Levi Pillow: The Past, Present and Future of Arkansas's Famed Dave Donaldson Black River WMA

Levi Pillow has over 50 years experience hunting the famed Dave Donaldson Black River WMA in Northeast Arkansas. Going from gentlemen’s agreeement to who hunted where with permanent decoy spreads to today’s chaotic overcrowding, he’s seen it all. Pillow shares that history along with changes he and a group of hunters from the WMA recently proposed to the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission with a non-resident draw as the key effort to manage the unrelenting pressure.

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Transcript

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Welcome to The Standard Sportsman Podcast. The show features trending topics, touching all aspects of duck and goose hunting in an effort to motivate others to leave the resource better than they found it. Hosts Cason Short and Brent Birch are lifelong Arkansas hunter conservationists, delivering thought-provoking discussions with engaging guests before, during, and after duck season. Thanks for spending time with us today. Now let's jump into today's show with the guys.

Everybody, Cason Short back as always with Brent Birch for another episode of The Standard Sportsman. And Brent, as we sit here recording this week, we are staring down the barrel of a sizable rain event moving in the Mississippi and Louisville Valley. Why is that significant? Some may ask. Well, it's going to affect a little bit of the ratoon rice. It may have had a chance at getting started. And it's going to affect a lot of more soil units that were in the middle of drawdown and some soil disturbance. So Brent, what are your thoughts on how an early rain like this can affect a duck season that's as far out as the next one is?

Yeah, it's if if the euro model is right, we're going to be we're going to be underwater. It's going to look the Grand Prairie is going to look like a lake.

We're going to need a bigger boat.

We're going to need a bigger boat. But yeah, we're in this. We're in that process of drawing. We've drawn down one down completely and we're we're kind of staging the other one. So it's still got some water in it. But the problem is, you know, we can leave our boards out and try to get rid of it. But our farm flows into Biomita and Biomita is going to get it's going to get right at the tip top because it can't go anywhere if the Arkansas River can't dump in the Mississippi River. I mean, it's just a chain of events that we're we stare down and and that those are some scary digits we're seeing on that you got a lot of people that have already got beans in the ground. You know, it's it's it's not great and I'll tell you I remember this was I think it was four years ago maybe five years ago we got a like a 16-inch rain in May and you know bottom end of our farm it did it looked like a big lake but I will say that particular end of the farm that following duck season was the best it's been since we've owned the farm so really yeah kind of interesting but but it really did you know we were able to get it dried out but man it we held on that water for a lot longer than we wanted to and this is an area we don't we don't plan anything it's it's all smart weed and sprinkle top and everything else that comes up in there and it's pretty small but the water did push out into a field we do farm rice in and that kind of that third of the field where that water stayed on so long we weren't able to plan it so all the smart weed came up on that side there's a little levy that snakes through the middle of it but I don't know we'll see it was it was a lot of rain then and I'm kind of hopeful we don't get that much now because it's going it's gonna cause a lot of problems on on a lot of levels for a while yeah for sure so it's been over a decade now but in June of 14 we got a 14 inch rain overnight less than obviously less than 12 hour period and it turned everything in our little area into an ocean I mean it was water in places I'd never seen it water flowed across levees and across fields it did not even bother trying to meander through our creek system it went where it wanted to but interesting note that water stayed around into July I mean just had nowhere to go we had a complete crop failure on most of our soybeans that year rice turned that okay but kind of turned everything into impromptu more soil units there as best you can in June and July had a lot of tooth cup and had some some nice aquatic vegetation and held teal like I'd never seen it had a great and we shot a lot of teal that year but had a great duck season as a result of it kind of making lemonade out of lemons.

But we did what we had to that year. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, you would think that much water hanging around that long when you get a bug bloom and you know, all that stuff comes up in there too. You just, you're right. You're trying to make lemonade out of a bunch of lemons. So we'll see. It's a crazy forecast. Hard to predict what it'll do. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, but yeah, when this show comes out, it'll be kind of in the middle of it. So we'll see what happens. Yep. For over 30 years, Lile Real Estate has been connecting land investors and outdoorsmen with sellers. Whether looking to invest in an income-producing farm or recreational land, the Lile Real Estate team has the connections and the expertise to help. They work with tracks of all sizes and specialize in agricultural, timberland and recreational properties. New listings are hitting the market almost weekly, so head on over to their website to learn more. www.lilerealestate.com.

All right. Well, let's get into the show. I think we got a pretty good one today.

I do too. I'm kind of interested to talk about this. I've hunted up on Black River before, and I had a really close friend that has since passed away that owned some private ground that kind of, you know, the public ground kind of wrapped around it. And, you know, we go into the public public ground sometimes, but it's a really interesting piece of property. And I want definitely to talk about some of that and paint the picture for listeners that have always heard of Dave Donaldson, Black River, but don't know the intricacies of it. And we've got a guy on here today that's got a lot of history with this place, and it's going to be able to kind of share, you know, some different lenses looking backwards, looking at where we are now and where we're going and with this particular WMA that is quite popular and obviously holds a lot of ducks when it's right. And, but it's got some things going on and we're going to talk through some of that today. So we've got Levi Pillow on the show, and Levi, welcome to The Standard Sportsman podcast.

Hi, good morning. Good morning. I'm proud to be here with y'all and appreciate the invitation.

Yeah, yeah, well, Levi's on the Advisory Council with Cason and myself that reports to the Director of the Game & Fish and has a lot of insight up there and has brought some things to the Advisory Council that if you're hunting either, Cason's a little closer to that part of the world. I'm farther away, at least from a duck standpoint, but it's a really unique piece of property that's pretty far up there in the northeast corner of Arkansas. It gets different ducks, it gets them at different times, they do different things, the way the water goes up there. We're going to talk through all that today. But may we start off, Levi, give a little background on you. I know you've been up there obviously a long time hunting that particular property and done quite a few things up in that part of the world.

Yeah, I was actually born and raised here in Northeast Arkansas. Perrygold, I guess, was what you call my hometown. I actually live out in the country, but the closest city that people may recognize. I'm a 56-year-old, been hunting Dave Donaldson since I was about eight. My dad and family always hunted up there. We started out having one of the first houseboats that were actually on the river up there. That's where I started out in my hunting experiences with Dave Donaldson, Black River. I've seen a lot of changes naturally over those 48 years. In my personal life, I had a lot of opportunities to work with the general public. I was county judge up here in Greene County for a few years. Got out of that, went into general contracting, and since I've been doing that, I actually have done quite a bit of work for the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission. We do a lot of the maintenance and upkeep at Dave Donaldson. So it gives me the opportunity to have a familiarity with the WMA that maybe other people don't get the opportunity to have. But also we help do the watering, dewatering, and just a lot of involvement there from that standpoint. We have been involved through one of the commissioners in the last few years. We've got a couple of committees up here that help retrieve information and put fillers out to our hunting population here. Boots on the ground type application to get some feedback. We've been forcing it for the last 10 years, seven mostly, that we've been able to have a little bit of input into Dave Donaldson and trying to, again, give a little different perspective to the Game & Fish Organization as well as commissioners from, again, a user standpoint. I think that's what our advisory council, when I was asked to serve on that, that was really the responsibility that I felt like was given to us was to really bring about some different perspective than possibly what they see with just their day-to-day staff operations. Other than that, I mean, I guess that kind of covers what brought me into this. But again, I have a definite passion for hunting. I've got a lodge there on Black River at the Brookings camps. I probably hunt, on average, I hunt 50 out of 60 days a year on Black River. And again, talked to a lot of people in state, out of state. I hunt by myself a lot of days just for the purpose that I go into an area and try to hunt with different people, just to get the opportunity to get their perspectives. And so I get a chance to meet a lot of people doing that, but it's direct. It's really one-on-one with the people that are utilizing the area.

