Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Interstate Batteries. Whether you need a battery for
Speaker 1: your truck, or a battery for your trail camera, or
Speaker 1: a specialized battery for your range finder, or a crazy
Speaker 1: toy that you bought for your kids, Interstate Batteries has
Speaker 1: got you covered. Stop into a local Interstate Battery retail store,
Speaker 1: talk with a specialist, get the battery that you need,
Speaker 1: and go on about your day. Interstate Batteries outrageously dependable.
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
Speaker 1: the world of hunting the icon of the North American Wilderness. There,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation. We will also bring
Speaker 1: you into some of the wildest country off the planet
Speaker 1: chasing battery. Hey, this is the baritege Colby moorehead. Today,
Speaker 1: Clay is joined by James Brandenburg for a bonus episode
Speaker 1: of the of the podcast. They're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: a land issue that's pertinent to Arkansas and the setting
Speaker 1: of public lands. Uh just real quick, stay informed, have
Speaker 1: a good one. I am here with James Brandonburg, the
Speaker 1: chair of the Arkansas chapter of the back Country Hunters
Speaker 1: and Anglish Association, and you brought me, uh pop tarts,
Speaker 1: big league to peanuts and coke at my I texted
Speaker 1: James when he was coming over and I said, I
Speaker 1: tried to make this like really obscure list of things
Speaker 1: for him to bring to the global headquarters. And it
Speaker 1: was a joke and he brought it. So we're we're
Speaker 1: like having a feast right now. So James, I wanted
Speaker 1: to get you on here to talk to us about
Speaker 1: what's going on with the Pine Tree Experimental Station over
Speaker 1: in eastern Arkansas. So it's a essentially you're we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into all the details, but essentially what's happening is
Speaker 1: that there's been a piece of public ground over there.
Speaker 1: It's been a piece of public ground for a long
Speaker 1: time and it's owned by the University of Arkansas. It's
Speaker 1: been managed about the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, and
Speaker 1: right now they're trying to sell off about six acres.
Speaker 1: That's just I don't I don't know why, Maybe you do.
Speaker 1: They're selling it off and basically it's just public land
Speaker 1: that's gonna be turned into private duck lease, duck lease
Speaker 1: or something, and so, um, so how long has this
Speaker 1: piece of ground been public land. It was acquired by
Speaker 1: the federal government sometime, let's say in the probably in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties or fifties, so for like eighty years
Speaker 1: that's been public long time, yep, yep. And so the
Speaker 1: way that this came back to the federal government is
Speaker 1: that there's an act passed during the depression that's called
Speaker 1: the Bankhead Jones Farm Tenant Act. And one of the
Speaker 1: provisions of that act was, you know, authorized the Secretary
Speaker 1: of Agriculture to acquire submarginal farmland and take it out
Speaker 1: of production. Um. And this would be places that were
Speaker 1: that either weren't good farmland to start off with, maybe
Speaker 1: they'd been degraded or damaged. Maybe they were along watersheds
Speaker 1: and needed to be needed to be taken out of
Speaker 1: production so that, um, you weren't worrying about quality of
Speaker 1: the water things like that. It says in the law,
Speaker 1: you know, it talks about conservation and habitat and for
Speaker 1: the benefit of the public, that they would take this
Speaker 1: land out of production. Okay, So sub marginal farm land
Speaker 1: end is usually a great hunting land yeah, exactly, especially
Speaker 1: if I bet that's a good place to hunt. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's been out of production for a long time,
Speaker 1: so that's the other thing that's been rehabilitated. Right. So
Speaker 1: it also provided for the Secretary of Agriculture to dispose
Speaker 1: of those lands, provided that that land remained in public use.
Speaker 1: And if you think about this, Clay, would you want
Speaker 1: the federal government or anybody to come in and say, um,
Speaker 1: buy up property, buy up distressed property from at that
Speaker 1: time in the in the depression era. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: let's face it, it's probably farmers that were not doing well.
Speaker 1: Buy that up from them and then turn around and
Speaker 1: sell that either for a profit or sell it to
Speaker 1: land barrens, or you know, however you want to describe it.
Speaker 1: Back then. You know, people who were wealthy back then.
Speaker 1: One of the key things that was going on during
Speaker 1: the Depression. I've done a lot of reading on this.
