Latest / The Standard Sportsman / Harrell Hosts: A Q&A with Brent and Cason

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Harrell Hosts: A Q&A with Brent and Cason · The Standard Sportsman

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Standard Sportsman Podcast, where duck and goose hunting's hottest topics meet a mission to leave the resource better than we found it.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Lifelong Arkansas hunter conservationist Kasten Stork and Brent Birch bring you thought-provoking conversations with entifled guests before, during, and after the season.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Glad you're here.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_08: Hey, welcome to The Standard Sportsman.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_08: My name is Chris Harrell, and you may be thinking, wait a second, where are the sultry tones of Brent and Kaysen that I'm used to hearing on all these episodes?
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_08: Well, I got good news and bad news.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_08: The bad news is, I'm guest hosting today, but the good news is Brent and Kaysen are with me, but we've got them on the other side of the proverbial table, so we can ask some questions to them and kind of go through some history and and some background on those guys.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_08: And I hope you don't mind, but they they've got a lot of friends in the outdoor industry, wild waterfowl and and other biologists, et cetera.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_08: And they asked about 50 of them to guest host today.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_08: They all turned them down, so they settled with me.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_08: You're stuck with me, I'm Chris Terrell, I'm your guest host.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_08: Let's welcome our guest today, Kasen Short and Brent Birch.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_08: Hey guys, how are y'all?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_08: Doing fine.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_08: Hey Chris, thanks for having us.
• 1:17
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_08: No problem.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_08: I'm glad y'all could make it.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_08: Uh a little bit different setup today.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_08: Thank you guys for letting me be a part of it.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_08: Uh looking forward to visiting with you a little bit.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_08: But um, we're recording this what last week of October 2026.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_08: It is dry as the Sahara.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_08: I was mentioning earlier before we started, I've got some game cameras up.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_08: Not a lot of deer, but I have had some camels showing up.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you know, you joke, but I've I've had some blue herons on camera where my deer are supposed to be.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_05: So I guess it's so dry that they're trying to find somewhere else to go.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_08: It's a it's it's biblical out there, but I got a verse for you guys.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_08: Y'all know Matthew 5.45.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_08: Not off the top of my head.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_08: I think that's Jesus talking Sermon on the Mount.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_08: He talks about it and he says, uh, for he makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_08: I don't know if you guys are just or unjust, but we could use it for rain right now for sure.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_08: So you're telling me there's a chance.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_08: There's a chance, yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_08: There's all of us.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_08: So anyway, hey, part of the, I guess the the goal today, you know, Casey, I kind of want to ask you some questions specifically.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_08: Kind of want to talk about a place and, you know, a business that's near and dear to your heart, you know, your family's farm, the guide and outfitting service, Bill Byers Hunter Club.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_08: I know people have heard you reference it before on different episodes, and and a lot of folks are probably aware, but you know, kind of give us a little overview.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_08: What is Bill Byers Hunter Club?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_08: What's your role?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_08: You know, we've got 70 years of history to cover here as we kind of talk about it, but kind of give us a 30,000-foot view of what what it looks like today, and then we can kind of go from there and kind of delve off into the past a little bit.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_08: So kind of give us that overview.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'm I'm happy to.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I do want to take this opportunity before everyone tunes out, listen to me answer questions, to thank you for bringing us the idea for the giveaway for the buy two duck stamps, because that that was really kind of your brainchild.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_05: Oh no.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_05: So oh, it was.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_05: Brent, I mean, Brent had a great idea, and I think it was you that that text us and like, hey man, you know, Harold and Sons is happy to throw in some product.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_05: Let's let's do a giveaway.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_05: And Brent, I don't do you have the list in front of you.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_05: And again, Chris, appreciate the idea and you stepping out there and being the first to jump on, but it is it's a pretty attractive prize package.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_06: It is that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_06: Uh yeah, definitely thanks to Chris, because that that was a good idea to kind of add some legs to this deal.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, and we've been working through a lot of channels.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_06: We've got to thank Robert Riley, who was a guest not too long ago on the show.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_06: Of course, Chris has been on the show before.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_06: Uh Robert helped us with some of the legal stuff to actually pull this thing off and stay in compliance with Arkansas law.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, so we've got it all buttoned up and we're we're about to be ready to go.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_06: And I think we're gonna say November 1st, this is going live, but we're gonna do a you know, some sweepstakes.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_06: That's what we got to call it legally.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_06: Um and uh folks that bought two duck stamps get a chance to enter and win some packages of uh you know prized stuff that's some really good gear.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_06: Uh definitely gonna have some Harylan Sons.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_06: Uh got several items that he's gonna put together a nice little package.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_06: Uh Sitka's giving a pair of waiters.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_06: Uh Drake is giving a pair of their BMF waiters, their new ones.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_06: Um got a designated puller.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_06: Uh Perfect Limited Outdoors is giving a whole uh designated puller setup, every every option that those things come with.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_06: Uh Tom Beckby has got some gear in there.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_06: Uh Raggio Custom Calls doing a uh a really nice knife.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_06: Um uh heavy, uh heavy steel is gonna donate a couple cases.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_06: We're gonna give away those separately.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you got Rixie Outdoors, got Shin, uh Natural Gear, uh put together a nice package.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_06: Uh Haas straps, if you're familiar with those uh dog collars, they're gonna give us some stuff.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_06: So uh really uh banded.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_06: Uh talked to Austin Booth yesterday, and banded once in on the action too.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_06: So I don't know exactly what their package is gonna be, but they're in.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_06: So I guess uh point of that being uh some really good stuff.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_06: Really appreciate them supporting the the campaign to do the two duck stamps and look for that to get out there on social media here and uh as we head into November and we're gonna run it through the season until we run out of packages.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_06: So we'll you know collect a bunch of entries and pull a name and we'll award one package and move on to the next.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_06: So uh that's the plan anyway.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_08: So for folks are folks that are, you know, obviously this is an awesome opportunity.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_08: You guys have done a lot of legwork to put this together and and hopefully all the listeners realize that you know, we're supporting conservation by uh purchasing an extra duck stamp this year.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_08: We all realize what all that allows us to do and allows the folks on the on the federal level to do.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_08: But it it where can people go to see more details about that?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_08: Y'all y'all pimp your Instagrams and all that kind of stuff for the for the actual um buy two duck stamps.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_08: What's the what's the accounts that we see all that from on socials?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you'll mainly see it uh under the standard sportsman uh sure account.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and then of course we'll share it through our accounts.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, casen has a personal account.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_06: I have a personal account, and then I have one tied to the book, the Grand Prairie.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_06: Uh Kasen's got the the Bill Byers Hunter Club or Bill Byers, I can't remember exactly the long name.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_06: Uh no, you got it right.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, there you go.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_06: Yep.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_06: Uh so you know we'll we'll we'll obviously share it through those and hope all the other supporters will also uh push it out there across theirs.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_06: But there is a website that's tied to all this, and that's where the entries will be, and that's buy2ckstamps.com.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_06: And it'll be plain, can't miss it, big button, enter the sweepstakes.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_08: Yep, and that'll explain how folks can show that they're already supporting by buying two duck stamps and be eligible for some of those sweepstakes winnings, right?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_06: That's correct.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_06: That's correct.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you know, why you're doing this and why it's important is all there, and then the ability to uh to enter that sweepstakes and see all the brands that supported.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_06: There were a lot of brands that supported that that didn't get on the sweepstakes, but we still appreciate them uh getting the word out there, and it's it's pretty interesting the traction it's gotten.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_06: We've even gotten a couple of restaurants.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_06: Open season and stuff guard is gonna put placards on the tables, uh encouraging people to buy.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, all the Flyway Brewery uh restaurants that they have between Northwest Arkansas, uh Little Rock, Memphis, they're gonna put stuff on their tables too.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_06: Uh little QR code, scan that, and go buy you two duck stamps.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_06: And the thing about it is we really don't care where you buy the stamps.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_06: You can go walk into your post office and go buy them.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_06: You can uh pick them up wherever you you have the availability to purchase an extra stamp.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_06: Just buy an extra stamp.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_06: And you don't have to stop at two.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's right, it's a no-brainer.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I know we preached it, but it's easy.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, uh, 98 cents of every dollar goes to the things we need a lot more of, and that's habitat.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_08: And I know for a lot of waterfowlers, you know, there's some oftentimes some frustration of what can I do to help?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_08: This is easy, it's tangible, touchable, feelable, walk-aroundable.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_08: It's, you know, you're spending that much money on another box of shells.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_08: So if you want to be able to shoot that box of shells, let's buy an extra duck stamp.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah, good work.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_08: Good work, guys.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_08: Buy two duckstamps.com is the website on that.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_05: So we talk about it all the time on here, you know, brands who who care about conservation and and supporting brands that that are in the arena.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_05: This is a great way to do it.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I would say to everyone, you know, fight the urge to keep it on the down low, just increase your chances of winning.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_05: Like you see it on social media, share it, send it to your friends.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_05: Because the more these brands see the exposure, the more they're going to get involved in years to come and the bigger this thing is gonna get.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_05: So uh help everyone spread the word and let's let's make this thing a big deal.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, good stuff.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_08: Well, again, thank you guys for letting me be a little bit part of that.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_08: That's uh y'all have done a lot of legwork, so kudos to you guys.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_08: Um, and uh y'all didn't bring me on here as a guest host to to blow smoke up your skirt, but I do hope you guys realize that that's appreciated by the the folks like me out there.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so good on you, good on you guys.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_08: So good stuff.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_05: You you had a big role in it, so we appreciate that.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_08: All good, all good.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Since 1937, Ducks Unlimited has been the leader in waterfowl conservation, with over 16 million acres of habitat conserved.
• 9:26
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• 9:31
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• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: You too can play a role in leading a legacy for the future of waterfowl hunting.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: To find an event near you or to join our volunteer team, go to www.ducks.org slash volunteer.
