Latest / Ducks Unlimited Podcast / Ep. 535 – Managing GTR's: A New Approach in Arkansas

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Ep. 535 – Managing GTR's: A New Approach in Arkansas · Ducks Unlimited Podcast

• Chris Jennings: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Ducks on the podcast. I'm your host, Chris Jennings. Joining me today on the phone is Trey Reed, Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Assistant Chief of Communications. What's going on, Trey? Hey, Chris. Good to catch up with you, man. Awesome. And you've been on the podcast before, so you're familiar with how, you know, How we do this, but you know, just as a reminder for some of our audience, it'd be cool. If you just kind of introduce yourself, tell our audience what you do, uh, what's your, you know, your day in day out operations for Arkansas game and fish and the communication side, which I think it's, it's pretty cool, pretty cool story. What you guys do over there. Um, but go ahead and do that and just kind of tell us what you do and where you're at and all that. Trey Reed: Yeah, so I am based out of our headquarters in Little Rock. That's the state capital of Arkansas. I know you've got listeners far flung. You know that's the state capital, but others may not. But yeah, so our headquarters is in Little Rock. I work in the communications division. As you mentioned, I am assistant chief of communications. And what does that mean? That's the next question. So part of my job is doing things like this, podcasts, working with the media, the local media here in the Little Rock market or the Northwest Arkansas market, and just getting the word out about things we're doing at the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Now, sort of the other half of my job, in addition to doing radio and TV appearances and media interviews, is overseeing video production. So I have a staff that works with me to produce video content for the agency, whether that's something in-house, a message from our director to the employees, or our public-facing stuff. videos about waterfowl hunting, about duck hunting, about partnerships with Ducks Unlimited, about stream bank restorations that we may be doing in our fisheries division to improve water quality and fishing. So obviously, Chris, lots and lots of things that the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is doing. I know we wanna focus on waterfowl and ducks on the DEU podcast here, but there is never a boring day because That's one of the things I enjoy so much about my job is I'm a passionate waterfowl hunter myself, so I love doing this podcast with you. But we get to meet with so many different staff members, meet with so many people from the public and talk about there's so many different great conservation projects and work that the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is doing. And so I get to go out and spread the good word about that in a nutshell. Chris Jennings: Oh, that's awesome. And yeah, you know, we are pretty much waterfowl focused, I would say on this podcast, very much so, uh, to be in fact, but, you know, I think it's cool that, you know, you guys get, you know, you're also, it's Arkansas, so you guys are pretty waterfowl focused, but you also get to do, you know, like you said, some cool stuff on the fishery side. You're probably, you know, and Arkansas fisheries, you know, ranges quite a bit. I mean, you've got great trout fisheries, you've got, you know, great largemouth, you know, great panfish, you know, you guys have some, A very wide variety of options for outdoorsman. So that's cool. Trey Reed: Yeah. You know, Chris, that's one of the things I think for, for listeners who may not be, you know, mid South or, or as familiar with Arkansas, I know y'all's headquarters is in Memphis. So a lot of the folks there know what's going on in Arkansas, but we're geographically diverse. I mean, we're obviously famous for our duck hunting and that's, for the most part, the Delta is sort of the epicenter of that, the eastern third of the state. But we've got the Ozark and Ouachita uplands, we've got the Gulf Coastal Plain, we've got that funky Crowley's Ridge that's like running right down through the middle. of the Delta. If you've ever driven to Little Rock from Memphis, you've crossed that at Forest City on Interstate 40. But so anyway, the point of that is there's like Arkansas is geographically diverse. And so there's a lot of different things going on. You mentioned the trout and largemouth and catfish and all this other stuff. And then so there's a lot to talk about and a lot going on. There's never a boring day at the office. Chris Jennings: I bet. I bet. That's awesome. And I did, you noted it out, but when I was talking about fishing, I forgot catfish. That should be like a slap on the wrist for Arkansas because I forgot to mention catfish. So I'm glad you did that. Well, you know what, let's get into, you know, what we're here, you know, our waterfowl focus. And, you know, I think it's really unique. that Arkansas draws so many hunters from even all over the country. I mean, you guys have been, you know, the shining spot of waterfowl hunting for so long. You know, the heritage and history and traditions. It is, while you'd say it is regional, it, you know, our audience is broad and, you know, all across North America. But I think when we talk about Arkansas, I think most of our audience understands that this is a very important wintering, migration, you know, everything for waterfowl as far as waterfowl habitat and waterfowl hunters. So, you know, we'll get into that conversation. And I just wanted you to kind of give us an overview of, you know, waterfowl season started in Arkansas, what, I think it was November 18th this year. right around that, that weekend before Thanksgiving. But if you can kind of just give us an overview of how it started, you know, what the habitat's looking like now from then, and what could be needed to potentially