Speaker 1: Yeah. My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production
Speaker 1: of the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render,
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast presented by f
Speaker 1: HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 1: as designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I want to take a minute and talk about something
Speaker 1: that I think is really important right now. In the
Speaker 1: United States, the Spring two legislative agendas and public comment
Speaker 1: periods for state agencies are coming out, and as I
Speaker 1: hope you've heard, many have strong wrong anti hunting and
Speaker 1: specifically anti predator hunting agendas. Washington State recently canceled the
Speaker 1: spring twenty two bear season, despite it being recommended by
Speaker 1: their Fishing Wildlife Colorado Bill SP twenty two DASH oh
Speaker 1: three one is set to ban mount Lion, bobcat and
Speaker 1: lynx hunting. Arizona is experiencing a strategic push from the
Speaker 1: animal rights crowd to change current regulations about lying and
Speaker 1: bear hunting by flooding the public comment process. California has
Speaker 1: petitions filed to suspend bear hunting in the state until
Speaker 1: further population studies can be done in Vermont. Anti hunting
Speaker 1: groups are pushing for a full band on the use
Speaker 1: of hounds in hunting, and the list can go on.
Speaker 1: Years ago, if you told me that hunting was strategically
Speaker 1: under attack, I would have called you an alarmist crying
Speaker 1: wolf when there wasn't one here. We all live in
Speaker 1: some version of cocoons with limited visibility of the wider nation.
Speaker 1: That cocoon is partly geographic, but mainly the un is
Speaker 1: our own interest. When I started working with Bear Hounty
Speaker 1: Magazine in twenty thirteen, my eyes popped wide open when
Speaker 1: I saw bear hunting and the crosshairs of many states,
Speaker 1: and I saw how the tools of bear management and
Speaker 1: the methods of take that make bear hunting viable had
Speaker 1: already been banned in many places. Just as a short,
Speaker 1: non complete overview, California band bear hunting with hounds and
Speaker 1: mountain lion hunting in the nineteen nineties. Washington State banned
Speaker 1: hounds and bait for bear in nineteen six, Oregon band
Speaker 1: bear hunting with hounds and bait in the mid nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: Colorado band bear hunting with hounds and bait in ninety one,
Speaker 1: New Jersey Band all bear hunting completely on the basis
Speaker 1: of public opinion. Several years ago, we started saying that
Speaker 1: we've got to guard the gate. Guard the gate because
Speaker 1: predator hunting is the gate of the anti hunting community
Speaker 1: to come into the space of the North American model
Speaker 1: of wildlife conservation, which I might add is the most
Speaker 1: success full act of wild animal and habitat management on
Speaker 1: planet Earth. Since the frontier days of America, there has
Speaker 1: always been a political and ideological divide between the urban
Speaker 1: and rural areas. The masses often have the attention of
Speaker 1: the politicians because of money and votes, and as I've
Speaker 1: always said, it's a one phase cell. To convince someone
Speaker 1: with no history or knowledge of hunting that killing a
Speaker 1: bear or a predator is bad, it's a much more
Speaker 1: complex story to convince them that it's a good thing.
Speaker 1: And this is why we as hunters have to work
Speaker 1: harder than those that oppose us, and we should because
Speaker 1: we actually have stock in this thing. There is something
Speaker 1: that we've now seen work twice in the last year,
Speaker 1: and it's when hunters from all over the country, hunters
Speaker 1: of every striping creed, participate in communicating with legislators and
Speaker 1: the powers that be. Last year, a California bill was
Speaker 1: submitted to banned bear hunting, and the legislator was bombarded
Speaker 1: by people who love wildlife enough to know the hunting
Speaker 1: is good, and it swayed the political process and the
Speaker 1: bill never made it to the floor. And just the
Speaker 1: last few months, the public outcry of hunters to reinstate
Speaker 1: the spring bear season in Washington got the spring bear
Speaker 1: hunt back on the agenda of the Commission and was
Speaker 1: recently discussed again. Inside of a democracy, the main tool
Speaker 1: that we have as our voices. We all know that,
Speaker 1: and I urge us all to become more active participants
Speaker 1: in every way by making our voices heard. I found
Speaker 1: the easiest way to do this is by following the
Speaker 1: lead of the wildlife organizations that have all this communication
Speaker 1: stuff dialed in. Most of them are a one stop
Speaker 1: shop for letting your voice be heard. I have zero
Speaker 1: affiliation with any of these groups that I'm about to say,
Speaker 1: but I want to give you some groups to check out.
Speaker 1: And what you have to do is just get dialed
Speaker 1: in with these guys systems and the way that they
Speaker 1: communicate with legislators and just do it. A good group
Speaker 1: that I love is Sportsman's Alliance. I would say do
Speaker 1: whatever they say. It's just that some A new group
Speaker 1: that I really like so far, and they are brand
Speaker 1: new is a group called how for Wildlife. They seem
Speaker 1: to be really streamlining the process of communication. There are
Speaker 1: many other groups that are fantastic Hunter Nations, Safari Club International,
Speaker 1: and the list goes on, including a bunch of state
Speaker 1: agencies which are essential that you be members of. Whichever
Speaker 1: group allows you to easily and consistently communicate use them.
Speaker 1: You know, years ago and when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: talking about being a public land hunter wasn't cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's where everybody hunted, and it's kind of the place
Speaker 1: you didn't want to hunt. In the last ten years,
Speaker 1: it's become cool to talk about and to hunt public land. Well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you the new thing that we're gonna
Speaker 1: make cool is defending hunting. I love it that some
Speaker 1: people are calling into account social media influencers to use
Speaker 1: their voice in a positive way. I mean, it's really
Speaker 1: a modern issue that we're going to have to deal with,
Speaker 1: and if we really love hunting, we will and will
Speaker 1: joyfully unite our voices in in in very productive, educated,
Speaker 1: classy ways will say hunting is good. Wildlife management in
Speaker 1: this country has worked. We are the good guys that
Speaker 1: love wildlife and want to see all species of wildlife thrive.
Speaker 1: We're the guys that are putting our money towards habitat
Speaker 1: conservation inside of a country where urban sprawl is just
Speaker 1: devouring habitat. We are the good guys where an animal
Speaker 1: has cultural value through hunting, that animal and its habitat
Speaker 1: is protected. And lastly, the best thing that we can
Speaker 1: do to protect this lifestyle that we love is to
Speaker 1: clean the inside of our own cup and make sure
Speaker 1: that we're representing this lifestyle with honor and dignity in
Speaker 1: every aspect of our life. So right on, guys, let's
Speaker 1: get to the render. Speaking of boots, he caught Brent
Speaker 1: on a good day and he's not wearing his Wow,
Speaker 1: this is the first time crocs are flip flips, I think,
Speaker 1: is all I've ever seen Brent Raven. Well, the last
Speaker 1: time we went out to the mew barn, squishing between
Speaker 1: your tube, Well, no, I just didn't have access to everything.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is the first time I've seen Brent
Speaker 1: where the first time we wear boots. We've been all
Speaker 1: over the country together and not scared of coronavirus. He's
Speaker 1: just worried about getting worms. Yeah wait just a second,
Speaker 1: did you I'm scared of getting him again? Did you
Speaker 1: freak get beer boots? Whenever you all went hunt hunting
Speaker 1: bear camp? What did y'all come back for? He forgot
Speaker 1: his bot, I forgot my boat. Remember it was important,
Speaker 1: would have went barefooted. But welcome to the Burger's Render.
Speaker 1: Doing that, we have we have some man, this is
Speaker 1: a big day at the Burgers Render. We have some
Speaker 1: real guests with US State boys. Or I could tell
Speaker 1: when I when I walked up and I saw you
Speaker 1: in your your dress clothes, think place in dress clothes.
Speaker 1: And Brind's got shoes on, has faded overalls today. He
Speaker 1: very nice. I hung that on a bob war fence.
Speaker 1: Brinton has a zip tie in lieu of a button. Beautiful,
Speaker 1: good custom custom. Yeah, well, we're gonna do something a
Speaker 1: little bit different today. I'm gonna introduce my guests right
Speaker 1: off the bat. Well they go first. Well, I just
Speaker 1: I don't, I just I'm just so excited. I just
Speaker 1: He's just gonna blurt it out at some point if
Speaker 1: he tries to introduce to Yeah. Usually I talked for
Speaker 1: ten minutes before I introduced the mystery guests. Right, Austin Booth.
Speaker 1: Austin Booth, director of the Arkansas Game of Fish, is
Speaker 1: with us. Austin them to have you. Man, it's really
Speaker 1: good to be here. Thanks for coming to Northwest Arkansas
Speaker 1: has excellent boots. Yeah, what kind of tell us? Tell
Speaker 1: us about these boots, Austin, So these are dinner lights. Uh.
Speaker 1: I like them because they're very similar to what I
Speaker 1: wore in the Marine Corps for eight years. Super comfortable.
Speaker 1: Can't tear them up, you can resole them. Really, Santa,
Speaker 1: apparently Santa brought them to you. Santa Claus did indeed
Speaker 1: bring them. Hey, let me tell you. My problem with
Speaker 1: boots like this is I really like what you're doing
Speaker 1: here and that you're you're using them like like dress
Speaker 1: boots almost. I mean, like, you know, they look nice,
Speaker 1: there's not a scuff on them. But you're gonna you're
Speaker 1: gonna walk out of here, and because you have those on,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be like you're gonna like run across the
Speaker 1: ditch or you're gonna go do something, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: scuff them up, and then you've built You've built this
Speaker 1: this idea in your head that these are the boots
Speaker 1: I wear, like these are like my church boots, but
Speaker 1: then they beat up in no time because they're not
Speaker 1: church boots. It messes with my head because I can't
Speaker 1: keep a pair of boots nice. I mean, it's a problem.
Speaker 1: I just heard you say your shoes make you do things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do. And I don't wear crocs. I got I
Speaker 1: got crocs for I got crocs from my children, your
Speaker 1: kids listen to this podcast. I know, and I love them.
