Speaker 1: M you're riding a boat together, or you're you're walking
Speaker 1: out to a place together, you're sitting in a blind together,
Speaker 1: and the conversations can just continue while you're duck hunting.
Speaker 1: On this episode of the Beargrease podcast, we're back in
Speaker 1: the swamp in pursuit of understanding the cathedral of the
Speaker 1: Mallard Duck Green Tree Reservoirs, or GTRs as they're called.
Speaker 1: This is part two in the final episode in our
Speaker 1: series on Arkansas duck hunting. We've explored the ancient Mississippi
Speaker 1: Flyway and the unique culture of the water fowlers who
Speaker 1: dedicated their lives to ducks. Get ready for some drama,
Speaker 1: because the trees and the GTRs are dying. We'll talk
Speaker 1: with Austin Booth, the director of the Arkansas Game and
Speaker 1: Fish Commission, and waterfowl biologists Luke Naylor. Will look into
Speaker 1: the complexity of conservation issues on public lands, which can
Speaker 1: be slow to navigate, but in the end we'll hear
Speaker 1: what the plan is to save these critical flooded bottom
Speaker 1: land hardwoods. I really doubt you're gonna want to miss
Speaker 1: this one. Do we want to to tell our green
Speaker 1: kids what it was like to hunt by me to
Speaker 1: or do we want to listen to them? Tell us
Speaker 1: what it's like. My name is Clay Nukelem and this
Speaker 1: is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten
Speaker 1: but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where
Speaker 1: we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives
Speaker 1: close to the land. Presented by f HF gear, American
Speaker 1: made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to
Speaker 1: be as rugged as the places we explore. Started when
Speaker 1: I was nine and so this will be my sixth
Speaker 1: or is my sixty four duck season. When I say
Speaker 1: that to people, they just sort of look back at me, like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what does that really mean? And he realized,
Speaker 1: sixty four times you've done this. This is Mr Bobby Martin.
Speaker 1: So you started hunting public land in Arkansas when you
Speaker 1: were just a kid? Yeah, literally nine years old. First
Speaker 1: time was you know, like a lot of kids. My
Speaker 1: dad took me on the first trip and put me
Speaker 1: on his back and hauled me across the rice field
Speaker 1: and win Arkansas, and so all of my life I've hunted. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: if there was a puddle of water in Arkansas with
Speaker 1: a duck on it. I probably have hunted it. You
Speaker 1: said your dad used to take you and leave you
Speaker 1: over at BioMedia for a couple of days when you
Speaker 1: were just a kid. Yeah. Actually, uh, you know, by
Speaker 1: the time I was thirteen, myself in another hunting buddy,
Speaker 1: and you know, we were just really kind of eating
Speaker 1: up with it. After Christmas week, we're out of school.
Speaker 1: So my dad would take us down and we'd hunt
Speaker 1: on a Sunday morning and that he'd leave in the
Speaker 1: afternoon and leave us there. We camped in a pup
Speaker 1: tent and walked in hunting uh into an area that's
Speaker 1: called Government Cyprus. Principally anybody around Arkansas by media, they
Speaker 1: know exactly where I'm talking about. So we would be there,
Speaker 1: and then about on Wednesday each during that week, he
Speaker 1: would come in check on us and take us into Wabasek,
Speaker 1: Arkansas to the laundromat so we could dry out whatever
Speaker 1: was wet, and there was always something wet. But literally,
Speaker 1: of course, that was the time when the things were
Speaker 1: a little bit different. But you know, my parents had
Speaker 1: a lot of trust and responsibility to have us out
Speaker 1: there with twelve gay shotguns and theres a lot of
Speaker 1: wilderness during that time. I can't tell you that we
Speaker 1: didn't get lost. I know my parents loved me, but
Speaker 1: I look back on and I'm thinking, wow, okay, but
Speaker 1: a lot of trust they were, but they loved me
Speaker 1: enough to know how good it was for me. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where it really got my love and my passion going.
Speaker 1: Mr Bobby is seventy three years old and is currently
Speaker 1: a commissioner of the body which governs Arkansas Wildlife and
Speaker 1: state owned lands, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Stories
Speaker 1: like Mr. Bobby's are common in this part of the world,
Speaker 1: and when it's this personal understanding, the passion is easier.
Speaker 1: When a father carries his son on his back into
Speaker 1: a wild place. Perhaps that ancient transportation method switches on
Speaker 1: a gene for excessive focus on the travel to activity,
Speaker 1: or perhaps the ability to mine out the nuance of
Speaker 1: wild places unperceived by others. I'm in pursuit of understanding
Speaker 1: the sector of American culture that has a cult like devotion,
Speaker 1: fist pounding fervor in a hundred years of conservation replete
Speaker 1: with some failures but also massive victories. The score keeping
Speaker 1: isn't done by man end but by the ducks. We're
Speaker 1: peering into the world of water fowlers. By Man's calculation system,
Speaker 1: water fowlers have directly protected over fifteen million acres of
Speaker 1: critical wetlands in North America. The waterfowl community has been
Speaker 1: highly successful at protecting where ducks live, which has impacted
Speaker 1: duck numbers. Since nineteen fifty five, the US Fish and
Speaker 1: Wildlife Service has kept track of duck numbers on the continent.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, waterfowl numbers were in decline, but
Speaker 1: today our numbers are trending towards fifty year highs. There
Speaker 1: is no doubt it's a hundred percent attributed to hunting
Speaker 1: conservation groups, both state agencies and NGOs. No other group
Speaker 1: on planet Earth does more for wildlife than hunters, and
Speaker 1: where an animal has cultural value through sport hunting, it
Speaker 1: and its habitat are protected. This isn't a political spin
Speaker 1: or contrived through tinted lenses. Though we aren't perfect, our
Speaker 1: message to the wider American community is clear. Give us
Speaker 1: the space to manage wildlife and wild places through hunting.
Speaker 1: It's working. The science backs us, But perhaps as important
Speaker 1: as the science is that hunting runs thicker than blood
Speaker 1: in the river's mountains and hollis of this country. I
Speaker 1: continue to be amazed as I look into our American roots,
Speaker 1: from the rich history of the Native Americans, connection to
Speaker 1: the land, to the frontiersman. We are a nation of hunters,
Speaker 1: and this is something to be proud of. The story
Speaker 1: of Arkansas duck hunters and their desire to protect habitat
Speaker 1: is just one small piece of a big story. In
Speaker 1: this last episode, we talked about why Arkansas is known
Speaker 1: as the duck hunting capital of the world. It was
Speaker 1: a combination of multiple things, but primarily geography. Here's world
Speaker 1: champion duck caller jimbo ron Quest recapping a few things
Speaker 1: for us. You just look at the land, so you
Speaker 1: start way back. Ducks used all the river bottoms, so
Speaker 1: used to buy me to basin, the Cash River, basin,
Speaker 1: the White River bation. And then when we had the
Speaker 1: advent of rice on the ground, which become a surrogate wetland.
Speaker 1: Once they started planting rice and there are the nineteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and ducks started finding it. This area started getting
Speaker 1: well known where farmers would say, come go shoot these ducks.
Speaker 1: I'll buy you shells. Just keep ducks out of my rice.
Speaker 1: You know that literally happened for some time. The combination
Speaker 1: of all the hardwood bottoms in h and all of
Speaker 1: our river systems is that all comes together and flows
Speaker 1: towards the Mississippi. It just kept tightening up, tightened up,
Speaker 1: and we had great habitat and great natural food sources.
Speaker 1: And then we added to that with the advent again
Speaker 1: rice production, now corn milow. Whatever people are playing on
Speaker 1: food plug. I love it when natural systems do what
Speaker 1: natural systems do. And just like this morning, you and
Speaker 1: me or sitting in a duck hole over here watching
Speaker 1: ducks fly by, and you can't push them too hard
Speaker 1: to go somewhere they don't want to go. They're gonna
Speaker 1: go where they want to go, and that is Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I may be biased about my home state, but Mallard
Speaker 1: ducks have used the Mississippi Flyway, the most used flyway
Speaker 1: in North America, to come here by the millions since
Speaker 1: the end of the last ice Age. It has to
Speaker 1: do with the geography of rivers and continental drainage, agriculture,
Speaker 1: and US having the largest stands of green tree reservoirs
Speaker 1: in the United States. From the duck hunting side, Arkansas
Speaker 1: is the capital because of what duck hunters call hunting
Speaker 1: in the timber. I'm new to duck hunting, but it
Speaker 1: didn't take me long to learn two things. Mallard ducks
Speaker 1: are the king, and hunting flooded timber is the rolls Royce,
Speaker 1: the flashy mule, the cast iron skillet corn bread of
Speaker 1: duck hunting. But we need to establish why. Here's Sean Weaver,
Speaker 1: me eaters duck guru, talking about hunting in the timber.