improve the habitat over there. Trey Reed: Yeah, so as you noted, we started November 18th, and it's a very short first segment of the season. For those that aren't familiar, Arkansas has a three-segment season with two splits. As we're recording this, I guess now it's technically the second week of December. We just opened our second season, December 9th. And so we're just a couple of days, three days now into the second season as we're recording this. You know, the first segment of the season, much like it normally is, it's dry, but I would say even drier than normal. Now, when we opened the season on November 18th, I would have to go back and look at, you know, the University of Nebraska puts out the drought monitor map. But, I mean, even after the first season, Chris, we were still in some form of drought and or abnormally dry. across basically the southeastern two-thirds of the state, basically everything except for that Northwest Arkansas, the Ozark Highlands was in some form of drought. Well, I mean, you're listeners. We call them waterfowl for a reason. And so the conditions were not optimal, I guess, would be a nice way of putting it. Now, don't get me wrong, there were some places that add water, mostly on private lands that manage for some early water, ag lands with the ability to pump fields up and that sort of thing. I've talked to some folks that hunted in that first segment of the season that did okay. I mean, they had some good hunts, but to be quite honest with you, we still need more water. Now, we got some rain over, I believe it was this last Friday night, right before the season reopened on Saturday. So we've had a little bit of rain here and there, but they're those kind of rains that are like, you know, we're getting a half inch. We got a, like a one to two inch rain a couple of weeks ago, like right after the first segment ended and that, and that helped. And I don't want to like, you know, kind of sound pessimistic because conditions are most definitely better than they were when the season opened on November 18th. As we're talking this morning, gosh, it was in the mid to upper 20s when I got in my truck to come to work this morning. So we've got some of that cold weather. But honestly, we need a lot more rain. As I mentioned, we were in drought conditions. And so a lot of some of this rain that we've had, I mean, it's soaking up, you're not getting a tremendous amount of runoff. into those systems like the St. Francis, the Black River, the Cache River, the White River is the big one. So we don't have a lot of… There's not a lot of bottomland hardwoods that are flooding, that type of habitat, unless it's managed water. You know, we have intentionally over the last number of years delayed when we're catching water on our public lands, our game and fish wildlife management areas, our green tree reservoirs. That's something you and I talked about last year. That's not going to change. We know that the trees are not dormant as early as we used to think they were or with some kind of warmer conditions in the fall that we've been seeing for a number of years now, we don't want to harm the trees. And there has been some damage done to some of our bottomland hardwoods over the last 50 to 70 years of managing them the same way before the science kind of caught up to what we were doing. So therefore, there's not been a lot of water on the landscape. You combine that with as dry as it's been, And it was not the greatest conditions for the first segment of duck season. Now, that said, things have changed. We have gotten some rain, but we need more rain. It's kind of the long and short of it. But Chris, the thing about it is, this is a pattern that is pretty typical and is pretty new to people who duck on in Arkansas, right? I mean, you mentioned people coming from all over the country. Well, I tell folks if they want to plan a trip, start looking in mid-December to mid-January is really going to be the prime hunting waterfowl, the prime duck hunting in Arkansas, especially if you're looking for that flooded green timber experience because it's about September and October are typically dry. We start to get some rain in November, and we get it more so about second, third week of December, we start getting some pretty consistent patterns of rain, and that's when things change, that's when the ducks show up, and that's when duck hunting gets really good in Arkansas. Chris Jennings: Yeah. And I think, you know, for people who, who spend time in Arkansas and talk to even Arkansas residents who hunt, you know, I talked to a lot of, a lot of people who live in Arkansas and it's funny because most of them, like, they're not even thinking duck season when the duck, when duck season opens, they're like, yeah, we'll kind of get to that after Christmas. Because I think that historically, like you said, you know, the state typically doesn't get enough water to put those traditional green timber reservoirs into play until like you said, middle to late December into January. And it's just, you know, most of those guys that I know are deer hunting and doing everything else. And they're like, yeah, no, I mean, absolutely. Trey Reed: I mean, I, I think, uh, I mean, I know a lot of guys that will, they'll deer hunt until about right now. And then they'll get their stamps, or if they haven't already gotten them at the start of the season. But Chris, I'll let you in on a dirty little secret, and then I don't do this often, but I skipped the entire first segment of duck season to go tropical saltwater flats fishing, okay? I mean, I bring that up jokingly, but it's like some people… I am first and foremost a passionate duck hunter. I don't deer hunt as much anymore, but I mean, I've been duck hunting. I started very young, like four or five years old. So I've been duck hunting almost 50 years in Arkansas now, okay? I was mostly just accompanying my dad and playing with shotgun holes in the bottom of the boat or the blind back in those early days. But