Bear Grease - Ep. 59: Bear Grease [Render] - The Game Warden’s Here

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

On this episode of the Bear Grease [Render],  Clay Newcomb and the crew are joined by Lt. Ep Fletcher of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. They discuss wildlife regulations and some of the most memorable moments in his career. Fletcher describes how he evaluates each violation with three specific questions: what was the intent, how does it effect the resource, and how does it impact public safety. Ep ends the podcast with a moving story about a game warden who lost his life in a water evacuation. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee 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. So I have a philosophy. I have a theory. Okay. So I'm still not convinced that Brent Reeves isn't working double undercover to bust me.

Is that called something? Is there a name for that where you're double undercover? I could tell you, but you know what would happen? It would be triple undercover if you lied to him about it. So Brent used to do undercover work for the, for multiple law, well, state police. What was it? I would not liberty discuss that with you, sir. Okay. So Brent used to do. Lieutenant, we'll talk. later. So Brent used to do undercover work. When Brent met me years and years ago, he called me and it was kind of suspicious.

And he was like, hey, I really like what you're doing. He did what Russ Arthur did to, you know, the guy he was after, played to his ego. No, it was like, I really. Would you say that that was suspicious or maybe he has a guilty conscience? Well, I think everything Brent does is suspicious. Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me. So he calls me and I'm like, who is this guy?

Yada y'i-ya. And finally I meet up with him. We become friends. To this day, I still think he's probably a double undercover agent. But his plan is finally coming to real fruition because he finally helped me gain, you know, a position in the outdoor space where I have a podcast. And then he helped me become comfortable enough that on a podcast, I told every illegal thing I've ever. ever done. Did you?

Then he orchestrates, he's like, hey, Clay, you ought to invite a game warden out here your house. And then here we have the gaming fish. So I'm waiting for a raid at any moment. It'd be cool that it would be on a live podcast. Also, Tim. Bad boys, bad boys. What you're going to do?

Tim has been working for us as well. Tim, the dog. Yep. A deep cover. Okay. We do have a special guest with us. Lieutenant Epp Fletcher from the Arkansas game. and Fish Commission.

Welcome, man. Yeah, thanks for having me. Super stoked to be here today. We heard that you're going to sing a special. Austin moves. The look on his face. So when I, yeah, I said they needed to sing a game warden that could sing and play music. They didn't tell you that?

No. Can you clog dance, too? Because we're looking for some clogged dance. We brought you here to entertain us. We need some cloggers. It's great to have you. We're going to talk with Lieutenant Fletcher about some game warden stuff, which is going to be really cool. Introductions.

Brent Reeves. Here is right. Good. Good to see Brent. Beard's looking good. Summertime beard. Absolutely. These overalls look like they've been washed about four or five times.

They are. It's pretty good for you. Which is a direct correlation to how many times I've worn them. Mm-hmm. Anybody keeping up or keeping score? How many pairs are you up to now? I actually bought, man, we had a store open up just down the street yesterday. in Atwoods, like a, I don't know if you all got them everywhere, but like a farm store, like a

tractor supply. And they had overalls. And they had overalls on sale in there. Oh. I come out of down. Are you a red house overall guy? Roundhouse. Roundhouse.

Yeah. Roundhouse. They made out of that woods? Yeah. That's what they sell there. And they're made in America. And you had liberties on last week, didn't you? Well, we all have to.

We all have to. We work a way up to the top. And Roundhouse is the top? The only overall. I used to wear Key. Remember key? Yeah, I do. So I got me a pair and my grandson a pair.

Nice. Looking good. And you're wearing real shoes today. Yeah. To your left. Josh Spillmaker. Fresh off the boat. Yeah, fresh off the boat.

Josh has been in Hawaii. Oh, my. Did some fly fishing in Hawaii. Got some small mouth. Small mouth bass like we have here? Yeah. They were released back in the 20s. Really?

That's how I took them to get over there. I'd tell you what it was crazy. I'm surprised they'd let them carry that on a plane. They had me a little Ziploc bag. That's illegal, isn't it, Lieutenant Fletcher? Could be something there. It's wild walking through Hawaii in waste deep water where there's no predators and nothing dangerous. You don't have to worry about snakes or bugs or ticks.

It was a weird thing. Ticks and chiggers over there. I don't know. There are places in this world that don't have ticks and chiggers. I mean, because I've always seen movies where they're like having picnics in the grass, and I'm always like, oh, gosh, Hollywood. And I said that one time, and someone's like, no, we don't have ticks and chiggers where we're at. Now, up north, the worst hunt I've been on in terms of ticks was in Montana.

And who was with you? You were with me. And it was the worst. I mean, I've never seen so many ticks, but they don't have chiggers there. So I like what you're saying, though. So no water moccasins, no copperheads. You just go walking through the jungle. And lots of chickens.

There's no, there's feral chickens everywhere. Because there's no predators. And hogs. There's no, no predators. There's feral chickens in a Walmart parking lot. They're everywhere. It's a wild thing. It was a wild place to go to.

Do the chickens come to you? They probably would. And I kept asking people, I said, now do people just snatch these chickens up and eat them? They're like, no. Ew. I'm like, they're chickens. Yeah, that chicken's probably been eating cigarette butts.

Like, okay. But there's just wild chickens everywhere. Hogs are you anything? And hog sign all over the jungle. Really? You didn't see any hogs though? Didn't see any hogs? There's a lot of bohunting that goes on in Hawaii.

You know, Ronella did a episode of meat eater in Hawaii. Yeah, I saw it. It was really good. They have black tail and Axis deer there, too. They got turkeys in Hawaii, too. Do they? Didn't see any turkeys. I think Rios.

Oh, really? I think so. Or Miriams. It's one of the two transplanted there. That's pretty cool. You can hunt them. Fly fishing under a hundred foot waterfall is pretty cool. That's pretty cool.

Wow. The pictures are beautiful. To your left. Gary Newcomb. The one and only. Good to be here. And then to my dad's left. Misty.

Hey. My wife. Hi there. Good to have you, Misty. Good to be here. Hey, I got to tell you, I actually, when I, I didn't tell Dad what I was going to do on this podcast. And I called him after I thought maybe he'd listened to it. And I said, you probably didn't like that one very much, did you?

I thought he might be like, why'd you go tell all this stuff? Yeah. But what did you say, Dad? I said, I loved it. I mean, I do the same thing. But when I do something really stupid, which I have a propensity to do that. at times. Game laws.

No, but anything. I mean, I just don't go to all my buddies and go something really low IQ I did. I mean, that's between me and me. Some things you just don't tell. Yeah, yeah. And I've heard you tell stories like looking down the barrel of that gun. There's no sense of telling that. We're kind of talking about two different things.

So Dad thinks I over-disclose about stuff that makes me look stupid. Right. Not like. The other makes you look honest. And I like that. when I came out about, you know, these two or three things that happened. So I was actually kind of surprised about that. Thanks, Dad.