Speaker 1: Coming from the outside into duck hunting, you just feel
Speaker 1: like the goal of duck hunting is to kill as
Speaker 1: many ducks as you can. Whether you kill those ducks
Speaker 1: on the edge of a field, or whether you kill
Speaker 1: those ducks on a river, or whether you kill those
Speaker 1: ducks and flooded timber, you would not, intuitively, just from
Speaker 1: the outside be able to say which one is more coveted,
Speaker 1: has more value, and it's cooler wise, hunting ducks and
Speaker 1: timber so special. Yeah, you raise a interesting point there.
Speaker 1: For a lot of people, it's actually not just a
Speaker 1: numbers thing. It's not just how many ducks you can kill.
Speaker 1: It's not just shooting your limit. It's how you kill them.
Speaker 1: And for example, if you go hunt a pit in
Speaker 1: a rice field, those ducks don't always finish right. They
Speaker 1: might kind of hang above the decoys at thirty yards
Speaker 1: and give it a real good look, but not be
Speaker 1: back pedaling feet down over the decoys. And yet they're
Speaker 1: still in shooting range and you get to shoot those ducks.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of guys, especially guys that really
Speaker 1: kind of have the game figured out, they would rather
Speaker 1: take just a few ducks a day feet down, hovering
Speaker 1: over the decoys and knowing they've got them fooled, really fooled.
Speaker 1: That matters more than just the number. And to shoot
Speaker 1: ducks in the timber, it's kind of an all or
Speaker 1: nothing proposition for the ducks. They're either gonna stay up
Speaker 1: above the trees and screw around, spinning around, working but
Speaker 1: not fully committing. But once they've come down through that canopy,
Speaker 1: they're committed. They've made their decision, and you have fooled
Speaker 1: them at that point. And I think that the fact
Speaker 1: that when you're shooting ducks in the timber, they're usually
Speaker 1: fluttering around feet down is a big value to a
Speaker 1: lot of people and why it's so coveted to do it.
Speaker 1: Here's jimbo on why the timber is special. I've noticed
Speaker 1: lots of these guys just get a little tongue tied
Speaker 1: when they talk about it. And it's the it's how
Speaker 1: they really explain it. But it's the kind of a
Speaker 1: funky word to use for it. But it's the intimacy
Speaker 1: of it. It's it's it's your inclose. You're standing against
Speaker 1: a tree. But I've had it for ducks, like you
Speaker 1: can just almost grabble and you're calling and and there,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, today, lots of times I'm ducks,
Speaker 1: the ones that we've finished, they'd come right on top
Speaker 1: of that because looking for that call, you know, and
Speaker 1: then you have to get him a look for the decoys,
Speaker 1: and and just the fact that that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1: You know, they're coming looking for you. The last episode,
Speaker 1: we introduced the new director of the Arkansas Game and
Speaker 1: Fish Commission, Austin Booth, as a lifelong public land duck hunter.
Speaker 1: He's just like these other guys, a bit at a
Speaker 1: loss for words. It is almost impossible to explain it.
Speaker 1: There's no than like it. There's absolutely nothing like it.
Speaker 1: I was raised in Lonoke County, went to college out
Speaker 1: of state, and basically left the state four or fifteen years,
Speaker 1: but I always came back during duck season and I
Speaker 1: would explain to people that have never hunted timber before
Speaker 1: that ducks land in the trees and they look at me,
Speaker 1: and you're just supposed to know that that's really, really special.
Speaker 1: And no, they wouldn't believe me that I know. They don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do. They say, you mean you're standing in the
Speaker 1: woods and a bunch of water and ducks will land
Speaker 1: down into the trees into the water. Said, yes, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't believe me. I had the opportunity to bring people
Speaker 1: to Arkansas to watch them. Watched timber hunting for the
Speaker 1: first time, and there's nothing else like it. When those
Speaker 1: ducks can see your decoys from eight hundred a thousand
Speaker 1: feet in the air and they come down at a
Speaker 1: sixties seventy eight degree angle, wings cup through the limbs,
Speaker 1: and when they're inside the canopy from you, you're you're
Speaker 1: just so close to him that you can hear their
Speaker 1: feet dragging through the wind, you can hear their feathers
Speaker 1: cutting through the wind. To be that close and have
Speaker 1: that close of a connection where a cred are so
Speaker 1: hot up in the sky, there's just nothing like it. Inside.
Speaker 1: As hunters, we cherish the very fleeting moments before we
Speaker 1: take game. If you, if you think about deer hunting
Speaker 1: like we think about big white tail bucks, the amount
Speaker 1: of time that I have spent in the presence of
Speaker 1: a big wild white tail buck is actually a very
Speaker 1: miniscule amount of time. And that moment is what you
Speaker 1: remember for so long, this animal, this majestic animal that
Speaker 1: you're after in his natural environment, unaware of your presence,
Speaker 1: and you as a as a predator, in all the
Speaker 1: work that's gone into that moment, being ready and knowing
Speaker 1: that the moment of truth is is now. That's what
Speaker 1: it feels like. There is something very special about watching
Speaker 1: these birds and then convincing them to commit to your decoys.
Speaker 1: But what I what I wouldn't have known, is that
Speaker 1: these ducks actually coming through the limbs of these trees
Speaker 1: and the way that the aeronautics of what they do.
Speaker 1: That's what gets the duck hunter flipping out. That's right,
Speaker 1: because they do all kind of wild stuff when they
Speaker 1: come in, and it's just it's the culmination of everything
Speaker 1: we know. Mallards are the king, but mallards in the
Speaker 1: timber is the king on his throne. I want Austin
Speaker 1: to define that throne for us. What is a green
Speaker 1: tree reservoir? A green tree reservoir is a reservoir of
Speaker 1: bottom one hardwoods. So so think a predominance of red
Speaker 1: oaks that is naturally at a lower point in elevation
Speaker 1: where it's a natural drainage point. The word okay, so
Speaker 1: that you've established why it's called green tree because it's
Speaker 1: living trees, primarily oaks, is what we're interested if we're
Speaker 1: talking about ducks, but it's a res of ore. It's
Speaker 1: it's holding water at different times of the year naturally
Speaker 1: in the flood stages of these rivers. Correct green tree
Speaker 1: reservoirs GTRs or what makes this place special. It's important
Speaker 1: to understand that there are two reasons timbered areas would flood.
Speaker 1: The first would be an active nature or just natural flooding,
Speaker 1: the second being man induced flooding by the building of levies. So,
Speaker 1: after the turn of the twentieth century, rice production in
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Delta took off. Farmers cleared large amounts of
Speaker 1: bottom land timber and planet agg crops, lots of it
Speaker 1: in rice ducks loved the rice, but it also concentrated
Speaker 1: ducks into the timber that remained, and duck hunters took
Speaker 1: notice of the old Mallard's affinity for acorns in the timber.
Speaker 1: Here's Luke Naylor, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commissions lead
Speaker 1: waterfowl biologist. He's gonna tell us about the first intentional
Speaker 1: flooding of hardwood timber in Arkansas, which took place in
Speaker 1: nineteen They talked about the first one being a guy
Speaker 1: in the name of Tindal in Arkansas County, and he
Speaker 1: ring levied a bunch of trees to hold water to
Speaker 1: to irrigate rice. We know that irrigation reservoirs are critically
Speaker 1: important and being added to the landscape even today to
Speaker 1: to irrigate rice during the summer using surface water, and
Speaker 1: so these folks were experimenting with that way back ninety
Speaker 1: years ago. Let's just let's just levy up that chunk
Speaker 1: of woods over there, and the woods historically would have
Speaker 1: been temporary, and so you would have had these situations
Speaker 1: where you know, ducks use those areas when they flooded,
Speaker 1: mostly naturally the period of time, a short period of time,
Speaker 1: maybe not every year, almost certainly not every year, depending
Speaker 1: on the elevation, And so then you get people early
Speaker 1: hunters and and see that Okay, wait a minute. With
Speaker 1: these woods flood, the ducks get in it, and that's
Speaker 1: really off them because we get to go we get
Speaker 1: to go hunt the ducks in the woods, and that's
Speaker 1: really cool. So then they start seeing, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: build a reservoir here to flood our rise in the summer.