Speaker 1: I love mused by you, and I will wear those
Speaker 1: crocs at different times, but I will not wear them
Speaker 1: when my family's honor is at stake. The fight that
Speaker 1: happen often crocs, I firmly we have. There was you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you're around someone and they say something that you're like,
Speaker 1: That's what I've been trying to say my whole life,
Speaker 1: and you just take it from them. Um Ron Bayne
Speaker 1: Hunting Dog Podcast. He says you should never not wear
Speaker 1: shoes that you couldn't protect your family in a volcano.
Speaker 1: Why couldn't you? When have you? Why is the volcano relevant?
Speaker 1: Volcano is a metaphor. I mean volcano. If you're a human,
Speaker 1: I would like that is more culturally relevant. Well I
Speaker 1: get it though when you say that, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to be wearing flip pups. You wanted
Speaker 1: to be wearing these. Still I'm wearing leather boots, so also,
Speaker 1: I like your boots. That's all we're trying to say.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's a really other you anticipate this was
Speaker 1: going to start off this way. I knew it was
Speaker 1: gonna be something similar about something meandering and humorous play
Speaker 1: We oh photo evidence that shot. So are other mystery
Speaker 1: us that we're very honored to have. Luke Naylor, Arkansas
Speaker 1: Game Fish Commission waterfowl biologist. Luke was on the Luke
Speaker 1: was on the Main Burgers podcast last week. I told
Speaker 1: I told him he carried the weight of it, carried
Speaker 1: the weight of it as usual. Yep, he did. Great.
Speaker 1: Now I still stand by my analogy that you being
Speaker 1: the lead guy for the Arkansas Game of Fish Commission,
Speaker 1: lead waterfowl guy in the duck hunting capital of the world,
Speaker 1: he is essentially, like I said, Steph Curry of the
Speaker 1: Golden State Warriors. Yeah. Yeah, my jump show is not
Speaker 1: that good. Quite. I don't think that's gonna work. You
Speaker 1: would have typically, I'm about the only guy showing up
Speaker 1: on a on a w A to change in and
Speaker 1: out of hunting boots and wearing my Choco sandals. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much Choco to and from a hunting location. So
Speaker 1: I'm I got problems with volcano, I guess. But but
Speaker 1: it works out. You got all kind of problems if
Speaker 1: you were in Chuckos chaos, I mean, only worn. I
Speaker 1: think there's something that we need to get it out
Speaker 1: of the way with Luke, okay, about a certain object
Speaker 1: that falls from trees. Oh it's true. Yeah. I wanted
Speaker 1: to make a public apology to all my listeners from
Speaker 1: the South about the way Luke pronounced the word acorn an.
Speaker 1: You know what. I listened to it twice one time
Speaker 1: on the way up here, and the only thing I
Speaker 1: could get over was you saying pronouncing I know. I
Speaker 1: knew it would come up. I knew it would come
Speaker 1: up there. I didn't hear I don't you know. I
Speaker 1: honestly didn't remember him saying it either. He did. He's
Speaker 1: had in the truck too on the way here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: get a lot of really Kansas. Yes, I'm a native
Speaker 1: kans and they don't trees. How much was the telephone pole? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Pretty much is so. Yeah, there's there's a few acorn
Speaker 1: berrying trees in Kansas, but not near the number there
Speaker 1: are down here. So you do have some respect for
Speaker 1: where you're at. Just go and call you kind of
Speaker 1: gotta go. I've I've been here for a while and
Speaker 1: I can kind of you just gotta kind of read
Speaker 1: the room and it it's particularly hostile, you go with acre.
Speaker 1: You just just avoid the subject altogether. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well no present company accepted you. You you gave us
Speaker 1: some great knowledge on the podcast. So are you gonna
Speaker 1: introduce the rest of us? Yes, I was gonna say so,
Speaker 1: the regular crew that's here to my right, Misty Nuclem.
Speaker 1: Great to have you, Misty. Did you guys know that
Speaker 1: most of the comments would get about the burglary surrender
Speaker 1: about Misty? Yeah, because she's better than us. Yeah, very
Speaker 1: much so. Brett Reeves. Great to see Brett, great to
Speaker 1: be seen. Josh Billmaker here, glad, I'm glad. Hey, Daniel
Speaker 1: Rupe couldn't be here. His mustache is excellent. I have
Speaker 1: that in my notes what did you guys think? The
Speaker 1: first thing I'll photo was Calfish hunter. Should we possibly
Speaker 1: get some context for why we're talking about Dan's mustache, Well,
Speaker 1: he post we we would not out this information because
Speaker 1: we follow hippo guidelines here at the Barges podcast, we
Speaker 1: probably should talk about what Dan just couldn't be here.
Speaker 1: So last week Daniel saw my mustache and Daniel was
Speaker 1: that the inspiration, no doubt, No, I mean it's not
Speaker 1: really debatable it is. I have to say. It's the
Speaker 1: most fake looking real mustache. You'll see it. It looks great,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic. So Daniel couldn't be here, and then unfortunately
Speaker 1: Gary Newcomb couldn't be here. That's very unfortunate. Yeah, Dad
Speaker 1: couldn't be here either. So so we've got a got
Speaker 1: a great yeah subtle for us. Hey, while we're while
Speaker 1: we're taking care of some business here, I want to
Speaker 1: to two Metta related things. So meet eaters coming out
Speaker 1: with a whole big waterfowl deal. You can go to
Speaker 1: the meat eator dot com forward slash waterfowl and see
Speaker 1: all the stuff that they're doing. So one of my
Speaker 1: guests who on the podcast was Sean Weaver, who is
Speaker 1: meat eaters waterfowl guru. Shawn is a cool guy. Shawn's
Speaker 1: twenty eight years old. He puts seventy thousand miles a
Speaker 1: year on a truck, which is true and has for
Speaker 1: like the last ten years, and he he travels all
Speaker 1: over the country and it's just a genuine good guy.
Speaker 1: And uh so he he came here and I interviewed him,
Speaker 1: and I thought he was so good on the podcast
Speaker 1: because he wasn't from Arkansas. Everybody else was from Arkansas,
Speaker 1: including me, and so we were establishing that Arkansas is
Speaker 1: duck hunting capital of the world. And I was kind
Speaker 1: of playing the why is it? I don't understand and
Speaker 1: Sean to me kind of sealed the heel because he's
Speaker 1: got no stock in Arkansas and his I liked. I
Speaker 1: liked what he said about He just kind of gave
Speaker 1: an outsiders look in Arkansas. I say that to say.
Speaker 1: Meteors coming out with a new series called Duck Lore,
Speaker 1: and it's Sean traveling all over the country hunting with
Speaker 1: people and so it's pretty cool and one of the
Speaker 1: episodes will be in Arkansas maybe maybe maybe not with me,
Speaker 1: there's not an episode in Arkansas. We got big problems
Speaker 1: because this is the kind of capital of the world.
Speaker 1: So you can go to the Meteor dot com forward
Speaker 1: slash Waterfowl and you can see First Light has a
Speaker 1: new waterfowl waterfowl gear system coming out, and you can
Speaker 1: sign up for our newsletter. That is uh, that's good.
Speaker 1: The only other thing on a meeting or agenda is, uh,
Speaker 1: how many you guys know Spencer new Hearth. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: our guest series, Spencer new Hearth works hunting editorial guy,
Speaker 1: A good good. Yes. I had a dream the other
Speaker 1: night and I remember nothing about the dream other than
Speaker 1: that Spencer new Hearth walks past me and I call
Speaker 1: him beach Nut, and you're gonna make this public, You're
Speaker 1: gonna release this on the Nut. I just remember addressing
Speaker 1: him very seriously, Mr Nut, beach Nut, come here, you
Speaker 1: know something. So I just I'm doing my part in
Speaker 1: uh to just make sure that that's what everybody calls him.
Speaker 1: I think that's a moniker that I'm pretty sure Steve
Speaker 1: Rinella is on this wagon too, as is everybody else
Speaker 1: at Meat Eater. So beach Nut, we really like, we
Speaker 1: really appreciate what he does for us. Okay, moving right along,
Speaker 1: moving it was weird. It was very weird. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: why I've made it a point. I you know, made
Speaker 1: it a point to make this very public. Okay, moving
Speaker 1: right along. I almost lost my eye yesterday. I feel
Speaker 1: like I had rode with these guys for like twenty
Speaker 1: minutes before I told them that. I wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: like either you know, Clay's got pink eye or Clay
Speaker 1: is pink Yeah, that's my first thought. It's like I've
Speaker 1: got small kids, like, oh, if your eyes read, you
Speaker 1: just assume somebody. Yeah. Well, I didn't want it to
Speaker 1: be the first thing I said with you guys. Um No.
Speaker 1: So yesterday I had two of my buddies from Oklahoma
Speaker 1: come up here. Um, Alan Grigg and Brian Wrangles. Very nice,
Speaker 1: very they they they are really good guys. They ride horses.
Speaker 1: They wanted to come up and squirrel hunt on their horses.
Speaker 1: Me on the mule, and we hunted yesterday. And at
Speaker 1: about eleven o'clock yesterday, I was riding to a tree.
Speaker 1: So when you when you're squirrel hunting on mules, part
Speaker 1: of the deal is that you can get to the
Speaker 1: tree quick. So the dog's tree and the squirrel especially
Speaker 1: this time of year. They're going in Den's really quickly.
Speaker 1: Usually it's the quicker you can get there, the better.