It's your mother coming out. Yeah. We may bring Juju in here later, and I may do a formal apology to Juju for all the bad things I've done. Okay, moving right along. I kind of regretted all of the, you know, the end of the last Barry Shrender. I said a lot of real nice things about you being upright. Good. honest and I kind of

when you listen to this when you listen to this podcast where you're like, I don't know who you are. Exactly. Who are you? And when I saw the gay board and pull into our front drive,

I was like, well, there goes to be. So Lieutenant Fletcher, do you, when you pull up in your truck, do you, do you sense people's

nervousness around you? I mean, like, what's it like being a game warden? Yeah, I mean, I think any time that you you come in contact with people, you either get one of just a handful of responses would be,

you know, I've been doing this for 20 years and this is the first time I've ever been checked by Game Warden. And I think you pick up on some honesty in people when they make those type of comments. You know, I also think you do get the surprises. Like, hey, man, where'd you come from? You know, they're like, this guy's a ghost. How did he show up in my domain?

Yeah. Or this officer's a ghost. And I think those are probably the two more popular responses. Yeah. A lot of times just by rolling up in that gaming fish truck, that law enforcement, conservation law enforcement truck, people sit there and they're like, man, is this officer ever going to get out of that truck? Their windows are tended.

I don't know what's going on in there. What are they working on? You know, usually you encounter that type of contact in the field when you're responding. to a call to service from an adjacent landowner or someone that witnessed something off the side of the road. And you're sitting there in the truck and you're doing the business of the day, which is trying to find as much information and start an investigation on a case or whatever. And sometimes, you know, people, you know, they're just like, man, why did it take you so long to get out of that truck? You know, their nerves are killing them. They can't just get out.

So what are you doing in the truck? Yeah, that's it. I'm dying to know. Yeah, that's what you're doing is you're sitting there on your radio and you're, you know, running your cell phone and and you're trying to gather. They're all the information that you've got so far on something just as simple as, you know, a neighbor shot a deer on the other side of the fence. And they forgot to call their buddy who's the landowner. And all of a sudden, the landowner's driving by their property and they see somebody out there

in a piece of hunter orange on their property. And they're like, I've got somebody out here hunting on my land. And, you know, a lot of those things, you're putting those pieces, limited pieces of information together. Yeah. It's funny, just that type of instance alone, you'll see. you'll see a lot of those situations resolve themselves by the time you actually show up. Usually they realize, hey, I do know so-and-so.

You know, they're two houses over and, you know, they just forgot to make the call. That's just, you know, one of several type of things. But those are probably some of the more common, you know, first encounters with the public. That's kind of what you see. So are you in the field? Like, is that your primary? Yes. So I have as a lieutenant.

Okay. I have field responsibilities. You know, I have enforcement duties assigned to me in a county that I'm assigned to and the furthest part of northwest Arkansas. But I also have administrative roles, which is more of my day-to-day stuff, where I'm an assistant supervisor of a district of 15 officers and six counties in the northern part of Arkansas. Okay. So it's a balance for sure.

Yeah. I would say probably about 60-40 administrative and 40. And 40% I get out in the field and be with our folks and be with the public. Okay. That's a huge part of our success for our enforcement division in the game fisher in Arkansas is the contacts that the wildlife officers make out in the field with the public. There's no doubt. Yeah.

What would you say, I ask this to Austin, what would you say is the philosophy of law enforcement? Just in general terms, I get, you know, because I don't really even know what question I'm asking. Right. But I know that you guys have a mission, you guys have a philosophy for how you enforce the law and how you interact with people. Just talk to me a little bit about that. So, you know, I think in the podcast, you know, the director was spot on when he said, you know, we really focus on and drill down on those major violations. Right. And that's true to who we are as an agency and as a division when I came to work 12 years ago, just like it is today.

and it will be the same 20 years after I've retired. Yeah. You know, the compliance stuff, you know, I think that gives us as a group of officers, conservation law enforcement officers, wildlife officers, game wardens, whatever affiliation you're, you fall under and what state you fall under, you know, we are regulatory agencies, right? And so our primary job is to go out there and ensure that the general public, the hunting and fishing public, are compliant.

with what those regulations are. And so, you know, I don't know that the philosophy is as fluid as some of the strategies that we might have as an enforcement division or as an agency in response to progress with technology or population growth. Or, as you like to call it, maybe this crossover in these urban to rural areas where you've got a lot of the traditional rural type approaches to hunting and sportsman-type outdoors activities are now getting squeezed out a little bit with more urban settings. And so we adapt and we adjust with the times, just like everybody does in any kind of segment of law enforcement

or any industry that you're affiliated with. Conservation law enforcement's no different. What's a big violation? Like serious violation? Give us an example. So, you know, I look at it. I'm a community-driven guy. And so, you know, I take ownership of what happens in my community. I want to be present in my community. And so I think if you look at it through my lens, what I consider to be a big violation or a major violation would be something that draws in towards public safety, a threat to public safety. a threat to public safety. And that gives you the road hunting situations, the night hunting situations, what Rinella called it, what, Jacklighting?

Which is, which I mean, I'm an Arkansas guy. That's a term that's new to me, but spotlighting. I correct. Yes, sure. What he means is spotlight. Yankee. So, you know, anything that as a guy or a gal that's a wildlife officer in their county or in their community,

that is a genuine threat to the same. safety of the people that they share the space with, those things take priority. Yeah. The over-harvesting wildlife, you know, those kind of things with intent on the violator, you know, those things are egregious and there's no place for that. Yeah. And so we try to establish major investigations, undercover operations, special operations. Is that stuff still going on right now?

I mean, like, so the individual. and that we talked about in this past podcast. I mean, were people that were killing, you know, 20, let's just say 20 plus turkeys a year. You know, back when we had a lot of turkeys. Like, are people still doing that?

So I'm going to answer that yes, they are still doing that. I've had some conversations with some other supervisors across the state this last week and a different setting. And we've all kind of come to the consensus, and I'm not speaking for everyone, but just some of the conversations I've had,

is we've all kind of come to this, consensus of, you know, maybe there is a little bit of a decline in that, you know, just super egregious type of negligence in over-harvesting a game with intent of like hunting out a season or just doing it because you want to cut the horns off of a deer and leave the meat, you know, that kind of thing. It still is occurring, but I don't know the prevalence rate is as high as what it once was. with the exception, one thing that I have seen over the last 10 years, and I think a lot of it has to do with probably location, because throughout my career, I've been based along this western, northwestern border of Arkansas, so we share territory with other states, Missouri and Oklahoma. And we do a lot of work with other state conservation agencies where these more major, more serious violations have occurred across state. lines, but it's Arkansases that are doing them. Oh, really? Yes. And so they'll ask us to assist with

investigations. You know, getting a deer tag in Kansas is a big deal. It's a very big deal. And it's a very calculated system and it's a fair system. But just to investigate some of my own country men and women, if you will, here in Arkansas, on violations for nothing more than what extent they would go to to try to manipulate a system in Kansas so they can kill a Kansas buck deer legally, which is not legal. You know, those are the kind of things that we're kind of seeing show its head. And I can tell you...