Speaker 1: And wow. Uh so we've kept this thing flooded for
Speaker 1: a couple of years in a row, and the ducks
Speaker 1: are in it all the time now in the winter.
Speaker 1: So okay, let's put two and two together here. Keep
Speaker 1: doing this. Yeah, let's keep doing this, Let's keep providing.
Speaker 1: Let's keep flooding these areas on a regular basis, because
Speaker 1: when they flood, we shoot ducks. When they're dry, we
Speaker 1: don't shoot ducks. Let's fix that. Just human nature at work.
Speaker 1: Then that kind of led us to to where we
Speaker 1: are now with this whole notion of consistency in well
Speaker 1: and that and that. Over the course of decades and
Speaker 1: generations of people, it builds in a idea of what's
Speaker 1: normal it is in human nature, and we love consistency
Speaker 1: but basically, nothing in nature is consistent. Nothing in nature
Speaker 1: is consistent, and that's an important phrase to remember. As
Speaker 1: is common demand, people began to find ways to get
Speaker 1: around nature's inconsistency, and building water holding infrastructure that allows
Speaker 1: large tracts of land to be flooded and drained was
Speaker 1: the ticket. It's important to know that both private and
Speaker 1: public land have water holding infrastructure, but the Arkansas Game
Speaker 1: and Fish Commission manages over fifty thousand acres of it
Speaker 1: on forty different GTRs. All this was great, but about
Speaker 1: twenty years ago we started to notice a problem. We
Speaker 1: wanted to hold water. We wanted to hold water to
Speaker 1: make the sixty days of duck season more predictable. We
Speaker 1: wanted to have water on the trees well enough before
Speaker 1: the duck season started, when the ducks could enjoy it
Speaker 1: and understand what they could eat there. The problem with
Speaker 1: that is when we put the infrastructure in place, we
Speaker 1: just didn't know a whole lot about tree dormancy. When
Speaker 1: water or stands on on trees, that's generally a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Now they can take it when the trees are dormant.
Speaker 1: I tell people treats don't have a calendar. They don't say,
Speaker 1: all right, it's November fifteenth, time for us to go dormant.
Speaker 1: It's based a lot of soil temperature, air temperature, individual
Speaker 1: climate of that that year. When we put water on
Speaker 1: the trees artificially and those trees aren't dormant yet, then
Speaker 1: that's putting a lot of stress on the trees. We
Speaker 1: kept doing this for for years and years and years
Speaker 1: and years, and then about you know, ten twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: we started seeing some pretty troubling signs and it was
Speaker 1: declining timber el and it happened predominantly trees. Trees were dying,
Speaker 1: and it was predominantly for two reasons. One because we
Speaker 1: were we were putting water on them artificially too. It
Speaker 1: was because of increased rainfall. We had a rain event
Speaker 1: this year two one the first week of June and
Speaker 1: uh D Shay County in southeastern Arkansas got nineteen inches
Speaker 1: of rain in thirty six hours. That same rain event,
Speaker 1: when it hit by met a wildlife inchment area, it
Speaker 1: took us about six weeks to get the water off.
Speaker 1: Not only is our infrastructure outdated, not only have we
Speaker 1: been artificially putting water on, but we've just been getting
Speaker 1: more rainfall than our infrastructure was ever intended to handle.
Speaker 1: So the issue of standing water on tree roots, which
Speaker 1: is natural in this part of the world, is compounded
Speaker 1: by artificial flooding and unprecedented rainfall in recent years on
Speaker 1: the White River, which is a major river in the
Speaker 1: Arkansas Delta. Of its twenty five highest recorded crests, ten
Speaker 1: have happened in the last eleven years. Think about that
Speaker 1: for a minute. The current trend is massive amounts of
Speaker 1: rainfall in short periods of time. This makes things tough.
Speaker 1: Here's Luke. Yeah, So we've we've been managing these systems
Speaker 1: in a in an artificial way for about fifty years,
Speaker 1: let's say, on average. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is that these areas when we talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty years ago, would have been periodic flooding,
Speaker 1: unpredictable flooding, variable flooding, and we've provided fairly consistent flooding
Speaker 1: in these areas, which has led to several different different
Speaker 1: issues we have. These forests are made up of a
Speaker 1: bunch of different species, which is mainly talking about trees now,
Speaker 1: and different species of trees that have different water tolerances.
Speaker 1: Even in these swamps. Even in these swamps, trees have
Speaker 1: different they're highly adapted to it, but they're adapted to
Speaker 1: different hydro periods, different durations and timing of flooding, and
Speaker 1: we've altered that by generally flooding earlier than Mother Nature
Speaker 1: would have flooded these So they usually would have flooded
Speaker 1: in the wintertime and through the spring winter through spring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: through March April. We can think about this landscape. The
Speaker 1: driest months of the year for us are typically September, October,
Speaker 1: and through part of November. Our management has attempted to
Speaker 1: flood these areas for opening day a duck season, which
Speaker 1: had been the Saturday before Thanksgiving for years and years
Speaker 1: and years, So kind of a mismatch with the normal
Speaker 1: rainfall period in this area. Would it be safe to
Speaker 1: say from December through April would have been the typical
Speaker 1: flooding period for this part of the world. Likely, yes,
Speaker 1: December through April, and they would have probably these areas
Speaker 1: would have started to drop in in late February after
Speaker 1: spring migration to ducks, and then you're gonna get inevitable
Speaker 1: big spring thunderstorms right the broad water in the things
Speaker 1: that pulse up, but they'd fall out a few days.
Speaker 1: And we look at trees and when some of these
Speaker 1: bottom and hardwood species break dormancy, a lot of these
Speaker 1: don't break bud until March or April, which long behold.
Speaker 1: That lines up pretty well when these areas would have
Speaker 1: been mostly dry, but maybe a few day flood event
Speaker 1: that came and went moving while the entire time, we
Speaker 1: think that means oxygenated water, so something that these trees
Speaker 1: are highly adapted to. Unlike early fall flooding October November flooding,
Speaker 1: trees are not gone dormant. They've still got green leaves
Speaker 1: down here exactly. Temperatures are warm, and we end up
Speaker 1: with stagnant water. So for fifty years we've added at
Speaker 1: least an extra month or month and a half about
Speaker 1: that of water on these trees. It's and it's killing them,
Speaker 1: and it really it just all boils down to variability
Speaker 1: and the lack of it. We we managed for a
Speaker 1: lack of hydrologic variability for a lot of years. So
Speaker 1: what what I heard to say earlier is that natural systems,
Speaker 1: they all seem to be very unpredictable, and so that
Speaker 1: is their system. The system is designed to be unpredictable.
Speaker 1: So this thing floods this year but not next year.
Speaker 1: This year it flooded in the winter but not in
Speaker 1: the spring. And that pattern, even though it doesn't it's
Speaker 1: not really a pattern, produces what those trees be his need.
Speaker 1: So the consistency that man came in and put on
Speaker 1: it is what's hurting them. Yeah, variability is the pattern.
Speaker 1: Natural systems have mastered the art of finding equilibrium in
Speaker 1: ways that are impossible for the human mind to comprehend.
Speaker 1: Unpredictability is nature's pattern, and that has founded an incredibly
Speaker 1: stable system. Here's Austin with some very disturbing statistics. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, we did a forced health assessment
Speaker 1: at Hurricane Lake Wald Life Management Area, and forty two
Speaker 1: percent of our red oaks were either dead or irreversibly
Speaker 1: dying fort and then we had a precipitous die off
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen. So I think it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that our our red oak health at Hurricane Lake
Speaker 1: compared to what it was is well over half, well
Speaker 1: over half. And and this is what the ducks are eating.
