout, six years out in California in the Central Valley where the northern pentail is king. And it's fascinating watching that when I was out there was kind of during this transition phase where pentail populations were declining continentally. Bag limits were declining. So it went from back in the days where Brent mentioned the point system. They were pentails were a bonus duck in the 70s in California, which meant you could shoot 10 of them per day.

And it built this whole culture of managing habitat for Pintails, which is a different structure. It's wide open, huge, huge, you know, I hunted one time out there with a friend over, you know, 3,000 decoys. And this is just totally just wide open water, like four to six inch deep, wide open. And as Pintail limits dropped, people started managing for Mallards. And so now people in California are managing much, much, more from Mallards than they did in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s,

because kind of the king duck sort of switched based on, you know, regulations kind of, apparent population size, and kind of the availability to have that harvest opportunity. And so it's kind of these regional, we have these regional differences in what duck is important. But, you know, as we talked about on the podcast, I mean, it's, it's just, there's just no doubt. who's king here and it's the mallard in most parts of the country and nobody

nobody can challenge the argument that that Arkansas is the king of the mallard locate like I mean the mallard is king and Arkansas is the king for mallards so that that's pretty much undebatable just despite you know rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated so yeah talk to me about that because it's probably everybody just wants to talk about the negative and that's what you hear but i hear guys say that you know there's not as many coming down you know it's different than it used to be and i know that it is different i mean just just talk to me about that yeah it's totally different but you i always got to kind of compartmentalize right

that different doesn't necessarily mean worse or it's always going to stay this way i mean it may change right right back uh we don't we don't know um a lot of good things have happened just this could be a whole other conversation. But if you think back, well, it's kind of interesting where people establish their frame reference, right? It's always fascinating to talk to people. I had a colleague in Louisiana who has lived there now. He actually was from California, but lived there for over 30 years now and was getting,

you know, finger in his chest from some guy talking about how terrible duck hunting was now. And he finally asked him, it's like, man, I've been duck hunting in Louisiana 30 years. I wasn't born and raised here. He said, how many years have you been duck hunting just out of curiosity? like, well, eight. Like, well, so, so where's your frame of reference? And I think it's, I think that's really important because some old timers, I say that kindly, right? Have a different perspective on it.

20s, 1920. Right. There have been a lot of changes. And if you think, kind of continentally and what's happened for waterfowl habitat, we've done a lot of good stuff. We've put a lot of wetlands back on the landscape across the entire Mid-Continent Mallard range. So we should expect the district. of those birds to change. I see.

It does not mean that Arkansas is still not king, and it doesn't mean that Arkansas is maybe getting fewer ducks. An argument could be made that, hey, populations have been high for the last five to ten years, let's say, record highs. You could make the argument that Arkansas maybe should have seen a bigger boost than what we might have, well, some people have perceived. And even what we've counted in some of our data.

But it's just kind of a broad. broadening out of this whole duck range and it makes people uneasy. More people are shooting ducks in more places. It doesn't mean that Arkansas is still not the leader. I see. It makes it a little bit more unpredictable here. And so that predictability, I mean, you know that Mother Nature is never predictable, but humans just want everything to be exactly the same.

We want those 700 ducks in the decoys, right in the whole, every single day we go. and it's kind of a human coping mechanism to always remember the most positive experiences. Right. And so you have it framed. You can never, expectations never go anything but up. The social scientists in this field tell me. They say expectations, they just keep ratcheting up every time you go. You know, 44 years of duck hunting, that happened once.

What you said about 800 ducks flying in there. That happened one time. And that's great perspective. Yeah. Well, and I think it's human nature too, to. want to find reasons maybe and not an excuse for not being successful but like to just to talk about the time you went that it was bad you know or that or that or how your luck has changed or whatever you know and i think another coho mechanism which brent i know you've got

opinions about is um is gear i mean the amount of of money that people People are spending on every single piece of gear now compared to what they were spending on it 25 years ago. It's just absolutely nuts. And hey, this America, they spend their money however they want to, and that's awesome. But, you know, people have high expectations, and sometimes the season doesn't deliver on that. So they buy this piece of gear that's going to help them reconcile that gap. I think the expectations then go even further. So you're saying the more you spend on gear, the more.

expectation you have. Well, sure, you're more invested. Yeah. Yeah, you drive around these parking lots and you've got $60,000 to $80,000 and we talked about, what, there'd be two, 300 vehicles in biomeat on a given day. Right. And half of those have got, about, got, you know, let's say $50 to $70 plus $1,000 parked there. So there. Add that up. They've got some incentive to bring some duck meat home. Oh, yeah. Well, and then I wonder how many were people talking bad about Arkansas duck hunting 40 years ago? I mean

do you still say like I mean there were people that had bad duck hunts 40 years ago that's what I'm saying. Yeah well sure they did and but there wasn't an internet then the biggest roadblock or the biggest stumbling block that we ran into was overcrowding and as duck hunting got more popular and it was I can attribute it only to what I saw. You know, a TV show comes out about duck hunting.