What would be a... How would they do that? I mean, I'm not... Sure. And I'll explain, you know, with leaving names and faces aside. You didn't have to be that big, but they would, I mean, like, yeah, give me just a simple example of how. Sure. So, I had an investigation with a subject that lived in a small rural town in central Arkansas. I get contacted by Kansas Parks and Wildlife about an individual that they had been investigating for the better

part of a year and a half, almost two full deer seasons now. And what started out is something of a simple check of their current license status, meaning are they a resident in Arkansas and they have license privileges as a resident of Arkansas? Or are they a resident of Kansas? Therefore, they're entitled to have a state license. Correct. Resident license and the privileges that thereof in the state of Kansas. Well, what started out is just that simple check to see, and we do that with other states. They'll call us in Oklahoma or Missouri and try to check and say, hey, we don't recognize dual citizenship. To my knowledge, nobody does. No state does. But for us, it's the same thing. We just want to make sure that your primary residence in Arkansas or it's in Kansas in this case.

So what started out is that evolved into this timeline and building this investigation against an that had for almost greater than a decade cheated the state of Kansas out of licenses of landowners that had turned their tags, their landowner tags, a privilege given to them as a citizen of the state of Kansas, back into a regional office or a licensing center or a check station. And this individual from no-name Arkansas was paying under the tape. to a certified agent of the state of Kansas, not a law enforcement agent, but someone who was an employee of the state of Kansas under the table to take those tags that are issued in someone else that turned them in and use them in his own name. And to make it even furthermore,

he was passing him out to his buddies. Wow. And so this, these are the kind of, yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty wild. Of conservation crimes that, that I'm, seeing that we're seeing across the state of Arkansas and throughout the southern the United States, because it's, I would imagine the state of Kansas and the state of Colorado and Missouri and New Mexico, they're seeing their citizens, the people from their states violate things in Arkansas. And we've got a special investigators unit of our enforcement division that does the exact same thing when these things happen out of state.

Interesting. Yeah. Do you have another example? of an egregious wildlife violation. Man, egregious. The one Austin talked about was someone just shot. Well, yeah.

That was, yeah, just. I don't know people still do that. I mean, why? What are you talking about? Where he shot the, they shot his deer from the highway. Oh. Oh, yeah.

Just left him dead. So, you know, I'll share with you one that's kind of still hot off the press, if you will, but it's all been adjudicated, gone through courts. So I feel comfortable sharing it with you. But we had a recent investigation that was held by some of our officers here locally here in the northern part of state. And they started investigating this gentleman greater than three years ago now for what started out is just what I would call just a simple call to service where a complainant calls in and says, hey, shots were fired after dark.

I got a vehicle description. They didn't get a license plate. But they got us enough information to where the officers could document on paper, do a good incident report, and say, okay, we've got something here. And we'll keep an eye out on it. You know, that's always key for our officers to let those people know, the individuals know, that call in from their communities, hey, we're going to start working this. And if you see or hear anything that's suspicious, give us a call back. This was no different. Well, within a matter of weeks to a month, you know, another call in that same general vicinity by another private landowner saw this same type of activity almost with the same time of day, same location, same vehicle description.

And so that was really enough for officers to start working in a full investigation. And we really had to drill down on this and start giving it some attention through the use of a decoy set or working non-traditional hours. you know, an area that we would have to conceal vehicles and try to see if there's anything that we could physically see. Nothing materialized that year. Well, the next year, as soon as the phone started ringing, if you will, for those officers in this same location, they're like, okay, we're going to get out in front of this. And so about that same time that this all started to occur, an officer in northwest Arkansas gets another call from someone who wants to be an anonymous on this particular activity, which correlates with the same chain of events that

it happened a year prior and everything. Does that tip you off to anything when somebody wants to be anonymous? I mean, it's somebody that maybe has a personal relationship with this person? Yeah, I'll say, I mean, that's no secret. You know, a lot of times it's friends. It's, it's Monday morning quarterback talk. It's around the water cooler showing a picture of a big deer or a turkey that was harvested. did a couple of days before season.

You know, sometimes your closest friends and family members, you know, whether it's an ethical standard or it's just something that they feel like is just wrong or they're sick of you showing them those pictures or describing that event. And they just had enough of it. And so that's a legal right that is afforded by the game and fish that you can call anonymously and no questions will be asked. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. We've got a database. I did that a couple times on Brent. I was about to say maybe Josh and I will do that every Monday morning on clay. I've told you all the bad things I've done already. I mean, it doesn't have to be factual. You know, we could just call it. That was one brim basket, and that was 15 years old.

Okay. Anonymous. Yeah, so the anonymous complainant, just kind of something real quick on that. So if an individual calls in and an officer ends up doing a report, it runs an investigation. It's their information is kept in a database and they're issued like a series of a letter and a number. And that's how it's recorded and documented in the report.

And that's how you could get back in touch with the person. Absolutely. But it completely stays anonymous. And so we protect their rights to that autonomy. So anyway, so in this instance, subject calls in and says, hey, I know this stuff is going on and what you need to know is this is who's doing it and this is what they're trying to accomplish. And when I first got the information from one of our officers, it really took me a back. You know, my daddy, he's 79 years old and we share these stories about my career in law

enforcement. My career is a conservation law enforcement officer. And he always says, hey, nothing surprises me with your job. And you know, this is coming from a guy who was an Arkansas state trooper for greater than 30 years in state of Arkansas. And I'm like, you know, you look up to your dads, right? And so for him to say that and for me to get caught off guard at times, man, I'm just like, wow, this is new territory. You know, so this was no different. We walked into this situation and the officers reported it says, hey, this individual owns a small business, has vehicles as a part of their small business.

they have employees, they've got a shop, they do construction like work or work around in that industry. And so therefore they have access. And to make a long story short, what this individual had done is over the course of years, he had gone out in the mornings during deer season, legal season, which I find kind of ironic because what he was doing was far from legal. and he would harvest deer shooting him from the road. And sometimes he'd have somebody in the truck with him when he did it. And sometimes he wouldn't. But where it got so interesting was,

is he went out and bought license for his employees and brought them in to this type of activity. And they would go out behind him and pick up his deer for him and tag it. And they would take it back to his facility. and they would process it there. And so once we had this chain of events and we started putting together this investigation and now you've got this gold brick that somebody just gave us in this information through this confidential informant, we had something to work off of.

And so we reached back out to the confidential informant, got the information on when this type of activity was prevalent when it was more predictable. to run into it. We set up a little sting operation with our officers and a deer, deer decoy, and within a matter of 48 hours of that activity. Wow. We caught this guy red-handed shooting our deer decoy. And yeah, it's real interesting.

Wow. What was the estimate of how many deer that guy was? So I believe he was issued citations for seven deer deer. that he failed to check or tag in his own name. In addition to what we had evidence of, physical evidence of, was an additional nine deer, I believe, for those other individuals that checked deer in their names, even though they weren't engaged in.

Was he after horns? Was he Big Buck Hunter? You know, I think that's probably how it started. But, you know, when we went in to his shop and started looking at all the, the meat and stuff, you know, it was packaged as if it was for consumption, you know, there wasn't a lot of terrible waste, you know, so I think it probably just turned into, you know, this is something that I just do. I don't know if it was some kind of release he had to have or whatever

this fix was. Kind of like junior high girls with shoplifting. Yeah, sure. Yeah. You know, it's like a thing. They just, a bunch of them just like to do it. And I'll, and I'll speak, I'll speak to this. and I don't, I don't mean to kind of control this conversation because that's not what I'm going to try to do, but it brings me to another point about the end of the podcast. And you showed in your moment of vulnerability about shooting a squirrel. Right. And you get checked by the wildlife officer, any keys, or he or she keys on a speck of blood, right? Yeah, yeah.