Speaker 1: This is why they're going to the timber. This is
Speaker 1: why before European settlement. Ducks were coming down the flyway
Speaker 1: and they were making a living off off the acorns
Speaker 1: natural flooded timber and the acorns that were they on
Speaker 1: the ground. That's right. They can get calories from the acrons,
Speaker 1: they can get calories from the invertebrate that that live
Speaker 1: in the leaf litter, and they can get covered from
Speaker 1: the trees. Red oaks are are the best anchor for
Speaker 1: all of that kind of habitat in the g trs.
Speaker 1: So red oak timber is essential to green timber reservoirs
Speaker 1: and ducks. You know, during duck season, most of leaves
Speaker 1: are off the trees anyways. For folks to really understand
Speaker 1: what this mortality looks like, they really need to get
Speaker 1: that in the spring. And so yeah, duck hunters are
Speaker 1: seeing these trees when they're all dormants, so they all
Speaker 1: would appear dead. They wouldn't be coming back alarm in
Speaker 1: the bell and all the trees are dead. And I
Speaker 1: don't want you or any of your listeners to think
Speaker 1: that I'm a trained forest biologists, because I'm not. I'm
Speaker 1: a knuckle dragon marine. I've been learning this stuff too.
Speaker 1: And we went out there a Hurricane Lake Wildlife management
Speaker 1: area in the southern GTR where it is like ground
Speaker 1: zero of Denver mortality and it will make you six
Speaker 1: years stomach. The only thing that is taller than the
Speaker 1: buckbrush that ducks really don't care about from a food
Speaker 1: perspective are sofest trees and dead red oaks. Then we
Speaker 1: took what we learned at Hurricane and we started a
Speaker 1: forest health assessment at by Me to last year. This summer,
Speaker 1: we were about halfway through that forest health assessment, we
Speaker 1: noticed some really disturbing trends where even though we were
Speaker 1: not all the way through with the forced health assessment,
Speaker 1: we think that some of the things we're seeing on
Speaker 1: the ground right now at buy Me to look a
Speaker 1: whole lot like what Hurricane would it looked like, you know,
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, two thousand twelve. So we made
Speaker 1: the difficult decision to implement changes for this water fall
Speaker 1: season on how we're managing our water levels at Hurricane
Speaker 1: and Buy Meat. Here Luke talking more specifically about what
Speaker 1: is happening to individual tree species in the flooded timber.
Speaker 1: As a warning, parents, this section may not be appropriate
Speaker 1: for children because Luke incorrectly pronounces the word spelled a
Speaker 1: c o are in despite this erosion of trust. Here's Luke,
Speaker 1: So tell me what's happening, Like, what what are we
Speaker 1: now seeing. We're seeing these species that are less water tolerant.
Speaker 1: Most of them are red oaks, and most of the
Speaker 1: red oaks are produced acorns that are of the right
Speaker 1: size to be consumed by ducks. Were mainly talking about mallards.
Speaker 1: I guess it's unfortunate. It would have been nice if
Speaker 1: the water tolerant species produced small acorns that ducks like.
Speaker 1: But it's not that way. We've got willow oaks, which
Speaker 1: a lot of people around here called pin oak, but
Speaker 1: it's it's not a true pin oak, real slender leaf
Speaker 1: tree that's extremely common, which is produces a nice small
Speaker 1: acorn that mallards and wood duck just love. Uh. Not.
Speaker 1: All oak is another species. And though and that willow
Speaker 1: oak is water tolerant, it is not water tolerant. And
Speaker 1: that's the catch. So we've got willow oak. You've kind
Speaker 1: of you've got this whole, these different tiers of water
Speaker 1: tolerance that we we think these trees have, and we
Speaker 1: think willow I'm a big oak guy, man, tell me
Speaker 1: tell me the stratification of water tolerance. Yeah, so I'll
Speaker 1: start at the high ground, the least water tolerant. We're
Speaker 1: probably talking about. Cherry bark oak and water oak are
Speaker 1: kind of the higher species within these bottom and hardwood systems.
Speaker 1: Maybe a month of flooding is what they can tolerate,
Speaker 1: and you step down a little bit. We think willow
Speaker 1: oak can take maybe a month or two. We're talking
Speaker 1: thirty to sixty days of dormant season flooding. You go
Speaker 1: down the gradient a little bit more, you find not
Speaker 1: all oak that can tolerate maybe a couple of months
Speaker 1: of flooding, and then you move down to over cup oak,
Speaker 1: which is highly a water tolerant, and we can take
Speaker 1: about probably even we see it surviving with six months
Speaker 1: plus the flooding. Now, all those time periods all also
Speaker 1: assume variability, right, so even sixty days every year for
Speaker 1: forty years for not all oaks is not good, even
Speaker 1: though they're a little bit more water tolerant than a
Speaker 1: cherry bark oak. And so what we're seeing now is
Speaker 1: those red oak species are showing major signs of mortality,
Speaker 1: tree stress and mortality, and so we've had massive die
Speaker 1: offs in some locations. Uh that have been fairly sudden,
Speaker 1: and we've had a bunch of other areas that have
Speaker 1: been just kind of a kind of a slow bleed,
Speaker 1: lots of just showing signs of stress, fallen out of
Speaker 1: the forest on maybe in little maybe in little fits
Speaker 1: and starts. You know, maybe I have a year where
Speaker 1: you lose a bunch of them, and maybe they hang
Speaker 1: on for a few more years than you lose a bunch.
Speaker 1: So a really kind of a slower process in some places,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because it makes it a whole lot
Speaker 1: harder to detect when you don't see a massive die
Speaker 1: off that happens in two or three years. A lot
Speaker 1: of folks can simply go into these areas year after
Speaker 1: year after year, and that change is so subtle that
Speaker 1: it's almost imperceptible. Let's really really stop and look at it.
Speaker 1: And it's generally happening with these with these willow oaks
Speaker 1: and nuttle oaks are the two predominant species on w May,
Speaker 1: so that this is happening to the artificial flooding is
Speaker 1: selecting for water tolerant oaks species, and unfortunately those types
Speaker 1: of oaks produced acorns that are too big for ducks
Speaker 1: to utilize. Literally, they can't swallow them. Waterfowl needs small
Speaker 1: acorns produced by nuttall and willow oaks and some other
Speaker 1: red oak varieties, but the water is killing those kinds
Speaker 1: of trees and not allowing the young trees of those
Speaker 1: species to survive. Trying to understand how all this could
Speaker 1: sneak up on us is a complex question, but it's
Speaker 1: something that the a g f C has been tracking
Speaker 1: for over a decade. The answer is pretty simple, and
Speaker 1: it's both biological and social. Here's jimbo ron Quest given
Speaker 1: us a little history. Heck, even Tim fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: You know, people like Looking Later and Buck Jackson, Mickey Hoytmeyer,
Speaker 1: different ones. We're talking about something's gonna have to be done.
Speaker 1: Are we gonna lose this whole ecosystem? Finally, here a
Speaker 1: few years ago, we had a big timberdal if at
Speaker 1: one of our w a mazed. Everybody talked about it,
Speaker 1: and we scratched at a little bit and try to
Speaker 1: educate folks, and there's folks still thinking, wow, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's fine, it's good. We gotta keep flooding. Well,
Speaker 1: finally Game of Fish stepped up and said it's time
Speaker 1: to do something, and in some ways they may be
Speaker 1: a little late, but they took the bull by the
Speaker 1: horns and are making something happen. So now here's what
Speaker 1: we're gonna do. You heard him mention that for a
Speaker 1: long time, Luke and many others have been crying wolf.
Speaker 1: And it's worth bringing up that the amount of research
Speaker 1: driven data, the assessment of public opinion, and all the
Speaker 1: other factors that come into implementing long term plans isn't
Speaker 1: always a fast process. We all know that whatever direction
Speaker 1: of government agency goes, it's gonna take some criticism. Couple
Speaker 1: that with the passion around Arkansas waterfowl hunting, and it's
Speaker 1: easy to see the difficulty with getting the timing right
Speaker 1: on this. Here's Luke talking about the challenges of managing trees.