So Levi, for the average listener who's not familiar with Dave Donaldson or isn't privy to some of the meetings we've been in, enlighten us all as to what's going on up there and the problems that you're seeing.

Well, and we have a lot of issues that we face. Well, one of the things that you just mentioned earlier, y'all were talking about the floods that we're fixing to get here in May. What we've been dealing with more so in the last few years, is Dave Donaldson is a really unique WMA. It's about a 27,000 acre WMA. It has about 5,700 acres of GTRs. Those GTRs are artificially flooded by utilizing the river flow. There's a diversion on, off of Black River into what we call Little River. Little River has a dam or a weir structure in place. We call it Little River Dam. Once that structure is closed off, it actually diverts the river into these GTRs. There's actually structures underneath the river that carries this flow back to both sides of the river, carries it across the river, floods over on the west side, and then brings it back under the river to flood the southeast areas down behind Ash Ball Lake. Most people, anybody familiar with the area is familiar with Ash Ball Lake. But over the last, we actually had an issue that came up several years ago where there were a lot of tree damage. Our GTRs were really declining and it was due to a lot of the core issues of how we get our water from Clearwater Lake and how that water is released and the flood scenarios that we get back down into our river basin. But like this year, it doesn't make any difference how they release water. When we get these spring floods, the GTRs get flooded and it really holds a lot of water on these trees during their growing season and we all know that's not a good thing. So we've been dealing with that for the last few years and trying to get some of those issues rectified. But our really pressing issue that we feel like we have today is just the amount of pressure that we are putting on our WMA. And not our public lands, not only our private lands, are also the issues or the resources concerned. This year is a good example that we had a really high river opening a duck season instead of 5,000 acres. We probably had 12,000 acres flooded. Had quite a few ducks in the area, a lot of ducks on the WMA. But we only took us because we had such a hunter density, a high population of hunters, we estimate we had probably close to 4,000 to 5,000 people on that WMA opening weekend. So when you look at that, you get that down to where there's only about two acres for every hunter, every hunter. We basically shot these ducks out in less than two days. We had a good morning, Saturday morning, everybody would kill the limits. And it was a great, great opening day, just like we used to have 20 years ago. And then Sunday was a little slower. And then my Monday, nobody was killing ducks. And our fear factor is that we keep pushing these ducks out at the rate we are. And then eventually they're going to quit utilizing our public land there, as they've been doing for hundreds of years, or more so for the last 60, for sure, since we've been managing it and flooding it like the way that the Game & Fish has been doing it. And that has been one of the, it's one of the only spots left for our ducks to have a good resource to utilize in Northeast Arkansas. And I know this is getting long, but Cash River used to be one of our other main resources in Northeast Arkansas. And due to the drudging and draining of the Cash River Basin, which took away a lot of our little contributors into that, it eliminated a big resource that the ducks had up until the time it was drained, which was about 20 years ago. And then when the farming practices have changed as well, so that now we have very little opportunity for the ducks to utilize the private land, because most of that's been commercialized for duck hunting. And most of it that's holding water has got a pit and duck hunters in it, so the ducks really don't have a good place to go out and utilize any private land as well. Farming practices, being what they are again, yes, we're cutting rice in August, where when I was in school, they didn't cut rice till October, November. So a lot of that's, you know, 80% of the water we had back in the 90s was not used for duck hunting. It was just there because the farmers couldn't get it drained. Again, the farming practices were a lot different back then, but now those resources are not in place. So yeah, our biggest concern right now is how do we protect the resource to make sure we don't push this area dry of opportunity for the ducks to use this area. We know we've got to get this number back down to a reasonable utilization of the natural resources so that the ducks have a place to go and rest and feed and have shelter without somebody even sitting there waiting on them all the time.

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A very strong priority point for everybody. I mean, even private land has gone to much more aggressive efforts to manage pressure in what is the formula to hold ducks. You got to have a habitat, you got to manage pressure. And obviously that is very difficult on private land because you're out there together, but you're not all in it together or for the same reasons and that kind of thing. And I know that's a really tough, it's a tough thing to manage, but it's almost something you got to wake up one day and think through the process that, man, maybe what I'm doing, not Flooded Corn in Missouri or shooting ducks in September in Canada, maybe it's something I'm doing that is resulting in why my season isn't better, why I'm not seeing more ducks. And I think that's a kind of a sticky point where we're at within the hunting community is not, some people are not connecting those dots, but you mentioned something a second ago, you know, like you said, I think you said, like it was 20 years ago, kind of backtrack a little bit on Black River, because Black River had had some uniqueness to it for a long time. And kind of talk through those those days, way back when, and kind of walk through to paint a picture for somebody that's never never seen Black River, never experienced it, to kind of understand how that place used to function. And then up until today and kind of those changes that you've seen that have put that that particular property at this point.