Speaker 1: And going to a tree, and I mean, just like
Speaker 1: we've done for lots of miles, riding through thick forest,
Speaker 1: you just kind of put up your arms and just
Speaker 1: go and stuff brushing across you, and you know, And
Speaker 1: I just took a stick. You know, I didn't see
Speaker 1: it happened. I don't know how big it was, but
Speaker 1: it was in your and you didn't see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just took a stick in my right eye. And uh,
Speaker 1: for a minute there, I really thought I'm gonna open
Speaker 1: this eye and I'm gonna see black. You know. I
Speaker 1: was envisioned what I'd look like with a glass eye,
Speaker 1: and like what what I was gonna put that's actually
Speaker 1: in the middle. I wish I would have thought about
Speaker 1: that because I was just the hospital. No, I was
Speaker 1: picturing and walking around with him with a patch. I
Speaker 1: also had visions and I and and because Clay is
Speaker 1: so descriptive in text message, I'm I'm shaking my head. No,
Speaker 1: he's like I had issue with my eye, heading to
Speaker 1: the doctor, may need, may need to ride. And my
Speaker 1: response is on a scale of one to ten, with
Speaker 1: ten being blindness. Where we are and he didn't text back,
Speaker 1: and we called, We talked on the phone. You didn't
Speaker 1: on the phone. You did. But when I talked to
Speaker 1: him on the phone, I was a little concerned, to
Speaker 1: be honest, because you can usually hear it in Clay's
Speaker 1: voice that everything's all right and it's usually a good
Speaker 1: story or whatever. And I couldn't hear that when I
Speaker 1: when I I just got on the phone, it was like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, it might be hard from the text if
Speaker 1: in fact we are at in blindness. So so I
Speaker 1: just picked up the phone and called him and said,
Speaker 1: what's what's going on? And I could tell he wasn't
Speaker 1: quite sure. Well, it hurt like heck, and at first
Speaker 1: I just thought it would just kind of go away,
Speaker 1: and so we just kept hunting, kept hunting, and I
Speaker 1: just kind of was squinting and it was watering, and
Speaker 1: about four hours later it was worse than when it happened,
Speaker 1: you know, And so we had a hall off the
Speaker 1: hunt and I just was like, man, I can't even
Speaker 1: see you out either eye because when you squinch up
Speaker 1: this eye so hard this I started water in two
Speaker 1: and you just it was. It was pretty painful. I
Speaker 1: went to the eye doctor and I took off a
Speaker 1: chunk out of my cornea and uhry he said. He said,
Speaker 1: if it had been two millimeters further as I'm seeing
Speaker 1: right now to the west, uh he said, it would
Speaker 1: have caused permanent damage. If if you if that happens
Speaker 1: on your pupil, like it's basically I mean, from what
Speaker 1: I could tell, like not, but it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: It's it's almost already healed. Isn't that crazy? But if
Speaker 1: I hadn't gone to the doctor, he said, what happens
Speaker 1: is it's when you get an eye injury, it abraid,
Speaker 1: it abraids your eye, and then when you blink, it
Speaker 1: tears the scam off your every time you play, they
Speaker 1: put it. They put a contact lens, like a medicated
Speaker 1: contact lens over it, and then so that when it
Speaker 1: was like but yeah, to get rid of the worms,
Speaker 1: but it Brent stays for pink. Your eye heels very quickly.
Speaker 1: And I'm serious, like, right now I feel perfectly fine,
Speaker 1: and yesterday I can hardly see how so yeah, miracles
Speaker 1: modern science, folks, Well, what my buddy Alvin says is
Speaker 1: he said, we take for granted how often stuff just
Speaker 1: goes normal, Like you go, you go squirrel hunting and
Speaker 1: you don't get hurt, and you come home and you
Speaker 1: just think that's normal. It's so. Anyway, I lost another
Speaker 1: tooth today. Yeah, yeah, Austin man. You uh so, you've
Speaker 1: you've been at the game and fish now since July
Speaker 1: July one, July one, so little over six months. That's right.
Speaker 1: So give us a little, uh the walk through of
Speaker 1: your career and where you've been and how you got here.
Speaker 1: Grew up in a small town in Lonoak County. UH
Speaker 1: left in two thousand four to go to college. Uh
Speaker 1: dad was a ninja builder. Mom became a nurse after
Speaker 1: she put her kids through college. But anyways, Uh, I
Speaker 1: went to college at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Then I went to law school at the University of
Speaker 1: South Carolina, and uh then took the start taking notes here.
Speaker 1: He's a lawyer. Okay, that's one finger check, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Then took a commission in the United States Marine Corps
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten. He's a Marine number two and
Speaker 1: served on active duty in the Marine Corps for eight years.
Speaker 1: UM got out in two thousand nineteen, came home, was
Speaker 1: the chief staff for the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs
Speaker 1: and did that for eighteen months and then I started
Speaker 1: at at Game and Fish and July. So in the Marines,
Speaker 1: you were a lawyer for the Marines. Yes, really, So
Speaker 1: my first three years I did nothing but basically prosecute cases.
Speaker 1: What I mean, like, what I don't understand why the
Speaker 1: I mean the Marines defending themselves? Yeah? Is it? Is?
Speaker 1: It stuff happens inside the Marines. Well, so the Marine
Speaker 1: Corps a a cross section of society, right, so it's
Speaker 1: very interesting cross section of society. Um, but we have
Speaker 1: marines that that that break the law and are you serious? Yes?
Speaker 1: Actually yes? And uh. In the Marine Corps, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we have the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which it
Speaker 1: is very similar to what we would see in civilian jurisdictions. Uh.
Speaker 1: We hold them accountable. And there's a Marine Corps jury,
Speaker 1: Marine Corps judge, Marine Corps prosecutor, Marine Corps Defense counsel
Speaker 1: and uh uh it's very similar to what you would
Speaker 1: see out in town. Okay. So there it's like its
Speaker 1: own internal, own criminal justice system. So you were just prosecuting,
Speaker 1: just regular stuff. It wasn't like you name it all
Speaker 1: over the place. For nine years, the jury selected at
Speaker 1: random like they are except for within a smaller yes,
Speaker 1: now mostly at random. UM. There's some guidelines on if
Speaker 1: you're a certain rank you know, there can't be anybody
Speaker 1: of junior rank on on on the panel. Um. And
Speaker 1: there has to be a certain officer to enlisted ratio.
Speaker 1: So we can just reach into hattan people out. But
Speaker 1: then we get this big panel and then we go
Speaker 1: through the Vadar process where each side trust to keep
Speaker 1: people off if they think they'll be unfair. That's very
Speaker 1: similar to what happens out in town. So I did
Speaker 1: that for three years, uh, and then went to Afghanistan. Um,
Speaker 1: it's an operational stuff over there. And then came back
Speaker 1: and went to the hill for three years. So in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan you were like on the ground. I was on
Speaker 1: the ground still as a lawyer. Uh. But then what
Speaker 1: we call operational law, which is I mean use of force,
Speaker 1: drone strikes, rules, an engage front, you know, vetting, targeting packages,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And then okay, so I tried to
Speaker 1: get out of the Marine Corps after Afghanistan, but that
Speaker 1: really just wasn't a marketable skill to law firms. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it would be. That's all right, and
Speaker 1: you're you're married and have three kids, married and have
Speaker 1: three kids, and uh, hey, I just want to say
Speaker 1: this because this was news to me the director of
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. That position is a
Speaker 1: hired position. It's not an appointed position. And that's right.
Speaker 1: That's that's good intel to know. I mean because for
Speaker 1: someone who's lived in this state his whole life, I
Speaker 1: could not have told you that. I thought I knew
Speaker 1: that the commission was governor, right, and I just, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of lumped all the leadership together in some way.
Speaker 1: But the director of the agency, I mean, you applied
Speaker 1: for the job and got hired. That's right, that's good.
Speaker 1: And when we were doing our g t R public meetings,
Speaker 1: I don't want pull anything, but someone would always ask me.
Speaker 1: They were like, so, you're thirty five years old, how
Speaker 1: exactly did you get to be the director of the
Speaker 1: ark Star Game Fish And uh I was telling the
Speaker 1: same thing. I said, do you really want to know?
Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, of course, give us the inside, and
Speaker 1: I tell him I'm like, I went online. I googled
Speaker 1: the head. I found his website and I sent him
Speaker 1: in my cover letter and resume and they said, what
Speaker 1: did you know any of the commissioners. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I knew one, and we had lunch of Bear was
Speaker 1: his inn road and we had lunch and he told
Speaker 1: me not to apply. So, yeah, it's high. So Austin,
Speaker 1: did you grow up hunting? I did mostly duck hunt,
Speaker 1: a little bit of deer hunting, but mostly wing shooting,
Speaker 1: dub and ducks hunting. Public land in Arkansas, public land
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. We had it, you know, we had some
Speaker 1: leases every now and then if we could find him.
Speaker 1: And oh yeah, let me ask something. Brent, you're not
Speaker 1: a hillbilly. You are a flat lander. So is Austin
Speaker 1: also a flat lander? Okay, it's helpful. I just I
Speaker 1: just think it's helpful to category in the room. Just
Speaker 1: so you know, if you call me a hillbilly or
Speaker 1: him a hillbilly, now that there's two of us here,
Speaker 1: you better have the right shoes on cross. Uh. I've
Speaker 1: had the threatening the quick call them me a hillbilly.
Speaker 1: Clay throws a cham around kind of loosely. Yeah, now, Luke,
Speaker 1: we we got into little bit of your history on
Speaker 1: the main podcast. But you've been with the game fish
Speaker 1: since two thousand six, correct years you went. Where'd you
Speaker 1: go to school? I went to undergrad at Kansas State
Speaker 1: and then graduate school at the University of California Davis,
Speaker 1: so spent some time out there. So, yeah, I grew
Speaker 1: up in Kansas and just my wife and I went
Speaker 1: west for graduate school for a few years and then
Speaker 1: decided to come back east. As the California people say,
Speaker 1: once you crass crosses here in Nevada, you're back east.
Speaker 1: East Arena is back in Yeah, yeah, so anywhere out here,
Speaker 1: you know. That's I like what you said there, because
Speaker 1: directional descriptors are totally based on your perception of where
Speaker 1: you're at. Because Austin was asking me about ger Stoker
Speaker 1: a minute ago. He saw a painting that we had
Speaker 1: hanging that was a guy fighting a bear with a
Speaker 1: knife in crocs. He was not wearing cross and uh
Speaker 1: so the book that that story is in is called
Speaker 1: Wild Sports in the Far West. Right here, there was
Speaker 1: a time when Arkansas was the far West. That is
Speaker 1: neither here nor there. But so you man, Luke was
Speaker 1: hunting public land this morning when you got the invite
Speaker 1: to come here. So I was driving back from a
Speaker 1: little morning in BioMed How how much do you think, uh,
Speaker 1: participation inside of the places that you're regulating helps you
Speaker 1: manage a lot. I don't know how much. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you could do this job if you if
Speaker 1: you don't spend time in those places. I have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to speak to some college courses, you know, wildlife classes,
Speaker 1: conservation classes, whatever the name may be. And I've kind
Speaker 1: of got a standard presentation I give and tweak from
Speaker 1: year to year, and that's been some of my I've
Speaker 1: been kind of hanging on that advice the last few
Speaker 1: times when I talked to students, said you gotta I
Speaker 1: think I ordered something. You gotta walk where you want
Speaker 1: to work. And and I've that was instilled in me
Speaker 1: early on. I was a public land hunter growing up
Speaker 1: in Kansas, a lot of a lot of duck hunting.