And what do he tell you to do? He said, Clay, you need to write about it. Yeah. When it was all, when it was all done. And I'm going to tell you, and I'm only been doing this for a little over a decade. But I bet in that moment, Clay felt better because what he thought he had done wrong, and then he got that approval from the wildlife officer to go out and write about it and speak openly about it. When we run into these serious violators, the ones that aren't even on that same level,

your violation is way down here on the floor and the stuff that's, that we're talking about today is the top of the ceiling. When we run into that type of encounter and there's closure there, you get this sense from these individuals that they're almost very thankful and appreciative of you catching them. Interesting. Because they've done it for so long. They're tied up in it in so many ways that they're just almost beside themselves

thankful that they had this encounter. Interesting. Yeah. I can say that. That correlates a lot with the undercutor work I was doing. I've seen folks, we try to catch him for years selling dope, and we finally do. And they, it's like, hey, you know, that was my job to catch him. That was his job to sell it.

I won that day, and now they say they don't have to worry about the next knock on the door. I get what you're saying there. Because all the time that guy's out there doing that, he's got to look for you and make sure that you ain't coming around the corner or something. So it's probably a burden lifted off of them. The truth shall set you free. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in 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 go, 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 gobblers 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Dad, what questions do you have? Well, have you ever written a citation to Gary Newcomb? I do not believe so. He's talking all that trash that keeps bringing my name up. I ain't never got a ticket. I've never seen this guy break the law.

You got a ticket, though. I ain't never got one. I know. That's why I told everybody. Shut your pie hole. You just never got caught. That is not what we're talking about. We're talking about who got a ticket and who didn't.

Well, all that's very, very interesting. I love to hear that stuff. It takes me back to my childhood. A little bitty guy. And, you know, we're all kind of innately evil. You know, we're taught that. You know, we have a propensity to make a wrong decision. A little bitty kid is going to steal a toy.

I mean, they don't go up and hand you his toy. I mean, they're going to take your toy. I mean, that's the way, that's our nature. So as a little bitty guy raised up in a very sterile, honest home, my big sister got me stealing stuff out of a little store that was in the neighborhood, Beverly, of all people. And so, he's never told anyone today on Dr. Field. That's all hold hands.

We'll have a little moment here. I got something really cool. He's a little teeth, you know, full of Kool-Aid. And I mean, I was smart enough to know, don't go in the house with this. So I crawled under a trailer, a little little low-boy trailer. And I'm down there chewing on this thing thinking, man, this ain't worth it. You know, it's a whole lot easier just to play by the rules and not have all this worry. And I find that so true in life.

And you just described it better than I've ever heard it. But, hey, the simplest way to lead this life is to pretty much play by the rules. You know, I mean, there's rules that society allows us to break. that the penalty's not too great, like driving up here today. I mean, speed. It's speeding. You know, when I run a stop sign, I go, hey, man, I just save my brakes. I save fuel.

I'm saving the economy. I mean, really? I mean, we justify it. Yeah, I kill a big deer, and I go, well, you know, I'm feeding family, you know. So we all live in our own little bubble, and it's all okay because I'm doing it. I don't understand. What do you mean? Well, my point.

Well, I've kind of. I'm not of getting two stories together. But as a little kid, I say follow the rules. But still, even in that environment, we all break rules. Right. But there are rules that we have made the decision on not a law enforcement officer. I've gone, okay, stop sign, suggestion. You know, killing people, that's a law.

So, I mean, we all play these games. So far, I'm two for two with Gary Newcomb. saying what Steve Ronella was saying is that he now looking back in his childhood, realized that his dad had a very strict code that they lived by. And now he looks back at it and is like, where did this come from? Like, we could do this, but we couldn't do this. We could do that, but we couldn't do this. But he would have been real mad if we'd have done this.

And yeah, it's kind of interesting because you'd be surprised how many people have brought up to me speeding inside of all these conversations about outlaws. breaking laws. Everybody goes back to speeding. Well, you said something, too, that I didn't agree with. You said yourself was a poacher because you dropped your orange. I was going to ask him about that. That don't make you a poacher.

It makes you a violator. The poacher's killing an animal. That was such a wild deal. Like, I never in my life have not wore orange. I know so many people that intentionally don't wear orange or take it off when they're in the tree, which here in Arkansas, that's illegal. Right. Other states you can.

I think in Mississippi, be once you're in a tree stand. Don't quote me on that. Look that up. There's places where orange laws are different. Yeah, what would have been a situation like that? Like, walking to the tree stand, and I didn't say it on the podcast. I was on my land.

Bow hunting during, I know it doesn't matter. Bow hunting during musloader season. You dropped the orange vest, had the orange hat, just keep hunting, just like, well. You was already a violation by not wearing it out there. In the dark? you have a weapon? Are you in game cover? Am I right, Lieutenant?

You violated. By the letter of the law. Yeah. You know, your intent was to go hunting that day. Well, listen. Under periods of darkness or not, the letter, the letter of the law would say that you need to do that.

Now, did Clay violate a law by the letter when he shot this world-class buck? That's how I envisioned it in this. I'm not going to tell you which one it was. I'm saying it would be confiscated. No, no, it's good. It was that one.

But, you know, I see that as, you know, your intent, right, was to wear your hunter orange that day or otherwise you wouldn't have it with you, right? Right. But had a wildlife officer made contact with you out in the field after you had taken that deer and you had not had your hunter orange on, how would you have talked yourself through that situation with that encounter? And I think that's a lot of times when, you know, the director mentioned last week, and not to get us too far off into the weeds here, but he mentioned last week about, you know, a lot of people just think, hey, our officers are out there to do nothing more than just write tickets. Right. I think that our officers are out there to have a duty to our communities, but to also educate the public on things that they probably should know,

but they haven't taken the time to truly understand. you take the totality of the circumstances. You know, for me, when I'm out in the field and I come across a compliance violation like someone not wearing Hunter Orange when I check them in a tree stand or walking out from a field, for me it's a three-pronged litmus test. You know, what's their age? What was their intent when they left the house that day? And by their violation, how have they impact the resource?

Right. So by clay leaving his vest or it inadvertently falling down on the ground, how are you impacting the resource that day? What was your intent? Did you mean for it to be left on the ground? Right. And so as a wildlife officer, our officer discretion is probably the biggest duty that we have out in the field on a day-to-day basis. So just I'm following you. Sure.

Like me not having Hunter's Orange didn't give me an advantage. that day. Like, is that what you're saying about how it affected the reason? Absolutely. And, and I absolutely, yeah. So it's, it, that's what you would have said. Like, it wasn't like I accidentally spilled a pile of corn on the ground on public land or something.

Again. Accidentally saved yourself on dearest. I like what you said about intent. Sure. Because, I mean, yeah, my intent entirely was to wear orange that day. I'd do it every time I hunt. Sure. So that would have factored in.