Speaker 1: It is they were early because their trees and they
Speaker 1: live so long. It's a tough system to study and
Speaker 1: identify these changes. And you start to see in the
Speaker 1: scientific literature and and in you know, just general writings
Speaker 1: of within agency documents and such, you see mention of
Speaker 1: tree stress. Fairly early on in the growth of GTRs
Speaker 1: as a management tool. You start to see so that
Speaker 1: there was some there was some noticing of this is
Speaker 1: maybe hurting the trees, right, people noticed it. Tendall's reservoir
Speaker 1: was quickly treeless. It was a dead stick reservoir. So
Speaker 1: folks notice pretty quickly that wow, okay, that's flooding year around.
Speaker 1: Is not good, and so check that off the list.
Speaker 1: But then it transition to well we can dormant season flood. Well,
Speaker 1: then that kind of gets pushed earlier because we like
Speaker 1: to shoot ducks earlier, and you know, I have duck
Speaker 1: season earlier, and people notice that there were issues. There
Speaker 1: were some early studies that that suggested a boom in
Speaker 1: acorn production and tree vigor when GTRs were implemented, like
Speaker 1: the first few years, which could make some sense. You're
Speaker 1: all of a sudden irrigating this tree just like a
Speaker 1: high water year. Yeah, if if that happens just for
Speaker 1: a couple of years, maybe it would spike production exactly,
Speaker 1: So it spikes, but then it's kind of a short
Speaker 1: lived benefit. It's just a really slow burn. And and
Speaker 1: as hunters, as we go out there in the winter,
Speaker 1: no leaves on the trees except those early you know,
Speaker 1: during November when there'd be water on it. But in
Speaker 1: December in January. You go out and look at these
Speaker 1: places and it's kind of like, well, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: oaks here, there's trees. I gotta treetle in against the hunt.
Speaker 1: So what's the problem. And we've just done a better
Speaker 1: job here recently to actually scientifically document these changes and
Speaker 1: the decline and for is held. Here's Austin, and he's
Speaker 1: gonna tell us what the plan is. So Austin, it's
Speaker 1: it's clear that there's a big problem that's gonna affect
Speaker 1: the flyway in a significant way and and really has
Speaker 1: the potential to change duck hunting here in a significant way.
Speaker 1: So it's it's like, really, the problem is very clear.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what you guys are doing. We
Speaker 1: are temporarily managing water levels to a lower level to
Speaker 1: let two things happen. First, for us to get the
Speaker 1: infrastructure in place that we need to manage this water
Speaker 1: consistent with the level of rainfall that we're getting, and
Speaker 1: to to undertake some aggressive forest management on the wildlife
Speaker 1: management areas. At biometer, we normally manage that water to
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty feet means sea level on average. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna lower that to a hundred and seventy nine
Speaker 1: feet this year, and then next year, after we make
Speaker 1: some improvements to some of the boat launches, we're going
Speaker 1: to manage that down to one seventy eight point five
Speaker 1: in the three season. And that's a big deal, Like
Speaker 1: one that doesn't sound significant to me necessarily, So tell
Speaker 1: tell me how significant that is. Yeah, And there's a
Speaker 1: key caveat here, all right. If we lower the water
Speaker 1: level to one seventy nine down from one eight, that's
Speaker 1: a reduction in public access in the in the amount
Speaker 1: of water covering the ground that is duck hountible ground. Yes,
Speaker 1: so by lowering the water one ft, you're reducing the
Speaker 1: amount of flooded timber by as a baseline, and that's
Speaker 1: the caveat. In the twenty three season, if we lower
Speaker 1: another six inches like we planted two down to one
Speaker 1: seventy eight point five, that's another from one eighty down
Speaker 1: to one seventy eight point five, a total fifty percent reduction. However,
Speaker 1: that's a fifty percent reduction as a baseline, Austin, what
Speaker 1: do mean by that? It means that we are not saying,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to drain these suckers dry and
Speaker 1: we're gonna leave them draw. Our goal on this is
Speaker 1: to replicate a more natural flooding model. So byo MET
Speaker 1: is a thirty three thousand acre wildlife management area seventeen
Speaker 1: thousand acre GTR, but it's watershed clays seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand acres. As that watershed naturally fills up with
Speaker 1: rain events, it's all going to drain down. To buy
Speaker 1: me that this happens every single year, and if we're
Speaker 1: flund to one seventy nine and we get a big
Speaker 1: rain event, it'll pulse up over one seventy nine. As
Speaker 1: it drains out, it will come back down to one
Speaker 1: seventy nine. So we're not saying we are reducing the
Speaker 1: public opportunity by well, that's not true, because that's only
Speaker 1: true if we get zero inches of That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Ad how certain are we that this is gonna save
Speaker 1: the timber that's still alive? Were very common? Really? Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've we started our renovation at Hurricane Lake Wildlife Management
Speaker 1: Area in July, but for that we did a year's
Speaker 1: worth of force health assessments, a year's worth of a
Speaker 1: lot are driven hydrology studies, and a year's worth of
Speaker 1: design and engineering we put a lot of work into
Speaker 1: ensuring that whatever solution we come up with is the
Speaker 1: right one. We're not interested in rushing to failure here.
Speaker 1: We're not interested in a band aid because, to be
Speaker 1: honest with you, claim the timber health at some of
Speaker 1: these places it's so bad that we're not going to
Speaker 1: get in a shot. That's wild. Yeah, when you look
Speaker 1: at wildlife management areas like this that hold so much
Speaker 1: caloric benefit and provides so so many duck energy days
Speaker 1: to the duck resource. If we lose Hurricane and we
Speaker 1: lose bio meta and we lose Black River, that will
Speaker 1: change the flyway. Those are stark and serious words, especially
Speaker 1: when you consider the ancientness of this flyway. In summary,
Speaker 1: the plan is simply to replicate a more natural flooding model.
Speaker 1: That's the answer. Here's Austin addressing some of the bigger
Speaker 1: social implications. Because it's straightforward of a solution as this is,
Speaker 1: there are still naysayers. It's more than about a few seasons.
Speaker 1: We believe the average age of our public land duck
Speaker 1: hunter is about twenty three. I've told people that it's
Speaker 1: an opportunity for us as a generation of waterfowl hunters
Speaker 1: to ask ourselves the hard question of what we want
Speaker 1: our legacy to be. You know, do we want to
Speaker 1: be known as the consumers or do we want to
Speaker 1: be known as a sportsman that made the difficult choice
Speaker 1: for the resource. Do we want to to tell our
Speaker 1: grand kids what it was like to hunt by me
Speaker 1: to or do we want to listen to them tell
Speaker 1: us what it's like. I hunted this publicly and growing up.
Speaker 1: There's a lot at stake to a whole lot of
Speaker 1: people in the state, but really to the future water
Speaker 1: fowler here. Why are people just like, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: let's do this. I think there's a few reasons for that.
Speaker 1: I think the first reason is that they want to
Speaker 1: keep enjoying the resource and they're uncertain of what the
Speaker 1: future looks like. So I mean, this could be milked
Speaker 1: along for some period of time before we saw like
Speaker 1: catastrophic change. Yes, we could probably hunt another five to
Speaker 1: ten years, depending on on the location, and still see
Speaker 1: lots of acorns on the ground. The problem is we've
Speaker 1: been on the downward trend for the habitat values of
Speaker 1: of these GT yards for a long time. So do
Speaker 1: we want to ride it all the way down or
Speaker 1: do we want to try to arrest this decline and
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't get back. You can't get back
Speaker 1: eighty year old red oak stand in in any less
Speaker 1: than another eighty years. Another reason why people are skeptical
Speaker 1: is they say Mother Nature has always flooded this stuff.
Speaker 1: These trees are meant to survive in water. That's the
Speaker 1: way the Good Lord made them, and it's just not
Speaker 1: true be as we've interfered with it. I think the
Speaker 1: last reason is there's a lot of variables at play here.
Speaker 1: It's easy for folks and I sympathize with a lot
Speaker 1: of it. It says the real problem is this. We
Speaker 1: can fill in the blanks. One of those is fluctuating
Speaker 1: river levels with the Army Corps of Engineers, or the
Speaker 1: fact that we stopped we stopped dredging some of the rivers.