Yeah, when I first started hunting up there again, you know, almost 50 years ago, it was not nearly as well known. Again, that was for social media, cell phones, any of that has brought about a lot of changes. So Black River was unique. It was one of the last areas that we had to start removing decoys. When I was a kid up there, people had their own designated little areas they hunted. Everybody knew everybody. You know, and everybody kind of had their own little kind of corner of the world that they dealt with. Most people that, it's kind of unique that some people that may have hunted on the south end of the area had never even hunted it for 20 years, but never went to the north end of the area. Never went outside their little boundaries, let's call it. They kept their own locations clean. And then again, when you come in, you put your decoys out, the decoys stayed out all winter. You know, it was just a lot less congested. You know, naturally, we just didn't have as many people up there. Accessibility was a lot different back then. And as time progressed and we did have issues that when we started removing decoys and had that was, I think, when probably about the time, the sport started to really grow in popularity. You look at duck stamp sales numbers, and this thing is just continually progressed on a very rapid scale in the last 40 years. And as that desire increase, it naturally created more of a demand. So that demand created the Game & Fish to go in and look at, okay, we can't really have these boundaries established. We need to allow people to go where they need to go. It's public land. You know, you don't really... It got labeled as claiming holes, if you want to call it that. But everybody was a lot more social back then. But you still had traditional hunting back then that I was raised, again, with my dad hunting. And he basically taught me the woodsmanship and the ethics of tradition of how you hunted up there and how you respected other hunters. And so there was a lot of things that were in place that kind of kept everybody in check. And as things progressed, and again, they started kind of creating more of a demand and more people started coming into the WMA. The WMA is kind of, has always had a little bit of uniqueness as well, that it's all woods, there's no open area. So it was always intimidating to a lot of people that wouldn't go into those woods because concerns and stories of people getting lost and staying out there for a day or two days at a time before somebody can find them. It's not that big an area. But when you take the sloughs and the water and everything that was involved, it wasn't something you could just get a straight line and walk out of. So you got lost up there. It was pretty intimidating to some people. So I think as GPS and cell phones and again, a lot of things, I think Mojo Ducks, or Spinning Wing Decoys, they brought a lot more of the new younger generation of hunters in, which we need the younger generation. I'm not complaining about that. But they had a lot of people that I feel like we had come into the hunting and environment at that time that didn't have that older mentorship to bring them into it with the understanding of the traditions and history and things of this nature. Because all they had to do is four or five of their buddies get together and they were all 18, 19 year old maybe and went and bought four or five Spinning Wing Decoys and they may not have ever hunted. They may not even blow a duck call, but they could go up there in those woods and actually kill ducks. They didn't have to worry about getting lost because they had their phones and all the new electronics at the time, that GPS receivers and things can get them in and out of the area without having those concerns. That transitioned right on up into the social media. I think when the social media aspect of it came out and I think if you type in Arkansas Green Temperate Hunting today, and what I find is probably, I'll be conservative, 60 to 70% of the videos that I see on YouTube are Dave Donaldson. It was more or less an advertisement. We're not talking about local advertisement when you get into that level. You're talking about it goes everywhere. I think created a lot of interests outside the state. Then we've seen a big influx of hunters coming in because everybody's heard about Arkansas Green Timber Hots. That's the one thing you want to put on your bucket list. So we went from having expectations of coming in. It wasn't nothing to kill limits and stuff back 40 years ago. It wasn't a big issue when you are what the big surprise when you'd have four or 500 ducks in a group come down into a hole. Those guys hunted them different. You didn't shoot till they hit the water and you didn't shoot till the last duck hit the water. Now you're lucky to see 20 and 10 to 20 duck groups coming into these holes. A lot of times it's just two or three singles that are breaking off and coming in just because the pressure has changed the behaviors of the ducks up there dramatically. This thing, again, it's split right down the middle of Black River. You got GTRs, they're basically five big GTR units on that WMA. And now it's nothing, if you talk to people that hunt up there on a regular basis, they hunt from one end to the other. There's a lot of duck chasing going on. We never, when I was a kid, you never left your area. You had your boundaries, it didn't make any difference if the ducks were lightening 400 yards from you. You didn't go out there through the woods and hunt something else. You didn't spook the ducks. You let them use what they want to use. If it was your day, that was great. If it wasn't, it just wasn't. It was somebody else's day. There was no shot chasing going on. There was none of those things that created a lot of the issues that we have today and people being on top of people, and some of those things that are just not what we learned when I was a kid. So, again, it's a lot of older people and a lot of local people have actually quit hunting the WMA up there just because of the changes. And yes, we were probably spelt that we had one of the diamonds of the whole state that people didn't recognize, but the more it got recognized, the more it got utilized. And it's just created that overpopulation now that is my biggest concern. And when I say we, we've got a subcommittee on the advisory council, that five of us out of 15 all hunt Dave Donaldson. And then we've got these other groups that I talk to on a regular basis, and we're all concerned that the acceleration of changes over the last 10 years, it's just like acceleration of technology or the acceleration of the changes of how we hunt up there and the pressure that we're putting on. Just in the last two years alone, I've said this a lot of times, you know, every year we've, for the last five years, we said it can't get any worse. We can't get more people up here. And we'd keep getting more and more people. This year alone, we had over 1,400 trucks and trailers in five parking lots, six parking lots on this WMA opening day. We had them parking a mile and a half and two miles from the boat ramp, and walking back to the boat ramps. That has never been seen in the history of this WMA. And if we continue to do that and continue to accelerate at that rate, then we're going to run our resource here because we're definitely going to push them out. I get my guys' analogy of East St. Louis. I quit going to East St. Louis a long time ago because you go through there enough and you get your windows knocked out, you'll quit going through there. And these ducks are getting their windows knocked out every time they come in to these WMAs now in Northeast Arkansas and Dave Donaldson specifically because there's somebody there every day. Like, that didn't happen 50 years ago. They had plenty of room to spread out, plenty of room to get into areas that people's mud motors or another thing has changed up there. You know, the noise is one issue, but the accessibility is another issue. You know, this WMA had areas I could have taken you to 15 years ago before the mud motor that held Ducks year-round because people wouldn't willing to walk. You know, they didn't have to, for one reason, but because there wasn't the hunter density we have today. Well, now we've got such a hunter density and the mud motors have created such an access issue that these areas the Ducks used to have that they pretty well had to their self because nobody was willing to go that far. Now they have that accessibility to the mud motors or we have a younger generation that's willing to walk that mile and tow decoys and stuff because that's the only way they've ever hunted. They don't realize how different it was a few years ago, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's important to note or I think it's a huge factor that the impact social media has had. It's had it on all publicly and hunting, but it kind of works both ways, and especially in this era where they've decided, the Game & Fish has decided to back flooding up across the board at all the GTRs. Black River typically has some amount of water. Last year, it was a really good amount of water for early, early season while other WMAs were bone dry. People that hunt public ground know this. And the popularity of Black River, I would assume, really took off when social media started to really escalate because people found out that, oh, Black River almost always has ducks early and these other WMAs don't. So I don't have a place to hunt this first weekend. I'm going up there. And that's what has put a lot of that traffic on that particular WMA. And you also got the regionality of it that people can come from other states that are up in that part of the world, so to speak, and can get there and want to take a stab at it and see if they can't shoot a duck or two in the trees.

Well, that is one of the uniqueness of Dave Donaldson as well. It's one of the only WMAs that has consistently guaranteed some water opening the duck season since it's been in existence for 60 something years. You know, a lot of the, like you said, a lot of our other WMAs are relying on some other type of flooding opportunities or, you know, with the diversion of the river, it's a guarantee that we will have some water opening day. And I've said this about the out-of-state hunters. You know, if you're planning a hunt six months ahead of time, you realize that, hey, if I want to hunt, I may have to hunt with people, but at least I'm guaranteed water to hunt if I go to Dave Donaldson. Well, that's not the case. Even about, you know, about the views, about META, you know, hurricane, all these are susceptible to being able for Game & Fish to flood them in a different way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally different strategies. And that's why it's kind of hard on some of these rules and regs related to WMA is that they, you know, there's a blanket rules and they all function so differently. Even draw different kinds of hunters and what they want to do. But I don't want to mention an online personality. But that's had to have played a role too in some of what has increased the popularity of Black River because there's a few personalities that really tout that whole, you know, scouting and hustling to get a hold, you know, all of that. You know, are you seeing that? I mean, you and I are pretty much the same age. You know, we're a little older probably than that, the crowd that pays such close attention to that. But to me, I run enough across it enough that I would say, man, I don't know if that's what we, what we, you know, or somebody that hunts up there, is that what we really want out there? And I would assume that's caused some issues too.