Speaker 1: Qualent doesn't of course, had had some had an uncle
Speaker 1: that had a farm for years out west, which tall
Speaker 1: and and had some awesome opportunities there with family over
Speaker 1: the years. But but nine public land and uh, and
Speaker 1: that just instills a totally different perspective and I don't
Speaker 1: know how I could relate to anyone else, do anything,
Speaker 1: have any credibility really with all the stuff we're talking about,
Speaker 1: the g TRS if I didn't actually live it myself.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, I like to just get out. And
Speaker 1: I went out and just took a walk in the
Speaker 1: woods by myself this morning, and may may go out
Speaker 1: tomorrow morning with some friends. We'll see, but you know,
Speaker 1: kind of it's a refreshing to do that at least
Speaker 1: once kind of by myself every year and just go
Speaker 1: kind of wonder around and uh there's no no pressure,
Speaker 1: no strings attached to anything, just go out and see
Speaker 1: what's going on. So again, coming into this topic in
Speaker 1: this world not knowing a lot about it, which is
Speaker 1: to be interesting that you can live in a state
Speaker 1: like Arkansas and be is active in the hunting space
Speaker 1: as a bunch of us are over here and know
Speaker 1: nothing about duck hunting. But when you told me that
Speaker 1: you didn't, you know, everybody hunts private land sometimes, but
Speaker 1: you were like, man, I pretty much hunt public land
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. And I mean, you're you're the guy making
Speaker 1: putting a lot of your fingerprints on what's going on
Speaker 1: around here. I I just thought that that did give
Speaker 1: you a lot of credibility. You know, well I appreciate it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta walk a mile into shoes, right, so it's
Speaker 1: uh more or I guess most people don't walk like
Speaker 1: I do, but a lot of people are something like that.
Speaker 1: Put in another man's crocs, right right, Yeah, I might
Speaker 1: as well have been in croc today. My waiters were leaking,
Speaker 1: so wouldn't make it. But but yeah, it's you get
Speaker 1: you gotta get out there and experience it, just like
Speaker 1: like other folks do. I do it. It's been turkey
Speaker 1: hunting here, deer hunting here. You know, it's all public land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sure I'm not afraid to to go out and
Speaker 1: ask permission to snow goose hunt or go out and
Speaker 1: somebody invites me to a place, I'll do that. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a couple of times a year versus to
Speaker 1: all the other trips compared to all the other trips
Speaker 1: I do on public land. So keeps you, uh, keeps
Speaker 1: you kind of grounded on what's really going on out
Speaker 1: there a little more connected. How feasible is it really
Speaker 1: to hunt ducks and all that on public land in Arkansas?
Speaker 1: It is most people. I guess I'll start out by
Speaker 1: putting in perspective from somebody outside Arkansas. Most folks coming
Speaker 1: from outside Arkansas come here and have a duck hunt.
Speaker 1: And we've got about forty five thousand people every year
Speaker 1: come from out of state to hunt ducks in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and about of those are on private land, but on
Speaker 1: public land invariably. Those folks have come from out of
Speaker 1: state to duck hunt on public land typically, and I've
Speaker 1: talked to a bunch of them over the years that
Speaker 1: the one day in Arkansas they will see more ducks
Speaker 1: than they see in an entire season of hunting ducks
Speaker 1: somewhere else big states for US out of state hunters,
Speaker 1: or Georgia, South Carolina, Um Tennessee of course, coming across
Speaker 1: a Memphis a lot. But it's it's to a person
Speaker 1: they say that this is I mean one day in
Speaker 1: the woods here when the water's in and this time
Speaker 1: of year, and they'll see more ducks, and they'll see
Speaker 1: uh in a couple of seasons sometimes. So it's just different.
Speaker 1: The the intensity here is extremely high, the pressure is high.
Speaker 1: You can't you can't ignore it, and you know, pretend
Speaker 1: like it's some sort of a wilderness experience to go
Speaker 1: duck hunting on public than in Arkansas, because you're not
Speaker 1: typically gonna find a lot of solitude. I found relative
Speaker 1: solitude this morning, which means there's somebody. I think Clay
Speaker 1: was asking me how close somebody was and you know,
Speaker 1: a few hundred yards and you can barely hear their
Speaker 1: duck call. That's that's kind of solitude in public land
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. Um, but it works, and and I think
Speaker 1: it's the folks can take off um where I'm hunting.
Speaker 1: You you just get a pair of cheap hip boots
Speaker 1: and a duck call and go walking. I didn't even
Speaker 1: have a decoy with me to really and yeah, you
Speaker 1: just walk in and kind of the old timer way
Speaker 1: of doing things. You just kick the water. Duck's key
Speaker 1: in on that the being in the woods. Ducks really
Speaker 1: key in on the moving water, the splashes and the
Speaker 1: sound the call. So they're kind of hard wired to
Speaker 1: look for that. Take any ducks this morning, I talked
Speaker 1: to I shot to two ducks. I should the two
Speaker 1: that that came in and did it? Did it right?
Speaker 1: Like I like to shoot them so they would be
Speaker 1: fully committed that where they mallards. Yeah, yeah, they were great. Right,
Speaker 1: that's synonymous in arcas compared this right here, what he's
Speaker 1: talking about doing on public land. How many vehicles running
Speaker 1: parking lot this morning? There's usually this when it's like
Speaker 1: it is now, they'll be fifty to seventy five, sometimes
Speaker 1: over a hundred at our major access points. And that's
Speaker 1: on and in the area you're hunting by meeting. I
Speaker 1: assume it's probably twenty thousand acres of water right now
Speaker 1: because we're on a major flood. Twenty acres fifty to
Speaker 1: mt vehicles. Just what you said, what would you do
Speaker 1: if you pulled up and put six hillbillies? What would
Speaker 1: you do if you pulled up to a trailhead in
Speaker 1: Montana where there was a million acres in front of
Speaker 1: you and there was fifty vehicles there? You go somewhere,
Speaker 1: you turn around and go back home. But you can
Speaker 1: do that here. That's pretty cool. The question why, because
Speaker 1: you can do dislike what what Luke did. You can
Speaker 1: get two d and fifty yards away from somebody and
Speaker 1: you can do that and still be successful. Absolutely you can.
Speaker 1: And that's just that's a big difference. And I just
Speaker 1: thought about how different that was then if you and
Speaker 1: I had pulled up somewhere with a trail here that
Speaker 1: had fifty vehicles and we wouldn't even stop. We just
Speaker 1: keep going, and he and we would be walking, and
Speaker 1: he was walking. Yeah, I don't know much smaller area
Speaker 1: and he had a space to do it. Brent, tell
Speaker 1: us about your duck hunting history. My brother than I
Speaker 1: guided for better probably twenty six years. I guess. I
Speaker 1: think what I figured it up. And I've been I've
Speaker 1: been hunting. I killed my first green head when I
Speaker 1: was twelve, I think, and I can remember it just
Speaker 1: like it happened this morning, and twelve years when I
Speaker 1: was twelve. That was a few years ago. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was right after the Great War and uh Spanish American. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where I learned speak spending. I got caught. But
Speaker 1: we we guided at Raydale. We had a camp. We
Speaker 1: bought a camp over at Raydale, right on the Arkansas River.
Speaker 1: We were ten minutes from Buckingham Flats, which is now
Speaker 1: can we why can't we talk about all this public
Speaker 1: land and not and it's okay to be specific or
Speaker 1: I mean it just is. I mean that's it, but
Speaker 1: I mean it's a it's a serious question because I
Speaker 1: don't understand we don't use names of stuff well in
Speaker 1: bio media. I mean, if you're duck hunting on public
Speaker 1: landing Arkansas, in that part of Arkansas, it's by me
Speaker 1: to or if you're if it's north east Arkansas, it's
Speaker 1: Black River or Black Swamp, or we're comfortable saying that.
Speaker 1: It's just a serious question. Yeah, I mean, do you
Speaker 1: ever talk about the places I hunt? It's over. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quit pointing your finger me. I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: if you all asked me, like a name of a
Speaker 1: road or a or the nearest town where I turkey
Speaker 1: hunt Stone Face, I don't know what I want. Two
Speaker 1: or three, any street You've already gone too far, already
Speaker 1: with it. We'd say, just turkey hunt in the eastern
Speaker 1: deciduous for us. This photograph that I brought my son
Speaker 1: wanted to come to a renter, but he couldn't come today.
Speaker 1: He was toy open. I think when I took this picture,
Speaker 1: this was on the blue line and by me. Luke
Speaker 1: may have heard of that where yeah, standing right there
Speaker 1: is that Luke in the background. No, No, I don't
Speaker 1: think I was lurking back. That that's my brother back there.
Speaker 1: But we had this dog for thirteen years. That that
Speaker 1: that's in this photograph with him. But that that photograph
Speaker 1: says so much to me. And one reason I brought
Speaker 1: it today the show was just for y'all to look at,
Speaker 1: was this was on the last podcast you talked about
Speaker 1: driving by Luke. You talked about your dads and he
Speaker 1: drove by, and every other house had a black dog
Speaker 1: and in a boat in a driveway. What that was?
Speaker 1: This was my life right here for almost thirty years.