• 9:45
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• 10:50
  SPEAKER_08: So listen, I didn't know we were going to talk about all this at the start.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_08: You know, I didn't get all my my notes in order, but I'm glad we get that out there for folks to hear about.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_08: But Casey, can I circle back?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_08: I really want to, I really want to grill you a little bit about all the buyer's farm stuff.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_08: Are you good to run down the rabbit hole with me?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_08: Back on the hot seat.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_08: So look, I kind of mentioned before, um, obviously you've you a lot of folks realize that that buyer's farm, Bill Byers Hunter Club is, you know, something that you do, for lack of a better word, but um 70 plus year history, and and I really want to kind of run down and talk about some of the the past and what it wasn't before and and who Bill Byers was.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_08: But again, if if you don't mind, before we kind of kind of look to the past, kind of give us an idea of what is Bill Byers Hunter Club today, what's your role, some of what what goes on there?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_08: Um kind of give us, like I said, that 30,000-foot view.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_05: Uh just ride around, drink beer, and shoot frogs mostly.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_07: I'm having a good time.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, right.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_05: Uh that that was a joke for all the game ones listening.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_05: But anyway, uh what is it today?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_05: It is uh you know, that's a really good question because I think there's a a misconception that we're a wide open 60-day out-of-the-year guide service that just runs as much as we can, and and that's not the case.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_05: We are, or I I guess I am trying to be a continuation of that legacy of my grandfather.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, and we'll get into the the history of it a little bit as we go.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_05: But the duck hunting and the commercial outfit kind of helped him carve out a piece of property for himself.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and along the way, I think he realized that a lot of times those clients turned into really good friends.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_05: And and so I kind of grew up in that environment and I appreciate that uh in the service industry side of it, if you will.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so it's a balancing act, really, Chris, between being able to continue that legacy and introduce people to Arkansas duck hunting that otherwise might not have a chance, and being able to hunt with friends and family and spend time with my kids and and friends as well.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_05: So that's uh, as you know, with with kids of your own, it's uh it's a juggling act.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but that's what we're trying to do.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_05: Give a little bit back and and still proceed uh with the sport we love.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_08: Sure.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_08: So correct me if I'm wrong.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_08: Bill Byers Hunter Club today, it's a full service guiding outfit on your family ground, for lack of a better word, where y'all have a lodge, guides, hunting, all that.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um, how many acres is the farm currently that y'all operate on?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_05: It's just over 3,000.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_05: And that's correct.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_05: We don't we don't lease or hunt anywhere else, we just hunt on what we can manage and and develop.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_08: So give the for anybody that's not followed on socials or or hunted with you guys up there before.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_08: Speaking of which, y'all can see a lot of cool stuff that they do uh on Instagram.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_08: And I believe is your Instagram is it Bill Byers Hunter Club on Instagram?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_08: Is that correct?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_08: That yes, that's correct.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, and again, I'm not being asked to to put this out there, but I would tell folks great follow on Instagram.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_08: You can see a lot of this what we're talking about in the episode today.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_08: But um kind of give us an idea.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_08: What's the makeup of the farm?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_08: Are we talking about ag ground?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_08: Are we talking about timber sloughs?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_08: Kind of give a bird's eye view.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_08: What's the makeup of the farm currently?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: So it's mostly ag now.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_05: We've got a little bit of old growth uh timber actually that we we purchased here in the last decade.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh we had surrounded it on three sides forever and finally got the opportunity to pick that up.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then we've got two other reforestation projects that are in kind of different stages of life, uh, from you know, kind of 20 year CRP to some that's a little bit younger.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, we do have an application in for WRE to enroll approximately 50% of the farm.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_05: That has been an extremely uphill battle, has been very tough.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_05: Um because of our proximity, so we we rank, and this is getting away off in the weeds, you can stop me whenever, Chris, but we rank really high on all of the valuable components of WRE.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_05: We are not close enough to other protective ground to max out our score.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_05: And because of that, I think we're like a quarter to a half mile too far away.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_05: We land in an area that we may or may not ever get picked up.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_05: So the the appetite is there to restore it.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_05: Uh just a matter of finding the funding and the resources to do that.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_08: Well, thank you for that.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_08: So obviously that leads to another obvious question, kind of starting to look back, you know, some of the legacy of the farm and the folks that came before you.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_08: Obvious question.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_08: Who who was Bill Byers and and how did the how did Bill Byers end up, you know, outside of Hunter, Arkansas?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_08: So um, who was Bill Byers to you?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_08: How did he end up, you know, up there doing what he did?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_08: And then we'll kind of go into, you know, some of the history of what got him started in that area.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_05: So Bill was my grandfather, uh, born 4th July 1918, uh, in Lodges Corner.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_05: And that's originally where they settled that family.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_05: Uh a widow, my third great-grandmother came from Jefferson County, Alabama to Arkansas when it was basically trying to raise its tax base, uh, and you could be given 40 acres if you moved to Arkansas.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_05: So they moved into Arkansas pre-Civil War.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and as my grandfather was was born and kind of came of age, he realized, as Brent can attest, the land was not available down there.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_05: It was being farmed and it was competitive, and he knew if he was gonna have an opportunity to do something for himself, he had to move elsewhere.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_05: So moves up into the Wheatley area as a sharecropper, starts farming, uh, finally gets an opportunity to purchase some land there just outside of Hunter, which I'm gonna assume is how it got its name.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_05: You know, things you look back with relatives, you're like, I should have asked that question when I was still around.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but anyway, had a a partner in the business and originally bought 1,800 acres of uh of green timber there just in Hunter.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_05: And if Chris, if you've ever seen there's a picture, I know it's been on social media and it's in our lodge, but it's uh the guy standing on the front porch of what was the original building.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_05: And if you zoom in really close, you can see a sign in the window that's a little paper advertisement for the duck hunting.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_05: You can actually read like the 1800 acres and his description of what he was doing.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's in that old photograph.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_05: So, but yeah, that that was him.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_05: Uh moved there, you know, started that, levied it up because at that time Hunter was a timber community.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_05: It had been logged and there just wasn't a lot of value in timber.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_05: So started to hunt it, put water on it, started killing ducks, uh, you know, started guiding hunts, and then back then this was in 53.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_05: So I bought it in 53.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, yep.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_05: And I want to say at the peak of it, they were hunting like a hundred people a day at ten dollars a head to go hunt.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um, yeah, that sounds like a nightmare.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_08: Um so wait, let me let me pause you for a second.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_08: Bought 1800 acres, and of course, you you use the term green timber in 1953.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_08: You know, he bought 1800 acres of what we would that they would have called woods, correct?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_08: Correct.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_08: All 1800 acres timbered, but levied it up, put water on it, started hunting pretty much immediately, or was there some farming going on at the time too?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_05: No, there was no farming.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_05: So he was still working, you know, sheriff cropping for other people around and was trying to get that going.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't know, because I never asked the question directly.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_05: I I don't know if it was the the one mallard limit, you know, we went to a two-duck limit in 20-day season.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_05: I I think that was the component that really jump started clearing the woods to farm.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um, because I think at that point, you know, he realized that duck hunting obviously, as we know, ebbs and flows, and if you're gonna depend on that, you you might get hung out to dry.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_05: So I think that really maybe he always had had plans of farming his own ground, but I definitely think that time frame launched that or at least sped up that process.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_08: Sure, yeah, obviously.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_08: So you mentioned 100 hunters a day running through, did they have a a clubhouse or a meeting spot?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_08: They they weren't people weren't spending the night there, they were just showing up day hunting.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_08: Is that correct?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_05: That's right, just day hunting.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and again, we we'll share some pictures on social media about it, but uh yeah, we still have the original portion of that lodge has been added on to more times than I can count.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_05: But it it is still in existence in our lodge today, that that one room building that they all came through and basically gathered in the morning, had coffee and went out about their hunt.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_05: Wow.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_08: So how how did somebody how do they operate that running up to a hundred hunters a day?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_08: You know, were there guides?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_08: Was it, hey, you go here, you go there?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_08: How how much of it do you know?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_08: How did that work back in the 50s when they were starting?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, he had he had guides and it was it was pretty interesting because it's not that dissimilar today.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I think over time clients became friends and then became trusted enough to to start guiding for them.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_05: So it was just kind of a a lot of friendships born out of out of that business that gave way uh you know to other opportunities, I guess.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_08: Sure.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_08: So was was the area there, was it known for duck?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, obviously, eastern Arkansas been ducks there for millennia, but it sounds like he saw that opportunity of ducks in the area, here's a source of income, here's these 1800 acres that we can carry folks on.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_08: Was was that kind of the goal originally as he bought that property, do you believe?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_05: I w you know, I I have no way of knowing again, never asked that question directly, but I would assume so.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_05: You know, wouldn't it be something to go back and look at what I mean, not only eastern Arkansas, but but all of the the MAV through Arkansas, what what did it look like in the 30s, 40s, and 50s?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_05: You know, uh obviously a pretty expansive wilderness, but yeah, I'm sure he was aware that ducks were there naturally anyway, and thought to himself, as someone who loved the outdoors and loved hunting, like, hey, this is this has got some great opportunity.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_05: I should make a move on this.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_08: Well, and you know, how many times have we all dreamed about walking through the woods in East Arkansas and you know, 1850?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_08: You know, we've all heard the squirrel could cross the state without ever setting foot on the ground, you know, at one time.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_08: So would would have been nice to see it just for for frame of reference a little bit for sure on that.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_08: So um obviously in the 50s you mentioned um 100 plus folks coming.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_08: Do were any stories from back then of you know any notable personalities, you any famous folks that came through that um you you remember stories from from your granddad?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Tim McCarver used to hunt with us, which Tim I think grew up in East Arkansas or Memphis area.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_05: I know he went to high school in the Memphis area, but he hunted with us some back in I want to say the sixties.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_05: And I could be That's wrong.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_05: I'd have to look up exactly how old he is.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_08: But uh, but yeah, him and uh so wait a second, for all the for all the 20-year-olds, who's Tim McCarver?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I don't know.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_05: Have you watched the World Series in the last decade?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, not 20, so yes, I know who Tim McCarver is.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, go on.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh played played for St.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_05: Louis forever and and hosted uh I mean, I don't know how many World Series on Fox.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_05: But he called him for Fox, right?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not getting that wrong.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's right.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you're right.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_05: Put me on the spot with that one, Chris.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_05: All right, thanks, Brent.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_05: Brent's a baseball guy, let him tell you.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, uh just a a pretty I mean, I'm I may be speaking out of turn here to say he's a Hall of Famer, but a uh fairly renowned professional baseball player.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, and quite the broadcaster too for years and years.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_08: If for you younger guys, if you've seen clips pop up on your social of World Series from years past, you know, obviously World Series going on right now, but um you've probably heard Tim McCarver's voice if you've not seen clips of him actually playing ball.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah, quite notable.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_08: I cut you off though.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_08: Who else?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_08: You were about to tell me somebody else.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_05: Uh well, no, I I don't know if there was anybody else.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_05: Certainly not, you know, a babe root or anything like that, but uh I don't remember any any big names.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so I've seen Oh, go ahead.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_08: Sorry.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_05: No, no, no.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_05: I was gonna say that's an interesting side note.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I'm trying to sit down or find the time to sit down with my mother and a few of our the original guides that are still around and go through all those black and whites.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I want to have them kind of write on them who they recognize and video it all too, just to document that history before it's gone.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_08: Yep.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_08: And side note for all you got young guys listening, you know, we've, you know, Casein's a couple times said, you know, I never asked.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_08: If you've got some of those older folks in your life, your dad, granddad, grandma, whomever, that, especially on the outdoor side of it, sit down and ask them the questions.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_08: You've got a supercomputer in your pocket at all times where you can record phone or video and or audio with your phone.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_08: Um, I when before my granddad passed away, I sat with him some and jotted down a few notes about his hunting back in years past and his time in the Navy and World War II and different things.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_08: I should have done more of it.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_08: Um, for you guys that still have some of the folks that you that got you into hunting that you look up to and all that, sit down and ask him some of those questions.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_08: Um, because you don't want to be, you know, 60 years old one day trying to go.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_08: I I I never asked him.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_08: So just a side note there, uh great opportunity to kind of get some of that oral history from folks, especially as it pertains to waterfowling.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, 100%.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_05: So I'll tell this.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_05: My grandfather passed away in November of 09.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_05: We we buried him on the opening day of duck season.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_05: And then in August of 10, my father passed away.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_05: So in the span of less than a year there, I lost that entire lifeline of, hey, what was this like?
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_05: Or uh what what is this for?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_05: And that was probably the biggest struggle for me early on was not having those two to turn to and be like, hey, what would you do here?
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_05: What what is this history?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_05: What's the reasoning behind this?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_05: It was, you know, gone like that.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I mean, I almost not jovial, but almost kind of laugh about it now, like I never asked him because either I was too young to notice the details of it or or how significant it would be, or you name it, just didn't didn't get around to asking it and it's gone now.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_08: You laugh about keep from crying because some of those I yeah, I wish I wish I'd asked more.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah, for any of you guys that that have those folks, I would encourage you to be sure and ask them.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_08: Um and for some of them, they won't they don't have anybody that they they to to tell the stories to.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, ask those questions.