Speaker 1: Some people have declared war on the beavers. I certainly
Speaker 1: don't like beavers, and we spend a lot of dollars
Speaker 1: and manpower trying to eradicate beavers. I can go on
Speaker 1: and on, but a lot of people want to point
Speaker 1: to these other problems. One of the challenging aspects that
Speaker 1: we've had with this message is that we're not saying
Speaker 1: those things aren't problems. What we're saying is that this
Speaker 1: is about accountability. At the end of the day, our
Speaker 1: Kansans expect us to control the things that we can control,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're trying to do here. That means
Speaker 1: managing it at a lower level. So we have something
Speaker 1: that's still around on the other side of all those
Speaker 1: other longer term challenges, right, so we can work better
Speaker 1: with the core. Yes, we can do more with you know,
Speaker 1: river discharges, and we can keep fighting those hard long
Speaker 1: term fights. But if we don't do something now, we're
Speaker 1: not going to have a resource left to save on
Speaker 1: the other side. Yeah, it just it seems to me
Speaker 1: like that this is a no brainer decision. But and
Speaker 1: if you're not comfortable talking about this, we don't have to.
Speaker 1: People are in general, I mean, this is a people issue. Really,
Speaker 1: Why we can't just enforced us without any conflict with
Speaker 1: because there are people that are upset, am I right?
Speaker 1: And saying that there are people that are upset. There
Speaker 1: are people that are saying the government is coming in
Speaker 1: and trying to shut down our public land and all
Speaker 1: the guys on private get to keep all their ducks
Speaker 1: and have all. There's a lot of pieces of this
Speaker 1: puzzle that could make people say that, I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you what do you say to that? So let
Speaker 1: me say two things. So first is that we are
Speaker 1: not taking away anything. It's if we do nothing, that's
Speaker 1: what's going to everybody. That's right, most people people really
Speaker 1: truly get that. As do you think you've got support
Speaker 1: for this? Yeah? Okay, that's good. Here. Now a different
Speaker 1: question is do of arkansans like it? The answers no,
Speaker 1: I don't like this. Our agency staff don't like this.
Speaker 1: We're not asking folks to like this. We're asking folks
Speaker 1: to understand that this is the right thing to do
Speaker 1: for the resource. Sean Weaver isn't from here, and he
Speaker 1: ain't got a dog in this fight, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to hear his thoughts on the implications of this decision.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get a beat on how big of
Speaker 1: a deal this is. I don't even know how Sean
Speaker 1: pronounces acorns. I don't really want to know. Here's Sean.
Speaker 1: I think it's hard to ignore that it was an
Speaker 1: unpopular decision that they had to make. Of course, people
Speaker 1: are going to be frustrated when they lose a little
Speaker 1: bit of Hunting Act says, and lose some hunting opportunity,
Speaker 1: especially for the guys that have spent their whole lives
Speaker 1: running an outboard in these flooded timber green timber reservoirs
Speaker 1: that now all of a sudden the thing they've done
Speaker 1: their whole lives is changing. Sometimes unpopular decisions have to
Speaker 1: be made, and this is uh, this is a dilemma
Speaker 1: we deal with in politics and national issues anyway. Is
Speaker 1: do you make the unpopular decision now or do you
Speaker 1: make someone suffer down the line. You can't deny that
Speaker 1: down the line, someone's going to suffer from these green
Speaker 1: timber reservoirs being held at too high pool. You have
Speaker 1: to do something. It's just how long will you wait
Speaker 1: to do that? Will you wait till it's too late?
Speaker 1: A lot of the timber tracks were lost a long
Speaker 1: time ago, and you'd hate to see us lose more
Speaker 1: of it in the long run, knowing what we know
Speaker 1: and knowing that we could have made a decision to
Speaker 1: stop it, but we didn't. It's not for anybody to
Speaker 1: have to have to make a decision between hunter opportunity
Speaker 1: and hunter access versus hunter opportunity and hunter access fifty
Speaker 1: years from now. There's always this. There's always a group
Speaker 1: of people, and sometimes I might be in that group
Speaker 1: that that would look at decisions that the government makes
Speaker 1: and assume that that decision is designed to help some
Speaker 1: other group of people aside from the ones that it's affecting.
Speaker 1: Do you think that is something that people could say, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's it's public land. I mean that that's what's interesting.
Speaker 1: Do you think people think that. I'm sure some do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be the detractors, right, But I
Speaker 1: guess a counter argument counterpoint to that is quite a
Speaker 1: few of the private land duck clubs with green timber
Speaker 1: started making their unpopular decision and doing what they could
Speaker 1: save their timber and manage their timber twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: I don't think people create ideas of like malintent when
Speaker 1: times are good. Necessarily, when when the hunting is real
Speaker 1: good and the mallards are thick and everyone's having a
Speaker 1: ball of a time, No one's pointing fingers, everyone's just
Speaker 1: enjoying it. There's no doubt that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: duck hunters in the South that are just frustrated with
Speaker 1: shifting weather patterns and and ducks not coming so far
Speaker 1: south and a long term slide and hunter success in
Speaker 1: the Deep South. I think whenever you have people kind
Speaker 1: of pointing fingers that that this is a way to
Speaker 1: help the few the expense of the many, it would
Speaker 1: be because they're just frustrated. But ultimately to get rid
Speaker 1: of that frustration and to bring back this legacy that
Speaker 1: is the Arkansas green Timber, you have to save the
Speaker 1: green timber. You know, It's just like everything. When the
Speaker 1: system is stressed, it brings out the worst in people.
Speaker 1: I mean, you go on a vacation with your kids
Speaker 1: and get them all the car and about that tenth
Speaker 1: hour of that road trip in the system is stressed
Speaker 1: and you see the worst in everyone that that can happen.
Speaker 1: But the good news is is what I see is
Speaker 1: that there's so many people. The vast majority of people
Speaker 1: are in support of this, even the people that it's affecting,
Speaker 1: even public land hunters that are losing some opportunity, are saying,
Speaker 1: heck you out, that's what we gotta do. You know,
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, people had to make outdoorsmen had
Speaker 1: to make a hard decision. Then with the Migratory Bird
Speaker 1: Treaty and all the new rules and regulations that surrounded
Speaker 1: waterfowl that really are the epicenter of the North American
Speaker 1: wildlife model. To save the canvas back, to save the
Speaker 1: wood duck, to save the Canada goose, all of it.
Speaker 1: There was tough decisions that had to be made. But
Speaker 1: they made those decisions to stop things like market hunting
Speaker 1: and punt guns and baiting. All those things. They stopped
Speaker 1: them so that our grandkids would someday be able to
Speaker 1: shoot a mallard mount duck in the Arkansas Timber yes,
Speaker 1: and said in the first time that we've had to
Speaker 1: make tough decisions. Can you imagine those guys back in
Speaker 1: those days going bring back the market honey man, I
Speaker 1: love hunting mallards over bait. What echoes throughout all wildlife
Speaker 1: management is that it has to be managed by humans.
Speaker 1: The competing interest that impact decisions made about wildlife and
Speaker 1: habitat are vast, and I'm always interested in the human element.
Speaker 1: You just can't get away from the necessity for anything
Speaker 1: to move on planet Earth without human cooperation. I was
Speaker 1: just the question I really wanted to ask you, was
Speaker 1: should wildlife management be that with that human focused I mean,
Speaker 1: couldn't we just be like, hey, we all want more ducks,
Speaker 1: we all want more habitat for ducks. Here's a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Don't talk to us for the next ten years. Just
Speaker 1: print the regulations. I mean, but it's not that it's
Speaker 1: not that clear cut as a modern wildlife science was
Speaker 1: driven by people, by hunters and other early conservationists. So
Speaker 1: it's always been been driven by people. And we've learned
Speaker 1: more and more and more about the science of wildlife management.
Speaker 1: But again I was taught early on it's wildlife management
Speaker 1: is both science and art, and the art part, I
Speaker 1: think is where a ton of the human elopment comes in.