Speaker 1: It was we I deer hunted some for something to
Speaker 1: do until ducks season opened up. I mean that, and
Speaker 1: that the whole community of people that I was around,
Speaker 1: that's what they did. Everything else was just to keep
Speaker 1: you out of jail long enough for duck season open
Speaker 1: up and then for the next our sixty seventy ninety
Speaker 1: days whatever it was gonna be. That's what we did
Speaker 1: every day. And it was the hardest job I've ever
Speaker 1: had outside of law enforcement, the hardest thing I ever done,
Speaker 1: in the most fun. I mean, I made the best friends.
Speaker 1: And you talked about people coming from out of state.
Speaker 1: We had clients from all over. The hunted with us
Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania and Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina
Speaker 1: like the biggest, vast majority of them come from there.
Speaker 1: And we remember one day we took a guy from
Speaker 1: Pitts from Pennsylvania, from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We took him into
Speaker 1: Buckingham Flats and we went in there and nine ten
Speaker 1: o'clock ducks just shut off. It was over with, and
Speaker 1: we liked there was probably four or five of us
Speaker 1: in there. I'd say there was four of us in there,
Speaker 1: and we liked, like two ducks having a limit for everybody.
Speaker 1: So we started picking up the equips and we're walking
Speaker 1: out and the guts he's passed away now, but the
Speaker 1: guy from from Pennsylvania was walking around beside me, and
Speaker 1: I said, Mr Roberts, I'm I'm sorry, it wasn't any
Speaker 1: better than it was today. And he said what I said,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it wasn't any better than that was normally
Speaker 1: ten o'clock. You're waking up from a nap, getting ready
Speaker 1: to get something because you've already limited up several hours before.
Speaker 1: And he reached and grabbed me by the collar of
Speaker 1: my shirt and turned me around. I thought he's fixed
Speaker 1: to hit me. He said, boy, you don't realize what
Speaker 1: y'all have here. He said, I saw more ducks this
Speaker 1: morning than I have killed than I have seen in
Speaker 1: two years at home, he said, And I killed more
Speaker 1: ducks this morning than I have over the last two
Speaker 1: years at home. He said that you've got something special here.
Speaker 1: And if I never and I would say that up
Speaker 1: until that point, I would always apologize to a client
Speaker 1: if we didn't kill a full limit. I never said
Speaker 1: it again after that because he was right. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was this would have been ninety eight or ninety nine,
Speaker 1: and it was you could go and you could put
Speaker 1: two hundred and fift three ducks in a in a
Speaker 1: hole in the woods, right on top of you. I
Speaker 1: had them so close they were blowing that their wing
Speaker 1: tips that touch you on the arm. My brother caught
Speaker 1: a mallard hen one time. They're not saying that. The
Speaker 1: directors here, they they're gonna have to catch him. He
Speaker 1: let him go. He called a mallard him, come him.
Speaker 1: I thought you were gonna say, my brother wants killed. No,
Speaker 1: just fluttering by, looking for a place to light. And
Speaker 1: he reached out and grabbed it by the neck. And
Speaker 1: he said it went that duck went up his arm
Speaker 1: like a roast in the year. He said that he
Speaker 1: was clawing and he durned it, Lucy, but it was
Speaker 1: I mean, you just get them in that close, and
Speaker 1: that's not what's the most? You ever just estimated and
Speaker 1: we know your estimation is gonna be thirty percent higher
Speaker 1: than the truth. Well what's the what's the most do
Speaker 1: you think ever landed in a set of decoys? You know,
Speaker 1: came in in Buckingham Flats. We had two guys from Memphis.
Speaker 1: We went in there on a Tuesday morning and we
Speaker 1: were the only folks in there. We had where's one
Speaker 1: vehicle in that parking lot on a Tuesday morning? This
Speaker 1: been about four eight three or four And if it
Speaker 1: was one duck, it was seven eight hundred. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say a thousand, but you weren't gonna believe it.
Speaker 1: So we started working ducks and and fifty ducks because
Speaker 1: I don't even know really what ducks would look like. Luke,
Speaker 1: have you ever experienced anything? Most people don't. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not to that scale. But UM been fortunately, been on
Speaker 1: some good hunts with some good friends, and I see
Speaker 1: that start to happen. It's strange, what what happens? There's
Speaker 1: something so fascinating about hunting in the timber that it
Speaker 1: it does. As Brent started to describe, they kind of
Speaker 1: just there's just this cascade effect or where they start coming.
Speaker 1: And I watched a few of them do it this morning,
Speaker 1: and I was about ready to leave and a few
Speaker 1: ducks came in. They finally just found a spot and
Speaker 1: they broke through the trees, away from me and away
Speaker 1: from this other group just just kind of started settling
Speaker 1: in and half a dozen of them started it. And
Speaker 1: and really all it takes is a few to start
Speaker 1: the train. And I mean just in just quickly, there's
Speaker 1: probably sixty seventy ducks just pulled right in behind them.
Speaker 1: So if there's enough ducks around, it can build into
Speaker 1: the hundreds like that, if the key is being patient
Speaker 1: enough to let it happen. And they started lighting like
Speaker 1: a hundred yards away, okay, they kind of and they
Speaker 1: just and it was just like a rolling carpet. They
Speaker 1: just started just rolling. Rend you ever see anything like that? Awesome,
Speaker 1: big big groups like that. Hunting on the White River
Speaker 1: bottoms one time, and we had a group of six
Speaker 1: guys and one group came in about three minutes after
Speaker 1: shooting time and we limited out one and one group
Speaker 1: of ducks. How would that be? Would you have you
Speaker 1: had to have reloaded? No, but how would you limit out?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a game warden or anything, but
Speaker 1: if you only got three shells in the limits four,
Speaker 1: how do you limit out? Because the ducks are that
Speaker 1: close and there's that many. Sometimes if it gets right,
Speaker 1: you gotta be careful. One of the one of the
Speaker 1: first times I had had but I had my head
Speaker 1: down here one of the first times we were in
Speaker 1: government Cyprus several years back, ten plus years ago, and
Speaker 1: and uh, they finally started coming in that they did it.
Speaker 1: They broke through. And if things are going right, and
Speaker 1: I'm sound kind of arrogant, I guess, but if you're
Speaker 1: shooting them right, which means they're down inside the tree right,
Speaker 1: not flying skimming the tree tops and all that, you know,
Speaker 1: each his own that that that's it's legal to make
Speaker 1: your own make your own decisions. But um, really, shooting
Speaker 1: a secondary like if if ducks are doing it right
Speaker 1: in the woods, shooting them is kind of an afterthought
Speaker 1: because it gets to the point where they're they're in
Speaker 1: so close and and there's there can be so many
Speaker 1: of them and they really um there, I mean acrobats,
Speaker 1: but getting that many ducks up out of the woods
Speaker 1: and out of gun range. Uh, A man can operate
Speaker 1: a gun much quicker than they can get out. It
Speaker 1: really Once it happens like that, Um yeah, it really is,
Speaker 1: you're kind of like, Okay, I guess we're gonna shoot
Speaker 1: him now, started the top and yeah, and you work
Speaker 1: as they come up. You just keep working the ducks.
Speaker 1: That's after they've landed, after they coming, when the shooting starts,
Speaker 1: you start high and then as they work up you
Speaker 1: take them. Is it going out? It could be the
Speaker 1: ducks there are still coming in talking about that train starting,
Speaker 1: you know, and if a bunch of them on the water,
Speaker 1: they're just gonna keep coming. You shoot the ones here
Speaker 1: and then other ones get up. You're just basically bang
Speaker 1: bang bang. It's a safety thing too. Yeah. They're easy shots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you talk, you'll think y'all shot twenty gauges. That was
Speaker 1: my guide. Gun wasn't open under twenty Wow. So do
Speaker 1: you like as a duck hunter if when you're thinking
Speaker 1: about your duck hunting career, is that like, is that
Speaker 1: like killing a ten point buck limit out and you know,
Speaker 1: limiting out in one minute. So look at that. How
Speaker 1: does that give me a scale? Here? Luke and I
Speaker 1: were talking about that on the way up here. I
Speaker 1: think I'm in the minority here, but I would much
Speaker 1: rather kill a few ducks short of my limit but
Speaker 1: have a longer hunt. I mean, I love being I'll
Speaker 1: see those those blue notches on their wings in the sunlight,
Speaker 1: and I love being a lot to see that green
Speaker 1: that knee on emerald green head in the sunlight. Uh. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's awesome to limit out really quickly, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: much rather you know, string that over a few hours.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, Yeah, it's it's really it's about seeing them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I can shoot some ducks, great, But I know
Speaker 1: if I've shot some ducks, that means I saw a
Speaker 1: lot of ducks, and I had a lot of ducks close.
Speaker 1: That's way more important at the end of the day
Speaker 1: seeing them and talking to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: communication you have after you calling. We always we would
Speaker 1: tell clients we can get this over with quick. You know,
Speaker 1: at one point there was a point system where you know,
Speaker 1: males and females. Drakes and hens were a different point value,
Speaker 1: and you went up to a hundred, and hens were
Speaker 1: a hundred. If you killed a hen, whoever killed that hen,
Speaker 1: that was their limit. So we would tell during that
Speaker 1: hun during that time and even after, you know, if
Speaker 1: we got close on if there was close on hens,
Speaker 1: you know, we'd say no, you know, we're shutting it
Speaker 1: down before we got to a limit, because we've been
Speaker 1: gonna walk out there limited ducks. So I would we
Speaker 1: would always tell them the boys, we can get this
Speaker 1: done quick, or we can sit here and let the
Speaker 1: sun come up and we can shoot the boy ducks,
Speaker 1: you know, and and see a show. From that time on,
Speaker 1: and everybody to a man was yeah, we want to
Speaker 1: we want to stay here and we want to watch
Speaker 1: it because it is so you try to shoot the
Speaker 1: drake Mallard just pick out the boys. Yeah, boy, that's
Speaker 1: harder to It's it's not every band I ever killed,
Speaker 1: except for one. I saw it on the duck's leg
Speaker 1: when I shot him. We're kind of different duck hunters,
Speaker 1: you know, because here's the deal. Look, Craig mack Austin,
Speaker 1: tell me there's a difference between a man that hunts
Speaker 1: ducks and a duck hunter and experience. Yeah, you gotta
Speaker 1: be careful how far you take that before you offend.