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• 26:11
  SPEAKER_08: So you mentioned some of the black and white photos.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_08: I've been to the camp house before, uh, the current clubhouse and lodge.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_08: You've got these wonderful black and white photos all over the wall.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_08: You've put up some of them on your socials in the past.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um, something that a lot of folks don't have in their family history.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_08: Why do you have all those great professional, for lack of a better word, black and white photos everywhere from back in the day?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so we're so very lucky to have those.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_05: Um my father became friends with the outdoor writer for the uh commercial appeal in Memphis, the newspaper there in Memphis.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, Henry Reynolds was his name.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_05: And Henry would would come and hunt and often write about his hunts there.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_05: And either brought the camera himself or brought a photographer with him so often.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_05: So, I mean, there for several decades, it is a well-documented history of that farm and and the people that they hunted with and that came with them.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_05: And it is a it's truly a treasure of ours to have all those images.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_08: So that I it's crazy to see some of those pictures.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_08: And I and I hope maybe when this episode comes out, you might put a few more up on social for folks to see.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_08: Because it's it's cool to see, you know, the calls they were blowing, the the clothes they were wearing, um, in general, but then to have that connection with those people with your granddad and the folks he was kicking dad and folks he was carrying, uh, what a what a blessing to you guys to have those.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you mentioned the calls.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_05: Uh go back and look, Chris.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_05: Do you do you see anybody with an old turned around backwards, or do they just do it, you know, the regular way?
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_08: Just like my granddad had it had it the right way.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_08: Had it the right way.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_08: Not throwing shade or anything, but yeah, it's funny how that works.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_07: But it ended up.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, that's good stuff.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_08: Um, so tell me a little bit, you know, you mentioned your your your granddad and your father's passing.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_08: Kind of tell me a little bit about your time that you had with with both of them, especially as it comes to waterfowling on the farm and the transition from um, you know, 1950s, you know, we talked about all the the woods and all that, and then you alluded to it earlier.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, I guess cover this first.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_08: That at one point, you know, what was left of all the timber got cut down, plowed under, and turned to ag.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_08: About what was the time frame on that?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_05: Um so that was a really long process.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_05: We've got a an aerial photo from 64.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_05: So in 64, I think it was there may have been one deadening.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and and to explain that to people, a deadening is just you put water on trees until they die.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and there's a there's a life phase that it goes through stage that is extremely hontable.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, very productive as a deadening, although it is limited because then it's gone entirely.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_05: So I guess it started in the early to mid sixties, and to my knowledge, even into the eighties, they were still picking up roots and and chunks of wood in fields to finally get them completely cleared.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_05: So a pretty long process there.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_08: So so what did that look like?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_08: You know, I guess I don't know if we would have called it habitat management back then, but you know, how how were they managing it for the ducks originally?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_08: And then how was that transition, you know, to farming?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_08: You know, I th well, there was a time where y'all they weren't really carrying folks duck hunting, is that correct?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know that it ever went away entirely.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sure it it ebbed and flowed with season, uh, with those season dates that we talked about, but uh it it's definitely and and we'll get into that um because I think it's gonna relate to to a lot of what Brett and I talk about and maybe where you're at in your stage of hunting, Chris, but we'll we'll get to that in a few minutes.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um so I think it ebbed and flowed in terms of uh the season and and availability dates and stuff like that.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm sorry, you had asked me something else, I may have already gotten sidetracked.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_08: Oh no, just kind of the habitat management aspect of uh you know from 60, 70 years ago.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_08: You know, how was that?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_08: What was the viewpoint there for so yeah, it's it's interesting.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_05: This is probably gonna uh make some people mad or it may shed some light on current events, but there's some pictures, uh I still have them, of where they sowed rice into dead timber and grew an amazing rice crop in dead timber and then hunted over it.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_05: Shockingly, uh it was still legal before 1998, and that didn't change.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so it's not a new practice.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it's been going on for longer than you and I have been around, Chris.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_05: But some of that, you know, what what they could do and where they could do it.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and you got to think too, you know, they didn't have the internet, they you know, that was really a trial and error.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_05: What what could you do and what worked?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_05: And did you see it on the ground?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, you're you're just ground-truthing things and and trying different stuff.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_05: But um yeah, stuff like that.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, okay.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_08: So this is maybe a little bit off topic, but I I've heard stories before.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_08: Tell me about the the Canada goose situation on the farm and your your granddad's relationship with with the east in general and especially especially the cannabis.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well, so I'll back up real quick because I mentioned the dead timber.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_05: I will say, you know, I remember into the 80s, the government had a set aside program.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_05: Um basically you could plant cover crops and receive some payment for not actually farming.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_05: So Milo and Millet were some of those cover crops.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, so even in the mid to late 80s, we were pretty growing a good number of acres of millet and Milo and hunting over that and and trying to use that set aside program and you know, I don't know, improve their farming practice all while providing habitat as well.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um, yeah, so okay, so on to the Canada geese.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_05: Uh man, I I don't know why it became an obsession of his, um, but it but it did.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_05: I guess I don't know, and Brent, you may can talk about this from the time frame standpoint with your historical knowledge.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_05: He's calling the geese.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_05: No, I'm trying to get him in on the conversation.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_05: I'm tired of talking.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I mean they used to kill a bunch of Canada geese in Arkansas, and I think as my grandfather saw that going away.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_05: Migrating Canada geese, correct?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, this was pre nobody knew what the word resident meant in terms of you know where you lived or where the geese came from.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um so yeah, I think as those migrators began to to stop showing up and he saw those numbers decreasing, he had this idea that you know he could start raising them and releasing them and and kind of you know offset that loss.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_05: Uh while it may have been a noble idea at the time, I'm sure there's some people, I don't know, some people love hunting, some people love that resident season.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but there's probably some golf courses that would wish that had never happened.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_05: But but yeah, he started raising them.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_05: Uh there's people all around the state that talk about you know coming to his house and picking them up and and you know, he would build crates and send them to people.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_05: And there's a lot of resident populations around the state that I'm sure he had a hand in starting.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_05: What was the time frame on that?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_05: Uh that would have been in the 90s, mostly through the 90s.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_08: Right about the time that there was probably a noticeable decline, and you know, what what little bit of you know traditional migrating Canada geese hunting went on.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_05: Cause I think at at that time, and and again, Brent may can help me with this.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_05: I want to say that in that time period we looked at well, A, we had a 30-day duck season, but but B, I think we had four days that you could hunt Canada geese, and it was like two weekends.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_05: One may have been the last weekend of duck season, and then the next would have been like the weekend after, and that was all that you could hunt them.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_05: That's you know, a far cry from where we're at today.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 34:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_06: Because I I I I think it was the 80s when uh the Arkansas Game to Fish reintroduced resident Canada geese.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know if y'all remember case.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_06: It may not, he may never go that direction, but they built this kind of sanctuary at Clarksville, uh, which is not far from the the uh the Arkansas River.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_06: And they built this sanctuary to reintroduce Canada geese because they had slowed down migrating here, and that's where um they built a couple of satellites like that, but uh yeah, the game of fish reintroduced them, and that's uh uh another big chunk of where the resident geese came from.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_06: And of course they fanned out from there, and now you got golf courses training dogs to chase geese off the greens because they create such a mess.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, yeah.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_05: So they would they would bring them in by the truckload from like the east coast.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_05: I I remember when the E Teen Wheelers would come in with all these geese that they had caught, and he would he didn't keep any of them, like he would just disperse them to people that wanted them, and eventually that you know, crossing state lines with them, the uh the chicken industry in northwest Arkansas got wind of it and shut it down, gave gave them a fit.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_05: There was a little legal action, it was a whole thing about stopping it, but uh they eventually stopped it.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_08: Anybody here in this today, don't start trucking migratory waterfowl into your farm.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_08: There's some more legal issues than nowadays.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, we know a lot more now than than we did 30, 40 years ago.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_08: Well, but and that leads me to another question, you know, not just the Canada goose thing.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_08: And I've been on the farm before on like some banding operations.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_08: And that's been something that's been a part of that area in the farm for years.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_08: You know, talk a little bit.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_08: Was there was there much banding of waterfowl going on in the area and on the farm historically back then?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_08: I know there's been quite a few operations here in the last few years, but talking about that a little bit.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_08: Was that was that on the radar uh when your granddad was still running everything?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I I know they had done it some uh because I remember my father talking about having to help him catch ducks, whoever, you know, a grad student, whoever it was at the time, was was struggling to catch them out there in the open, and he was like, Well, let's try this.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_05: And they were successful in banning some ducks.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_05: Now, how often that happened, I I don't remember.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm willing to bet that was probably in and around the time frame that a lot of that banning was done in the White River bottoms, which uh Brent, is that still what they're using for AHM or that they started using Dr.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_05: Osborne's stuff?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I don't I don't know that they're they're plugging that in there yet.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_05: I don't think so.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_05: I think they always lean back on that the White River stuff they did eat what would be eons ago now.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_05: But that would I would assume that would be in around that time frame because it's typically you didn't have you didn't have biologists doing it like we see now attached to universities.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_05: It was U.S.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_05: fish and wildlife.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_05: So if they were in the area, chances are they were doing a bigger, more comprehensive study, and that didn't go on all the time.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_05: Most all, you know, there was hardly any winter bandwidthing that went on prior to what we see today.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_05: It's become much more prevalent in today's world.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_08: Well, cool.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_08: It's cool to me to have to know what's gone on there in the last few years so far as banding and research opp uh opportunities, but to know that that was something that was part of the of the farm and the and the um your family's legacy, if you will, in that area, even in years past.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_08: So kind of cool to see that continue and go forward for sure.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_08: Did it change how you look at ducks and duck hunting?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_08: For me personally?
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_08: Um I I think so, yes.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, you can't help but, you know, if you get a little peek behind the curtain and and what all goes on to those that banding process, you you can't help but kind of get a a different viewpoint of it.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_08: Um, you know, I was I was fooled that even as a kid back in the early 90s, I got to go over and be part of some banding stuff, like at the hollow bend refuge over in the river valley where I grew up.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_08: And you don't really think about it when you're six or eight years old, but being an adult and seeing that it goes to it and why we do it, yeah, it's cool to have it on your lanyard to harvest one.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_08: That's a neat thing.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but the research and the the value that that's involved with that, yeah, it's it's it's an eye-opener for sure.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_08: Um being uh being a being a part of it and kind of understanding it from that side.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's really it's it's neat.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and I was always it's still the same, you know, it's fun to kill a band and it's definitely going to go in the lanyard, and that's just what we do as hunters.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_05: But when you you know participate in a project like that and you see all the volunteers that show up and the time and effort that goes into it, you know, it kind of gives you a different perspective of you know the people involved in our sport and the research that goes into it.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, I would encourage anybody that has the opportunity to to try to tag along and go help banning operation because it's it's a worthwhile cause and it'll I think it'll make us all a little bit better conservationists.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_08: And do you think buying two duck stamps would you know help any banding efforts anywhere?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_05: You know, maybe uh it would have to, right?
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_05: I mean you look at golly, look at how few bands are going out today and they talk about funding, then hey, we can try to fix that.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_08: Go to buy two duct duck, excuse me, buytwooducks.com.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_08: Good stuff.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_08: So let me ask you this.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_08: Um, to get back to kind of the farm and and over the years, how is kind of the approach to managing that property?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_08: How's that changed over the years?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_08: Obviously, you know, your granddad and your folks, you know, had what they were doing, you know, kind of juxtaposition what was going on for them versus kind of the the viewpoint you have now and how you're going about, you know, managing that property for both habitat for ducks and for hunting.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's always a moving goalpost.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, in an ideal world, we would have an unlimited budget and we wouldn't have to worry about the production side of it.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_05: We could just do whatever we wanted to for wildlife, but but I don't I don't live in that world, unfortunately.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_05: So in a year like this where we're 25 inches below on average rainfall and we're looking at record high diesel fuel, it it's it's a tough year.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_05: Um, how do you strike that balance of you know, can't go broke providing habitat, you know, commodity prices stink.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it's a tough year to be a farmer, and we're still trying to set the table and do stuff for waterfowl.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I'm sure there's some people listening, they're like, oh, yeah, but you get paid for it.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, but you know, it's expensive, it's very expensive.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I think, you know, decades ago, back in the 80s, we would have basically the entire farm flooded the opening weekend of duck season.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um, now, mind you, that was a 30-day season.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_05: We didn't have the splits that we do, so it was easier and more justifiable to do it that way.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_05: But in today's world, I don't think I could touch that for you know under a hundred thousand dollars.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so it's kind of a balancing act, right?