It definitely has. And again, when I get out and talk to different age brackets, you can definitely see it in the younger age group, yes, that they are definitely influenced by different personalities and different, you know, and it's not just the personalities. I mean, I'm one of the older guys that, if anybody hears this and tries to look me up on Facebook today to see who I was, they're not going to find me because I don't have a Facebook account. That's pretty unusual anymore, you know. But, you know, the groups that are doing these pile photos and, you know, what I call kill picks and things like that and then post them, that's not, again, conducive to what we're trying to do to help the resource. Because all that does is create that environment of competitiveness and it, to me, puts an emphasis on something that really is not what I was thought to put an emphasis on. You know, and that's not what duck hunting is all about, is how many you can hang on its tree. You know, it's, which I have, I have labs. And yes, I love working my dogs. I love, but for me, it's always been more about calling ducks and working ducks. And if I had the choice today, you know, and if I had to put my gun up, I would still go out there just to play with the ducks. When I say play, call them ducks, you know, see if I can manipulate them into paying attention to what I want them to pay attention to. That's, that's more of the game than killing them, if that makes sense.

No, for sure. Yeah, I would think I would probably fall in that same category.

It's a But the social media does it, a lot of the, what I guess is all the point to that is, I think a lot of the social media influence doesn't encourage that. It encourages more of the competitiveness of who killed the most today. And you know, where can we be tomorrow? And that to me has created a lot of the conflicts that we see today.

Yeah, Levi, I definitely agree with that. You know, in terms of how social media kind of drives the narrative of the hunting culture. And particularly when we talk about pressure, that's definitely, you know, something that Brent and I agree on. I think pressure is the one single biggest factor that we can all play a role in, which kind of leads me to this question. And I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit here, because I'm curious what you think the solution is. But when I listen to you talk, and I know there's a lot of our audience who comes from out of state, they're going to hear the same thing. You know, they're going to hear that you hunt 50 days, that it's our Ducks, our WMA, they're going to hear these comments, and then they're going to hear you talk about pressure. So it doesn't seem as if you're dialing by your pressure. So what would you say to them, and what do you propose as a solution to the issue? Because I think it's easy to identify there is an issue, not only on Dave Donaldson, but on a lot of other WMAs, and even on private ground, there's a lot of issues, most of which is pressure related. So what is your proposal?

Well, and one of the things I've done as one individual, I've changed the way that I hunt tremendously. Again, anybody that knows me up here and hunts with me knows that out of those 50 days, probably 35 to 40 of them, I'll be by myself. And everybody knows that knows me pretty well, hunts up here. Yeah, I'm back at my lodge at 8.30, 9 o'clock at the latest. A lot of mornings, I may be back at 8 o'clock, whether I've killed a duck or not. I call it my... I've got a thermos timer. And my coffee thermos is my timer. If I go out there and when I run out of coffee and watch the sun come up, if I'm not killing ducks, it's still time for me to go home because there's not enough ducks in the woods out there for me to be out there, then I need to get myself and get out to give them an opportunity to do show up to have a place to come to. That's right. And if I do kill a few ducks early, but I never stay out there late. One exception I make to that, if I do have somebody that comes in to haunt or I had one group this year that we took that, yeah, we stayed out there on 9, 30 or 10 o'clock. But what's funny with that group is I unloaded my gun three times trying to get them to come in, because I don't think we're doing any services by staying out there all day. Again, my thing with the pressure that we talked about in our groups, which even before we started talking about the non-resident deal, let's go back to talk about how we flood Dave Donaldson. Normally, in the past, Dave Donaldson was always flooded October 15th. We always had water in the woods to catch the Halloween Ducks. And our season may not even open until December back in the day, even when you all remember that. And these ducks were so rafted up in these woods by the time we got to them that we had ducks those 30-day season. We had ducks for the full 30 days because we didn't run them out. You couldn't run them out. Well, today, we'll start putting the structures in. Normally, the Wednesday before we open season on Saturday, which if we have, it's all engaged upon the river levels. If we've got a higher river, we can flood quicker naturally than if we've got a really low river. We can't even flood at all, but we can still flood some acreage. So we put these gates in on the Wednesday, and then by Saturday, if we're lucky, we got 600 acres flooded up on a normal year. That would be all you would have. And you turn all these hunters lose on that 600 acres. Well, as a group, as a regional group, we've even made the suggestions to the commissioners about three years ago, four years ago, that we don't open that first season. We don't even open that WMA for the first 10 days of that season. Let it go. Let the 10-day split go. Give it 20 days to not even hunt, and let the water get spread out more. Let the ducks get in there and start using the area better. Because right now, again, we're putting a little bit of water in there, and then we're starting in with putting hunters in the area before the ducks eat and get there. So they're never getting to utilize these woods and this resource like they did in the past. So that would be across the board. Now, if you had a river like we had this year, and the river was out, you had 12,000 acres, that's fine. Let's open it up and everybody go. And you're not going to be affecting the resource like you would on our normal service staff. But that is something that everybody here that hunts Dave Donaldson that I represent, which I don't represent everybody. And that's one thing I want to make sure people understand. Yes, we've got fillers out. I've got people I've talked to. And we've got different groups and organizations that we try to meet with just to get a feedback and a perspective. And we try to take these ideals to as many people as we can before we make them public. But this is one idea that people understand. And I think most of the hunters in the area understand. And again, it may be more prevalent that I'm talking to a little bit of a more experienced age group from the WMA. And not so much, I got 13 and 14 year old kids. So this is one of my main reasons. Again, I'm 56. I don't know how much longer I've got. But I know they've got the rest of their lives. So I'm trying to make sure they have some type of resource available to them at some point in time. Some of the things that was one of the ideals that we presented to commission in the past that I think could have a very big effect on trying to get our ducks to start coming back and utilizing that Dave Donaldson, WMA and the public land there. Just again, that eliminates a lot of pressure right out of the gate. The second thing we talked about this year and that I made a presentation to the commission about last week at their commission meeting or two weeks ago, was starting to look at draw systems. One of the draw systems that we talked about was, again, even three years ago, we talked about utilizing a portion of the WMA as a full-blown draw. Residents, non-residents, everyone involved at the same time, but take one of the GTRs possibly and make it into where it's a draw hunt only. And try to do that as a pilot program to show the hunters and the general population that it would be a success or it would not be a success, but it could prove itself one way or the other. Well, that's been three years. We haven't done either one of those yet. So we haven't really seen a response to either one of those yet. So this year, though, with the increase on the demand that we've seen, again, with all the trucks and trailers and the parking lots and all the pressure that we've seen on the WMA, and also with all the other states that we see that are starting to already talk about, you know, regulating and trying to restrict maybe out-of-state usage in their general state areas, we started looking at work and we at least start to start taking down some of this population issue or this pressure issue and non-residents is the area that we looked at first and foremost. Part of the reason for that is, again, I have a brother that, he started out, he's 10 years younger than me, but he's been up there 30 something years, hunting with my dad and me. But he's a 40 hour week guy. He works Monday through Friday, and the only opportunity he gets to hunt is Saturday, Sunday. And so, he gets to hunt maybe 14 days a year. And in the last few years, it started being harder and harder for him to even justify going and trying to have a quality hunt that he would want to take his kids on. So, we've run into that as well. And that's another subject we'll cover maybe later of some of the issues that we have with kids and trying to get them involved from a local standpoint. But he, as well as probably 70 to 80 percent of our local hunters that are here, do not have an opportunity to go anywhere else. And they're being driven away from this public land just because of the pressure that's being put on it by everybody that we have in the area. One of the big questions that we have from a personal boots on the ground standpoint, we tried to do some parking lot counts this year, looking at license plates and what's the ratio of non-residents versus residents. And our parking lot surveys do not match anything close to what the Game & Fish surveys are based on their cell phone surveys or that they look at locations and things of this nature. But our parking lot surveys, you know, we were servicing out-of-state people more than we were servicing in-state people. Our residents were losing the opportunity due to the fact that we were actually again providing more opportunity to people from out-of-state than we were in-state. So we come up with the idea of possibly looking at starting off with the draw for the out-of-state residents to get this down to about, you know, right now, the Game & Fish recognizes it about a 75-25. We feel like it's, you know, 50-50 or even honestly, I think that would be a very conservative. I think, you know, we're talking about 60-65% of our hunters up there are from an out-of-state residency standpoint. That is strictly not a number that's based on anything, but the opinions of us looking at parking lots this year from our advisory council, different ones of us going to different parking lots and looking at license plates. We're trying to do those counts. So where do you start? You know, it's hard to come in and tell a resident that, you know, you're not going to get the opportunity to hunt the private land that's available to you and only, you know, your only opportunity to hunt because we're going to allow possibly a non-resident entity to take prevalence over, you know, the people that are here local. Well, and again, if you take this away from them, if you put a full-blown draw on, let's say, on everybody right now, it would probably drive a lot of locals out of hunting here, I think. Like my brother, if you start pushing him down to where he's only getting the draw, probably a 20 to 30% success rate cuts him down from, let's say, 14 days a year to 3 or 4 days a year. Well, he's not going to maintain what he has to hunt 3 or 4 days a year, and he has nowhere else to go. One of the analogies that I looked at was, I go feather hunting. We've been in Nebraska, Canada, South Dakota, North Dakota, everywhere. South Dakota is our go-to here lately, and I pay $200 a day as an out-of-state resident to hunt on private land because I don't want to crowd them out of their public land. But also, that's a minimum cost to me for the trip, is to pay that additional cost to have a place to hunt. We recognize that we do this. It's probably going to create more demand out in the private side of this. Depending on how they implement it, it could create an issue with other public lands. But that's something that we did not, as Dave Donaldson's subcommittee didn't want to. Again, there's so much uniqueness about all these WMAs. We're familiar with ours and we're familiar with what we've dealt with for the last few years. But I couldn't talk very educated about, I couldn't talk educatedly at all about biomedicine because I never even hunted it, but I can remember. Biodevue, yes, some others. But Dave Donaldson, that's where we're trying to get a pilot program really started there. But it could be implemented throughout the rest of the state. What we looked at there is trying to do it based on that hunter density issue. We went back and looked at private entities, like your private hunt clubs, how much pressure do they allow, how many hunters are they looking at per acre. We took information from all their surrounding states. We also looked at, I think Brent, you found the original document somewhere where they designed these, that they had expectations of about 100 for over 13 acres. A lot of people ask about like Missouri's draw. Even on their draw system, they're looking at like 100 for every 50 acres up there, is all they're allowing. Well, we've tried to do the best we can to come up with some formula, and we're worried about 100 for every 12.5 acres. This can be implemented on every public land. There isn't a state at the commission that like to do so. But again, we're just talking about Dave Donaldson as a pilot project. Again, try to do some of these things to prove it out. If it works, it works. If it don't, scratch it and let's do something different. Our main concern here is we got to do something. We can't just keep kicking the can down the road because again, we've got other states around us that are fixing to do something more than likely. If they do something and we're the last, we're supposed to be the premier duck-hunting state in the world. And it doesn't seem right if we're going to be the last ones that are protecting that. Long answer, but anyway.