Speaker 1: Somebody ain't worried about offending Clay Well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a pretty serious duck hunter, and uh, I pretty
Speaker 1: much just hunt, you know, the timber. But it's amazing
Speaker 1: what you can see if you just look. You know.
Speaker 1: It was always and we would tell new hunters, you know,
Speaker 1: pick out one duck. There's gonna be few there, maybe
Speaker 1: fifty come in, but you gain shoot them all. You've
Speaker 1: got to find one. And then being gads, we would
Speaker 1: always let the client shoot first, start shooting, they get
Speaker 1: their chance, and we'd shoot hours. And then how does
Speaker 1: that work? And I'm not I'm not saying that's bad,
Speaker 1: but why does the guy get to shoot? Why does
Speaker 1: he get to shoot while I'm out there hunting too?
Speaker 1: I'd like to shoot him. But in a wing, you're
Speaker 1: not taking away anything from anybody. But because usually in
Speaker 1: a guided situation, the guide's not hunting too. But that's
Speaker 1: common practice, that's pretty common, and it gives you an
Speaker 1: extra limit for the picture. Okay, you so give you
Speaker 1: an extra limit. Yeah, you're taking novice hunters too. It's
Speaker 1: nice to have. I took some out just last week
Speaker 1: and I had my gun with me. No intention of
Speaker 1: shooting first at all, but you know, had to go.
Speaker 1: Um cripple goes off something. You gotta have somebody experience
Speaker 1: that kind of knows how to take care of things,
Speaker 1: and you're hunt When novices you've got a dog, for example,
Speaker 1: you tell everybody that, hey, once that dogs out everybody else,
Speaker 1: but nobody else shoots like I'm gonna shoot because I
Speaker 1: know what the dogs doing. So it's important a lot
Speaker 1: of times to have a guide or have a more
Speaker 1: knowledgeable hunter, more experienced hunter to be to be ready
Speaker 1: to help out with some situations like that. And he
Speaker 1: has a few more ducks for the picture too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: few more ducks for the picture. Put all the mallards
Speaker 1: up front. Um, do you feel like this is all
Speaker 1: inside baseball? Josh, No, I have intentionally never duck hunted.
Speaker 1: That's on purpose, on purpose because I have a bit
Speaker 1: of an obsessive personality, and I know that first I see,
Speaker 1: I love to fly fish. I mean I get obsessed
Speaker 1: with fly fishing. Actually tell you guys, I got my
Speaker 1: first trout fishing guide gig this weekend for some guy.
Speaker 1: My guide license. Everybody that's I'm obsessive about gear and
Speaker 1: about fly fishing and tying and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I know, the first time I go duck hunting, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be You're gonna like this. My brother in law
Speaker 1: loves my brother in law, Scott Anderson, duck hunts over
Speaker 1: and around the Tulsa area a lot, and he's always
Speaker 1: wanting me to go. And I'm like, I've never just
Speaker 1: been too gung ho about it because because of that reason. Okay,
Speaker 1: talking directly about the podcast, this is what we usually do.
Speaker 1: What what was your favorite part that stood out to you?
Speaker 1: Anybody can start, Yeah, I'll tell you it was. It
Speaker 1: has been my favorite of all the ones. He really,
Speaker 1: he actually said this yesterday. It's been in my favorite
Speaker 1: since even Bear Hunting Magazine when we first started. It's
Speaker 1: been the because there was everyone that talked on there.
Speaker 1: I could relate everything somebody was saying. You know, it
Speaker 1: was from Jim bow to the whole thing, the biology
Speaker 1: and the the area because this, you know, these were
Speaker 1: questions that clients would were asking me. I've had people
Speaker 1: from New Jersey they they wanted to know some of
Speaker 1: them never seen stars at night. They were standing outside
Speaker 1: in front of the camping in Raydale on the bank
Speaker 1: of the Arkansas River and looking up at the stars
Speaker 1: and be amazed, and they were just it was just
Speaker 1: one question after another. What kind of tree is this?
Speaker 1: Why do ducks come down here? The things that you
Speaker 1: addressed in that thing, and it was from me lying
Speaker 1: to them and tell them to pick cottonfield was the
Speaker 1: remnants of where they raised grits at that. I never
Speaker 1: corrected that, but to to actually tell them the truth
Speaker 1: about things that I could actually answer. But all of
Speaker 1: those things were just an intrinsic part of their experience.
Speaker 1: And it made me realize, like the guy that's snatched
Speaker 1: me out of my waiters there from Pennsylvania, of what
Speaker 1: we had, you know, and what we have and what
Speaker 1: we were, what we were able to do, that those
Speaker 1: guys were just gonna be able to see for like
Speaker 1: three days until the next year. Every from we'll start
Speaker 1: to finish this nostalgic for I loved Yeah. Man brought
Speaker 1: back a million million memories. I know. There was one
Speaker 1: thing I listened to it the second time when it
Speaker 1: actually came out, and I thought man, I bet I've
Speaker 1: offended a bunch of people. Well did Here's what, Here's
Speaker 1: what I think. This was the only thing that guardered
Speaker 1: my attention other than you say in pronunciation was the
Speaker 1: first word the first duck hunting podcast, and as far
Speaker 1: as I know, I'm the first duck guys you ever knew.
Speaker 1: And my reference was corn bread, which was really going bad.
Speaker 1: Trump's everything got called out for your love of corporate
Speaker 1: which is true. No shame in that, No, It's right.
Speaker 1: I loved it. I've I've listened to every single one
Speaker 1: of the Bear Grease cast and Beer Greased renders except
Speaker 1: for the most for the most recent render um way
Speaker 1: to go Austin. Yeah, I had some special perspective on it,
Speaker 1: not because I worked for a Game of Fish, but
Speaker 1: because I grew up Arkansas dunk hunting, and then I
Speaker 1: left it, and I did it in South Carolina, did
Speaker 1: it in Virginia. Was Oh, the look of disgust. But
Speaker 1: I tell people it was so much different. But it
Speaker 1: made me such a better hunter, not just because I
Speaker 1: appreciated it, but because I had to pay attention to
Speaker 1: so many more variables when you're hunting. You know, public
Speaker 1: land off of the Potomac River with you know, you
Speaker 1: gotta worry about tides. You you've got to worry about
Speaker 1: like when the temperature folds into single digits, big water,
Speaker 1: just a million different variables. And I had my boat
Speaker 1: inside my garage out there one winner, and my dad
Speaker 1: came out. They're understanding and in the garage talking, and
Speaker 1: he looked in it in my boat and said, son,
Speaker 1: why in the world do you have blue building? And
Speaker 1: you know, he you know, It's like, what, Dad, It's
Speaker 1: just that's just what we have at here? What is
Speaker 1: the blue bill decoy? It? It's so a blue bill
Speaker 1: is a type of duck. It's a diver, not a
Speaker 1: dabbling duck. Uh. And Luke's gonna correct me if I
Speaker 1: get anything wrong here. It's a fun bird to chase. Uh.
Speaker 1: They five very erratically, so they're fun to shoot. They're
Speaker 1: not quite as tasty and not near as pretty as
Speaker 1: a mallard. Okay, I mean blue bill kind of sounds
Speaker 1: nice to me. It's not. I'm a I'm more of
Speaker 1: a mallard guy. Right, you always have a Um, I'm
Speaker 1: out at the one mallard I've ever killed. So I
Speaker 1: loved it from that perspective. And then the second thing
Speaker 1: that I really liked about it was the outro your
Speaker 1: description of it's a good thing when North American hunters
Speaker 1: love a career so much that that they chase it
Speaker 1: for its feathers, it's for for its meat, because we'll
Speaker 1: do whatever we take to try to preserve that. And uh,
Speaker 1: as I've kind of approached the game of fish as
Speaker 1: an as an outsider, but as a life on beneficiary
Speaker 1: of it, I'm very focused on trying to restore that
Speaker 1: connection between consumption and sportsmanship. So yeah, yeah, man, that
Speaker 1: statement is so true, and I mean that's really the
Speaker 1: message that we're trying to to send to the broader
Speaker 1: world is that, Man, the best thing that could happen
Speaker 1: if you were a game species is that guys like
Speaker 1: this would sit around a podcast one beautiful lady h
Speaker 1: and then what would talk about hunting that inside bou Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the best thing that can happen because
Speaker 1: where where where an analyze cultural value and see these
Speaker 1: are the things that I think need to be on
Speaker 1: all of our tongues just to intuitively be able to
Speaker 1: say it. I want my kids to be able to
Speaker 1: say this is that where an animal has cultural value,
Speaker 1: it's protected and its habitat is protected. And when you
Speaker 1: when you when you when you can't hunt something, when
Speaker 1: when when the common man has no incentive because he
Speaker 1: cannot partake of that resource, he has no incentive to
Speaker 1: protect that. And I mean that's the North American model,
Speaker 1: is that we've given people the common man incentive want
Speaker 1: to protect wildlife, and we've built this culture, this hunting
Speaker 1: culture into our families and North America, oddly enough, as
Speaker 1: the most big game animals of anywhere on the planet
Speaker 1: and the strongest, most robust hunting culture of anywhere on
Speaker 1: the planet and other places, but they do not fishing.
Speaker 1: And fishing we got our slot limits that we observed. So, Brent,
Speaker 1: would you say, in light of claysure Mark, that the
Speaker 1: mallard is valued culturally in Southeastern Yes, I would say,
Speaker 1: I would say it would be Jesus and then the
Speaker 1: mallard duck. No, it's not even close. But he the
Speaker 1: mat of ducks the next one on the wrong. No.
Speaker 1: I thought that was an interesting question because it's so
Speaker 1: in It's like there's no question. I mean, like you
Speaker 1: guys that are in it deep that never I mean
Speaker 1: has it ever crossed your mind that why are we
Speaker 1: targeting this animal? So why is this one so special?
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys they're all looking at me like
Speaker 1: I'm crazy. They're like, yeah, yeah, well that's interesting because
Speaker 1: that and that's why I wanted to talk about it.