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_05: Like how much do we need to start the year?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_05: How much habitat is required to to set the table?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_05: And then is it gonna rain?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_05: Can we catch that?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_05: Can we do it a little bit cheaper?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_05: So I don't know, maybe maybe it's a little tougher for me than it was for them because commodity prices were a little bit better and inputs were a whole heck of a lot cheaper back then.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_05: Um so again, it's just a I feel like I'm being evasive, but it's just a juggling act, you know.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_05: What what do we have to have and what can we get by with?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm sure that that matrix kind of changes year to year from you know what you've put in in years past, what you need to put in crop wise that year.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_08: And um, you gotta have to be kind of nimble um as you make your plan.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_08: How far out do you forecast so far as like crop rotation and um what's going into WRE, what's CRP stuff?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_08: You know, how what's the is there a 10-year plan, a three-year plan?
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_08: Are we, you know, give me a little insight, you know, under the curtain there.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_05: Uh well, crop rotation is pretty annual.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, we could probably plot it out because generally it's an even rotation.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you know, what's rice will be beans and what's beans will be rice.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_05: It's not always the case.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, on a lot of the stuff we duck hunt, we could we could go rice permanently if we chose to.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_05: You give up a little bit of yield to do that.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so some of it's just year to year.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_05: Uh we we backed off on our rice acres this year because of commodity prices.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, I think we've exhausted that surplus, and I think rice prices will be pretty good next year.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_05: So we're gonna go heavy into rice next year.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_05: So we try to be as nimble and flexible as possible because it's uh a very, as we all know, unsteady climate politically and economically right now.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_08: Sure.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_08: Well, and and circling back to originally 1,800 acres, mostly all woods, you know, about 3,000 acres now, that most of which you said was AG with some CRPWR, you know, a couple little blocks of of mature timber.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_08: You know, that's kind of a microcosm of what's gone on all over the state of Arkansas for the last century so far as those bottomland wetlands kind of going away.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_08: Um, both of y'all talk a little bit about some of that history there of, you know, the the big booms of logging that happened, you know, almost a hundred years ago.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_08: And again, you know, mid-century, I you uh if you've read, if any of you guys have read, like, you know, the Arkansas Duck Hunter's almanac, different ones, you've you've seen the fact that a lot of the public timber WMAs that are still have mature timber on them.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_08: The only reason we still have those is because they couldn't log them when they were logging everything else back in the day.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_08: So y'all talk a little bit about that of kind of the history of some of that, not just at Buyer's Farm, but all over East Arkansas, some of that, that what it was before and and why it went away and when it went away.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, my recollection is uh a lot of that went away due to downturn in ducks and um soybean pricing was was it was advantageous to cultural.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_06: Clear ground to to farm soybeans.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and so a lot of people did it.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_06: And you're right, a lot of that that still stands today was ground you just couldn't farm it.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_06: You couldn't get equipment even back in those days to do anything in it.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_06: Um you know, you you can you can look back at old satellite maps, you can even see the shift from then.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_06: I I have uh on my farm, there is a uh website you can go back and look at satellite images dating back, I have one as early as 1955, and you can see the transition of that area even from the 50s, not even going prior to that when a lot of the stuff was cleared.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_06: But um yeah, it's it's pretty amazing how much of the the bottom land hardwoods are that were around are no longer there.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, one of our best hunting spots uh was a was formerly a cypress break uh a long time ago and it got cleared.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_06: So uh somebody tried to farm it.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_06: Now, of course, it's it's hard even today, it's really hard to farm.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_06: In fact, we're gonna take part of it and put it back into uh the the part that stays flooded, which is a which is a on the kind of the crescent moon shape of this break that we have uh on our property.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_06: Uh work with the nature conservancy, we're gonna put it back in cypress trees um and and turn it back to what it originally was.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_06: So um yeah, it's incredible what's clear.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, the the buyers farm is a great example.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_06: Uh the farm my dad hunts there at G Ridge, Arkansas, which is just east of uh a little town called Humnok, uh it was all uh bottomland hardwoods at one time and was cleared to farm.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and the name G Ridge, and coincidentally came from, they they lettered the high ground because that's where they had to store equipment when they were clearing all this ground uh to open it up and and turn into farm ground.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_06: And so the big winter rains would come and and these these low-lying areas would be underwater, so they had to move whatever equipment they were using, wagons, uh everything else, uh, you know, probably horses, mules, saws, all their stuff.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_06: And they there was even a sawmill there right there at the in the G Ridge Hum Noak area, but A B C D E F G.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_06: And so that that's where the little community got its name, G Ridge, because it was basically Hill G uh on for all these logging uh operators that were in the the world at that time.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, it's pretty remarkable.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_06: But uh that's my recollection is anything left standing today probably couldn't be farmed.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_06: Um not a reason to hang on to it other than that.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_06: Because I mean, ducks weren't uh they weren't as commercialized as they are now.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I mean there were guide service.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_06: Obviously, you got 70 years of history with the buyers club.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_06: There's a few others out there, Slicks has been around forever.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_06: Uh there's a handful more that have been around a really long time, but it wasn't I mean there were people coming here and paying to to duck hunt, but nothing nothing uh you know volume-wise like it is now.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_06: But it was the my recollection is soybean pricing was what drove a lot of that.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I was gonna say I think$14 beans probably clear more timber than anything.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um and Brent, I I would ask you too, because I can talk about the way we cleared it, or my grandfather cleared it.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we still have the old D7 dozer, but it was pre-hydraulic, you know, it had a three-cylinder pony motor on it.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_05: And he had a you know a V-blade that would cut the timber and a root rake and all, you know, all these attachments.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_05: And it was an ongoing process to clear that land.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_05: Lo and behold, you you felt fast forward 20 years, and we've got excavators now that just knock down trees one at a time, logging equipment changes, and suddenly, you know, you go from not farming to farming pretty doggone quick when you're chasing those bean prices.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_05: So I guess my question is how much do you think modernization of equipment really changed that landscape?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I mean a lot.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_06: Um because they probably were able to get even closer to these these you know bottom lands that just were untouchable prior to.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_06: But even modern equipment can only go so far.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_06: That's why you see floating tracos and and everything else on the landscape, because some places are just not real good for humans to be messing around in.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, and that's definitely you know, you as big as biomedo the wildlife management area is, I mean, it's almost 40,000 acres.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, think about how much ground that is that that somebody couldn't clear and farm.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_06: And that's why it still stands uh today.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and and I think they bought it for like seven dollars an acre or something ridiculous, uh, because it was pretty worthless ground.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_06: And now you you you think about it, and and and especially being in this business, but you think about how this these some of this ground was viewed as pretty much worthless.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, you can go out there and shoot a squirrel and kill some ducks, but I mean it's it's just some woods that get water on them, and now you take them to$15,000,$20,000 an acre,$25,000 an acre in some situations.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_06: It's just mind-blowing, totally mind blowing.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_05: I I think my grandfather bought some of ours at$100 an acre.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_05: A lot of some of it just paid the taxes that rode on it.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that there was a lot of that for sure.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_05: Um a lot of that.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_05: But um and he made that comment one time tongue in cheek, but he said that you know, at one point he probably could have bought all the land in Woodruff County, of course, you know, as a young six or seven-year-old, I'm like, Well, why didn't you?
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_05: And of course, his response was was pretty grounded.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_05: He was like, I didn't think I could ever pay for what I had, you know, I took on more than I ever thought I could deal with.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but it was out there and it was available.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's worth remembering when when people start talking about standing crops, I think you need to realize how marginal this ground is that the stuff's being grown on.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, like the you know, the really good quality ground is getting harvested and that's production ag.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm not saying there's not standing corn in places.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_05: I just I don't know that it's gonna set any records for yield either.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, this is some low-line stuff that when we talk about, you know, down in these areas that people are duck hunting.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's a valid point.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_06: That's a valid point.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_06: Um now, yeah, you're right, though, there there is some quality ground that is left for the ducks.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_06: Um, there are people definitely doing that, but uh in a lot of cases, yeah, it's it's stuff you're not gonna you're not gonna show up and and get the price you want uh for it because it's it's just doesn't produce.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_06: Uh so leave it for wildlife.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_05: It wouldn't make money to farm it.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_05: Like it would be a losing revolution anyway.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's exactly right.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_08: Well, and we're we're fortunate this dry year we're having this year, that they didn't have a year this dry back in, you know, 1920, or they might have cut all the biomeda, you know, kind of thing.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_06: Uh yeah.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, that's possible.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_06: Very possible.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_08: And as, and as, you know, as as the world has progressed, and you know, there was more channelization and you know, irrigation projects and and drainage things that they cleaned up that allowed more and more of that bottom land to to go away.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_08: But, you know, at this point in, you know, 2026, I think most everybody kind of realizes we need to hold on to what we got.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_08: You know, I don't I don't see any big projects of clear-cutting any um any bottom land forests that are left, um, fortunately.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_08: Um, but that also leads to, you know, there's a lot of folks, you know, you mentioned casing on on y'all's place and and Mr.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_08: Brent as well, some of the, you know, a lot of the WRE CRP stuff that's come back in.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um, how valuable is that for the waterfowl landscape?
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_08: And do you guys know like what's a rough percentage of like, you know, how much land in Arkansas is acreage-wise is enrolled in some of those conservation programs.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_08: Do you all know that off the top of your head?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_08: I don't.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_08: I don't.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_08: The answer is not enough.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_08: We need to keep doing more.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_08: That's that's correct.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_05: That's a fact.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_05: I I don't think you can over I don't think you can overstate the value of either CRP or WRE.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_06: I'll tell you, I I'll tell you, uh, because I looked it up real quick.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_06: Uh nice.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_06: CRP wise, Arkansas has about 206,000 acres.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_06: Nice.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_06: That's from uh Ag Council provides that number.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_06: I can look at WRP real quick.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_08: And sorry, I shouldn't prepare you for that ahead of time, but yeah.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_06: That's all right.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_06: Uh that's not much.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_06: No, it's not.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_06: And about 250,000 acres in WRP.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_06: So about five about 500,000 acres across a lot of ground.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_05: A lot.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_05: And so since you're since you're looking up stuff for us, how much land was lost when they basically cleared the MAV just through Arkansas alone?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_07: Okay.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_05: Keep talking about that.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_05: No big deal.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_08: Like not even like not necessarily how much land, you know, what was the, yeah, what did the bottom line hardwood forest, you know, yeah, you can look, is it are we down to like it's like less than 10% of what it was originally?
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_08: I'm sure we'll get the action here in a second.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_08: I think that's right, Chris.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_05: And I and I know ultimately it'll never happen, but the goal of all these projects is to restore that.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um it's not gonna happen, you know, commercial ag is is gonna stay, but somewhere there's a balance of that.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um you know, and it's without getting off into politics, you know, we we we talked to uh uh Crawford about this and about the farm bill and how so much of it is not farm related.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, I think he made the comment that the conservation side's easy because everybody's you know happy to to whatever do conservation.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, well, then why aren't we spending more?