That was good. So I've got a question. You mentioned that we were providing more opportunity for non-residents. And I was going to ask you to explain that a little further. That's the first time I've heard that statement.

Well, again, what we look, which first of, we kind of look at duck stamp sales in Arkansas. You all know, I know very well familiar with the out-of-state duck stamp sales here in Arkansas, out-numbers in-state duck stamp sales. Which again, when we looked at, we break it down to only about 10 percent of those are actually purchasing public land permits from what I understand based on the information we got. So there's roughly 60,000 out-of-state duck stamps being sold, only about 6,000 are going to the WMAs. We couldn't find any WMA specific numbers because what I understand, they don't do that in a specific way. When you buy a opportunity to hunt on public land, you can hunt anywhere in the state. Again, all these are unique. And it's hard to determine pressure. So when I say that, again, I have to back up and qualify that with the thought that that is strictly being based on, when I say opportunity, that we have more. If I go through that parking lot and out of 40 trucks, 27 of them have out-of-state plates and 13 of them are resident plates, are Arkansas plates, then I consider that we've provided more to out-of-state people that day than we did in-state people. I guess is where I'm kind of for that state.

Isn't the opportunity for the resident and the non-resident the same? You're just talking about more on the consumptive side of it.

As far as-

Because we're not allowing more non-resident licenses. That would be greater opportunity, right?

If you, I mean, I guess from the standpoint of maybe that was a bad way of wording that as far as opportunity. I think we're providing more. I guess I think we're just providing more to the out-of-state than we are in-state today on our WMA. Again, that may not be anywhere else in the state. That's just Dave Donaldson and three parking lots. We looked it all up. But then again, when I go back and talk to the Game & Fish Commission, and the Waterfowl Division and some of those, they're utilizing GPS locators on cell phones from different services and a lot of other information to determine that they would think only 25 percent of the utilization of the area is being out-of-state residents, that 75 percent of the residential usage. And again, we just don't see that from what we've seen. And again, it's really progressing more so in the last five years and more so probably from last year to this year, it was just amazing how much difference we've seen. Yeah, I mean, it might be social media. I mean, I do, but you know, there was a lot of social media out there. But hey, Dave Donaldson's got waters outside the banks. They got ducks everywhere. So naturally, it would have been a big boom year for us to have a lot of people, you know.

Well, it would make sense to me to start having a non-resident WMA permit and maybe do it by location. I'm not saying an increased cost for it, but at least some manner to actually track who's going where and who's using what WMA. Those are numbers that we should have and have a better understanding for sure. So something else that stood out to me as, you know, and we've heard this kind of proposal before and discussed it with some of your members there, but you mentioned driving more hunters to private land and increasing demand there. I'm curious if you think that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Well, and then I dive off into something there that probably would be controversial. If this is one of my own personal opinion.

Sure.