Yeah. You take in the totality of all of it, and then the officer has that discretion of like, hey, man, you know, the codebook says you got to have your orange on, but you're telling me that you dropped it on the ground and I can visibly see that it's 100 yards or 100 steps from your stand and this deer's in the opposite direction. So it was probably during a period of darkness. You climbed the stand. You got up there in the heat of the moment. The sun was rising. sure, the right thing might have been for you to come back out of your stand during that peak activity time and put the orange on. But you made that decision, right?

And so our officers, I think any wildlife officer, any conservation officer, any game warden across the United States, I think that's how they operate on a daily basis is they say, hey, guy made a mistake, but it wasn't intentional. Yeah. And he didn't really have a direct impact on the resource that day by not wearing his hunter orange. Yeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I say you do the crime, you pay the time, Malcolm. Turn yourself in, Jack. Do you remember that, Dad?

Yeah, yeah. I remember you. I told you about it. You were mad at me. Yeah, yeah. Well, let's hash this out. Let's have this conversation on the very good. Hey, your comment about, you say the right thing to do would have been to come down 25 feet and go back.

I understand that. That's your job. that was your job but our job is to kill deer but the point I'm making is it would have been a lot more dangerous to come down that tree again

walk back where you could be shot at peak time you know that was and you made that point I mean that and I didn't think that I mean that wasn't the thought process in my mind but like if you were if you were standing if you were yeah I mean I was just trying to say

the law is designed to protect us We're using Hunter's Orange to protect us. Absolutely. You know, I was kind of, what I like to do in those scenarios is just paint all the different scenarios that make something a little more nuanced maybe than it was. Or, you know, maybe then you might think of it. But, yeah. Hey, I've got a question, and I know intuitively that it's wrong, but I want to go back. I mean, not for the question, but the story you told about the guy who was using his workers and getting,

licenses in their name. He's paying for hunting licenses, and I think there's probably just from a legal labor perspective, you know, there's some major issues as a boss, and we should fire them just for that. But from a, as a non-hunter, like someone who I don't hunt a lot, and I didn't grow up in a hunting family, explain to me, I know it is wrong, but explain to me why it's wrong, if you buy the licenses, and so there's enough licenses, and you can skip this. Do you remember when to Kumsa?

Am I embarrassing you right now? Left his wife because she didn't know how to pluck a turkey? I'm just thinking it might be... No, that's a great question. I mean, I'm really thinking it might... I think any of us could answer, but we'll let... I'm just thinking that might be a question that people have. Why?

And you're welcome to skip the question, and you and I will be conversing later about that comment. No, I'm just teasing. No, I just say it's great. That's why you're here. I just think that some people might have that question. Like he's buying the licenses. Like how does it hurt the...

From a game and fish perspective, right. Why is this bad? Because clearly we have the licenses to hand out. And if you're distributing licenses on the... You're saying the goal of the game and... If you're distributing animals, you know, if you're making cap limits and things like that on the basis of how many licenses are bought and this guy legally buys a license.

The other guy, obviously it's not good. Yeah, let's see what... I'm going to say there's a lot of moving parts there. You know, when you look at regulation, regulation says that that's being considered lending license by definition. Okay. So what his intent was was to purchase license from his own money, his own funds in the name of his employees. Those individuals were not active hunters. and so basically in theory, they were lending license,

their tagging privileges because he was the one retaining the harvest. I think that from the regulation standpoint, it's very serious because the law clearly states how in so many ways that was wrong. But I also think it's a very strong ethical dilemma on his part. And so I always look at it from my belief system is where your ethics and regulations intersect, you have an experience. And so for each of us, we have our own experience out in the field, you know, when we're hunting or fishing or, you know, doing our recreational boating activities, whatever that is. But what were his, what were his ethics in that moment by doing that? knowing that his coworkers, the people that he had paid as employees, didn't hunt.

They weren't conservationists to my knowledge. And so that's where his ethics and the regulations came together. And I look at it as like, you know, what kind of experience is that for people when they do that with intent? And so I think all of us are in some ways responsible and accountable. and accountable as being conservationists and sportsmen and hunters to that particular type of situation. And so when the agency says, hey, every person's allowed five or six tags now, right? No more than two bucks per year and, you know, four antlers deer and you can take two in one zone and three in another or whatever that looks like, you know, those are based calculated off of, science, right? And so if you've got someone with intent that comes in and says, I've got 10 family

members, none of them hunt, and I'm going to over harvest on their... They're not calculated into our science. Exactly. On their behalf, I'm going to do a favor to whatever it is, you know, I think that probably kind of gets at the root of what we would see as, you know, why it's not okay. Because they're really not, when they set the limits. And I'm just thinking... They're calculating how many hunters we have in the state and estimate in part of us. They didn't calculate those 10 family members, those 10 employees.

They're not calculating them. And so he is going over, even if he purchased a license. If you think if everybody could do that, then essentially there would be no bag limits. Right. Because I could, I'd just go find some guy down the street, though. I could buy a tag for and use his tag. So I can... Yeah.

And obviously, he's lying. He's abusing his authority. You're just hearing us talk about hunter recruitment and buying tags that funds conservation. And I'm just thinking if all the people, there's a lot of people who listen to your podcast who are not hunters specifically. Am I not? Like I understand why, like, this is what this guy's doing is lying and that's bad. Like on that level it's wrong no matter what. Maybe I'm not the outlaw in this family.

You know, I was also thinking it's counterproductive to the, what's the term? that you use when when the game belongs to the people. Public trust doctrine. Yeah, it breaks that ethic because then someone just has the ability to go buy by deer. Right, exactly. I'm just going to go buy the ability to hunt and I'll kill as many deer as I want. It's a, it's really an unethical and it's a partial way to do that.

Yeah. And I think that's completely, yeah, just. What would you, so I keep going back to this, I'm kind of asking the same question, maybe over and over, but like what, what, who are the most people doing damage to the resource in terms of poachers? Like what, what's the kind of person? Because it's clear to me that probably a lot of your officer's time is spent with compliance. so you're at the boat dock checking people's license,

making sure they're wearing life jackets, public safety stuff. During the deer season, you're cruising public land, checking the license, you know, that kind of stuff. And, you know,

most of the violations inside of that are going to be compliant stuff like, do you have the right license, do you, you know, are you wearing your hunters or orange, stuff like this, which is all important stuff.

But then there's this other category of people like we talked about that leave the house with the intent to be serial lawbreakers that are just wearing out game populations. Sure. I mean, maybe I just answer my own question, but like who are those people and do we, well, I did ask you that question. Who are the people that are the biggest threat to wildlife?