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_05: If everyone's happy with the the funding for conservation, let's double it.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_05: Hell, let's triple it.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_05: Um because there's a lot of other stuff.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's maybe that side of it's kind of lost on people, maybe particularly in on the hill in DC who don't understand it.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you can look at you can look on our farm right here and what WRE would mean for the general public, not just for us, but you're looking at lowering you know the fertilization rates that are going down the hill.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_05: You're lowering sediment that are going into Big Creek and then in turn going into the White River and into the Mississippi and then to the Gulf.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_05: You know, all of that has to do with how these reparian buffers and how these watersheds work.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you're gonna slow down flooding downstream.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_05: There are so many, you know, primary, secondary, tertiary benefits to these programs that are just I don't I don't know that people see it or or think about it when they hear about these programs.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um and that's part of what Brett and I were doing when we were in DC a few years ago talking about this stuff was it's a big deal.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_05: And then just from a taxpayer standpoint, the the reduction in uh you know preventive plant insurance claims, you're gonna it's gonna save taxpayers money, even as it stands right now, it's gonna save them money.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_05: I think we could spend a lot more on it and convert or restore a lot more uh and still be saving taxpayers money.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_05: So you know it's hard to go back and and say I don't know.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe maybe it's easy to look at a landowner like myself now and be like, well, y'all should have never cleared it.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_05: Agreed.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_05: I don't have a hand in that and I can't change that.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, um all I can do is be willing to take a loss financially, you know, over the long run to restore it.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_05: And that's where some of that funding comes from.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_05: Like in in the short term, that funding helps the landowner, you know, kind of get get out of that production ag cycle and into something else.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_05: But uh in the long term, it's I mean, it's a losing proposition for someone to enroll this stuff.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um CRP, WRE, you name it, like it's uh it doesn't always make dollars and cents to to do it.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_05: So I think it should be obviously I'm I'm on a soapbox now, but I think it should be easier for for people to get enrolled.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_05: If the appetite's there, then then we should make it happen.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_08: Sure.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, and you would you'd like to think that most folks that have that opportunity out of the goodness of their heart would love to do it.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_08: But yeah, that it's tough to take a 200-acre block that's given a good yield and turn around and you know, take your$2,200 an acre one-time payment and and then roll it in whatever or whatever the numbers are.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_08: But yeah, um, I would love to see more opportunity coming from the from the feds to either A, make that easier or make it easy more accessible uh to put more acreage in it for sure.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_08: Did you get a number on that yet, Mr.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_08: Brent?
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_06: I did, I did.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_06: Uh this is from the Game and Fish and some of their, you know, when they were really pushing their uh green tree uh reservoir management plan.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_06: Uh they're saying at the turn of the 20th century, the Arkansas Delta had more than five million acres of bottomland hardwoods and lost over 60% of that.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_06: Um and to your point a minute ago, uh, I can't remember if that was before we started recording or not, but uh, you know, a squirrel could go from one side or the other to uh in Arkansas never touched the ground.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_06: When Arkansas was purchased, Louisiana purchased when it became part of the United States, uh it was 96% trees.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_06: Uh yeah, you think about that.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_08: East Arkansas, Delta, Ozarks, Washington, all of it.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's that 96% of the state was was underneath the tree.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_06: So um it's pretty wild, but but yeah, that's a that's a lot of loss, and and you can see it.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_06: It's pretty easy to see on a map.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_06: Um what it what has changed there and and trying to slowly build it back or improve what's there.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_06: I know, and I'm not not that we have to go down that row with all the the timber harvesting that the game and fish is doing, but some of that is for good reason.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_06: Um you can argue both sides of it, and I don't know why they're doing this or why I'm doing that, but that is a forest management strategy that they didn't come up with.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_06: That's uh it's it's people that know what they're doing that have that have told them that uh you need to trim this out, create this canopy, let these red oaks grow, so on and so forth.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_06: And you get into the whole, well, I've never killed a duck that's got an acorn in its craw.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_06: And you know, you got all that, all that rigamarole that goes around.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_06: But um, you know, I'm I'm with you.
• 58:07
  SPEAKER_06: I would really like to see see the bounce back of some of this.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_06: And you got people doing it, um, you know, planting trees and trying to grow them, but a lot of that's in it's not from a hundred years ago or fifty years ago, it's from the last 10 years, and those trees aren't aren't where uh where we need them to be yet.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_06: But but more and people, more and more people are making those efforts, and it does, it it it relies on the federal government pitching in, or somebody like the nature conservancy, which we're leveraging uh to plant some trees on our place.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_08: Well, and uh two things that that brings up to me.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_08: One, when I get my time machine, I do not want to go back and buy a lot of ticket for a billion dollars.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_08: I want to go back and see that 97 percent um forested coverage of the state of Arkansas.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_08: I think that would be absolutely um mind-blowing to to see what it was once upon a time.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_08: So for sure.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_08: Uh so that leads me to kind of a another question.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_08: You know, given the massive change in landscape in the state of Arkansas, um either on the local level or or or statewide or you know, even you know, MAV wide, plus all the hunting pressure that Arkansas gets, why do the ducks keep showing up?
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, what is it that makes Arkansas such a you know, the Mecca that it is in spite of all the the negatives we've talked about in the change in the landscape and all that?
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_08: You know, what what for for somebody that maybe is listening to this podcast for the first time, going, oh, y'all are talking about how everything's changed and yada, yada, yada, why do they keep showing up?
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so one, I think I think rice save ducks.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, but here we are talking about white fronts right before we hit record.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_05: We're talking about the early seasons, about to open, uh, it's dry, numbers are this or that.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_05: You know, white fronts are a really good species to look at when we talk about waterfowl and their ability to adapt.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_05: They followed rice production up, you know, through Texas, Louisiana, into Arkansas, and now Arkansas winters, or you know, when the population was a little better, was wintering a substantial number of white fronts, still does.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you can go back into the 70s and that didn't exist, right?
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_05: So they adapted quickly.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_05: That's one of the things that concerns me about them regarding the early season, the pressure that we put on them, but I'll stay off that soapbox right now.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_05: But mallards are no different.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, we we cleared all that timber, along comes rice production, and and kind of saves the mallard.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_05: Now, has the decline in the quality of habitat in a rice field affected mallard harvest in the state of Arkansas?
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_05: I would say absolutely.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, we harvest earlier, waste grain germinates.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I think we're we're at the give up threshold for a duck about the time we we exit the field with a combine, and you know, if they fall till it or whatever, that just goes down from there.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_05: So I think they adapted.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_05: I think we're kind of in a tough spot right now because I I don't think farming is certainly what it was uh in the 80s or 90s.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_05: I also think we might be on the cusp of like the next big revolution for Arkansas in terms of ratoon rice becoming a viable option in the state of Arkansas.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, this is the second year that we've been able to do it.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_05: And again, you look back to my childhood when we we would start cutting rice, maybe at the end of September.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_05: Um, at this point, we could have cut our second crop about that time this year.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_05: So it's changing and it may be about to come full circle on that pendulum.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but anyway, I think that maybe answered your question, I guess.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_08: Sure.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_08: Well, and and I'm glad to hear for you guys for the ratoon stuff, because I know this past weekend I was deer hunting down around Elmira and drove all the way back up, you know, through Stuttgart Hayes and back to my camp in Deval's Bluff.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_08: And with this dry year, not that they don't do it every year, there's a lot of stuff that's already plowed under, dirt panned, ready for next year that, you know, there's not a speck of organic material visible to the naked eye.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_05: So it's been burned or turned under, and you wouldn't know that fuel was that high because they're still going full steam ahead.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_05: Right.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_08: So um yeah, hoping that, like you said, that some of that ratoon stuff really starts taking off for a lot of farmers across the landscape.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, hang on.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_05: This this is where my point was going a second.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_05: I I forgot about it.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_05: The ADD kicked in.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_05: So my grandfather used to tell me, uh, Chris, you've hunted in what we call our South 160.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_05: You're familiar with that field.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_05: And that's still one of our best spots on the farm, day in and day out.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_05: Like it just produces.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_05: But my grandfather was adamant that the spots that were really good in timber were still really good in fields.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_05: So I don't know what makes it that way.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_05: I I don't know if it's topography or what it is they can sense, you know, generations of birds later, but he was adamant that the historically good places were good regardless of the type of habitat that was on it.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um and that kind of comes into some of the fly by night, you know, duck farm creators that you see on social media these days.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I don't know that you can make a duck farm out of nothing.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_05: You can absolutely improve one, but if my grandfather was right about that, if there's something that they inherently like about a place, it's gonna be hard to just recreate that out of nothing.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_05: But anyway, I guess the full question, full answer would just be adaptability.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_05: Sure.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_08: Well, and I'm glad you brought that up too, because even when Brent mentioned earlier that down there on that farm where the old cypress break was, that they're still killing ducks.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_08: And it's crazy to me, yeah, how how ducks will historically continue to use those individual pockets that were, you know, even before, you know, we came through and cleared the timber or you know, cut down the cypress break, whatever.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_08: They're still, you know, even just a little old swell in a in a what's now a rice field.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_08: And why do the ducks hit right there?
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_08: Well, they've they've hit right there on that low spot for, you know, since before the white man was chasing them across the prairie.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: So kind of cool to see that for sure.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: The Standard Sportsman is brought to you by Noah Perry, financial advisor with Raymond James and Associates.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, Noah is an avid sportsman.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: He was raised in a family where duck hunting tradition and conserving our natural resources runs deep.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, he understands that success in the field requires proper planning, discipline, and patience, and most importantly, a high level of trust.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: Trust in your gear, trust in your dog, trust in your hunting partners.
• 1:04:27
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• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: Call Noah today at 501-313-7313 or send an email to noah.perry at RaymondJames.com.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: Noah Perry with Raymond James, personal by nature, trusted by design.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_06: Serious waterfowl management isn't about reacting day-to-day.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_06: It's about making better decisions every season.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_06: Create the X is a waterfowl land management app built for the real work in the field.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_06: It's not meant to replace your journal or notebook.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_06: It allows you to access your past management history in real time right in the field.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_06: Track water movement, log field work, and GPS overlays, mark blinds, drop land damage pins, and record equipment maintenance documented by location and date so nothing gets lost over time.
• 1:05:29
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• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_06: From your first field to the farthest fence line, manage it smarter with Create the X.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_06: Learn more at create the X dot com.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_06: Available now on the App Store and Google Play.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_08: So, and I keep talking.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_08: How are we doing on time, guys?
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_08: You know, I'm not used to this guest hosting stuff.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_08: We we still rock and roll it.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_08: It's your show, Chris.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_08: We're just living in it.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_08: Well, I don't have to edit it though.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm you know, that's the thing, you know.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_08: I c I could talk for the next two hours.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_08: So hey, let me circle back a little bit, Kasten.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_08: Um give me, you know, going back to to your granddad, Mr.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_08: Mr.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_08: Byers and your dad and different ones, um you've now got, you know, a house full of kiddos, some of which that you're carrying out there to the farm doing a lot of hunting with already.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_08: Kind of talk a little bit about any of the stuff when you were a kid hunting with your dad and granddad, especially out there on the farm.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_08: Give me some memories of that and some of the takeaways that now as a father taking your kiddos out there that you're either applying lessons learned or you're sitting there in the blind thinking about, you know, I did the same thing with dad and granddad out here.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_08: Anything that comes to mind on that?
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_05: And I think it'll give me a chance to circle back to something I put off before.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_05: Um You know, I think probably my biggest takeaway is kind of watching being able to see the different life cycles or stages of of duck hunters.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you know, my my grandfather in an in a sense kind of came out of retirement from duck hunting to hunt with me when I started going.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_05: Um was lucky enough to kill my first band with him and my father one day.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I remember those.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_05: And I remember kind of, you know, a lot of the guys that were around that had hunted for years, the conversation about him, you know, coming back out and hunting as I started getting old enough to go.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_05: And then I kind of watched the same with my father, right?
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_05: Like uh one, running a guide service full-time will just kind of burn you out of hunting.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's a young man's game, so you really have to pace yourself.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so that's a that was a big takeaway for me.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_05: But my father kind of the same, you know.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_05: I remember when I was in that bloodthirst stage of hunting.
• 1:07:44
  SPEAKER_05: You know, how many times have you heard an old timer like, man, I'm just not that mad at him anymore?
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_05: And and you know, his comment was I'd killed plenty.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_05: But they also talked about that it wasn't as good whatever day it was, whether it was the 80s with my grandfather or into the 90s with my dad.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_05: It was kind of the same way, it just wasn't the same as it as they remembered it whatever number of years ago.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_05: And I would venture that all three of us here would say the same thing right now.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_05: It's not what it was in in our heyday.