people look at it like, dude, what are you doing missing the first week of duck season? And I mean, I primarily hunt public land, Baumeida, that's kind of my go-to spot. I mean, there's really no reason for me to get too excited or on the flip side of that, upset about the dearth of ducks or water in November. Yeah. December is when it happens, man. So, I mean, it's no big, it's no sweat off of my back. It's no, I don't feel like I'm missing anything to go fishing during the opening week of duck season. Chris Jennings: Yeah, no, and I'll, I'll be honest with you. I hunted that opening weekend at our place and we have, uh, um, some, some water that's, that's pumped, you know, fields, ag fields, uh, rice fields. And, and we did pretty well, but I mean, of all the ducks that we shot, we saw one mallard, you know, the reality is that, you know, and that's what most people are shooting. And I know a lot of, Arkansas, you know, local hunters are very mallard driven. So they're just not motivated to go and chase some of these other species. Trey Reed: Yeah, no, I mean, and of course, you know, you'll hear people talk about the Halloween mallards. And, you know, these ducks that are showing up in late October or early November. And don't get me wrong, I don't mean to suggest that there aren't mallards in Arkansas, because there are. Oh, yeah. But, you know, there are some birds that are That for whatever reason, they're hardwired to leave the prairies, leave the more northern areas of the country in Canada. A little bit earlier, they just, okay. We talk about these drivers of migration and there are many, but I mean, water is a huge influence. Everybody talks about cold weather, but we know from our waterfowl surveys that we conduct multiple times during the wintering period in Arkansas. and some other research we've done, it's water, man. It's water more so than it is the cold weather, right? But we also knew that one thing that never changes or is consistent from year to year, it changes constantly, it's the photo period. It's the amount of sunlight we have. So once we pass the equinox, the autumnal equinox in September, and those days start getting shorter, there are some of those dogs that are gonna be triggered by that and say, it's time to go, right? And they're gonna come to Arkansas, they may make a nonstop fly without making any detours. But I say all that to say that when we really get those other drivers like the the rainfall and the flooding in the bottoms and your ag fields filling up with sheet water and those cold fronts and the snow and ice and more northern latitudes, that's when things really start to get good and that's coming. Chris Jennings: Yeah, it's early. I mean, we were even hunting this weekend and a couple of, and, and we did okay on Saturday and didn't do very well on Sunday. And, and, uh, it was just kind of one of those deals where it's like, you know, we're kind of a little bit frustrated with it, but then we're like, man, it is still so early. Like, let's not, let's not get too frustrated too early. You know, it's, it's, uh, there's a lot, a lot of season to go. Trey Reed: I know, I get it. I mean, I can, when I was in my twenties and thirties, it's like, I want to be out there on opening day. Why are we not seeing ducks? But I mean, the older I get, it's kind of like, you know, probably like a lot of duck hunters. I mean, I still want to shoot ducks. I'm not nearly as mad at them as I used to be though. And I think like, uh, my, my, my patience expanded somewhat as I've gotten older. And, and also just that realization of how we set expectations and that like, it's really just now starting to get to be the good duck hunting in our community. Chris Jennings: Yeah, and it's funny you say you took off that first week to go fishing, and I did the same thing. I hunted the opening weekend and then took my family down to Louisiana for the week to fish. So, you know, I missed that whole day, the first two days, and then basically went down to Louisiana for the next, you know, four, five, six days after Thanksgiving, you know, through Thanksgiving. So, yeah, I kind of did the same thing. So, I think maybe that's a theme people should maybe follow there. Trey Reed: I want to throw this in before we move on, Chris. I was doing a radio show. I was down in Louisiana last week, and I was doing a radio show that I do every Wednesday morning here. Even though I was off work, just to keep people updated on what's going on. I take a lot of questions from callers and they have a text line or whatever. So this guy was like, what do you see in the way of ducks in Louisiana? And I think they were expecting me to say, oh, they're everywhere down here. Man, I was shocked. And I haven't seen Louisiana's waterfowl count and this is totally anecdotal, but I saw some birds. I saw some teal and some divers and things like that. They've been in a wicked, nasty drought down in central and southern Louisiana, way more so, even worse than the lower Delta, like Arkansas and Mississippi and parts of the Missouri Bootheel and Tennessee. I mean, it's been dry around our neck of the woods, but it's been really dry down there. Of course, you've got the salt marshes that are always going to have water, and that's where I did see some birds. I mean, it's like, there was a wildfire the day that we rolled in last Monday. So, I mean, that's not the answer, everybody. If you think all the birds are in Louisiana, they aren't. Chris Jennings: Yeah, no, and they've been really dry. My buddies that hunt down there, even some of the guys that I fish with out in Southeast Louisiana, you know, with the reports coming in, everything was so dry, you know, they were totally bummed out. And then now, granted, this doesn't… relate to everyone, but a couple of these guys that I've talked to, they've done very well. They've had a great season, and I think it's very hit or miss down there. You know, they've got some birds, and I think the people who have them on some