Right. I'm going to look at it from an experience that I shared with my supervisor, our district captain in northwest Arkansas, when I first had the opportunity to move back home from the Arkansas River Valley to northwest Arkansas. And one of the first things that he said to me in this open meeting with other officers, and I was a young sergeant at the time. And he said, you know, fish are a finite resource for the state of Arkansas. And I didn't really understand what he meant by the term finite resource. And he said it in a very common sense approach, which was just how.

we operate as game wardens and wildlife officers is we apply a lot of common sense to tactics and techniques and training and things and he said the fish are depleted at a much greater rate than what we can replace them at as an agency and so i think our biggest challenge with poaching is if you take that same type of segment with fishing and you apply it out in the field with hunters in general that over harvest to the point where it carrying capacity gets depleted and harvest numbers significantly drop. You know, those are a segment of poaching that we really have to be sensitive to and we have to pay attention to as wildlife officers as conservation law enforcement officers. You know, I think the other thing, too, to consider is most of the southern United States now,

South Central United States, is in this period of kind of the unknown when it comes to disease in cervids. Right. With the introduction of CWD and the prevalence that we have throughout the northern part of Arkansas and now all the way over to the Boot Hill of Missouri and into Oklahoma. and you're starting to see research and studies being done in surrounding states. And so when you have individuals that are uneducated or refuse to pay attention to the strategies and the science and the techniques that we're trying to do to manage a disease like chronic wasting disease and these type of things that are prevalent through this Northern Band of Ozarks, and starting to spread their way south, is that, by definition, a new demographic of poaching,

the individuals that when you have... That spread... Do stuff that might spread CWD? Correct, in the sense of we have CWD zone baiting laws in this part of Arkansas now. And the regulation says, you know, after the 31st of December, until the first day of September, you can't spread any bait on the ground with the intent to harvest wildlife or harbor wildlife, right?

And the strategy is real simple because when you bring in a group of deer, right? And I'm no scientist by trade, but I've been around to see it long enough and haven't explained to me, is when you bring around these deer and they have this communal type of gathering, right? Yeah. Well, then there's probability. And so I think we're in a new territory here. I really like that. That's the kind of, I didn't know what I was fishing for,

but that's a great point is that, you know, with the threat, CWD, that, yeah, maybe the guy that breaks the CWD laws is now the one that is really threatening the resource the most. And I know there's a lot of controversy on how CWD spreads, and that's a whole other conversation. But, yeah, that's important because, yeah, you kind of think of it like, well, and I mentioned it to you on the phone the other day,

but this terminology that I heard a lot of these now retired law enforcement game warden guys use. Jimmy Martin used the term, Russ Arthur used the term, but old-time poachers, which are just guys that are recreationally going out and killing more than their limit, maybe even during seasons using traditional methods. Yeah. And it's interesting to think that now the guy that's, you know, baiting deer longer putting out mineral licks. I mean, we can't put mineral licks out here anymore,

which, you know, it'd be interesting to see how compliant people really are to that because I don't know that they are. Right. And, you know, along those same lines and we talk about these strategies that our agency is implementing, We've got a phenomenal group of men and women in our wildlife management division that have spent almost a career's worth of their work in dedicated towards CWD and spread of infectious disease and things like that in cervids alone. We started seeing seven or eight years ago about the time that I was transitioning out of the river valley into northwest Arkansas, this intent on behalf of these hunters that were harvesting servids from out of state bringing their unprocessed whole-bodied servids, deer, elk, etc., across state lines into Arkansas.

And so, you know, that opened up a whole other avenue of regulation that we were prepared for as an agency. We knew it was coming, but we just didn't expect it to happen at the rate that it probably did. Yeah. You know, I'll never forget, seven or eight years ago, I was working in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and it was one of my days I was working in Crawford County, which is just north of there. And I get a call from our radio. room dispatch, which is based in central Arkansas. They say, Officer Fletcher, we've got an individual.

They're on I-40 eastbound in Oklahoma. Is there any way we can patch them through to you? And I said, sure, not a problem. And so through a series of things, they forwarded the call to me, and I'm talking to a subject, and he tells me he lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. And he'd been out in Oklahoma City working all week, and he says, I'm behind a truck bed of deer horns. and they're headed towards the state line.

And I knew in that moment that things were about to get real interesting for the wildlife officer in Arkansas when we start dealing with this type of activity. And so you ask yourself, is that a new era of poaching as well? I mean, is it or is it not? You know, we deal with that.

You know, that's our reality that our officers are now challenged with. Well, I mean, in the CWD, they can take more deer out than I could with a spotlight. Yep. You know, for sure. Is that a confession? That's what I was curious about.

How many deer have you taken out with the spotlight? Wow. It's always back to that. Good job. Misty and I run the same channel. Y'all are back to that again. Yeah. Clay's trying to get the focus off of him on someone else.

Everybody that's got a ticket to raise your hand. No, that's good point. Great point, Brent. Yeah. Continue. Well, I was born. in Warren, Arkansas. Oh, you're done. You're done with that statement.

Okay. Yeah, no, and that's just it. Yeah, that kind of stuff is way more detrimental to the resource. Sure, it could be. Could be for sure. Whether those deer were legally taken or not, if they're coming across and they're not packaged the way the regulation states to keep CWD out of Arkansas, I mean, that's, man, that's the one, the monkey pox out there.

So, who knows? Who knows how bad it could be? Yeah. Do you think that someone could do what, did you, you may not have heard the podcast about Louisdale and Charlie Edwards, and they killed like how many turkey every year? Seven, eight million. I mean, but this was like 20, 30 years ago.

Do you think someone could do that today? They were very vocal about it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, I think probably with advancements in technology and the way that our SIU teams work, the wildlife officers

that are trained to work either in an undercover capacity or work exclusively with social media presence, you know, because we do have to operate that way. Really? So you've got people

that are monitoring social media? Absolutely. I would say probably, you know, a majority of the conservation law enforcement agencies across the United States probably operate in some capacity that way. But, you know,

I would say that it would probably be real difficult to expose that type of activity if those individuals had a small network of friends that weren't tied into some kind of social media presence. They hard to hide it, wasn't it? Absolutely. They wouldn't need to be glorified by what they had done. You know, I mean, hearsay used to be the way that we started investigations and we built these phenomenal cases.

But today, it's almost like the burden of proof or whatever. probable cause has kind of been elevated to the point of we need some kind of physical evidence or something that puts someone in a certain capacity. So years ago, a hot tip would have been like, hey, he killed an extra turkey. Man, let's hit the ground and run with it. And that would have been big. And now it's like, well, I need more than just here. Yeah.

I see. And we make a lot of great cases. Don't get me wrong as an agency and as a division just based off of word of mouth. and our Watts hotline. We have a hotline here in the state of Arkansas that people can call in. And if they give us information that turns into a successful prosecution, we split the fine money with them. Just like Director. Yes, sir.

Just like Director Booth mentioned last week, none of our fine money stays within our agency. Thanks to Amendment 75 in 1987 when it was passed. in this one-eighth of one percent of the general sales tax use, and the state of Arkansas goes to conservation. 45 percent of that number goes to the Arkansas Game Fish Commission. And so we have these type of programs in place to where we can allocate some of those fine monies to keep that word of mouth, to keep that hearsay live in how we do our business. Absolutely.