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_05: Now, is that revisionist history or is it just kind of a mark of the decline?
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_05: But I think I think it's something to be aware of when we talk about managing for opportunity.
• 1:08:24
  SPEAKER_05: You know, we we we set all these regulations for opportunity.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_05: You know, the can of the goose is a great example, right?
• 1:08:30
  SPEAKER_05: How many days of opportunity do we have to shoot can of the geese?
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_05: When's the last time either one of you shot a migrating can of the goose during duck season?
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_05: You know what I mean?
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_05: When when we had four days, I killed more.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_05: You know, and I went.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_05: I enjoyed it.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_05: Now it's not even a thing anymore.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_05: So all the opportunity in the world doesn't matter if there's no resource.
• 1:08:49
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's lost on some of the decision makers who think we have to have opportunity, that's how we keep money in the sport.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_05: But but I think it's kind of unseen by a lot of those people that there is a a segment or a stage of Hunter that just they just age out.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_05: It's not the same anymore.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_05: They don't enjoy it like they used to, and they leave the sport.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_05: And I you know, I don't think there's any extra long season that's gonna keep those guys around.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's just the the quality of it, that aspect of it that that's not being managed for, and we're losing what may be the most important segment of Hunter.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_05: You know, that's your conservationist, that's your guy that that's willing to work for it, and he's just given up.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um so I don't know.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_05: You talk amongst yourselves, that may have been a little heavy.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_08: No, and uh, that's a that's a valid point.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_08: I can remember, you know, I'm early 40s and I can remember being blessed to duck hunt home all my life, but then being right in my go get them years in what in the last 30 years would be traditionally some of the best years um historically for duck hunting in Arkansas so far as actual harvest.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_08: And man, being mad at them, running and gunning and hunting with some guys that were older and when it was still very good, and you know, we'd go four or five days in a row and they might show up one day.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm like, what what's changed for you, man?
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, I'm just not that mad at them anymore, you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_08: And I I I've gotten there as well.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_08: But just like the same, the same thing.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_08: You you ask anybody, give me your top five favorite albums of all time.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_08: Most folks are gonna pick albums that came out from the time they were 15 to 25 years old.
• 1:10:31
  SPEAKER_08: And then they're gonna listen to those for the rest of their life.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_08: So there's a little bit of that too.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_08: Uh this was this is the this happened when I was young and mad and uh yada yada, and now I'm a little older and have a little more.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_08: And that's not a bad thing.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_08: That's a natural cycle.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_08: But I we I hate it for the folks that we lose completely, like you were talking about, the ones that have completely stepped away, walked away.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_08: I hadn't bought a stamp in 10 years, et cetera, et cetera.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_08: Those are the ones that I go, mm-stay in the game just enough to one, be a mentor to some of those folks that are coming along behind you.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_08: And two, we we need you, you know, we we need the history that you bring to the table, we need your insights, and we need you buying your duck stamps too, obviously, selfishly.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_08: So it's yeah, it's it's funny how that works.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_08: You know, you talk about seeing it with your dad and granddad.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_08: My dad still likes to get after him.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_08: You know, I can remember my granddad before he passed, you know, I got to duck hunt with him a couple times when I was real young.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_08: And one time in my 20s, we made him go.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_08: You know, he just wasn't mad at him.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_08: Probably killed more ducks than avian flu back in the day, but could care, you know, not not care less.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_08: Was happy to hear the stories.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_08: But yeah, stay engaged, you guys that are kind of starting to think you're aging out.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_08: I'm trying my best to not be one of those uh guys just sitting at the coffee shop as well.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_08: So I feel you on that.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's it's a it's a thing for sure.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_06: And we talk about all the time on on this show that you know at some point it it does become an experience thing.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_06: It's not about just the ability to go, and it sometimes it's not even the ability.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, you want to see ducks and you want to have an opportunity to to shoot some ducks.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, it's hunting.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_06: Um, so uh yeah, that is definitely you know phasing some guys out.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_06: And it's not even just because the quality of hunt, they don't they don't want to fight the fights that you gotta do.
• 1:12:19
  SPEAKER_06: They maybe don't want to spend the money uh that it takes.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, there's lots of lots of reasons why people get kind of disinterested or or really temper their once burning desire to go chase ducks and they just lose it.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_06: And and that's um we're seeing a lot of that.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_06: I don't know if that maybe because I'm getting older, I'm 10 years older than y'all.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_06: So um I don't remember it though, uh like it is right now.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_06: And I think when you stack up some seasons in a row that people just don't feel like, man, this is I got I got better things to do, or or I want to put my money somewhere else, or whatever the case may be.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_06: And we gotta figure out how to improve that experience and and keep people from leaving.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_06: It's it's not gonna be offering them a bunch of days um just because they can go.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, they want to go out there and enjoy that time of field, and that's the key.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_08: I we we always joke at our camp about i i i it's I'm never going out there to stand in waste deep water and just drink coffee with my buddies.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_08: I am usually gonna carry my weapon and hope to have an opportunity to to to see a duck and all that.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_08: But yeah, I I hope I hope I'm I hope I'm never to the point where I'm just sitting at the camp just having a cup of coffee for sure.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_08: But Casey, go back.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_08: We were talking a little bit about you know, legacy and all that.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_08: Give me, is there do you even have any vivid memories, specific memories about hunting with your dad or granddad there at the farm, any, you know, out of the blue stories, any insights that they gave you hunting wise?
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_08: Give me something personal on that um with your dad and gr andor granddad.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_08: Anything that comes to mind?
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_08: Uh any insights into hunting?
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_08: Or a specific story that has always stuck out to you from maybe when you were a kid that out there you you mentioned shooting the first band with your dad and and granddad being out there.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_08: Anything kind of like that?
• 1:14:09
  SPEAKER_08: Give us a give us an anecdote.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_05: Uh okay.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_05: So we did, I remember the last deadening that we hunted.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um that's kind of where the grown folks got to go hunt, right?
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_05: Deep water.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and my my children have it so much better than I did.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_05: Um, guns that fit, clothes that are warm, you name it.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, they get it pretty easy, which which is great because we need to, you know, kids need to go, we need to make it comfortable for them.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_05: But I I longed to go hunt in that deadening.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and finally I got big enough to don my mother's converse waiters.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_07: Yes.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_05: Can canvas felt sole converse.
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, and I got to go with with the big guys and go hunt out there one day.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_05: Um and uh if I recall, I had a I had a pretty good hunt.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_05: Somebody somebody killed a uh God, I don't even remember what do we call them now?
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_05: Uh a private band.
• 1:15:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's been so long since I've seen one, I forgot what we called them.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_05: Used to see that a lot, you know, people would would put out their own bands and would show up.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_05: Anyway, somebody killed one there that we were hunting with, and I I think I smarted off to him as a young kid.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_05: Like, well, that one doesn't really count.
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_05: That's a pet duck.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I was a big shock because I had I had a pair of waiters in.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you did.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_05: Just little stuff like that uh stands out to me.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_05: Like I and I remember probably more than anything else just growing up around it.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you know, being out there even before I could really go hunt much, you know, being being in the room when when hunters would show up in the morning, the the sights, the sounds, uh the smell of coffee in the morning, uh some other stupid little stories.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_05: I used to carry a BB gun and I would tag along with whatever guide that would, I guess, being forced enough to get stuck with me for the day.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but that's I would I would dispatch cripples in the bottom of the pit.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_05: Luckily, I don't think any BBs ever bounced off and hit anybody, but that was kind of my BB gun.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_05: Well, when you put it directly to their head, it seems to work.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, that was it just growing up around it.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you know, people always ask, you know, when when was your first son or how old were you?
• 1:16:16
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, I don't, I don't know.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_05: I don't remember ever not going.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_08: Right.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_08: I I I recognize that.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_08: When did you did you start guiding, you know, officially when before you actually took the farm over?
• 1:16:28
  SPEAKER_08: Were you were you a guide at some point?
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_08: How old were you when that happened, if so?
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_05: I uh I I was trusted to take my first solo group when I was 14.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_05: So I guess I've been guiding a little over 30 years now.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_08: Wow.
• 1:16:41
  SPEAKER_08: How'd that how'd that feel when you're 14?
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_08: You you're were you too young to realize the weight of the responsibility there, or were you just uh way overconfident, full of piss and vinegar.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_05: Didn't have a very didn't have a very good hunt either.
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_05: Like I picked out the spot and was like, this is where we're gonna go.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_05: And it was a long-standing client who trusted me too much as well.
• 1:17:01
  SPEAKER_05: So it was not a tremendous experience.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_05: Can you imagine sending one of your kids out there guiding at 14?
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_05: Would you do that?
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_05: No, my oldest is 13, and I don't trust him to walk home from school.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_08: Well, every time.
• 1:17:16
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah, right.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, that's yeah, isn't that crazy?
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_08: Do you do you see um, you know, obviously family affair, do you've got kids of your own now that you have out there a lot hunting and and part of it, do you see that them continuing that legacy, not to put any pressure on them, whatever?
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_08: Is there um is that a hope and dream of yours, or is that, you know, we'll see what happens when the time comes?
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you know, I don't know that it's necessarily a hope and dream of mine.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_05: It it used to be, um, but I will say the production agriculture side and duck hunting as of late has really taken some of the fun out of it.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_05: I I want them to do whatever they want to do.
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_05: If that's part of it, that's great.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_05: I I want them to hang on to it.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_05: I hope it stays with them and their kids, you know, for a long time because uh, as you guys know, places like that don't turn up all the time.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, they they've got a great place that they love to go hunt and fish and enjoy spending time with me and and their siblings on.
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_05: So I hope they hang on to it in that regard.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I've got one that seems to be destined to be a biologist of some sort.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I mean, I could see them doing something with it, but uh I hope they don't feel pressured or or married to it in a sense.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_08: Well, and I I'm sure surely that's a good that's the right mindset to have on it.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_08: Because, you know, if how many times have we heard the story about, yeah, dad made me want to take over the family business and that burn it up on me regardless of what the industry was.
• 1:18:40
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah, well, that's a that's a cool thing.
• 1:18:43
  SPEAKER_08: Back to our I asked earlier and we never really got into it.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_08: Any takeaways that from when you were a kid hunting with dad and granddad, that ways they handled it that affect how you handle hunting with your kiddos, for for better or for worse.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_08: I, you know, like you talked about, I'm the same way.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_08: I can remember having canvas waders that I had to wear for three years, even though the boots were way too small and my feet just went numb.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_08: And so my takeaway for that is I try to make sure my kiddos have waders that fit every year so they're not miserable.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_08: Not not throwing uh throwing darts at dad if you're listening.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_08: But um, any anything that you took away as a kid with dad and granddad that that affects how you carry your kids to the woods nowadays?
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I definitely think you know, making it all about them.
• 1:19:29
  SPEAKER_05: My dad was good about that.
• 1:19:30
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, like I said, I tagged along with guides a whole lot, but when when he and I hunted together, it was it was all about me.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_05: And that may sound like really, I don't know, that may sound wrong, but I think you have to make your kids a priority on a hunt.
• 1:19:42
  SPEAKER_05: If they're cold, you go home.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_05: You know, like you, if you keep them out there against their will, they're not gonna enjoy the sport and you're not gonna get that time together.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and then there was another thing that my father always said, he didn't he didn't believe in quality time, he believed in quantity time.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_05: You just spend enough time with your kids and it'll be good.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so we tried to, I mean, from squirrel hunting, frog hunting, tear hunting, like we we tried to do a lot of of everything outdoors.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_05: So um as you know, Chris, I see the shirt you're wearing right there.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_05: You you better spend time with them when they're young because it you blink your eye and they're out of the house, you know.
• 1:20:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, no doubt.
• 1:20:20
  SPEAKER_05: No doubt.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I've got I've got one in Greek life at a local university and I'm wearing my dad's shirt.
• 1:20:26
  SPEAKER_08: I'm like, oh my gosh, am I old enough to do that?