of their properties are being very careful to not blow them out. You know, they're, they're managing some pressure there. Um, but, but a lot of guys down there seem to be doing pretty well. So it, which surprised me now that's far South that's coastal, you know, central and Northern Louisiana is a different story. I mean, they're dry as a bone. Um, hopefully they got some, some rain out of that last front that came through. Trey Reed: Yeah, there was some pretty good, pretty good system that came through over this past weekend, I guess. And hopefully that, that, that I probably changed things for some folks in the Mississippi Delta, Louisiana's portion of the Delta, and even down in Southeast Arkansas. We had some rain up here, more in the middle and Northern Delta of Arkansas, but the Southeastern part of the state, they were still struggling until this most recent system came through. But again, I mean, like we said, that's… I don't know, we talk about this every year, Curtis, but it's like, I think it bears repeating and reminding folks that this is kind of how the pattern works in the Delta. And in the southern, mid to southern latitudes, it's sort of what we get every year. It's not unusual. Chris Jennings: Yeah. And it typically happens. We used to have Luke Naylor on, who's now your Chief of Wildlife for Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. I think that's his title. You know, he would talk about that too. We, and that's all we would discuss basically is this, you know, the traditional timeframe to hunt really, you know, people are talking about opening day, this and that and that. And he would always stress that this is, you know, how it works almost every year. And so that mid to late December, you guys will get a big storm, a big rain. And next thing you know, the lines at the, uh, the boat ramps along the white cash. Those boat ramp lines start stacking up. Yeah. Trey Reed: Yeah. That's, uh, that's, that's how it works. Uh, but, uh, you know, look, let's just hope we get some more rain and, uh, and get some more birds around, but I'm not, uh, you know, like you said, it's, it's early. I'm, I'm ready to, uh, I've got my fishing out of the way on the personal level now, and I'm, I'm ready for rain. I'm ready for cold. I'm ready to go sit in the duck block. Chris Jennings: Awesome. Well, you know, speaking to Doug Lines, I just wanted you to kind of provide, and we've talked about this before, but only in passing, uh, the W Rice program that Arkansas Game and Fish Commission puts on. I mean, it's a great program. It's, it's available. Can you kind of explain what that program is? And, and we can kind of talk about that. Trey Reed: Yeah, WRICE is really an awesome program. It's an acronym. You know how we love an acronym in government, but it stands for Waterfowl Rice Incentive Conservation Enhancement, W-R-I-C-E. And so essentially the way it started, I mean, and again, I I want to be careful, Chris, because I don't want to say too little, but I don't want to say too much and bore your listeners who already know a lot of this. I mean, I know you have a pretty high degree of education among the waterfowlers that are listening to the DU podcast, but what we've noticed in Arkansas, and this is not exclusive to Arkansas, probably in other parts of the Delta, Louisiana and Mississippi, it's also happening. Obviously, harvesting equipment is much more efficient than it used to be. Rice varieties are maturing earlier. Farmers are getting their crops in and out sooner. And so just in general terms, there's a lot less waste grain in the fields than there used to be. And this is all being scientific. There's all kinds of papers about this. that you can look up to quantify just how much less food there is out there on the landscape for these birds. Well, then you throw into that, we're noticing a lot of fall tillage. And I mean, farmers, they're getting the crop out, they're getting that field turned over and ready to plant next spring. Well, once you turn that field over, boy, even the diminishing returns of waste grain that were out there, now there's none, right? I mean, once it's under the dirt, a duck can't get to it, doesn't matter if you get water on it with rainfall or it's flooded up. Yeah, there's a few bugs and what have you, but for the most part, the nutritional value that could be there is not there anymore. So, WRI started really as an incentive to farmers to forego fall tillage, to implement certain like rolling the stubble or patchy burn on the stubble. Certain conservation practices that we know through research leave more waste grain on the field, right, after the harvest. And so it started that way. And then we got into looking at, well, not only do we want to provide waterfowl habitat, we want to create more places for ducks to go to what we call duck use days. But let's create some opportunities for hunters. So essentially this is an incentive program where The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission enters into a contract with a farmer, a private landowner, and there are various tiers. If that farmer will implement some of the rolling the stubble or a patchy burn in the stubble, that's like one level. and then put a certain amount of water at a certain date, that's another level. Now, if that farmer will then allow public access through a permitted process run by the Game and Fish Commission for weekend only hunting, then he can actually increase his per acre payment. So it's really, we talk about win-win situations. This is a win-win-win. So you got three wins. So the farmer wins by getting cash money to implement a practice that's good for waterfowl, so the ducks win by creating habitat, and then the hunter wins by having this unique opportunity to hunt private land as a public duck hunter. So it really takes a lot of the burden off the farmer as well. A lot of farmers, of course, lease their land to hunters, but he's leasing to the Game and Fish Commission. He's got one person to