And it leads to some phenomenal cases and work done by our men and women every day. Hmm. This is kind of off topic, but just being in law enforcement like you have for as long as you have, what's the wildest situation you've ever found yourself in? Like just dangerous, that you could share with us. So I'll just tell you by affiliation, the first six or seven years of my career, I was stationed at Fort Chaffee was a big part. I consider myself being stationed there because four and a half days of my work week I could spend out there

and do the work of the game and fish and have a lot of opportunities for contacts with individuals. Big part of that area is of the 40,000 plus surface cleared area acres of Fort Chaffee is an area known as the impact area. And I can tell you, it in itself is an extent. extremely dangerous because you have, it's not surface cleared, meaning, meaning when Fort Chaffee was a very active military installation and still it is to this day. Let's describe it because we're talking to people outside Arkansas. We all know what Chaffy is. Chaffee is a military base. Sure. 40,000 acres is what, is how I describe it. Okay. Yeah. And then you've got an additional, gosh, I don't know, five, seven, eight thousand acres of this uncleared ground, meaning, meaning when

the military's in there doing their training, you have crews that go behind those groups and troops and platoons and they clear those ranges, it's active ranges, like live shooting at big targets and munitions and,

you know, the A10 tank killers, as I've gotten to know them over the years, they had a range out there called the Razorback Range and they would do all their drops in this impact area to simulate their trainings that they were doing in Afghanistan. Afghanistan,

live, military and wartime stuff. So this, this place is a, is a public hunting area. Absolutely. You can't just walk in there. You've got to take a class.

Absolutely. There's ways you got to hunt. But it's, it's well known around here. Yes, sir. So tell us about Fort Chaffer. So I'll just tell you, that in itself,

anytime I had to go into the impact area alone, you know, you were kind of playing with fire because you didn't know what to expect. You could step on a live shell? Is that the, some of the ordinance doesn't explode. That's correct. Some of them have not exploded.

Sometimes they'll randomly explode after being in the ground for 10 years. Yeah. Okay. So the thing about it is the impact area of Fort Chaffee garnered attention starting about 25, 30 years ago from a certain segment of the outlaw poacher. And these individuals would jeopardize their own lives, whether they knew or did not. know that there was a live fire in progress or a training in progress all in the name of harvesting a world-class boon and crockett-type deer that the impact area has so been glorified known to have and in my career there i saw kind of the last remaining you know world-class boon and crockett

type deer of chaffy because i saw it kind of decline over the six or seven years that I was there. But one situation in particular, we get a tip of an individual that had crossed over a road, a county road on the Sebastian County line and the Franklin County line that borders the far eastern side of Fort Chaffee, and they had jumped the fence in camo and a rifle. And that's all we had to work on.

And so I had a partner at the time, and we've got a K-9 team that, gosh, we're super proud of. These men and women from all over the state, they dedicate a large part of their career to these service dogs and what they're trained to do. And so I got the call from our radio room

because it came in anonymously and this individual was seen crossing this fence. So we had a last known location, but we knew they were going into the impact area. Well, you know, what does 10,000 plus acres look like in this impact area? I mean, it is forever.

It's, you know, And so I pick up the phone and I call my partner at the time and I say, hey, can you bring the dog? Here's what I got. And it might lead to something because, man, I'm telling you as a wildlife officer in Sebastian County, Arkansas and my primary job description is to catch poachers and outlaws crossing into the impact area, if I didn't catch this guy, I was going to, you know, deface the name of all those game ordinance. Just turn in your badge, man. Absolutely. That had come before me. Yeah.

And so, I mean, we took it to heart. And we sacrificed a lot to catch these guys. A lot of them we never caught. But this night was different. So my partner arrives there, and I meet him at the place where this individual, who was on their way home from work, had reported this guy in Cammo cross the fence. And I knew through my limited training of working with the canine handling, that, you know, I didn't need to contaminate this scene.

Okay, I'm going to do what I'm famous for. I'm an old coon hunter. So is Brent. There is a law that is unbreakable in coon hunting. And that is when you see a coon cross the road in front of your truck, if you just stop and turn your dogs out, you almost never tree that coon. Never.

And so what you do, and I want to see if this is what y'all did, You wait 20, 30 minutes, less than that, because no Coon Hunter has the patience to wait that long. But then you let the track, something happens and the scent settles, and you go. Anyway, I just thought of that when they said they saw a guy across the road. They're bringing a dog. I'm thinking, if you turn it out quick, you're not going to catch it. Well, he also didn't want to contaminate it with humans. I know.

I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. So it 30 minutes had passed, let's say. Okay, good. Exactly. He knows. He's all right. You're right.

So my partner gets there at the time, and he dumps the dog out, and the dog, you know, starts doing their crazy back and forth, back and forth, kind of raining in that scent. And then all of a sudden, man, there the two of them go, and they're over this fence, and they're tracking this guy. Are you worried about being in the impact zone? I'm always worried about it. I mean, you have to tell the chaffy folks.

Yeah, so we would call. Don't shooting tanks down in there. We would always, even in areas that. that were closed to general public that may not be live fire or active or anything like that. We had protocol. We would call range control. Okay. And they always had that facility staffed.

And we would let them know, hey, we're, we're downrange of range 88 or whatever the range number was. Are we good to work through this area? Give them the heads up. But you got to remember, this is the impact area. And we got to catch these guys. Yeah. And so, you know, we're going, as they say, are high water. Right. And so we're going. And so I look up and my partner and this dog, they're fading in the distance fast. And so I'm like, man, what I do? And there's not much I can do at this point because I didn't want to go circle around this guy or spook him or, you know, whatever. And so I go to this city down the road called Charleston and it's probably three or four or five miles. And I just wait because my partner and I had worked together for so long.

and it was not uncommon for me to dump him out of the truck and him just start walking and him to call me an hour later or seven hours later and say, hey, man, I'm on the other side of this range or I'm on the other side of this ridge. Can you come pick me up? That's not uncommon. So I knew how comfortable I was with it. So I went to this little area in Charleston and I sat there outside of this convenience store. And my phone rings about two hours after dark. and he says, man, I found this gilly suit and I found this rifle.

And it's at the base of this tree and I'm four miles inside the impact area or some crazy number. Right? So the dog did their job. And so. But no man. No man. So they stopped there. He photographs the evidence or whatever he needed to do and the dog takes off.

And they track this guy all the way out. the other end of the impact area, which is on the far eastern boundary of Fort Chaffee, which is probably another three miles to the highway. And then they get to a car wash, which is about another mile up a paved road. And there this guy set, and he had parked his car under this car wash, which is five or six miles from even touching Fort Chaffee. at this point. That was his intent that day.

Absolutely. So he was walking on blacktop roads? Yes. Wow. So he popped out of Chaffee and then walked on blacktop roads. And that dog was able to trail him that far. And the car wash, what I didn't tell you, is the car wash that he was sitting in that car. Here we go.

Was about 150 yards from where I was sitting. No way. Right under my nose. nose right under my nose. Wow. It was a car. He had changed his clothes, stuffed him in a backpack. And when we caught up with the guy, which my partner did, you know, I was sitting there almost about to eat dinner at this point.

Yeah. And he's like, I got this guy. He's scared to death. He's sitting here. And he said, you know, when we got him to talk, it's one of those situations where he was just like, man, I didn't know if y'all ever going to catch me because I've been doing this for about seven or eight years. Oh my gosh. Y'all had him surrounded that night, dude. Yeah, we sure did.

time was on our side. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, so that's... The dog saved the day. Yeah. Those kind of situations. I'm glad you waited 30 minutes. Yeah.

That's all I'm going to say. I mean, you know. Good call. Those kind of situations can be a little dangerous, intimidating at times. Yeah. Even for a skilled canine handler and a, you know, because it's that unknown. Yeah.

That's the, our guys and gals that do this every day, that's the world that they walk into. Would that dog, would he, is. Is he trained to apprehend someone? No, no bite. That's just a trailing. Correct. What kind of dog was it? Labrador.