As we look at the private entities, and again, I've got friends that are in the guide business and everything else here locally. I've encouraged them and some of them have looked at, they're utilizing their own farms, their own water just like you, and have a lot of investment in those things, and have to have some return on those investments. I understand that. But they're also utilizing the resource and the resource being the ducks. The problem that in the biggest sphere we all have, and I'm careful, I always go back to, because it fits my narrative of Marion, Illinois, or some of the goosepups capitals that we used to have, Cairo and stuff just north of this here, that there's no geese left there, because they are over commercialized, I believe, and they finally push everything, the flyway changed completely. I don't know that that's accurate, but I know that there's not the commercial hunting up there that there was 20 years ago. And that's the one thing that I tell my guys, and if we don't provide somewhere for these ducks to get comfortable and feed and have a shelter, then they're gonna find that somewhere. So as a private landowner, if you've got 120 acres that you're utilizing for the benefit of the commercial hunting application you're using it for, why not put 40 acres out or somewhere for the resource? And I don't know, on a voluntary note, that's very difficult because everything, that 40 acres over there is worth a lot of money to somebody if it's flooded and holds ducks, and why not hunt it and lease it out? But at some point in time, I'm a pilot as well, and I tell this story all the time. Back in 1990, when I first got my license, I used to fly up around Black River and over this northeast arcs area a lot, just looking at ducks and seeing what kind of populations we had and again, back then, probably 80 percent of fields I would use to fly over had ducks in them, but they didn't have anybody hunting them. There was no pressure on them. They just were sitting out there eating some of that different farm product that didn't get harvested for whatever reason. Now, if I take you up and fly you over this area, especially right here in Northeast Arkansas around Dave Donaldson, 90 percent of that, and then that's conservative, it's more like probably 95 percent of those fields that have any water, have a pit in the middle of them or on the side of them. They're all being utilized for commercial activity almost, and there's very little utilization for any type of refuge or rest area for these ducks. Again, you go back to our public land, we have Lake Asheville, which looks like Claypool used to most of the year. Then we have 600 acres of GTR, that's right beside it, that's a rest area. So we have about 11, 1200 acres of refuge for the ducks. Again, a big portion of that is GTR. But, what it does create, some... What's kind of ironic is you see people come in and everybody that comes down to Lake Asheville in the afternoon and sees the ducks leave it are like, man, there's so many ducks here, there's no way we can't kill ducks tomorrow. But these ducks are so behaviorally trained now over the last 10 years of this pressure change and they went nocturnal and a lot of other things. It is something that we have driven, I think, a behavioral change in these ducks already to a certain degree. If we keep putting that kind of pressure on them, we're going to change the flyaway. I know people disagree with me about that. But I think it's a good thing to drive it to go back to your original question. I do, from the standpoint, if we can do it in a way that the commercialization and the money raised can help create more refuges and we can get this thing possibly to get these... Because if we don't, they're not going to have a business. You're not going to have a business if you're in the waterfowl industry in Northeast Arkansas, if we keep pushing these ducks out like we have. We've already seen the decline of the usage year after year after year of what it was. At what point does it become zero? I think that's... Go ahead.

I think you're right and you're on to something when you look at Cairo or Katy, Texas or Gatineau, Louisiana. You look at the resource that was once there that is no longer there. Brent and I have hashed that out a bunch on this show. And that's where the source of a lot of our concern comes from. What does Arkansas Duck Hunting become? But to get back to that question about private, if we're looking at Dave Donaldson from an opportunity perspective, we're trying to limit pressure and in a turn affect opportunity. And you actually limit some opportunity as well, but you want to increase it for others or increase the quality of opportunity. Outside of the guiding business, it's my belief that shifting more and more people into the private land is not good for opportunity. People already complain about the lack of availability of fields to lease or places to hunt. We're already talking about, you've said it yourself, everything out there has got a gun in it. So now if we're driving more and more hunters out into that segment, now we're affecting those people as well. So in a sense to me, just a pilot program like you're talking about here is just kicking the can down the road to every other hunter in the state.

Yeah. I think it's what we've got to do to get outside the box thinking, Cason. I think what we've always done in the past is definitely not working for us. I agree. The thing that with radical change is, it just takes, I think, more courage than, I don't know if courage is the right word, but it...

I think so. Yeah. I mean, because we all agree something's wrong.

Yeah.

It's not going well, so we've got to do something, or make some attempt at doing something, right?

Right. And I think that's where we're coming from. One of the Game & Fish staff, myself, had a pretty frank discussion the other day about it. Is 15 acres per hunter enough to make for a quality hunt? Well, it's probably not, but it's a hell of a lot better too. You know, so where do you start? You know, and again, I think the thing that our ideal, even like what we talked about, taking a couple of one of the GTRs and making a full-blown draw out of it. Yes, that's probably kicking the can down the road for four or five years to make it as a pilot project. But the thing is, being realistic and how do you deal with the public, that you've got to get the perception there that this is a good idea. You can't do that just by telling them that. You have to show them sometimes. So our thought process is these pilot programs are at least something to implement some type of change from what we're, we just can't keep doing what we're doing and expect that the old foolish ideal is, you know, do the same thing, expect a different outcome. So, so, but if you could take that, that one GTR and in five years, that means like a New Mexico Elkhart draw, that if you got drawn there, you knew you're going to be able to take your kids in there and not have to fight and fuss, go in there at a normal hour, be out at a normal hour and kill a limited ducks and not be worried about somebody cussing you out in front of your kids or getting in a fight or anything else. I think in five years if that happened, then there would be a push from the population to say, well, why don't we do that everywhere? But I think you try to just implement that radical change today across the board, then it would be not very well received because it's just not proven that that's going to fix the problem. Does that make sense?

Yes, for sure, sure it does. And I think that's kind of where we are with some of this stuff. Now, kind of backtracking a little bit to this non-resident thing. Part of the reason you saw the influx of non-residents there at the beginning of the season was, this past season, we sold 10,000 more non-resident duck stamps than we sold resident. Biggest difference we've ever had. And we've basically taken that 10,000 from our resident population in 2015. It was about 58,000. And now in 2025, it's flipped. So we've lost basically 10,000 resident duck hunters, duck stamp wise. And we get on the whole thing that the duck stamp number varies from what the US. Fish and Wildlife classifies as an active duck hunter. There's a discrepancy there for almost every state. And they got a different way. They come up with all that. And it somehow factors out of hip and so on and so forth. But I think it's also important that some of your pressure in this pilot program that you've offered up, you've offered up some things beyond just a non-resident draw. I mean, it was going back to 3 Mallards in the public ground. It's going back to 15 shells. It's going back to no spinners. You know, some other things to live it. Yeah, yeah. So lots of different ways to, you know, try to get ours around this thing. And I'm in complete agreement that we got to try something. You know, I've told people or I've talked to friends of mine in the neighborhood. I'm very close to, by me, to the WMA. The actual waterway wraps around our farm. So the little neighborhood where the farm is, they're all public land hunter guys. And I've got some of them telling me they won't go in there. They won't take their kids in there and they won't take their dad in there because it's just, I can't deal with all that.