deal with and not like, you got a lease. Chris, you mentioned your lease. I don't know how many guys are in it. Let's say there's five or six guys. Everybody's got their own ideas about how we need to roll the stubble or how we need to flood the water or how many fields we need to flood. So you got the farmer, he's got all these folks calling him, right? I don't think you ought to do this. Well, I mean, it's all written down in the contract, right? Like this is how deep the water needs to be. This is when you need to have water on it. The Game and Fish Commission handles the permitting process. So look, if you wanted to have an opportunity to, and this is kind of the payoff part of it that people always want to hear about. Every week during duck season, from Thursday, I believe it's 3 p.m. Thursday till 11.59 Sunday night, you can apply. We have a list at agfc.com slash wrice. You go in and you can see where these fields are. We even have spreadsheets to show you how many people are applying every week, so you can kinda look and see. I may have a better chance of drawing a permit on one field as opposed to another. But Chris, this program started out like four or five years ago, and it was just a handful of fields. And we're up to, I want to say around 6,000 acres of managed rice fields now that are open to public hunting. And these fields vary in size from 80, 100 plus acres. And so, yeah, you go in every week and you apply, you'll find out like on… I think we do Monday or Tuesday, we send emails out, say, hey, you drew or you didn't draw. We send you a map, GPS coordinates, all the rules. Some of the farmers allow you to use like a ATV or UTV, but many don't. So we'll show you where the parking areas are, whether there's a blind. Our staff has gone out and brushed blinds before the season. So it is a, I mean, I can't… I can't stress enough what a great program this is. We're doing good work to provide habitat for ducks. Conservation practice is good for waterfowl. It's good for the farmer's bottom line. And then ultimately, it's a hunting opportunity, and a rare hunting opportunity for a guy that… For a $5 application fee on our website, If you're drawn, you get all day Saturday and all day Sunday, this private rice field that's managed for waterfowl to yourself. I mean, it's really pretty cool. Chris Jennings: And I think one thing you didn't mention, which, you know, I know a lot of people talk about the WRI's program because of this, it really opens the door early in the season when, like we've discussed, there's not a lot of water in some of the public ground. There's a lot of pressure on some of that public ground at different times, especially early, because of the limited access to water. And that's not just state property, that's also national wildlife refuge areas. and the white, but it takes the pressure off of some of those areas for people. And one thing I do want to also remember, especially for our audience, this is open for out-of-state hunters as well. Trey Reed: No, absolutely. It's open to anybody can apply for these, and it is open to anybody in the public. It is And it does, it spreads things out. And Chris, these fields are spread out. One of the new kind of aspects of WRICE this year is we spread it into some other parts of the state. It's largely just been in the Delta. And we score… It's a very competitive process. We have a lot more farmers that would like to be in the program. than we have funds to pay for it really right now. And a lot of… This is another great thing about it. It's not… Yeah, there are some state funds, but a lot of this is federal matching grant money. So it is a very cost effective way to create waterfowl habitat and hunting opportunity at the same time. But we've expanded this into like the Arkansas River Valley. Some folks that might be familiar with, say, Ed Gordon Point Remove Wildlife Management Area, Frog Bower Wildlife Management Area. But these are that area along the Arkansas River between the Oklahoma border around Fort Smith all the way down to Little Rock. There are a handful of public areas around there. And we try to… So one of the scoring components of when we select the landowners who are part of WRI, we want it to be within 10 miles of a wildlife management area, because we know that these big complex wetland mosaics of habitat are good. They can kind of put ducks in an area, right? I mean, they've got like maybe some moist soil areas over here, and then some flooded timber over here, and then some ag land over here. So that complex of habitat is what attracts ducks. That's one of our scoring criteria for participation in the program, but we've expanded that to be near some areas in the Arkansas River Valley. So they're really… I mean, if you're coming to Arkansas to duck hunt or if you live in Arkansas to duck hunt, there is probably one of these areas, these W. Rice permitted fields that's not far from where you want to hunt. Chris Jennings: Yeah, and this is just a question I'm curious of. Now, you mentioned you guys post the spreadsheet to see how many people apply for these, but do you post results sheets, kind of like some of the different state-managed areas throughout the country? Some of them have a tally that show who shot what on what day, yada, yada, yada. Trey Reed: I don't believe we have anything posted on that spreadsheet. It's more for folks to kind of look and see where they might have a better chance at drawing. But here's the thing, I mean, we have a great staff here that would be glad to answer your questions. I mean, and there's contact information about the W. Rice program on that website I mentioned, agsc.com slash W. Rice. So if you wanted to dig a little deeper, we'd be happy to answer questions about what the success has been and things like that. Chris Jennings: Yeah, that's awesome. And I know, I know duck hunters, and I know if somebody's got, has drawn one of these fields and probably done pretty well, I'm sure that, uh, you know, most, at least