And then the next year, the parking lot started getting fuller and fuller and fuller and fuller and fuller people. And I would say it would have been a boon to duck stamp sales and ammunition sales. And Pittman Robertson probably benefited from that, which benefited the whole state, everything. but you've also still got a limited amount of space with a large influx of new people. And as I would say, I enjoy this sociological discussion about human expectations.

The last thing that I want people to think is that, you know, me and Luke are saying the duck hunting in Arkansas is absolutely perfect in anybody that thinks otherwise is a crazy person. No. Yeah. I mean, it's a challenged, resource continentally.

I think we've got some access problems. We've got some habitat problems, which will be part two. We got plenty of habitat problems in Canada. So, yeah, we deal with unrealistic expectations a lot. But on the flip side of that, it's a challenge resource, and we need to be more adaptive in how we manage the resource, but also in how we deal with people in their favorite 60 days of the year. Yeah.

Hey, Austin, tell me about, tell me your philosophy, just what you see this next trail looking like for the gaming fish and your leadership inside of it. Yeah, we're in a really nice turning point right now. Not necessarily a nice turning point because I'm the new guy here and I think everything needs to change. but turning point culturally in the agency where a lot of people internally know that we need to change. We've got major fluctuations going on on the regulatory landscape and also some major changes in the habitat as well.

And, I mean, Luke, tell me if you think I'm wrong here, but the number one thing that we have going for right now, I think we got a really solid set of commissioners. and so you want to bat mouth any of that I would not advise there's any of pregnant pause here looks like

I already I already kind of like I held out when we talked about when Austin talked about the hiring process and because there's lots of other stories

from the staff side about how that went down as he would imagine I hear Missouri needs a new water pop Arizona Arizona yeah

Arizona's a great place to work on waterfow. I got no GTR. No, it is. I agree with that because the only thing I'll say about it as the evidence of that is that probably one of the biggest issues that this agency has ever tackled. And I don't think that's hyperbole. It's a GTR stuff. And we started that in, well, a couple times, but 2014, let's say. And so that's an entire term of one commission or seven years now, which you could do the math.

So that's like, however many of that is, total 10 or 12 of them, different people. Right. And we have held the same ground and continued on the same path toward change since 2014 with that many different commissioners. Yeah. And, I mean, there's not a single commissioner that I know that I can, that I would point out and be like, oh, yeah, he's not a very good guy. They're all awesome. they all serve the state for seven year terms. It's all unpaid.

And they put in just an immense amount of work. And they all do because they care about the resource. What I meant by that comment is we don't just have great people right now. We've got a rare chemistry going on where we're all pointed in the right direction. And we can get stuff done. Yeah. We can get stuff done. So back to your original question.

So we're about to roll out a strategic plan for the agency. I haven't had one in some time. But we're going to roll that out soon. And the way that I'm thinking about everything is Habitat First and Arkansasansans always. In the Marine Corps, we say that about the mission. Mission first, Marine always. Well, Habitat first and Arkansasans always. And at the end of the day, everything we do comes back to Habitat.

Yeah. We can talk about, you know, the deer resource, the duck resource, the trout resource. Everything comes back to habitat. And if we don't stay laser focused on that, then everything else is just details. Yeah. Second, Arkansasans. That means communicating them what's going on the resource, having regulations that make sense, and providing meaningful quality public lands with access. Yeah.

And you've been having these public meetings that are different. Tell us about one of your public meetings. What would it be like? Yeah. So the public meetings that we do with the GTRs. Ristlamia. Actually no. Actually no.

So I worked on... In GTR. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. What is that? So we haven't... The next podcast will be about green tree reservoirs. Yeah. So green tree reservoirs are this flooded, basically flooded timber.

Which you talked about in the podcast. We foreshadowed a ton about it. A ton. Yeah. It's a horse. So GTR. GTR means intentionally flooded timber. Yes. Brent, I

know I agree with this. Definitely Luke. But there are people in Arkansas for a good reason that are not interested in hunting ducks over a rice field or a moist oil. I know I'm not. The only thing they want to do is see ducks laying in the trees.