Speaker 1: And we're getting better these days with bringing the science
Speaker 1: side of it in to the human element, with with
Speaker 1: social science research and the and the whole scientific field
Speaker 1: of of social science. Some people talk about human dimensions research,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Human dimensions research studies how and
Speaker 1: why humans value natural resources. I had no idea this
Speaker 1: even existed. It covers a wide range of stuff from cultural,
Speaker 1: social and economic values to individual and social behavior. Basically,
Speaker 1: there's research dedicated to understanding how people might respond to
Speaker 1: something like the GTR issue. And to go back to
Speaker 1: my hypothetical question to Luke, it's a good thing that
Speaker 1: human values play into wildlife management because it's possible that
Speaker 1: the powers that be might place no value on wild places,
Speaker 1: nor value on giving people access to hunt like most
Speaker 1: of the world. Man, sometimes I think we don't realize
Speaker 1: what an incredible place we live while we're talking about humans.
Speaker 1: We can't have this discussion about public land duck hunting
Speaker 1: without mentioning something vitally and literally connected to it, private land.
Speaker 1: We're talking about public because it's the only place most
Speaker 1: of us have any right to give input. And you
Speaker 1: guys know that there are those who dog on those
Speaker 1: who have access to private land. We've all done it. However,
Speaker 1: in my experience, a lot of people that have access
Speaker 1: to private land they have it because they've sacrificed big
Speaker 1: parts of their life to get it. And I have
Speaker 1: the right to say that because I hunt a lot
Speaker 1: of public land, but also a lot of private and
Speaker 1: I love them both for different reasons. We're all on
Speaker 1: the same team. Here's Luke on the importance of private land.
Speaker 1: We can never under rate the contribution of private landowners
Speaker 1: who also have these similar habitat types and have preserved
Speaker 1: those habitat types for the same amount of time, and
Speaker 1: that we as agencies have You can't under undersell that
Speaker 1: at all. Is a lot more in private landownership than
Speaker 1: public ownership, way more the the public lands generally we
Speaker 1: like to think of them, not enough, not in an
Speaker 1: arrogant sense, but just because, like we talked about, the
Speaker 1: way they're where they are located. They really do provide
Speaker 1: the overall anchors of these bigger habitat complexes for waterfowl.
Speaker 1: But private lands play a huge rolling this. At the
Speaker 1: beginning of this episode, Mr Bobby Martin told us that
Speaker 1: he grew up hunting public land in Arkansas. What he
Speaker 1: didn't mention is that most of his life he's exclusively
Speaker 1: hunted public land. He wasn't a member of a private
Speaker 1: duck club until he was in his mid fifties. Point
Speaker 1: being he's a duck hunter. I've heard about a man
Speaker 1: by the name of Rex Hancock, and I wanted Mr
Speaker 1: Bobby to tell me his story and how it relates
Speaker 1: to us today. You know, when when the name Rex
Speaker 1: Hancock comes up, you know, particularly for somebody of my age,
Speaker 1: it's a reminder how people come along that are so
Speaker 1: critical to conservation and really have ensured that we're able
Speaker 1: to see and enjoy what what we have today. So
Speaker 1: Rex Hancock, you know, these goes back into the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: early seventies, and he's well known as uh, probably one
Speaker 1: of the strongest fighters, if you will, for conservation, particularly
Speaker 1: here in Arkansas. He was a dentist out of stut Guard,
Speaker 1: Arkansas during a time when the core of engineers embarked
Speaker 1: on channelizing the Cache River. UH, and the Cache River
Speaker 1: and the Cache River basin is really the second largest
Speaker 1: kind of you know, sector, if you will, of bottomland
Speaker 1: hardwood resource, and particularly how critical that's been to waterfowl
Speaker 1: in all of the Mississippi Flyway, all the Mississippi fly Away.
Speaker 1: In fact, the Cache River has always been viewed to
Speaker 1: be about as critical as the Everglades is or Chesapeake
Speaker 1: Bay or Okeechobee Swamp too. From the environmental side, you
Speaker 1: know what it did and what it adds to the
Speaker 1: critical college and everything of this part of the country
Speaker 1: and particularly the Mississippi fly Away. So when that channelization began,
Speaker 1: obviously it began to destroy then the bottom land heart.
Speaker 1: Tell me describe that for me what that means channelization,
Speaker 1: Why it was they literally and of course it was
Speaker 1: motivated by trying to improve agricultural drainage and and so forth.
Speaker 1: And this was during a time when you know, again
Speaker 1: as we talked about our hardwoods in particular. Uh now
Speaker 1: today what we have that's left was really spared the
Speaker 1: saw on the plow. Channelizing the Cache River meant literally
Speaker 1: just turning it into a ditch. And in fact, during
Speaker 1: all that era of time, the core went about a
Speaker 1: four and a half mile stretch before they were finally stopped.
Speaker 1: But that part of the of the Cache River was
Speaker 1: just literally a ditch. As a young guy remember at
Speaker 1: the bottom, so that sarges and exactly, and so it's
Speaker 1: just a straight line ditch. And so again obviously very
Speaker 1: disruptive to bottom land hardwoods and all that that meant,
Speaker 1: not just because it didn't flood wooden flood, and of
Speaker 1: course it destroyed a lot of that habitat. And Rex
Speaker 1: Hancock was an avid water fowler, but it was broader
Speaker 1: than just waterfowl, but definitely critical to a duck hunting
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. In fact, it's it's hard to imagine today
Speaker 1: where we would be if in fact, he had not
Speaker 1: fought that hard, and uh it was six essil because
Speaker 1: he fought it for a number of years, and I
Speaker 1: mean it became his full life mission. And so he was,
Speaker 1: you know, going to Washington, d C. He was fighting
Speaker 1: every angle, and he was almost a one man war
Speaker 1: against the Corps of Engineers during that time to try
Speaker 1: and get that stopped. And uh, you know, he's very
Speaker 1: uh stubborn obviously as a guy that would never give up.
Speaker 1: But you know, he won the fight. When you look
Speaker 1: at it back now, that victory was really olive ours.
Speaker 1: It's this generation and the generations yet unborn that now
Speaker 1: are able to still you know, have this you know
Speaker 1: natural resource that is so critical and remains critical to
Speaker 1: us today. So you know, he was facing a man
Speaker 1: made challenge. And I find today when you know all
Speaker 1: that we're hearing we're talking about here now that we
Speaker 1: know we've lost so much of our forest where we've
Speaker 1: been flooding at our own discretion to you know, enjoy
Speaker 1: water fowling and so forth in our green tree reservoirs
Speaker 1: and so forth. And of course now we've learned that
Speaker 1: doing that over an extended period of time, doing it
Speaker 1: wrong we now have, you know, lost a lot of timber,
Speaker 1: and now we're in a fight. I find it hard
Speaker 1: to not not visualizing ourselves a little bit as twenty
Speaker 1: one century Rex Hancock's and you know, for me, I'm real,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited and motivated as I see the reaction
Speaker 1: and the response, particularly from young people in their twenties
Speaker 1: and thirties, because what we're having to undertake here means
Speaker 1: that we're gonna have to give up something for a
Speaker 1: while in order to have it for the future for
Speaker 1: the long haul. If we continue to do what we're
Speaker 1: doing and just kick the can down the road, there
Speaker 1: won't be anything to recover. So as I watch as
Speaker 1: we've gone around and and see people, young people in
Speaker 1: particularly engage and understand what has to be given up,
Speaker 1: the willingness and the approach and the attitude is inspiring
Speaker 1: to me because they know, and you can see it,
Speaker 1: that it's a thirty year kind of challenge or even
Speaker 1: a forty year challenge to see you know, a new
Speaker 1: four worst generation or see a forty year old tree
Speaker 1: now that you know produces a kind of acorns that
Speaker 1: ducks like to get in there and enjoy in our
Speaker 1: bottom land, hardwoods, and it ties me back to three
Speaker 1: things that Rick Rex Hancock was also known for saying
Speaker 1: during that period of time, and his his approach was
Speaker 1: that he said, good conservation requires ordinary people with an
Speaker 1: extraordinary desire. Just hang on to that for a minute,
Speaker 1: an extraordinary desire, because it will take and is taking
Speaker 1: an extraordinary desire for people today to be willing to
Speaker 1: give up some of what we have today to not
Speaker 1: just hunt next year, but to know that will paulse
Speaker 1: will sacrifice for a while because we wanted in twenty
Speaker 1: years or we want our children, our children's children to
Speaker 1: have it fifty years from now, sixty years from now.