savvy duck hunters, uh, could try and keep their mouth shut on that. And it may be a secret to keep throughout the season. Trey Reed: That's right. That's right. Chris Jennings: If I know duck hunters, that's exactly what they're doing out there. So no, that's a cool program. I'm glad you got to describe that. It's a great opportunity for hunters. It's a great opportunity for farmers. Um, you know, it's just, it sounds like a great deal all across the board. Um, you know, before we get you out of here and you kind of touched on this, but I, I kind of wanted to dig into a little bit more. You kind of got into the GTR and, you know, some of the changes that Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have made over the years. You know, just kind of explain maybe a little more detail, you know, why Arkansas had to take a step back and look at these and, you know, Ducks Unlimited is in partnership with some of these, with this program. And so, you know, the Green Tree Reservoir, you know, let's just kind of discuss that and really explain to someone who may not, you know, be an Arkansas local that is familiar with these and what kind of habitats this is and what it provides for, you know, waterfowl throughout the season. Trey Reed: Absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity to do so, Chris. I mean, because that's really when you kind of circling back to where we started, the culture, the heritage of duck hunting in Arkansas. I mean, it is huge. I mean, it is I mean, our director, Austin Booth, talks about this frequently, I mean, in the outdoors in general, but I mean, it defines who we are as Arkansans. I mean, and when you start to talk about duck hunting, man, it really, I mean, it is part of who we are. I mean, the joke that we give our kids duck calls instead of pacifiers when they're babies. It's maybe not a literal truth embedded in that, but I mean, it does speak to how important it is. And what Arkansas is most famous for, I mean, we've been talking about rice fields, it's famous for that, but it's that flooded green timber, man. It's that bottomland hardwood habitat that seasonally floods in the wintertime, this time of year, like we've been discussing, and it creates this… We all know new water. I mean, ducks go to that stuff. And so when the woods flood, it's like, oh, it is just magical for a while. And I guess we should probably start with how we got there. So Arkansas has, Mississippi has quite a bit of Delta when we talk about Delta, Mississippi, Alluvial Valley, the floodplain of the Mississippi River. Arkansas, although we only have about 20% of the bottomland hardwood forest in the Delta that we had historically before European settlement, we're really a lot better off than, say, Mississippi or northeast Louisiana. more of it left than really any other state in any of the Southern Delta states, okay? A lot of that is in public ownership. White River National Wildlife Refuge is basically 160,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forest. Biomeda, 32,000 acres of bottomland hardwood. Dave Donaldson Black River WMA, the last two being state areas. That's up in Northeastern Arkansas, the Black River, 20 to 25,000 acres. So, you know, we're fortunate that a lot of, you know, there's a lot of private bottomland hardwood forest too, but a lot of this is publicly held. And that public land is, again, this is the remnants of what used to cover basically the eastern third of Arkansas, the entire Delta for the most part. I mean, it had oak trees on it, and much of this was cleared for agriculture and what have you throughout the late 19th and through the 20th century, and so we've only got so much of it left. And really dating back to the 1930s over the Stuttgart area, we started growing rice in the early 20th century in Eastern Arkansas, and rice is a very water-intensive crop. In the 30s, some farmers in that Stuttgart area started experimenting, and they would have these blocks of bottomland hardwood, low-lying woods that they knew seasonally flooded, but they didn't really hold water. So they built levees around it, and they thought, okay, well, while we've got water in the wintertime or in the spring, we'll hold on to that water, and then we'll use it to irrigate our rice crop in the summertime. Well, a funny thing happened. They noticed, man, look at all the ducks flocking in there. I was like, what's going on here? And they had seen this like with seasonal flooding of the wide and the cash and the black and the St. Francis and Biomeda itself and some of these other streams in the eastern part of Arkansas. So they saw that they could basically manufacture this. And that is how the GTR, the Green Tree Reservoir was born. So, as the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission started buying these areas in the late 40s and into the 50s and 60s and some even into the 70s and 80s. We're like, okay, we created these green tree reservoirs to artificially replicate what Mother Nature historically did every winter. And we'd get these rains that we talked about earlier in early to mid-December, and the water pulses up, and the woods flood, and boy, the ducks follow. And so we did that. And largely we did that knowing that we were creating habitat for waterfowl, which is a good thing, right? And opportunities for hunters, which is also a good thing. But what we didn't know in the 50s and 60s and into the 70s that we have been learning over the last 10, 15, 20 years with research out of Arkansas and Missouri and other places is that In many cases, we were getting water onto those trees way too early, like flooding them in October. They weren't dormant. We've got some ongoing research right now with the University of Arkansas at Monticello where we can actually quantify when a not all oak becomes dormant in the wintertime. And it's much later than what we used to think it was in the 50s and 60s. And so you look at that, and then we started over the last 10, 15 years doing forest health