Oh, really? All of our canines are left. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Or wanted a tennis ball. Yeah. For sure. Waiting for him to throw a tennis ball down.

Are all the dogs trained to no bite? Correct. Correct. Yeah. How interesting. That is wild. That's wild. That's the officer's job to bite.

Is it the same for canines in like the ones they have up here at the police station? Well, some of them. Some of the law enforcement dogs are definitely trained to apprehend people. You know, I mean, attack them basically. Holt restrain them. They would never need to do that with me. I'd just be like, sold. You got me.

My great Danes are trained to knock down and lick. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so do you guys have anything that y'all would like to confess to Lieutenant Pletard before we closed us? There was a time. I did not get a ticket for it. I was just kidding, Josh. I did go fishing, and at the end of the day, looked at my license, and it was three days. Boring. So I just confessed that. I just wanted to get on board with you, too, Clay. We'll pray for you later.

So in light of that, not in light of that, but how much time would you guys say? spend on game versus fish. Do you have officers that are specifically assigned to game and some to fish? No, in the state of Arkansas, it's based on season. A lot of times our seasons will overlap. Like in the heat of the summer, for example, our primary responsibility right now is water safety and water patrol and compliance on our waterways, trying to keep people from running into each other, having serious accidents on the waterway. Transitioning into the fall, It's dove season. Bow season opens up, and then we roll right into, it seems like, every single weekend through the first of December, there's something else coming at us, duck season, deer, whatever.

And so we vary our workload based on the seasonal stuff. When you talk specifically about fishing, just like I mentioned earlier, you know, fish are finite resource. And so we try to explain that to our officers out in the field is we really, in the spring when the crop ear spawning. the bass are starting to become active and the walleye are running up the rivers is is we really have to protect that resource in that moment and sometimes it overlaps into turkey season like it does here in the northern band of the Ozarks and the white river chain of lakes and and those things so so we just kind of go where the activity is and we know when we need to be out there catch and release hashtag keep them wet yeah keep them wet um did did uh did your time with

agency overlap with Joel Kampora? It did. Did you? Yeah. So I went to high school with Joe Kampora. He was one year younger than me. Yeah. Just talking about water safety made me think about Joel.

I wrote a story about Joel right after that happened. Joel Kampora was, he was killed in, well, it was 2013. Yeah. I think June. It was in May. Late May. May. Yeah.

Yeah, May 29th. Yep. Just thinking about the responsibilities that these guys have, I'll tell the story as I remember it. Sure. But there was a flood in Scott County. No, it wasn't Albert Pike. That was a different one.

There was a flood in Scott County. Wise City. I guess Joel was based out of Waldron at that time. And Big Flood, and there was a house that was being flooded, And there were some, as I remember the story being told, there was some elderly ladies that lived in this house and they called and water was coming up in the house. And then just talking about chain command and like when you guys might be called. Yeah, Joel was called along with the sheriff, Cody Carpenter of Scott County. And so the Arkansas Game and Fish Game Warden and Cody Carpenter went and using a gaming fish boat went to make a

water rescue with with these was it two ladies correct in the black it was in the black of night too wasn't it was black and night poor and rain and they ride out in the water to this house and i mean you know it's fast moving water and you know no one knows the details but they go in the house and the house collapses yeah and uh but it's it's it's i mean no telling what kind of of calls you guys are going to get and and and every they all perished yeah and it was uh it was a real it was a real moving deal there's a there's a part of that highway now i'd see it every time i drive to mina and every single time i drive to meena no matter who's with me i tell them about joel campor my kids know all about it but there's a section of the highway that's the cody

carpenter section and the jill campora memorial section but uh both those guys passed away and the ladies did too. Yeah. But two longest days of my life. I was there. You were there. It's still rough to talk about today, but. Yeah.

And I tell you, we have got a lot of great men and women that surround us every day in law enforcement and as wildlife officers. And, you know, we always say when conditions are at their worst, we're at our best. You know, it's one of our mottos. And they were certainly at their, at their worst. worse for those two or three days around that. And you definitely saw, definitely saw the best in people. Yeah. Through all that diversity.

There were, I mean, like a couple hundred people there. Sure. From other law enforcement agencies to other states. Because they couldn't find, they couldn't find them. Yeah. Yeah. I think, if I remember correctly and, you know, I probably need to pay closer attention to it because I was so involved in it.

Yeah. almost 10 years removed from it now next year. You know, there were so many moving parts, but that is one thing. We talk about pride in your coworkers and what we know and how we know to operate is we all as wildlife officers plugged in that moment because we knew what our capabilities were

and we knew how we assisted agencies when it came to critical incidents and, you know, overcoming these dire times. and dire periods of adversity. And so we all just jumped in that first day. And it was kind of a chicken with your head cutoff movement, but we didn't really have a calculated response. And by the time we got our people in there by the end of that first day,

and we had this calculated effort on how we were going to proceed, it was the very next morning we found Cody Carpenter. And then the following morning we recovered Joel's body. and man, I tell you, it's almost just like, you know, you look at it for the last 10 years of reflection, and you think about all the training and the trials and tribulations that we go through and the commitment and the sacrifices that we make for this career, this line of work, it's almost like we were molded for that particular experience to have occurred. we could endure it and see it through the other side.

Extremely sad situation any way you look at it. People lost their lives. Friends lost their lives. But I do this job today because of those men and women. That carried that torch with us through that whole deal. It is at the root of who I am. They live forever, basically, in your agency, I would think. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. 100%. You know, I think the, what I remember, the game and fish really took great care of Joel's, Jill's widow. Yeah. Rebecca. Yeah.

And still do. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, that spoke a lot to me. Absolutely. And I think, you know, you see that, and you can speak to this in the law enforcement community, regardless of what segment you're in. You know, you go to work for these agencies, you go to work for these departments, and they talk about this brotherhood and we're all a family.

And I can assure you with certainty that the Arkansas Game Fish Commission, wildlife officers, and their families are a family. I mean, we couldn't do it without it. You know, we have flexible work schedules. We don't have shifts. And when the phone rings at 3.30 in the morning like it did that morning that Brian Bailey called me on the phone saying I need help. you answer the call. You don't have backup. And so it takes that person on the other side of the bed of you.

You have to have their support, you know, for sure. Yeah. It takes a family. And our agency recognizes that. There's no doubt. Yeah. Well, we sure appreciate the work that you guys do. Yeah.

Yeah. We are very grateful for it and grateful for your service and sacrifice. Yep. Well, thanks so much for coming up today. It's been great. It really has. I tell you, so this, this ends in basically an eight-week period where we were talking about something to do with the law. And we're moving on.

Finally. Yeah. Brent's ready to talk about. Let's talk about squirrels. I'm tired of going to goar and fly on outlaws all the time. Poach. Poacher lovers. Just kidding.

And I can't even defend them anymore. No. But, yeah, so anyway, this is a great, this is a great way to end it. We appreciate you coming up for sure. Thank you. I was glad to be here. Yep. Glad to be here.

All right. That's a wrap, guys. Beow down, bow, bern, bern, you. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in 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 go, 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 gobblers 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 help 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. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.