Speaker 1: I want to conclude by exploring my original question of
Speaker 1: why guys are so wound up about duck hunting. I
Speaker 1: think it has to do with more than ducks. Here's
Speaker 1: Luke and I. I have never been to a hunting
Speaker 1: camp like the one that we're at right now, where
Speaker 1: there has been this much energy, finances, life, decades and
Speaker 1: decades of history stacked into basically being able to hunt
Speaker 1: a sixty day period hunting Mallard ducks. Where that? Where
Speaker 1: did that come from? I think duck hunting is unique
Speaker 1: and it's a much more social activity some than some
Speaker 1: of those other hunting pastimes. You think about Western big
Speaker 1: game hunters. You know what, you're gonna go in and
Speaker 1: maybe maybe gonna have a camp with a couple of
Speaker 1: people I'm backpacking in. You're gonna couldn't have fourteen people
Speaker 1: in your elk camp. You don't and and and you
Speaker 1: don't have a There's time for conversation and a lot
Speaker 1: of just camaraderie there. But it's but it's much different
Speaker 1: in a smaller scale when you get with duck hunting.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be you know, stone still and
Speaker 1: dead quiet the entire time. So I think it's perpetuated
Speaker 1: this opportunity for folks to have clubs like this, or
Speaker 1: folks to experience public land hunting and build a cultural
Speaker 1: around it and kind of build a social network around
Speaker 1: it because there's a lot of just your ride in
Speaker 1: a boat together, or you're you're walking out to a
Speaker 1: place together, you're sitting in a blind together, and and
Speaker 1: the conversations can just continue while you're duck hunting and
Speaker 1: you know you're sneaking through the woods trying to squirrel hunt.
Speaker 1: You you know you're trying to be quiet, and you
Speaker 1: just solved. You just told me what I've been trying
Speaker 1: to get somebody to tell me for forever. And it's
Speaker 1: not rocket science at all. It's just social. It's social,
Speaker 1: and it's and and I have not duck hunted a
Speaker 1: lot in my life, but this morning we're out. There
Speaker 1: were five of us that were together in this one hole,
Speaker 1: and we were talking in normal voices twenty, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen yards apart, probably from trees. At different times, the
Speaker 1: guys would come over to me and just talk with
Speaker 1: me by my tree, and then we called ducks and
Speaker 1: we'd see one, we all kind of hunker down and
Speaker 1: I'd walk over to them. And it was any other
Speaker 1: style of hunting that would have not happened. It doesn't work. Then.
Speaker 1: The other thing that makes duck hunting different is that
Speaker 1: you don't do it all day long, Like we went
Speaker 1: out this morning and we only hunt until about ten o'clock.
Speaker 1: And then if this were a three day hunt, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do the rest of the day. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be together, we're gonna be talking, we're gonna be cooking,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be doing whatever. And then you repeat the
Speaker 1: cycle the next day. And it fosters an environment for
Speaker 1: relationship between people. It sure does. And I think you've
Speaker 1: got ideally most of the time right that you're gonna
Speaker 1: have multiple, you know, attempts at at Harvey seen game
Speaker 1: for example, you think a big game hunt you're there
Speaker 1: for one shot. Most big game hunts you're there for
Speaker 1: for one shot. But duck hunting is kind of well,
Speaker 1: if you don't get them on this group, all right,
Speaker 1: well we'll get him and that next time, maybe just
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes away. Of all my exposure in
Speaker 1: the hunting world, there's not a ton of things that
Speaker 1: I'm envious of when it comes to looking into other
Speaker 1: groups of hunters. I am envious of waterfowl hunters, their
Speaker 1: camps there come ottery. You know, these guys come down
Speaker 1: here and hunt forty days a year, and by that
Speaker 1: they're not hunting all day. They're they're hunting the mornings
Speaker 1: and then going to work or doing whatever they need
Speaker 1: to do, coming back here at night with their buddies,
Speaker 1: hunting again in the morning. I mean, everybody has a
Speaker 1: different pattern, but just that predictable camaraderie. And here I'm
Speaker 1: seeing these guys that for decades have been coming to
Speaker 1: this camp and they just know, well, it's duck season.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go see Bill and Jim and we're gonna
Speaker 1: meet up. And man, big game hunting pretty much just
Speaker 1: doesn't have that at that big of a scalt. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure we have deer camps and we have different
Speaker 1: kind of camps, but it doesn't really rival duck hunting.
Speaker 1: It doesn't match what you get with duck hunting. And
Speaker 1: I think it's yeah, those those those connections just go
Speaker 1: way back and just are are deep in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. It's just a fascinating cultural experience. I've been
Speaker 1: inspired by peering into the duck hunting world. I've seen
Speaker 1: a level of singular focus that challenges me. I love
Speaker 1: the traditions of waterfowl hunting and that it lends itself
Speaker 1: to building human relationships, so naturally it's these things that
Speaker 1: have made it strong and enabled the waterfowl community to
Speaker 1: be such powerful players and habitat conservation, and in the
Speaker 1: world of increasing urbanization and every possible scenario for habitat
Speaker 1: to be fragmented and lost, protecting wild places is the
Speaker 1: heartbeat of the modern hunting community and our pathway to
Speaker 1: a relevant future. Broad scale habitat protection for the wild
Speaker 1: places that remain is the thing that we offer society
Speaker 1: that no one else can. We have this power because
Speaker 1: our model gives incentive for people to protect wild places
Speaker 1: by offering hunting privileges. We've got to make sure this
Speaker 1: doesn't change. It's a beautiful system, it's brilliant, it's working,
Speaker 1: and it has worked. I want to continue our conscious
Speaker 1: scripting of the conservation narrative. We're leaving as North American hunters.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to walk and talk big to make
Speaker 1: this work. And I'm not just talking about duck hunting.
Speaker 1: The way that will survive the test of time is
Speaker 1: by intentional unification and, as Rex Hancock said, by not
Speaker 1: just giving lip service to conservation. In some ways, the
Speaker 1: American hunting lifestyle is a cultural artifact of times past,
Speaker 1: and often artifacts are considered irrelevant unless they're interpreted by
Speaker 1: and their relevance is proven by those who know their value.
Speaker 1: In conclusion, I believe that most of our state wildlife
Speaker 1: agencies are doing the best they can with the resources
Speaker 1: they have to preserve wild places and hunting access and
Speaker 1: our hunting culture. There will always be disagreements and ways
Speaker 1: that things can be done better. So we'll keep using
Speaker 1: the appropriate channels to communicate our values to those in leadership.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. In the future that is uncertain for wildlife,
Speaker 1: we're all going to have to make hard decisions that
Speaker 1: mean will sacrifice in the short term for long term benefit,
Speaker 1: and that will be our legacy. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: Bear Grease. I hope you've enjoyed the series on duck hunting,
Speaker 1: and hey, check out the new Bear Grease merchandise on
Speaker 1: the meat eator dot com. We got some cool shirts,
Speaker 1: gonna have some hats in soon. But before we go,
Speaker 1: I wanted to include this section. Here's Luke Naylor telling
Speaker 1: us that duck hunting isn't as hard to get into
Speaker 1: as you might think. It actually doesn't take all the
Speaker 1: gear that you think it might. You know, you can
Speaker 1: you can go buy some really cheap decoys and a
Speaker 1: cheap duck call and a cheap pair of waiters, and
Speaker 1: and you can. It's a little bit more gear than
Speaker 1: than squirrel honey, but it's really not as as prohibitive
Speaker 1: as what it's kind of portrayed sometimes, and there's always
Speaker 1: almost always somebody willing to help you out with part
Speaker 1: of it, Like, what would happen to be a good
Speaker 1: experiment to see how long you could go in your
Speaker 1: life without actually buying duck hunting gear just borrowing it.
Speaker 1: There's so many people out there that have it. You
Speaker 1: could go a long time. I have yet to me
Speaker 1: it meat a duck hunter that doesn't have a spare
Speaker 1: set of waiters, that everything you have to