Speaker 1: They were trying to figure out how to get share
Speaker 1: croppers and tenants off of those situations where they were
Speaker 1: just living hand the mouth every year, get them started
Speaker 1: with a piece of land where they could build a
Speaker 1: life for themselves. So by taking this land out of production,
Speaker 1: they were they were trying to help with that situation.
Speaker 1: That that Act overall existed to help those help those
Speaker 1: poor people, and a lot of them in the South
Speaker 1: two get started with something better in life. There's tons
Speaker 1: and tons of history on on that and it's fascinating
Speaker 1: to get into. But for our discussion, this property in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty UM and I haven't found if it's the
Speaker 1: Forest Service at that point or if it was the
Speaker 1: Soil Service at that time, but eventually the property UM,
Speaker 1: through the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service, the
Speaker 1: University of Arkansas was deeded access to this property for
Speaker 1: agricultural agricultural research. And this happened across the country, not
Speaker 1: just here in Arkansas. There's many many places like this.
Speaker 1: In fact, part of our National Grasslands System came out
Speaker 1: of the same type of property. So in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: the University UM got access to it for agricultural research.
Speaker 1: UM there's a deed from the Forest Service to the
Speaker 1: University of Arkansas, and in that deed there's a clause
Speaker 1: that states if the property ever ceases to be used
Speaker 1: for the public or comes out of public use, that
Speaker 1: property is to revert back to the Forest service. It's
Speaker 1: about a four line clause in the deed. It's super
Speaker 1: easy to understand. You and I can read it and
Speaker 1: understand what it means. And so um. Fast forward to today.
Speaker 1: You know, the university publicly states that they have a
Speaker 1: need to fund some other obligations in the division of Agriculture. Um,
Speaker 1: They've made commitments, they've got some grants that they need
Speaker 1: to come up with matching funds for things like that.
Speaker 1: And the way that they're proposing to do this is
Speaker 1: by selling this property of it that they want to sell.
Speaker 1: There's a force in its clause that says it goes
Speaker 1: if they don't own it. It goes back to the
Speaker 1: force pretty straightforward right now. The way that they would
Speaker 1: get around that, of course, is the way that anybody
Speaker 1: gets around something that they don't like in a in
Speaker 1: a contract. They go they go to Congress and try
Speaker 1: to get that work through US Congress. So take an
Speaker 1: Act of Congress. The university acknowledges this, you will take
Speaker 1: an Act of Congress to close that land deal. M Now,
Speaker 1: the public of the university also states that they have
Speaker 1: um that they have marketed the property extensively, that they
Speaker 1: had extensive conversations with other agencies here in Arkansas Natural
Speaker 1: Heritage Commission, Nature Conservancy, and Arkansas Game and Fish Commission,
Speaker 1: and ultimately the Game and Fish Commission, they say turn
Speaker 1: them down because they didn't have the money to buy it.
Speaker 1: The Game and Fish has been kind of silent on that. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't pressed him on that yet really
Speaker 1: to to know how extensively that went on. Bottom line is,
Speaker 1: right now, there's a there's a contract in place for
Speaker 1: the university to sell this property to a private entity.
Speaker 1: It's going to take away the best hunting property in St.
Speaker 1: Francis County that's publicly accessible in a place where there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of publicly accessible hunting property, and it's
Speaker 1: gonna lock it behind the gate. And you know, you
Speaker 1: you have listeners across the country, and I think that
Speaker 1: people could ask themselves, like I live in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: You know, why do I care about what's going on
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. This is a situation Number one, it's going
Speaker 1: to take u S Congressional approval number two. These types
Speaker 1: of properties, these acres is a is a lot. But
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of all of our hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of public land to drop in the bucket. But
Speaker 1: for the people right there in St. Francis County, that's
Speaker 1: where they hunt. And I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: people I've heard from that, you know, kids, that's where
Speaker 1: they learned how to hunt. Women have learned how to
Speaker 1: hunt there. Of course, men have learned how to hunt there.
Speaker 1: You know, they were kids when they learned, and now
Speaker 1: they're grown ups taking their kids out there. If Congress,
Speaker 1: and all that takes is some slick lobbying to say, hey,
Speaker 1: look what we're gonna do with this seventeen million dollars.
Speaker 1: We're gonna send fifteen million of it over here, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna spend a million of it over there.
Speaker 1: And and Clay, that's not, according to what I'm hearing,
Speaker 1: that's cheap for that land over there. Um should be
Speaker 1: going for four thousand dollars an acre at least. Um.