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_08: Mr.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_08: Brent, anything you've got on that too for like go as hunting with your dad versus when your kids were coming through younger and all that?
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_08: Any any takeaways for any you know, moms or dads of younger kids trying to get them in the woods right now?
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I mean I it the case is on the money.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_06: You gotta you do have to make it about them.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_06: And then they are lucky compared to the stuff we used to have to wear.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_06: Um, I mean, I I can I can definitely recall hunts in the White River bottoms and and uh you know an elevated blind, that cold air underneath it, and my my feet being so cold I couldn't you couldn't even move your toes.
• 1:21:04
  SPEAKER_06: I mean one one, I mean just our our gear was not that great, and now you can keep kids out there comfortable longer, but you do you definitely do have to prioritize them.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_06: You can't be you know, when the shots called, you can't be knocking them down to get you know your barrel out the blind first.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, you know, we've all you know, you can look at it any way you want to.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_06: We've all shot plenty of ducks.
• 1:21:28
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you want a kid to to get interested in this and and take it on down the road.
• 1:21:32
  SPEAKER_06: You gotta you gotta make them feel like they're involved in it.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I definitely try to do that with my kids, try to get them to learn how to call earlier.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and and my dad was really good about that with me too.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, I was I was 11, 12 years old, and all right, you're calling today.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_06: Um you kind of and you kind of sink or swim in that environment, especially if you got somebody, you know, a guest with you, they're like, I you know, I don't want to suck and I don't want to be the reason the ducks don't work today.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_06: So you get pretty proficient pretty quick and learn how to call ducks, and and uh I definitely try to do that and just let them feel like they have a role in what's gone on for the day versus show up and be a shooter.
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and that's that's that's how you get them hooked.
• 1:22:14
  SPEAKER_06: And and and I think part of it too, which I I can definitely tell it's rubbed off on on mine, is some of the before and the after season work uh that that goes into it.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_06: You just don't show up on the days they're fluttering in the decoys.
• 1:22:30
  SPEAKER_06: It you know, there's there's a there's a process to all this, and there's there's work that happens uh outside of duck season and let them get involved in that and feel like you know, because I've heard my my son, my older son this year, who's 29, but I've heard it referred to his millet.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_06: How's my millet doing?
• 1:22:46
  SPEAKER_06: Because yeah, his ass got out there in July uh when all of his buddies were probably at the lake and did the work.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_06: And uh, you know, that that patch of millet that we planted, not that it takes a whole lot to get millet going, but in a dry year it can be.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_06: But yeah, uh this year's a little different, but it did, and so I've referred him to you know, my millet, and I can't wait till he says uh you know, shot a duck over my millet, uh, you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:23:16
  SPEAKER_06: So uh you just gotta think through ways to get them feeling like they're they're playing a bigger role than maybe they really are, or or you know, hand over some things to them and let them let them run with it.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_06: Drive the boat, drive the buggy, decide how the decoys are gonna be set up, something, and uh get them hooked.
• 1:23:34
  SPEAKER_08: Awesome.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, good call.
• 1:23:36
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• 1:23:43
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• 1:24:05
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• 1:24:14
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• 1:24:19
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• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_08: All right, I got about six little popcorn questions for both of you.
• 1:24:29
  SPEAKER_08: These are just fun, easy, you know, get to know kind of things.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_08: And then I got to hang on one second.
• 1:24:35
  SPEAKER_05: I'll make this quick because I think you were really asking me for like any hunting tips.
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, you got another.
• 1:24:39
  SPEAKER_05: No, I'm sorry, I cut you.
• 1:24:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yo, go, go, go.
• 1:24:41
  SPEAKER_05: No, no.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_05: It's uh pressure.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_05: My grandfather was adamant about pressure.
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_05: We didn't drive by certain places, we didn't drive past our rest pond.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_05: Like you had to let them rest.
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_05: And that was in the 80s.
• 1:24:51
  SPEAKER_05: You hear a lot more of it now, but that was, I mean, I had that beaten over my head from a young age.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_08: So and I've I've been up there enough to know that that's stuck because for anybody um casing them, when they when they carry hunters to the different blinds, they do it in the dark.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm not talking like fog lights, I'm talking like you don't turn a light on on the truck as you drive, you know, across the farm to whatever.
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_08: And you know, I've I've I've helped a guide once or twice there at the farm.
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_08: And the first time I got told to actually drive the truck to the blind in the dark, going over some of those culverts, it's a little nerve-wracking, but you can obviously see the benefit of it by the way the ducks use the farm and and hang out.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_08: So yeah, I can I can tell that that the low pressure aspect definitely stuck and it served you well.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah.
• 1:25:37
  SPEAKER_05: It's it's a little dangerous when your when your neighbor hits you with a light bar on their side by side.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_05: A little night blind.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, once you yeah, you finally get your eyes used to the dark looking through the the windshield, and all of a sudden, yeah, suddenly the blue lights flash me from behind.
• 1:25:54
  SPEAKER_08: All right, carry on.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_08: Sorry.
• 1:25:55
  SPEAKER_08: Let me give you just a few some random questions here for each of you.
• 1:26:00
  SPEAKER_08: What was do you remember first shotgun that you carried to the Duckwoods?
• 1:26:05
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_06: Let's hear them.
• 1:26:07
  SPEAKER_06: What was it?
• 1:26:08
  SPEAKER_06: Single shot 20 gauge.
• 1:26:09
  SPEAKER_06: Don't remember the brand, but I do remember the weapon.
• 1:26:14
  SPEAKER_08: Did it uh probably like a hardware store special, like a yep, oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 1:26:19
  SPEAKER_08: Bare bones single shot 20 gauge.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_08: It probably stomped you in the mud every time you tried to shoot it one over your head, too, if I had to remember.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:28
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_05: Mine was uh my mother's 1100 light 20, uh shortened so much that the uh the nut for like the action spring in the stock like protrudes into the recoil pad ever so slightly.
• 1:26:42
  SPEAKER_05: They had like hollow out part of the recoil pad to make it all fit.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_05: But it was hers and then it fit me.
• 1:26:46
  SPEAKER_05: Uh my yeah, my eight-year-old son is using it currently.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_05: He's he's on the mend this duck season.
• 1:26:54
  SPEAKER_05: So there's a kid on their trap team that is using it to shoot trap with, so it's getting even more leases on life.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_08: That's funny.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_08: My first was uh 1116 gauge, same deal, cut off, you know, with the uh aftermarket recoil pad on that my kid just finally grew out of last year.
• 1:27:11
  SPEAKER_08: So that's cool to hear.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_08: Do you still have that single shot 20 gauge, Brent?
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_06: No, we have uh a similar model, but we do have the the 870 that my kids uh learned to hunt on, which is the the same thing you got cut the stock down, it still has that little short stubby stock on it.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but uh we do have that gun.
• 1:27:29
  SPEAKER_06: Um, and then we've got uh that single shot that it's very similar.
• 1:27:34
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, everybody's seen that era, 1970s era single shot 20 gauge for a kid.
• 1:27:40
  SPEAKER_06: Uh that's what it was, and that's what we've got.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_06: They were brutal.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 1:27:44
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:45
  SPEAKER_08: Hammer on top and no safety.
• 1:27:46
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's it.
• 1:27:48
  SPEAKER_06: That's the that's the one.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_08: We know it.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_08: All right.
• 1:27:51
  SPEAKER_08: What was what was the first duck call you remember having?
• 1:27:53
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, my mine was a rich, mine was a rich and tongue.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_06: That was that was before they were countless more.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_07: Back then it was just original.
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_06: It was just the one and only call Butch made.
• 1:28:04
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 1:28:04
  SPEAKER_07: Do you still have that call?
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_06: I do.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_06: I sure do.
• 1:28:07
  SPEAKER_06: Nice.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_07: Do you still use it or is it in the shadow box?
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_06: It's uh I've got a little shelf in my game room downstairs that I've got some calls that mean something to me, that they're all they're all in there.
• 1:28:19
  SPEAKER_06: So uh yeah, that would have been late 70s era, clear acrylic, hand-turned, fancy.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_06: My dad got it for me for Christmas one year somewhere in there and uh still got it.
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_08: Had you asked for it, or was that a surprise under the tree?
• 1:28:37
  SPEAKER_06: I I I don't remember asking for it.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, surprise.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_06: That's cool.
• 1:28:42
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, so what about you?
• 1:28:44
  SPEAKER_05: Uh so I always, you know, they were always in drawers and stuff, and I'm sure I pilfered around and and called some my own over over the time.
• 1:28:52
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I know my dad had some early 80s and maybe like a 78 model Rich and Tone.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_05: But uh probably the first one that I ever you know was given that was really mine was uh Rich and Tone products.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_05: Do you guys remember that that life cycle of Rich and Tone?
• 1:29:06
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yep, yeah.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_05: Some of the uh first molded calls that they had out.
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_05: Uh they were black with like a gold, you know, label on them or whatever.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_05: That was probably one of my first ones, you know, came for Santa Claus or something like that.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_06: Gotcha.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think that was when uh I think that we were talking about the other day.
• 1:29:23
  SPEAKER_06: I think that's when Buck Gardner was kind of involved in that uh kind of offshoot of those molded calls.
• 1:29:29
  SPEAKER_05: And wasn't that was it Cope plastics?
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_05: Is that right?
• 1:29:32
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe.
• 1:29:38
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, hey, yeah, I think this is where those calls were made.
• 1:29:41
  SPEAKER_05: They were doing the rolling.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_08: That's great.
• 1:29:44
  SPEAKER_08: All right, what's your favorite duck blind snack?
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_08: Favorite duck blind snack.
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, mine's it's Pop Tart.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_06: Always has been.
• 1:29:53
  SPEAKER_06: Still is today.
• 1:29:54
  SPEAKER_08: You got a favorite flavor on the Pop Tart?
• 1:29:56
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, well, they quit making them.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_06: Those those cinnamon roll Pop Tarts?
• 1:30:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, those were fancy.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, those were fantastic.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, but yeah, I'll go with a just a strawberry most of the time.
• 1:30:11
  SPEAKER_06: So have you had You can always find those.
• 1:30:14
  SPEAKER_08: Have you had the banana bread?
• 1:30:16
  SPEAKER_08: Um no.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:30:17
  SPEAKER_08: I they come I usually they have them in the fall.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_08: I find them randomly.
• 1:30:21
  SPEAKER_08: Put that on your list to try.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_08: I know they have a billion flavors, but that's one that of the not the classics, one of the newer ones that I'm like, yeah, no, you might try that one.
• 1:30:29
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:30:29
  SPEAKER_05: Jason, what about you?
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_05: Uh brown sugar cinnamon.
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, you pop tart as well?
• 1:30:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I am.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_05: I am.
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_05: I which I I really don't snack much.
• 1:30:38
  SPEAKER_05: I am kind of of the persuasion that uh if I'm hungry enough and we haven't killed ducks, it's time to go to the house.
• 1:30:42
  SPEAKER_05: It's time to go, yeah.
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_08: I knew that was coming.
• 1:30:45
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
• 1:30:46
  SPEAKER_08: Y'all have good breakfast there at the clubhouse.
• 1:30:48
  SPEAKER_08: I've had a couple, so yeah, I don't blame you on that.
• 1:30:51
  SPEAKER_05: Well, the Bloody Mary's aren't bad either.
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_08: Well, that helps too.
• 1:30:55
  SPEAKER_08: Uh so are y'all coffeeing the blind guys or y'all I gotta blow my duck call the whole time.
• 1:31:00
  SPEAKER_08: I don't have time to have a ticket.
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_06: I'm not, I'm not a coffee guy.
• 1:31:03
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it it depends on the time of year.
• 1:31:05
  SPEAKER_05: Later in the season, yeah, I'm taking coffee with it.
• 1:31:08
  SPEAKER_07: When you need that caffeine, yeah.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:10
  SPEAKER_05: I gotcha.