assessments, and we saw some very troubling results of that, in that many of our green tree reservoirs around the state, the forests were in declining health. dead trees, or trees that were dying, or trees that were sick, that if we don't change some things, trees, like any life, it's finite, it's going to die at some point, but we were sort of expediting the mortality probably by I won't say mismanaging, but we didn't know any better. I mean, 40, 50 years ago, we didn't know, and the science has caught up. And now that we've seen that, I mean, we know that we need to make some wholesale changes in the way we manage these areas. And it's not just a matter of… Everybody kind of focuses on, you're not putting the boards in Biomeda until November 15th now, and the season starts on the 18th. Well, that's not time to catch any water. No, I mean, it's not, unless we got a six-inch rain on the 16th of November, then there'd be plenty of water. But what we've got to do moving forward is be more adaptive, but it's not just a matter of when we catch the water. Really, what's even more important is how we get the water off of the areas at the end of the wintering period, in February after the youth hunt, after the photo period is shifting to where the ducks are triggered to go back to the breeding grounds. What that is requiring, I mean, and this is, I mean, I can't stress enough, this is a Herculean task. I mean, it is, we have been studying the forest health for a number of years now. Over the past number of years, with the help of, you know, engineers and folks, that ducks unlimited. And with our own staff, We're looking at the hydrology of these areas and like, what do we need to change? And really what we've seen, and I won't get into a lot of details because every area is different, right? The hydrology is different. The acreage is different. The mean sea level is different. The way these things flow, it's all different. So we can't paint with a broad brush. But what I can say in more general terms is that our job as the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is to sustainably manage our fish and wildlife resources and the habitats on which those resources rely. And we know that if we don't make some wholesale changes we will not have, at least to the quality and maybe not at all in some cases, those bottomland hardwood green tree reservoir resources that have made Arkansas famous, that have made ducks come here for millennia, that have sent duck hunters here for the past century plus, and that's made Arkansas famous as the place to be for flooded green timber duck hunting. And so what we're doing is we are assessing the levy systems in these areas. Do we need every levy that we have? We built these things to hold water and keep water back. And we are now realizing that we need to manage these things to move water across the system in an effective and efficient manner, sure, we still wanna hold some water, and Mother Nature still has a lot to do with that, right? But the biggest thing is like, when we built these areas largely in the 50s and 60s, we're trying to drain swimming pools with a water hose. The water control structures Sure, they hold the water back, but they are not big enough to get it out of there in an efficient and effective way when it's time to get it out of there. We're talking about levees that are built on a two-to-one slope right now. They need to be more like a 10-to-one slope so that they do get overtopped sometimes, right? And that's okay. It just moves the water to another part of the system. system, and it doesn't wash out your levees. You don't have to keep putting riprap on them, these pinch points where they tend to wash out. So I know I'm kind of getting down in the weeds, and I know we're probably running a little bit long, but the key message is we are moving from a stopping holding water. We're still going to provide habitat for ducks and opportunity for hunters. But we are moving to how can we do that while still moving the water across the system more in the way that mother nature would have done it, where you have these pulses where it comes up and then it drops down, where you don't have three or four feet of water on an oak tree at the same depth all season long for three months. And so that's really what we're moving to. And I hope the message that duck hunters receive, especially public land duck hunters, is that we have to change the way we're managing these systems. if we want to enjoy them into the future. Chris Jennings: Yeah, and I think that's, you know, I know there's always some frustration out there and I know you guys do a great job of dealing with that. You know, when you open up some of these questions to the general public, there are some people who tend to be frustrated with some different management tactics and have their own opinions. But I think when the way that you described it in saying, you know, having these areas to hunt, you know, for the next five years is really nothing in comparison to being sure that they're around 75 years from now. And I think that's the message that should and probably does resonate, especially with the Ducks Unlimited audience, which is a little bit more conservation focused, I would say. Absolutely. They understand that, that you got to give a little bit to, you know, you're going to sacrifice something for the future. Trey Reed: But I think too, I mean, here's the challenge is that because these areas have been managed the same way essentially since they were built with some changes over the last eight to 10 years. We have made a concerted effort. When we first really launched this initiative to say, hey, we're going to change the way we manage green tree reservoirs in Arkansas, at least the ones we own, and we're going to encourage private landowners And many of those tribal landowners are already doing this, right? They're working with the Mickey Heitmeyers of the world from, you know, retired from the University of Missouri. He's done