Speaker 1: But if that disappears, and if they set that precedent
Speaker 1: for this place to disappear, what happens when they come
Speaker 1: for four d acres over there that maybe maybe only
Speaker 1: a couple hundred people use, or or whatever the case
Speaker 1: might be. We've already got an access problem. We've already
Speaker 1: got an Our three problem are we can't sell enough licenses,
Speaker 1: two to take care of the habitat at work that
Speaker 1: we need to do. And we're gonna make it harder
Speaker 1: for average people, and especially in eastern Arkansas, where it
Speaker 1: is quickly, in my mind, becoming harder and harder for
Speaker 1: people of average means to have a place to hunt.
Speaker 1: Because people want to go over there and duck hunt.
Speaker 1: They're willing to. They will buy, you know, in private transactions,
Speaker 1: which is fine. I mean, if you want to sell
Speaker 1: and I want to buy, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: But but access disappears all of eastern Arkansas. Well that's
Speaker 1: an exaggeration. A ton of eastern Arkansas is a high
Speaker 1: dollar lease land, that's for sure, you know, on the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Delta over there, and there's also some some big
Speaker 1: public tracks over there too, but it's yeah, it's big
Speaker 1: money lease country for sure. Yeah yeah. And so so
Speaker 1: back country Hunters and Anglers has gotten involved in this
Speaker 1: um here in Arkansas is our This is our first
Speaker 1: big thing to be a part of. You know, we
Speaker 1: were a chapter in June. At the end of July, wham,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we got confronted with this. Thankfully, we
Speaker 1: have some some friends in certain places in state government
Speaker 1: who are against the sale, and publicly, even the US
Speaker 1: Representative Rick Crawford has stated that he's against the sale
Speaker 1: as well, and so he's the rep over there. Yes, yep,
Speaker 1: that's in his district. And so we have some some
Speaker 1: friends in this in the legislature. But you know, to us,
Speaker 1: things happened by majority, and so having one or two
Speaker 1: friends doesn't mean that everybody's going to go that way.
Speaker 1: So what we're doing right now, number one, we're raising
Speaker 1: awareness about it. Of course our social media. We have
Speaker 1: a petition out there at back country Hunters dot org.
Speaker 1: Have enough people signed that petition. We've got about as
Speaker 1: of today, around fifty signatures, and and that's a that's
Speaker 1: a really good response on something that's kind of a
Speaker 1: localized issue like that. And um, you know the reason
Speaker 1: that we're doing that, like, Okay, what does a what
Speaker 1: does it signing a petition do? Well, if we need
Speaker 1: to mobilize to contact legislators at some point in the future,
Speaker 1: we need to know who to contact who cares about this.
Speaker 1: It also gives us a voice when we go to
Speaker 1: speak to let's say, say people or two thousand people
Speaker 1: that have signed a petition. Yep, we So you told
Speaker 1: me earlier that this the sale was supposed to be
Speaker 1: finalized in like October. But it looks like they're going
Speaker 1: to push it off. They may well they might, they
Speaker 1: might push it off. Um you know, nothing's set in
Speaker 1: stone yet. And and there's not a lot of public
Speaker 1: information coming from the university, which if you wanted something
Speaker 1: to go away, you're not. You're not gonna your pr
Speaker 1: machine is gonna say here's all the great things we're
Speaker 1: gonna do, and we're not gonna We're not gonna address
Speaker 1: these other people over here. We're not gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: ignore that. Um Man. I grew up in northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I love the Razorbacks, I love the University. This is
Speaker 1: a situation where there's a better way. We need to
Speaker 1: find a better solution to sell in this land so
Speaker 1: they can do what they want to do with that
Speaker 1: money and help the people of Arkansas. That's fine, but
Speaker 1: don't penalize St. Francis County and then the people who
Speaker 1: travel into to do that. So what what can what
Speaker 1: can people do? How can we get involved? So the
Speaker 1: first thing that we'd ask people to do is sign
Speaker 1: our petition because that gives us a voice. The second
Speaker 1: thing is share it with your friends, share it on
Speaker 1: your social media. We've got some articles up there on
Speaker 1: our Arkansas specific page at back Country Hunters out of
Speaker 1: Work talking about the issue. And and then just the
Speaker 1: main thing is if you want to contact your your
Speaker 1: legislators right now, it's okay, but there's nothing for him
Speaker 1: to do about it, so so be ready to do
Speaker 1: that if we need you to do that in the future,
Speaker 1: like if it goes to vote in Congress, the congressional level,
Speaker 1: that's where uh, people in other states could get involved,
Speaker 1: tell their their legislator, hey, vote against this happening, and
Speaker 1: they know what it was. Okay, Well, I think, I
Speaker 1: mean the premise of all this is right on is that,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got the public land that that we've
Speaker 1: got right now, and these to state public land. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is interesting, Like I never thought we'd have really
Speaker 1: anything quite like this come up in Arkansas. I didn't.