We're on the same page. And I get it because it's magical. But I worked on the hill for a little bit when I was still in the Marine Corps. So I got to see some congressional town halls. And I wanted to take a little bit different approach from just bringing our poor staff in and, you know, passing the mic around and letting Luke and everybody else get yelled at. So what we did was we made it not informal, but we intentionally selected venues where we could cook for people.

it was a goal of mine from day one that I wanted to get off the stage eye to eye with people and actually literally break bread with them and corn bread I don't think we had corn bread I think we had some rolls that was a miss I got you back next time we'll Luke try that in a vada waterfowl position now we'll have cornbread when we do our Black Panther town halls oh yeah I'm waiting to jump on him about that

Luke's still got to tell us about his podcast I did But carry on. So we would walk in this meeting. I would kick us off, talk very high surface level about what we were doing on each GTR. And then I would bring up the commissioners, bring out the staff. All of the commissioners were wearing blue Arkansas game and fish shirts. I would introduce all the commissioners and where they were from. And then all the agency staff, including Luke, and myself were wearing white shirts.

And I would introduce each of the staff members saying, This is Luke Naler. He's our waterfowl biologist. If you have questions about anything pertaining to ducks or geese, just ask him. This is Rob Willie over here. Rob Willie is our Habitat Program Coordinator. If you have questions about forest management and red oaks and white oaks and all that stuff, ask Rob.

And so we would go down the line. And then one of the last things that I always did is I said, if you're raising, or sorry, if you're wearing a white shirt. and you hunt ducks on public land, raise your hand. And all the guys raise your hand. And then I would say, all right, we're going to talk again in an hour. And I would turn the mic off. And we had maps set up around the room.

And people are eating barbecue at some places they're having a beer. And the conversation was actually conversation. It was actually productive, meaningful dialogue. And in all four public meetings, I made a point to remove myself from the crowd and just kind of go back and observe. And every single time I would look out over the room, there were white shirts and blue shirts, and they were each in their own little pocket of people. And the only thing that was happening was heads nodding up and down.

So that was tremendous for me to watch, you know, these guys like Luke that I see work so hard every single day in their element, in their expertise, actually having eye to eye, conversations with people. So they've been successful, huh? They've been very, well, Luke, what do you? Well, yeah, compare that to the old way of doing things. And, you know, there was a need to be, to be present, to be, to kind of open your doors and have people come in and have an opportunity to communicate.

But, you know, we used to hold a series of regulatory public meetings every year. And it got to the point, you know, you'd have, you'd have 20 or 30 gaming fish staff and about five members of the public show up. And we did a few of them a couple of years ago about GTRs and went pretty well. Not a lot of yelling and screaming and people angry at each other. That's a good thing. I know, I know. It was only a little bit.

We thought you liked those passionate people, Luke. I do. But what was neat about this new way is that there's a difference between having a passionate conversation with someone, disagreeing, agreeing, whatever, having an argument versus having a podium. Yeah. Whether that be us or be a member of the public. And it kind of puts everybody on the same level playing field where we're not talking, literally in a lot of cases, talking down to people, giving PowerPoints and everybody's going

to sleep and tired of hearing it. And then also have an open mic night for the public where people start to get amends and preach it brothers and all that kind of stuff. And it kind of just, you kind of get the whole crowd riled up. It ends up being one person. That's right. This is not an effective way to communicate with a lot of people. Yeah, you don't get any information out to anybody because that person, whether it's us or them,

like it's not productive for either of us. Yeah. And they all left home with somebody they felt like. And we would end every meeting the same way too. You know, we had an hour of dialogue with staff. I would come back up there. We'd hand out some door prizes. And then the last thing we would say is, I would say, is there anybody's going to walk out that door tonight with their

question not answered. And sometimes we'd have a few of them raise their hand and we'd sort through it that way. But eventually, you know, that was their time to ask, to ask questions, to have an open mic because I am sensitive people that are upset. And I want to hear them out as a director. That's my job. But we heard him out and everybody walked their door didn't have a question or they forever hold their peace. Well, it sounds like, it sounds like you're making the agency more accessible to people. That just sounds like what's, what's, what, the goal is. Guys,

thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it. Great to be here. It's good to be here. Thanks for your contribution to the main podcast, both of you. And this next week

is going to be, we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of the green tree reservoirs, which is why we started this whole conversation. And for the record, I approached these guys about this. They didn't call me and say, hey,

we want you to do a podcast on this. That's not the way it happened at all. That's right. I heard about what was, going on, knew nothing about it, thought that I should, learned a little bit about it, and thought that's interesting. And then so we're making this, we're going to do a two-part series on, you know, Arkansas duck hunting in the GTR situation. Yeah. So thanks for coming up here, guys. Luke, I really appreciate it. Thanks for a lot to do here. Austin, thank you,

man. Absolutely. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Yeah. You're going to thank us. Thank you so much for being here. For saying yes. the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit.

Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards.

Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed human.