a lot of research on this and, you know, and folks like that, they're already doing it, right? I mean, so I don't want to, it's just on the public land, which is like, that's where you run into this, like, frustration because it's like, And there's been this expectation that, okay, well, and then 40, 50 years ago, on October 15th, or November 1st, or for the last number of years, November 15th, well, there's gonna be water for me to go hunt. Well, not necessarily moving forward, especially what we're learning about tree dormancy. But the other thing that people have, there has been this expectation that on public land, I will be able to go at a certain time and the water's gonna be this depth and it's gonna be that depth all year long. And that's, I mean, I know people, I don't want, I'm a public land duck hunter. I like predictability and I want to know that on December 27th, when we reopen from our Christmas split, that there will be water for me to hunt in Upper Valley, right? I would love to be able to depend on that. But I think the key is that we are not going to have the predictability. It's not going to be the same every year. That a lot of this, we're still going to try to put water in the woods. I think there's a perception, Chris, out there. We just had some some feedback and pushback largely through social media channels about some announcements we made related to Dave Donaldson Black River. Now, this is in no way deviates from what we've been talking about for a number of years, but it was like, okay, we've finally gone in and done the assessments, we've looked at the hydrology, and now we're developing a plan that we will begin implementing within the next couple of years. And people heard that as you're going to do away with green tree reservoirs, you're not going to flood for ducks and duck hunters anymore. That's just simply not true. We are, but we're not going to flood it up to full pool on the first day of the season and keep it that way until the last day of the season. Now, if it rains 20 inches between November 15th and January 31st, there's nothing we can do. There's going to be water there, right? And so we have to adapt to the hand… We're going to play the cards that mother nature deals us, but we have to do it in a sustainable, long-term way that we are not causing damage to this resource that is so important to dogs, to duck hunters, and to Arkansas, to what it means to come duck hunting in Arkansas. Chris Jennings: Yeah, absolutely. And like I mentioned, it's, it's the long-term focus that should be taken into account. And, and also, you know, one thing I took from that, that you were just talking is that, um, I find it completely amazing that Arkansas Game and Fish and Mother Nature can't make everyone happy at the same time. Trey Reed: Now I'm just joking. Well, might as well mix DU in there too. I mean, I'm sure y'all make everybody happy every day, right? We all do. Yeah. Chris Jennings: And so, you know, and I think that, like I mentioned with the DU audience, you know, being a little bit more of a conservation focus, I think that a lot of those people, and I know a lot of people who are very, very in tune and aware, and we've had full podcasts, you know, several, even several with Austin Booth, the commissioner that, you know, focused entirely on this conversation. And our audience can go back and listen to those. I think Dr. Mike Brazier did a two or three part series on that last year. And, and it's all very interesting and, and, you know, good information for people to know, not just, not just people who live and hunt in Arkansas, but, you know, people throughout the country who may find interest in just this management habitat, kind of long-term view of, like you mentioned, you know, sustaining this tradition of Arkansas green timber hunting. So, no, this has been fantastic, Trey. You know, I think providing all of this information for our audience, um, and anyone listening out there who's going to be hunting in Arkansas, it's all pretty valuable. So, uh, the next thing you're going to have to do is send me an email with all the pins of the holes that you hunt in Biamita and we'll go ahead and distribute that out to the mass audience. Trey Reed: I tell you what, Chris, I will do that, but it may take me a couple of days because, as you know, we've had some issues connecting on the phone because my phone ended up in the saltwater marsh somewhere between Duloc and Cocodrie, Louisiana last week, and some of those pins are on there. But when I get the new phone, and we get everything, all the settings restored, I got you taken care of. And I would love one of these weekends or even a weekday when you're over in Arkansas, let me know. And let me just show you some of these places. I'd love to get out in the flood of green timber with you. Chris Jennings: Absolutely. I would, I might have to take you up on that for sure. Well, Trey, this has been great. I'm sure our audience enjoyed it and we'll have to get you back on maybe when, uh, maybe when Arkansas gets a bunch of rain and the real chatter picks up. And like I said, the boat, boat ramp lines get a little longer. We'll have to get you back on and just kind of talk about, talk about what the habitat looks like. Trey Reed: It'll be my pleasure, Chris, and I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about what we're doing at Arkansas Game and Fish and what waterfowl hunting, what duck hunting in particular, means to the folks here in Arkansas. It's always a pleasure. Good to catch up with you, and thank you again so much for the opportunity. Chris Jennings: I'd like to thank my guests, Trey Reed, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Assistant Coms Director for coming on the DU Podcast and talking about all things Arkansas. I'd like to thank our producer, Chris Isaac, for putting the show together and getting it out to you. And I'd like to thank you, the listener, for joining us on DU Podcast and supporting Wellands Conservation.