Speaker 1: Usually it's the Western states that have kind of these
Speaker 1: uh you know, places where there trying to sell off
Speaker 1: public land into private hands. And so this is just
Speaker 1: a unique example of how it can happen, you know.
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, if if that place was ten miles
Speaker 1: from here and coon hunted over there, you know, true
Speaker 1: or three nights a week in the wintertime, and I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be something that I would be very interested in.
Speaker 1: And we know that there, and that's that's just the
Speaker 1: way the stuff works. Is that for for the voice
Speaker 1: of hunters and anglers to have power, other people have
Speaker 1: to get involved with stuff that doesn't affect them. Like
Speaker 1: that's that's the way this works, is that we can
Speaker 1: we know that somebody's hunting over there, some somebody has
Speaker 1: raised their family hunting over there, and so it might
Speaker 1: as well be us that you know. And so that
Speaker 1: that's the way this stuff works. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the that's the culture that we're building inside the Hunting
Speaker 1: can comunity is one of Hey, we're kind of looking
Speaker 1: out for each other. And that's why I like about
Speaker 1: this is I've never been over there, just four or
Speaker 1: five hours from here. It's over in eastern Arkansas. We're
Speaker 1: in northwestern Arkansas. Um, but I think that's the way
Speaker 1: that we've got to view it, and so you know,
Speaker 1: we yeah, so just keep us keep us up to date. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and where can they find you on social media? And
Speaker 1: and updates on this and stuff at Arkansas b h
Speaker 1: A on Instagram. That's probably the easiest place to find us.
Speaker 1: We'll have regular updates there. Um. Of course we're on Facebook.
Speaker 1: We have a have a private group on Facebook. You
Speaker 1: has to join their um back Country Hunters dot org
Speaker 1: are Arkansas chapter page. We'll have information on it as well. Cool. Well, Um,
Speaker 1: is there anything else we haven't cover? I mean, I
Speaker 1: know we could, we we could go deep into it,
Speaker 1: but I think we've we've really done a good job
Speaker 1: of hitting the high points and letting people know what's
Speaker 1: going on. And we're just appreciative, you know, more than anything.
Speaker 1: I know the people over there. I have been in
Speaker 1: contact with with several of the people over there who
Speaker 1: are really concerned about it, and and there they at
Speaker 1: the risk of inviting the rest of the world to
Speaker 1: come down and hunt their place, they are asking for
Speaker 1: our help to save it. And um, and I think
Speaker 1: that's a worthy thing. And so I appreciate the time.
Speaker 1: Back Country Hunters Anglers mobilizes people better than any group
Speaker 1: I've ever been a part of. That's that's what we do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what yeah, I mean, And that's and the and
Speaker 1: the and the allies that we have. That's what I've
Speaker 1: told them. I'm like, we will get the message out,
Speaker 1: we will mobilize people to contact I mean. Part of
Speaker 1: the way that this problem is going to get resolved
Speaker 1: is finding an alternate way for the Universe City to
Speaker 1: sell it. Because if they need to sell it, if
Speaker 1: they need that money, well we let's help them find
Speaker 1: it in a way that makes sense. Well and sell
Speaker 1: you're saying, sell it to a group that would keep
Speaker 1: it in public. Yeah. Yeah, if they can sell it
Speaker 1: to Game and Fish Commission, if they for service and
Speaker 1: whatever it is. You know, let's find a way to
Speaker 1: keep this land. You don't have seen million you donate
Speaker 1: to this. Oh man, I just built a big old
Speaker 1: bear cabin out in the woods and not yet I'm
Speaker 1: still working on my first billion. Well, thanks to James,
Speaker 1: you've been um. Yeah, maybe we'll get We'll keep everybody
Speaker 1: updated on this and they can check it out on
Speaker 1: social media. That sounds good. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you.