Speaker 1: And I thought that was cool section of the podcast
Speaker 1: and it answered my questions because there's always functionality. There's
Speaker 1: always function behind something that seems just totally cultural. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they're the vocal duck, they're the biggest duck, they're
Speaker 1: meat duck. They're the most widely geographically distributed duck. So
Speaker 1: it's a no brainer once you understand these pieces of
Speaker 1: science behind it. You know that, uh that's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the king of ducks, man, the mount duck. There is
Speaker 1: a cultural connection. I mean, as we just kind of
Speaker 1: denigrated bluebills here for a second. You know, if you
Speaker 1: go out like the legendary and people here again they
Speaker 1: kind of like I might get struck by lightning. But
Speaker 1: you know, water follow hunting didn't start in Arkansas, I
Speaker 1: mean just right, So but you think about the I know,
Speaker 1: I know, I'll have my letter on your desk in
Speaker 1: the morning, but but you think about you know the
Speaker 1: diving ducks, campus back scalp, bluebills, you know that decoy carving.
Speaker 1: That's the East Coast tradition and Great Lakes tradition built
Speaker 1: around totally different species, largely different life histories, different behaviors,
Speaker 1: different ways of pursuing them. It's all duck hunting, but
Speaker 1: much different techniques used. Uh. You know my time out
Speaker 1: six years out in California in the Central Valley where
Speaker 1: the with the northern pentail is king, and it's fascinating
Speaker 1: watching that. When I was out there was kind of
Speaker 1: during this transition phase where pentel populations were declining, uh, continentally,
Speaker 1: bag limits were declining. Uh. So it went from back
Speaker 1: in the days where Brent meant to the point system. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were pentails were bonus duck in the seventies in California,
Speaker 1: which meant you could shoot ten of them per day,
Speaker 1: and and it built this whole culture of managing habitat
Speaker 1: for pin tails, which is a different structures, wide open, huge, huge,
Speaker 1: You know, I hunted one time out there with a
Speaker 1: friend over you know, three thousand decoys and this is
Speaker 1: just a totally just wide open water like four to say,
Speaker 1: since deep, wide open and as pentel limits dropped, people
Speaker 1: started managing for mallards, and so now people in California
Speaker 1: are managing much much more from mallards than that they
Speaker 1: did in the seventies, eighties and early nineties because kind
Speaker 1: of the the the king ducks sort of switched based
Speaker 1: on uh, you know, just regulations, kind of apparent population
Speaker 1: size and kind of the availability to to have that
Speaker 1: that harvest opportunity, and so it's it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: these regional we have these regional differences and what duck
Speaker 1: is important. But you know, as we talked about on
Speaker 1: the podcast, I mean, it's it's just there's just no
Speaker 1: doubt who's king here, and it's the Mallard in most
Speaker 1: parts of the country, and nobody, nobody can challenge the
Speaker 1: argument that that Arkansas is the king of the mallard
Speaker 1: local Like, I mean, the mallard is king in Arkansas
Speaker 1: as the king four mallards, so that that's pretty much undebatable,
Speaker 1: just despite uh uh, you know, rumors of its demise
Speaker 1: are are greatly exaggerated. So yeah, tell talk to me
Speaker 1: about that, because it's probably everybody just wants to talk
Speaker 1: about the negative, and that's what you hear, but I
Speaker 1: hear guys say that, you know, there's not as many
Speaker 1: coming down. You know, it's different than it used to be.
Speaker 1: And I know that it is different. I mean, just
Speaker 1: talk to me about that. Yeah, it's totally different, but
Speaker 1: you always gotta kind of compartmentalize, right that different doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean worse or it's always gonna stay this way.
Speaker 1: I mean, it may change right right back. We don't.
Speaker 1: We don't know. Um, a lot of good things have happened,
Speaker 1: just this could be a whole another conversation. But if
Speaker 1: you think back, well, it's kind of interesting where people
Speaker 1: um established their frame or reference, right. It's it's always
Speaker 1: fascinating to talk to people. Had a colleague in Louisiana
Speaker 1: who he's lived there now. He actually was from California,
Speaker 1: but lived there for over thirty years now, and was getting,
Speaker 1: you know, finger in his chest from from some guy
Speaker 1: talking about how terrible duck hunting was now and and
Speaker 1: he finally asked, you, it's like, man, I've been duck
Speaker 1: hunting in Louisiana thirty years. I wasn't born and raised here.
Speaker 1: He said, how many years have you been duck hunting?
Speaker 1: Just out of curiosity. Well eight like, well, so so
Speaker 1: where's your frame or reference? And I think it's I
Speaker 1: think that's really important because some old timers, I say
Speaker 1: that kindly have a different perspective on it. And right, Uh,
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of changes. And if you think, uh,
Speaker 1: kind of continentally and what's happened for waterfowl habit that
Speaker 1: we've done a lot of good stuff. We've put a
Speaker 1: lot of wetlands back on the landscape across the entire
Speaker 1: mid continent Mallard range. So we should expect the distribution
Speaker 1: of those birds to change. It does not mean that
Speaker 1: Arkansas is still not king and it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: Arkansas is maybe getting fewer ducks. An argument could be
Speaker 1: made that, hey, populations have been high for the last
Speaker 1: five to ten years, let's say record highs. You can
Speaker 1: make the argument that Arkansas maybe should have seen a
Speaker 1: bigger boost then what we might have. Well, some people
Speaker 1: have have perceived um and even what we've counted in
Speaker 1: some of our some of our data. But it's just
Speaker 1: kind of a broadening out of this whole duck range
Speaker 1: and it makes people uneasy. More people are shooting ducks
Speaker 1: in more places. It doesn't mean that Arkansas is still
Speaker 1: not the leader. Um, it makes it a little bit
Speaker 1: more unpredictable here. And and so that predictability, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know that mother nature is never predictable. But but
Speaker 1: humans just want everything to be exactly the same. We
Speaker 1: want those seven hundred ducks in the decoys right in
Speaker 1: the whole every single day we go. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of a human coping mechanism to always remember the most
Speaker 1: positive experiences. And so you have it framed like you
Speaker 1: can never expectations, never go anything but up. The social
Speaker 1: scientists in this field tell me, they say expectations, they
Speaker 1: just keep ratcheting up every time. You got four years
Speaker 1: of duck hunting that happened once. What you said about
Speaker 1: the hunder ducks in there that happened one time. That's
Speaker 1: a great perspective. Yeah. Well, and I think it's human
Speaker 1: nature too to want to uh find reasons, maybe not
Speaker 1: not an excuse for not being successful, but like to
Speaker 1: just to talk about the time you went that it
Speaker 1: was bad, you know, or or that or how your
Speaker 1: luck has changed or whatever, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: another cohe mechanism, which print I know you've got opinions about,
Speaker 1: is um this gear. I mean, the amount of of
Speaker 1: money that people are spending on every single piece of
Speaker 1: gear now compared to what they were spending on it
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago. It's just absolutely nuts. And hey,
Speaker 1: this America then spend their money how how however they
Speaker 1: want to, and that's awesome, But you know, people have
Speaker 1: high expectations and sometimes the season doesn't deliver on that,
Speaker 1: so they buy this piece of gear that that's that's
Speaker 1: gonna help reconcile that gap. I think the expectations didn't
Speaker 1: go even further. The more you spend on gear, the
Speaker 1: more expectations you're more invested. Yeah, you do these parking
Speaker 1: lots and you've got sixty eight thousand dollars, and we
Speaker 1: talked about what there'd be two three hundred vehicles in
Speaker 1: bio meat on a given day, and half of those
Speaker 1: have got got you know, fifth, let's say fifty two
Speaker 1: seventy plus thousand dollars parked there to bring some duck
Speaker 1: meat home. Well, and then I wonder how many were
Speaker 1: people talking bad about Arkansas duck hunting forty years ago?
Speaker 1: I mean, do you do you see what? Like? I mean,
Speaker 1: there were there were people that had bad duck hunts
Speaker 1: forty years ago. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, we're sure
Speaker 1: they did, and but there wasn't an Internet then. The
Speaker 1: biggest roadblock, or the biggest stumbling block that we ran
Speaker 1: into was overcrowded. And as duck hunting got more popular,
Speaker 1: and it was I can attribute it only to what
Speaker 1: I saw. You know, a TV show comes out about
Speaker 1: duck hunting, and in the next year, the parking lot
Speaker 1: start getting fuller and fuller and fuller and fuller people.
Speaker 1: And I would say it would have been a boon
Speaker 1: to duck stamp sales and ammunition sales, and Pittman Robertson
Speaker 1: probably benefited from that, which benefitted the whole state everything.