• 1:31:11
  SPEAKER_05: Depends on the environment.
• 1:31:12
  SPEAKER_05: I'm not I'm not much on coffee in a pit because just you know, all the mud and water gets in the top of it and it's not very palatable.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh but if if we're in if we're in the trees or in a bigger blind, yeah, I'm gonna take some coffee with me.
• 1:31:23
  SPEAKER_08: Gotcha.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_08: All right.
• 1:31:24
  SPEAKER_08: Do you Casey?
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_08: You mentioned remembering first band being with your dad and granddad.
• 1:31:29
  SPEAKER_08: Um, what year would that have been?
• 1:31:31
  SPEAKER_04: Ooh eighty eighty-seven, eighty-eight.
• 1:31:37
  SPEAKER_08: Okay.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_08: Speak what was a species of duck?
• 1:31:40
  SPEAKER_08: Do you remember where it was from?
• 1:31:41
  SPEAKER_08: Any of those details from I don't remember where it's from, but it was a Mallard Drake.
• 1:31:45
  SPEAKER_08: Mallard Drake, cool.
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_08: Mr.
• 1:31:47
  SPEAKER_08: Brent, do you remember your first harvested band?
• 1:31:49
  SPEAKER_06: I do.
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_06: I sure do.
• 1:31:51
  SPEAKER_06: I was 13, so it would have been 1983, and it was a Mallard Drake banded in the White River National Wildlife Refuge in Ethel.
• 1:31:59
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, cool.
• 1:32:00
  SPEAKER_06: Still got the I mean, I got all my certificates, but uh, I definitely have that one, which is you know the old school style.
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_06: Uh it's kind of hard to read nowadays, but oh man, I I mean it and it took probably I took another 10 years before I killed another one, and then I got on a roll.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_06: But um yeah, I wore that one band around like I was I was I was the man.
• 1:32:23
  SPEAKER_06: Um yeah, pretty pretty proud of it, pretty proud of it.
• 1:32:27
  SPEAKER_06: But uh yeah, still and still hunt that farm today.
• 1:32:30
  SPEAKER_06: Um that's cool.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_06: Been a minute.
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_08: All right, one more question here, and I'll I'll let y'all go.
• 1:32:37
  SPEAKER_08: The if you could go back and tell your 18-year-old hunting self one tip for the future, whether it meant specific how to hunt ducks or just a a vibe thing, what would you what would you go back and tell 18-year-old you out there in the duckwoods?
• 1:32:54
  SPEAKER_06: Well, I I mean I would say uh if I would have been wise enough to spend the time that I do now understanding why ducks do what they do, um I probably would have uh had more good days and bad days.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_06: Uh not I mean, very fortunate to grow up and have a lot of really, really quality duck hunts and some quality places, but I think it's more enjoyable now because I understand the dots that connected to make it that way.
• 1:33:25
  SPEAKER_06: And I don't think I I did back then.
• 1:33:26
  SPEAKER_06: I just showed up and um the ducks just here they're in the decoys, let's get them.
• 1:33:32
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and now and now be able to connect those dots as to why they do it, and especially when you layer on top of it, getting your hands in the dirt and having something to do with that.
• 1:33:41
  SPEAKER_06: It it's um it's something I I don't I obviously didn't appreciate at 18 and I really do at 56.
• 1:33:48
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:33:48
  SPEAKER_07: So pay attention, yeah.
• 1:33:50
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, pay attention.
• 1:33:50
  SPEAKER_06: There's there's a reason why they're why they're doing what they're doing and why and and that could be good or bad.
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:33:57
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you know, you think about what did I do today that made the ducks not want to finish or not even pay attention.
• 1:34:02
  SPEAKER_06: Um you know, you gotta you gotta see the whole surroundings and all the factors, and then you like I said, you connect dots, and then you know, okay, we can't do this this day because that fouled up the last hunt.
• 1:34:16
  SPEAKER_06: Um it's kind of think of it on those terms versus showing up and shooting, like I said earlier.
• 1:34:20
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:34:21
  SPEAKER_05: So that may be a tough one for me to answer.
• 1:34:23
  SPEAKER_05: I was 18 when the Robo duck came out.
• 1:34:26
  SPEAKER_05: Um so uh yeah, I think if I could do anything, I'd go back and and tell my young self to to plant more trees and plant them earlier.
• 1:34:38
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's a good one.
• 1:34:39
  SPEAKER_05: That's definitely a that's that's a long, that's a long play planting trees.
• 1:34:42
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, I'm putting stuff in the ground now that I'll never sit under the shade of, but somebody will.
• 1:34:47
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, and that's that's that's good advice literally and figuratively.
• 1:34:50
  SPEAKER_08: Uh yeah.
• 1:34:52
  SPEAKER_08: For life in general.
• 1:34:54
  SPEAKER_05: That's right.
• 1:34:55
  SPEAKER_08: Good stuff.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_08: Cool, cool.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_08: Well, what else we need to talk about, boys?
• 1:34:58
  SPEAKER_08: Y'all, I appreciate y'all again.
• 1:34:59
  SPEAKER_08: Uh I appreciate y'all coming on the show.
• 1:35:04
  SPEAKER_08: Thanks for having us.
• 1:35:05
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah.
• 1:35:06
  SPEAKER_08: Anytime.
• 1:35:07
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, yeah.
• 1:35:07
  SPEAKER_08: Last question.
• 1:35:08
  SPEAKER_08: Of all the guest hosts you've had, who's the best?
• 1:35:11
  SPEAKER_08: The answer is the same.
• 1:35:13
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, far and away.
• 1:35:14
  SPEAKER_06: You're far and away, winner.
• 1:35:16
  SPEAKER_05: Number one ranked both ways.
• 1:35:18
  SPEAKER_05: I love it.
• 1:35:18
  SPEAKER_05: Well, what's amazing is how quickly you accepted the invitation.
• 1:35:21
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, hey, can you do this tomorrow morning?
• 1:35:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, dude, I'll do it.
• 1:35:23
  SPEAKER_05: Well, like I said, I figured you'd been down the list and you were up against it, so I had to bail you out.
• 1:35:27
  SPEAKER_08: So I'm I'm thankful for the opportunity.
• 1:35:29
  SPEAKER_08: I've enjoyed it.
• 1:35:30
  SPEAKER_08: So very much and don't forget the buy2ckstamps.com.
• 1:35:34
  SPEAKER_08: We're excited about that.
• 1:35:35
  SPEAKER_08: So, yeah.
• 1:35:36
  SPEAKER_08: Anything else y'all need to tell them about the about the sweepstakes and all that?
• 1:35:39
  SPEAKER_08: Or we either just check it out and it'll be out on social soon.
• 1:35:43
  SPEAKER_06: And don't be yeah, don't be don't be lame and enter the sweepstakes without buying them.
• 1:35:47
  SPEAKER_06: Technically, you don't have to, uh, because that's how sweepstakes works.
• 1:35:51
  SPEAKER_06: That's how sweepstakes works, and that's how you make it legal in Arkansas.
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_06: But go buy two duck stamps.
• 1:35:57
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:35:58
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 1:35:59
  SPEAKER_06: Please or four or twelve or whatever.
• 1:36:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, two, two's not the limit for all the yeah.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_05: Two's not the limit.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_05: Five whatever you want, but yeah, go do it.
• 1:36:08
  SPEAKER_05: And and share, talk about uh the you know, the bigger this becomes, then the more it grows and the more good we can do as hunters.
• 1:36:16
  SPEAKER_05: So low-hanging fruit.
• 1:36:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, good.
• 1:36:18
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, offline especially.
• 1:36:20
  SPEAKER_06: You know, you're you're a duck camp and got some people in camp, you know, that maybe you don't associate, don't you can't rely just on social media.
• 1:36:26
  SPEAKER_06: We saw how that went with the with the whole uh uh drain tile setback deal.
• 1:36:32
  SPEAKER_06: You know, we a million million duck hunters didn't didn't play in that in that game.
• 1:36:37
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and that was all through social media, the the promotion of getting people involved.
• 1:36:42
  SPEAKER_06: So talk about it around the campfire, uh over breakfast at duck camp and all that.
• 1:36:49
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, all those things for sure.
• 1:36:51
  SPEAKER_08: All right, to reiterate, casen, if people want to check out um Bill Byers Hunter Club, Instagram is Bill Byers Hunter Club, just like that, correct?
• 1:36:59
  SPEAKER_08: Correct.
• 1:37:00
  SPEAKER_08: D-Y-E-R-S buyers.
• 1:37:02
  SPEAKER_08: Um you can uh you can listen to the standard sportsmen on all streaming platforms.
• 1:37:07
  SPEAKER_08: We'd appreciate it if you'd like and subscribe, share it with your friends.
• 1:37:10
  SPEAKER_08: If you got any questions about today's episode, put it in the comments.
• 1:37:14
  SPEAKER_08: Anything else we need to talk about on the way out the door, fellas?
• 1:37:18
  SPEAKER_05: Uh where can they find Harland Sons?
• 1:37:20
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, HarrowlandSons.com.
• 1:37:21
  SPEAKER_08: I didn't know I got a free plug.
• 1:37:22
  SPEAKER_08: If you want some classic American-made hunting gear, come check us out.
• 1:37:27
  SPEAKER_08: We've got a little bit in stock right now, and obviously we have some for the sweepstakes as well.
• 1:37:31
  SPEAKER_08: If you don't win, you can spend some money on it.
• 1:37:33
  SPEAKER_05: Hey, let me ask you this real quick.
• 1:37:34
  SPEAKER_05: I know I know we got to go.
• 1:37:35
  SPEAKER_05: Why American made?
• 1:37:37
  SPEAKER_05: Give me your pitch.
• 1:37:38
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, American made, one, nobody else is doing it.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_08: Two, I can touch and feel it.
• 1:37:42
  SPEAKER_08: Three, we're keeping people in American-made trades that are going away.
• 1:37:48
  SPEAKER_08: It's not real easy to find folks can do that domestically, and I don't mean that like I'm patting my own back, but um, I like the feel-good part of that for sure.
• 1:37:56
  SPEAKER_08: And also it lets me make sure I get to touch every piece before that goes out the door.
• 1:38:00
  SPEAKER_08: So the quality um I think is is a big part of it too.
• 1:38:04
  SPEAKER_08: So thanks for asking.
• 1:38:05
  SPEAKER_08: I appreciate that for sure.
• 1:38:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, well the quality is phenomenal.
• 1:38:08
  SPEAKER_05: I've had some of your stuff for years and years, and it's it's good stuff.
• 1:38:11
  SPEAKER_05: You guys should go check it out.
• 1:38:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:38:13
  SPEAKER_08: That's the one tough part about it is I get a customer one time because I don't have many folks that tear it up and have to come buy it again.
• 1:38:19
  SPEAKER_08: So uh that's the one drawback looking for all right.
• 1:38:25
  SPEAKER_08: Well, I guess I'm gonna sign us off.
• 1:38:27
  SPEAKER_08: I'm your guest host, Chris Harrell.
• 1:38:29
  SPEAKER_08: Thanks to my guests, Brent Birch and Casey Short.
• 1:38:31
  SPEAKER_08: Hope this all was enjoyable listening to you guys.
• 1:38:34
  SPEAKER_08: Hope you guys enjoyed being on the other side of the table.
• 1:38:37
  SPEAKER_08: And um anything else, and we'll get out of here.
• 1:38:41
  SPEAKER_05: That's it.
• 1:38:41
  SPEAKER_05: No, thanks for having us.
• 1:38:43
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, appreciate you.
• 1:38:44
  SPEAKER_07: Anytime, anytime.
• 1:38:45
  SPEAKER_07: All right, happy Halloween.
• 1:38:47
  SPEAKER_07: We'll see everybody soon.
• 1:38:48
  SPEAKER_08: And uh catch you on the next one.