I mean, that's what I started to say earlier. We've lost a lot of our local. I've got 13 and 14 year old kids. I own a lodge on Black River. I'm the last one that butts up against Game & Fish. My kids hunted six days this year. They love hunting, but they're not going to go. And it never, normally they hunt a lot. They're cool. So they get, and probably any normal 13 and 14 year old would, it's public school. But normally in January is when they hunt, you know, because we'll drop down in pressure. We'll normally go by Ashmore Park a lot down there. You may have seven to 10 trucks in the parking lot. Some days it will be a little as five. This year it never got less than 40. Never had less than 40 trucks in the parking lot. And they even recognize the 13 and 14 year olds, the quality and the concerns and just, they're not going to go hunt, you know, and I'm not going to take them to a place where there's a possibility that they could be exposed to that type of environment. That's one of the other things that we really have pushed hard and I've been, I guess, for lack of a way of saying it, radical about, you know, it is, we need some stronger penalties for these public ground. And these guys that go in there and they want to fight and fuss and argue and have boat races and all this, we don't need those people on public land. And if you go in there and you start a fight and you really are to the point of cussing somebody out, drawing a gun on them or throwing fisticuffs, you need to be banned off these public lands, not for five, two years, not ten, but for life. You do not, the penalty is going to have to be substantial enough to change behavior. I understand we cannot, there's no way that you can regulate ethics and things that personalities. But you can put the penalties to a point that they can't, or they won't take a chance in losing those privileges of hunting on public land. And if we don't do that, then we're going to continue to have these problems. And until we can get it back to where it's under control, that's what you're going to continue to lose. And I'm not sitting here telling you that out-of-staters are all our problem because they're not.

That's right.

But we've got to start somewhere. And again, that goes back to the other issue that I talked about earlier with trying to do a full draw on just one area. You know, the residents here are going to accept a full-blown draw at some point in time once it's kind of proven to them. So just to give you all an idea, we talked about doing the draw for the non-residents on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Having residents only Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And in the first year, if that doesn't make a difference in our ducks, don't start utilizing the public land better. Our second thought was and our second recommendation was just to close the WMA on three days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And then the next step would be if that don't work, then let's go to a full blown draw on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, whatever it takes, but let's do it in steps and increments that can be accepted by the public because if we just do it all at once without any backing of any, I guess, change, you know, systematic change, then we're just going to not have cooperation from everybody involved. I mean, you have just talked before, it takes every party of this to be involved. It takes our hunters on the ground. It takes our Game & Fish Commission and commissioners to be involved and listen to these folks. It takes the legislators to back the commission in doing what they have to, to get them the resources they need. But we've all got to work together. Once the division is becoming place, then it's impossible to get anything really progressive done.

Yeah, no, no question. Because it takes a lot of input and then a lot of ability to process all that. But I think, to me, what this is, and you got to realize maybe not everybody keeps up with it, but Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri are all kicking around non-resident related topics. Oklahoma and Kansas have legislation working their way through the channels on this particular topic. So it's out there and it's an issue.

South Dakota is already an issue. I mean, they've already got it in place and there's North Dakota. Yeah, there's their states that already. And again, this is the premier duck hunting of the United States. Just like again, we all draw off. I know I had a lot of friends this year that were upset because Mississippi had to change their turkey draw regulations for out of state. You know, we all have recognized too, I think one of the other things, we all have a lot more availability. You know, I think one of the cases mentioned earlier, I hunt 50 days a year. I've not been able to do that all my life, which I'm a little older now, I'm a little more established, which allows it. But I know a lot of 20 year olds, I think I may have heard it on y'all's, one of your previous podcasts, you know, that these kids are taking jobs around duck season. You know, they're making it to where they could be in the woods as many days as possible. They want every channels they have to do to get this. So we've got more, not just here, but all over the United States, the availability to have extracurricular activities and the resources being monetarily to travel and do things is more available today than it's probably ever been. You know, again, 40 years ago, we didn't have a lot of non-resident hunters because there wasn't a lot of people that could afford to travel like that. Not near what there is today. In fact, I think that's one of the other things we have to recognize is that's why all these states are having to look at this because it's not just us and duck hunting, but it's, I know, bohunting. I've always went to Colorado Elk Hunting. I've always been able to just draw, I meant just buy a tag over the counter. Well, that's not available no more because the pressure has just continued to escalate to a point they can't allow that no more. Well, we're in the same situation with our ducks in Arkansas.

Yeah. Well, yeah, you see with Turkey and everything else that people are dealing with the same, regardless of what game they're chasing, they're seeing things the same. I mean, Kansas is waking up that they mismanaged the amount of pressure they put on their deer herd in that state. And so now they're trying to get out ahead of ducks, and it's got all kinds of sides to it. But there's, Oklahoma and Kansas are both looking at banning non-residents certain days of the week. But that's got a downside to it as well, because there's a lot of guys, just like we just talked about, that we talked about previously on the show, you just talked about, there's people that are serious, die-hard, skilled duck hunters that don't want to go on the public land on the weekends. They'll skirt around all that, but they like to hunt during the week, and they have a job that allows them to do that. Well, that's going to put all, the non-residents are going to be on top of them during the middle of the week, because that's when they've been sandwiched into when they can go. So, there's not a perfect model out there, but I do agree that we got to look at something and get serious about something, because we don't want to be the one without a chair when the music stops on this non-resident thing. And that's what I hope to guard for them, because we've got to start looking at this, everything related to ducks in Arkansas, is we've got to stop looking at everything on an opportunity basis. And we got to start looking about the quality of the experience. You've heard us talk about Tom Beckbe and their classic hunting gear in fall and winter. Now that warmer weather is here, Tom Beckbe is rolling out a full line of lightweight shirts, shorts and travel gear. Check them out at tombeckbe.com or any of their four stores in Birmingham, Oxford Mississippi, Middleburg Virginia and Tuscaloosa.

Some of these ideas are reactionary to a certain degree, but I would rather be more visionary about this. And Cason, to speak to the point we were talking about earlier with pushing people out into private entities. I mean, you're familiar with this more so than I am. And I would ask, the supply and demand have an effect here at some point in time. We, I think, and my recognition is, it's a monetary issue for a lot of these issues can't be fixed without money to help fix them. I mean, we looked at permits on public land for everybody trying to raise, how do we raise money because we're expanding our hunting population, but we're not expanding our opportunity. Now, we talked about opportunity a while ago and I misused that term possibly, but our opportunity that I'm speaking of is Dave Donaldson has the same amount of flooded acres today that it had 40 years ago. But in my opinion, it has, I don't even, I wouldn't even want to guess a venture of how much more pressure and numbers of hunters that it has. So, you know, and that's not going to go down because, and we don't want it to go down. We want that younger generation involved, but how do you fix that? You have to expand the opportunity. To do that, it takes money. You need to buy more wetland. You need to buy and maybe create more GTRs and more area to spread these people out, to give them the same opportunity that we may have had 40 years ago. And it goes back to the same thing on private land. If there is enough demand, I guess my question, Cason, is there a supply out there, if the demand was there with enough monetary rewards, or is it just there's not enough supply out there to cover this in the private sector?

To cover what exactly?

If you create more of a demand by pushing these non-residents on the private land.

Is there more supply of private land to host these hunters?

Right.