Speaker 1: But you've you've also still got a limited amount of
Speaker 1: space with the large influx of new people. And that's
Speaker 1: about to say I enjoy this, this sociological discussion about
Speaker 1: human expectations. The last thing that I want people to
Speaker 1: think is that, you know, me and Luke are saying, Uh,
Speaker 1: the duck hunting in Arkansas is absolutely perfect, and anybody
Speaker 1: that thinks otherwise is a crazy person. No, I mean
Speaker 1: it's a challenge resource continentally. Uh. I think we've got
Speaker 1: some access problems. We've got some habitat problems which will
Speaker 1: be uh part two. Uh, we got plenty of habitat
Speaker 1: problems in in Canada. Uh So yeah, we we deal
Speaker 1: with unrealistic expectations a lot. But uh but on the
Speaker 1: flip side of that, it's a challenge resource and we
Speaker 1: need to be more adaptive and how we manage the resource,
Speaker 1: but also and how we how we deal with people,
Speaker 1: uh in their favorite sixty days of the year. Yeah, Hey, Austin,
Speaker 1: tell me about tell me your philosophy, Just what you
Speaker 1: see this next trail looking like for the game and
Speaker 1: Fish and your leadership inside of it. Yeah, we're in
Speaker 1: a really nice turning point right now. Not necessarily turning
Speaker 1: a nice turning point because I'm the new guy here
Speaker 1: and I think everything needs to change, but churning point
Speaker 1: culturally in in the agency where a lot of people
Speaker 1: internally know that we need to change. Uh. We We've
Speaker 1: got major fluctuations going on on the regulatory landscape and
Speaker 1: also some major changes um habitat as well. And I mean, Luke,
Speaker 1: tell me if you think um wrong here. But the
Speaker 1: number one thing that we have going for right now,
Speaker 1: I think we got a really solid set of commissioners,
Speaker 1: and so you want a badmouth, any of looks like
Speaker 1: I already I already kind of like I held out
Speaker 1: when we talked about the when Austin talked about the
Speaker 1: hiring process, and because there's lots of other stories from
Speaker 1: the staff side down, Missouri needs a new water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got no gt rsum, No, it is there. I
Speaker 1: agree with that because and the only thing I'll say
Speaker 1: about it as as a evidence of that is that
Speaker 1: probably one of the biggest issues that this agency has
Speaker 1: ever tackled, and that's I don't think that's hyperbole, is
Speaker 1: the GTR stuff. And we started that in well a
Speaker 1: couple of times. But let's say, and so that's an
Speaker 1: entire term of one commissioner seven years now, which you
Speaker 1: could do the math. So that's like, however many of
Speaker 1: that is total, ten or twelve of them different people,
Speaker 1: and we have held the same ground and continued on
Speaker 1: the same path towards change since with would that make
Speaker 1: different commissioners? Yeah, And and I mean there's not a
Speaker 1: single commissioner that I know that I can that I
Speaker 1: would would point out be like, oh, yeah, he's not
Speaker 1: a very good guy. They're all awesome. Uh. There they
Speaker 1: all served the state for seven year terms. It's all
Speaker 1: unpaid and they put it in just an immense amount
Speaker 1: of work. And they all do because they hear about
Speaker 1: the resource. Uh. What I meant by that comment is
Speaker 1: we don't just have great people right now. We've got
Speaker 1: a rare chemistry going on where where um, we're all
Speaker 1: pointed in the right direction and we're all get stuff done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we can get stuff done. So back to your
Speaker 1: original question, Uh, we're we're about to roll out a
Speaker 1: strategic plan for the agency. Haven't had one and sometime, um,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna roll that out soon. And Uh, the
Speaker 1: way that I'm thinking about everything is, uh, habitat first,
Speaker 1: and our kansons always Uh in the Marine Corps we
Speaker 1: say that about the mission mission first. Marine always well,
Speaker 1: habits at first and our kansons always and and you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, everything we do comes
Speaker 1: back to habitat. We can talk about you know, the
Speaker 1: deer resource, the duck resource, the trout resource, everything comes
Speaker 1: back to habitat. And if we don't stay lacey focused
Speaker 1: on that, then everything else is just details. Second Arkansas,
Speaker 1: that means communicating then what's going on the resource having
Speaker 1: regulations that make sense and providing meaningful quality public lands
Speaker 1: with access. And you've been having these, uh these public
Speaker 1: meetings that are different. Tell us about one of your
Speaker 1: public meetings. What would be like, Yeah, so the public
Speaker 1: meetings that we do with the g t rs WrestleMania.
Speaker 1: Actually no, actually, so I worked on g t R. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we haven't. The next podcast will be about green
Speaker 1: tree reservoirs. So green tree reservoirs are this flooded basically
Speaker 1: flooded timber, which you talked about in the podcast ton
Speaker 1: about Tony course. So g t R g TR means
Speaker 1: intentionally flooded timber. Yes, Brent, I know would agree with
Speaker 1: this definitely, Luke. But there are people in Arkansas, for
Speaker 1: a good reason, that are not interested in hunting Dutch
Speaker 1: over a rice field or a moist I'm not the
Speaker 1: The only thing they want to do is see ducks
Speaker 1: Lane and we're on and I get it because it's magical.
Speaker 1: But I worked on the hill for a little bit
Speaker 1: when I was still in the Marine Corps. Uh, So
Speaker 1: I I got to see some congressional town halls and
Speaker 1: I wanted to take a little bit different approach from
Speaker 1: just bringing our poor staff in and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: passing the microground and letting, letting Luke and did everybody
Speaker 1: else get yelled at? So what we did was we
Speaker 1: made it not informal, but we intentionally selective venues where
Speaker 1: we could cook for people. It was a goal of
Speaker 1: mine from day one that I wanted to get off
Speaker 1: the stage to eye with people and actually literally break
Speaker 1: bread with them, and corn bread. I don't think we
Speaker 1: had corn bread. I think we had some rolest you.
Speaker 1: Next time, we'll, Luke try that in avout the waterfowl position.
Speaker 1: Now we'll have corn bread when we do our black
Speaker 1: panther town halls. Luke's still gotta tell us about his podcast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But um, so we walk into this meeting, uh, I
Speaker 1: would kick us off, talk very high surface level about
Speaker 1: what we were doing on each gtr uh, and then
Speaker 1: I would bring up the commissioners, bring up a staff.
Speaker 1: All the commissioners were wearing blue Arkansas game and Fish shirts.
Speaker 1: I would introduce all the commissioners and where they were from.
Speaker 1: And then all the agency staff, including Luke and myself,
Speaker 1: we're wearing white shirts. And I would introduce each of
Speaker 1: the staff members saying, this is Luke Naylor. He's our
Speaker 1: waterfowl biologist. If you have questions about anything pertaining to
Speaker 1: ducks or geese, just ask him. This is Rob Willie
Speaker 1: over here. Rob Willie is as our habitat program coordinator.
Speaker 1: If you have questions about forest management and red oaks
Speaker 1: and white oaks and all that stuff, ask Rob. And
Speaker 1: so we would go down the line. And then one
Speaker 1: of the last things that I I always did is
Speaker 1: I said, if you're raising I'm sorry if you're wearing
Speaker 1: a white shirt and you hunt ducks on public land
Speaker 1: raisor hand and and then I would say, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk again in an hour, and I would
Speaker 1: turn the mic off. And we had maps set up
Speaker 1: around the room, and you know, people are eating barbecue.
Speaker 1: At some places they're having a beer, and uh, the
Speaker 1: conversation was actually conversation. It was actually productive, meaningful dialogue.
Speaker 1: And uh. In all four public meetings, I made a
Speaker 1: point to remove myself from the crowd and just kind
Speaker 1: of go back and observe in every single time, I
Speaker 1: would look out over the room and there were white
Speaker 1: shirts and blue shirts and and they were each in
Speaker 1: their own little pocket of of people and the only
Speaker 1: thing that was happening was heads nodding up and down.
Speaker 1: So that was tremendous for me to watch. You know,
Speaker 1: these guys like Luke that I see work so hard
Speaker 1: every single day, Uh, in their element, in their expertise,
Speaker 1: actually having ida a conversations with people. So they've been successful. Huh,
Speaker 1: they've been very well luquid. Well, yeah, compare that to
Speaker 1: the old way of doing things, and you know, there
Speaker 1: was there was a need to be to be present,
Speaker 1: to be to kind of open your doors and have
Speaker 1: people come in and have an opportunity to communicate. But
Speaker 1: you know, we used to hold a series of regulatory
Speaker 1: public meetings every year and they it got to the point,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd have you'd have twenty or thirty game
Speaker 1: and fish staff and about five members of the public show. Um.
Speaker 1: And we did a few of them a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago about g t RS and went pretty well. Um,
Speaker 1: not not a lot of yelling and screaming and people
Speaker 1: angry at each other. Um, that's a good thing. That's
Speaker 1: actually like it was only a little bit I do
Speaker 1: And but what was neat about this new way is
Speaker 1: that they could there's a difference between having a passionate
Speaker 1: conversation with someone disagreeing, agreeing, whatever, having an argument versus
Speaker 1: um having a podium either whether that be us or
Speaker 1: be a member of the public, and it kind of
Speaker 1: puts everybody on the same level playing field where we're
Speaker 1: not talking literally in a lot of cases, talking down
Speaker 1: to people given power points, and everybody's going to sleep
Speaker 1: and tired of hearing it. And then also have an
Speaker 1: open mic night to the public where people get start
Speaker 1: to get amends and preach it brothers and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, and it kind of just you kind
Speaker 1: of get the whole crowd riled up. It ends up
Speaker 1: being one person that's you know, you don't get any
Speaker 1: information out to anybody because that person, whether it's us
Speaker 1: or them, like it's it's not productive for either of us.
Speaker 1: And they all left home with somebody they felt like.
Speaker 1: And we would end every meeting the same way too, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we had an hour of dialogue with staff,
Speaker 1: I would come back up there, we'd paint out some
Speaker 1: door prizes, and then the last thing we would say
Speaker 1: is is I would say, is there anybody is gonna
Speaker 1: walk out that door tonight with their question? Not answered,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we'd have a few of them raise your
Speaker 1: hand and we'd sort through it that way. But eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, that was their time to ask, to ask questions,
Speaker 1: to have an open mic because I am sensitive people
Speaker 1: that are upset and I want to hear him out
Speaker 1: as a director dest my job. But we heard him
Speaker 1: out and everybody walked the door, didn't have a question
Speaker 1: or or they forever hold their peace. Well, it sounds
Speaker 1: like it sounds like you're making the agency more accessible
Speaker 1: to people. That sounds what's what the goal is. Guys,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming. Appreciate it. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be thanks for your contribution to the to the main podcast,
Speaker 1: both of you. And this next this next week is
Speaker 1: gonna be uh, We're gonna get in to the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty of the Green Tree reservoirs, which is why we
Speaker 1: started this whole conversation. And for the record, I approached
Speaker 1: these guys about this. They didn't. They didn't call me
Speaker 1: and say, hey, we want you to do a podcast
Speaker 1: on this. That's all the way it happened. At all
Speaker 1: I heard about what was going on, I knew nothing
Speaker 1: about it. I thought that I should learned a little
Speaker 1: bit about it and thought that's interesting, and then so
Speaker 1: we're making this. We're gonna do a two part series
Speaker 1: on you know, arganstas duckhunting in the GTR situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so thanks for coming up here, guys. Luke appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Austin, thank you, man, appreciate it. Thanks for having Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much here say yes