Oh, no, I don't think so. No, I mean, not at all. I mean, we're, Brent can back me up probably on this. Excuse me. But I see people hunting fields now that 20 years ago, no one would have dreamed of trying to hunt. I mean, we're already over. The demand is higher than it's ever been. And I didn't say that to, you know, protect my own backyard. No, no. In a sense, the guide business, I guess, might thrive a little more for it. But, I mean, I think ultimately, you know, we talked about this with a draw, and I'll kind of go down my avenue. I think if we're going to look at a draw, we should look at it statewide, not just WMAs. I think everybody, Brent and myself included, could benefit, every hunter could benefit from decreased pressure in the state of Arkansas. Now, that becomes a huge can of worms. How do you limit it? Who do you limit it to? I know one of my, and I express this maybe not to you, but to Blake and some of the other guys, when we talked about it, my big concern is, all right, I've got clients that have hunted with me for 20 years now. What happens when they can't come hunt because we put in a draw? So how could we possibly allot for an outfitter to get a certain number of guaranteed tags that then they can give to their repeat customers? How do we fix that or how do we deal with that? So I think we agree about limiting pressure. I think it's a lot bigger problem than what some think. There's a lot to it to do it right, because we can all sit back and look at other states and see how it's been done poorly. But we kind of have, to me, I think we've got one shot at getting it right. I don't think this is throw something up the wall and see if it sticks. I think we need to do some homework. We need to explore all the downsides to any idea that we have and try one time to get it really right. But we absolutely, you and I absolutely agree about pressure being an issue. And I couldn't agree more with you when it comes to penalties. And they should be steep. If you're on a WMA and you get an infraction, I mean, I don't, you know, even if it's a, I don't know, I hate to say a lifejacket, if it's a hunting infraction, you know, you know, at least a year band from WMA. And if you get another one while you're on that, you know, if you come back, and hide and lie about being there and get caught, man, it's, you know, huge penalty. I think that might go a long way. If we could enforce and have enough deterrent for some of the activities that are going on, maybe we could solve a lot of these problems without having to go to a draw. And the same could be true on private land or, you know, even the federal ground too.

Yeah. And that's our biggest concern, I think on the public land aspect of the penalties. You know, if we don't do something, just fines are not enough. You know, again, monetary is not a consideration anymore because it's just not enough of a deterrent to create, you know, concern. So the bans, when we talk to our wildlife officers, the bans are more, you know, if they're the $1,000 fine versus the one-year ban, they'll take the $1,000 fine 10 days out of the week, you know, meaning more than their opportunities there because it's just the fines are payable. The bans, they don't want to give up that access, you know. So we can make that, again, there's no room for somebody to be up there on public land if they can't have the decency to get along with people, you know, in my opinion. Now, other infractions, again, the other issue with boat racing, you know, those things that create the environment that people don't feel safe with their kids up there, those are infractions that are taking opportunity away from people that have done nothing wrong. And it's not fair to punish the good people for what a few bad people are doing. So the good people are getting punished by, but again, they're not even taking their kids hunting anymore because of the bad activities that are going on. Somebody asked me the other day in the commission meeting about mud motors. You know, those are another thing that the noise is one of the bigger issues. I don't like the access issue either, but the noise is probably the biggest issue. But it's sad that we would have to ban mud motors completely because there are some people that, you know, mud motors have never been an issue in noise because they have dealt with it. We had a gentleman up there that's hunted there for 15 years that had a little gold devil. And nobody ever complained because he didn't have it modified. It was quiet. He could come through the woods just as quiet as an outboard. But, you know, the few that want to change the exhaust on these things and rattle the windows and, you know, those people are creating a problem for the good people. But I don't know how you deal with that. Short of banning all of them because they are... The ducks' behavior has changed just based on that alone.

It definitely has. And I know there is an attitude out there. I'm not saying this across the board, but there's definitely an attitude that I'd rather pay... I'd rather roll the dice and pay the fine because it's way cheaper than a lease or having to buy ground. And that's the way there is a contingency of hunters that look at it that way. And so, they'll push the envelope on anything because a ticket to them is like, oh, well, I mean, you take this and apply it against going and leasing some ground to go hunt? I'm way ahead. And that's an attitude. And that's kind of scary. So...

Well, and that's the monetary aspect of it. If you make it to where they're banned from there... We have a lot of out-of-state hunters. I know they hunt more than their 30-day allotment. And they're hunting without permits because they look at it the same way. I'm going to go hunt. If I get caught, I'll pay 500 to $1,000 fine, you know? And I'll be more careful next year till I get this off my record, and then they go back to doing the same thing. Because the monetary aspect of it, again, is nothing compared to the access issue.

No, that's right. That's exactly right. All right. So you presented this, you know, proposed plan to the commissioners. I know you've continued to hold some meetings up there with folks that either use Black River or are up in that part of the world. What's next? What's next on the, you know, the push to try to get something done? Not saying, you know, the entire thing's going to be adopted from the get-go, but what's next?

Well, I think one of the biggest things that I hope we get response from the commission is just recognizing as well the problem. You know, I think, again, we as a group from Northeast Arkansas see everything, every day firsthand during duck season this year, we thought the world was on fire and that we really had to call in the cavalry to get this thing put out. And then when we get to Little Rock, it's not such an issue from the staff or from other people that even recognize that we feel like we've got a crisis. So, yeah, we made that presentation to the Commission and really haven't received any response at this time. And, you know, it's a time constraint issue. That's the biggest problem. Again, if Kansas and Oklahoma does do something and Missouri changes theirs to a more stricter out-of-state issue, Arkansas is going to be sitting here, like you said earlier, we're going to be the dumping grounds. And you think we had a problem, well, how much is it going to abasibate that problem whenever we take all that on that is created by those other states taking their action? So I guess, you know, we're going to be probably trying to visit with the commissioners and do whatever we can to get them to recognize this and try to, I think Cason is right. You know, I don't, and again, we have tried to get them to look at things a little bit differently as far as all the WMAs in the state. That H1 is unique and that it is hard to have a blanket policy that covers each and every WMA in the same regard, because again, hunting, Dave Donaldson is different hunting than hunting biometa. So, you know, we are at the mercy of the Commission. If they elect to recognize a problem and start dealing with it, then we're here to lend that support. And I told the Commission the day I met with them that, hey, we'll have our public meetings here in Northeast Arkansas. We'll get all the people here that can give more of a general population perspective to this, other than this depending on a small group, you know, to get a feel for how the public would receive, you know, these ideas. But till the Commission elects to recognize it and give us some direction of they're willing to do something, then our hands are kind of tied at this point. We've done everything we can, I feel like, again, to the point of going directly to the Commission meeting and making a presentation that we've done the research, we've done legwork. Again, I think, Cason, you know, one of the things that we tried to look at a lot of different scenarios and to come up with an ideal, at least that, you know, was a starting point. Not to say it's the best idea by no means, but it's somewhere we've got to start. And I'm just hoping to get some response from the Commission and some recognition that we do have some issue here that we need to deal with. But until we get to that point, I really, you know, there's not a lot of other alternatives that I see that we have from where we're standing today. You know, again, we've been questioned by other groups of people in the area that want to get involved, but until we kind of see what direction and path the Commission wants to take, it's simply up to them at this point, I believe.

Yeah, I think that's probably, you look at it on a state, federal level, it doesn't matter. I think the desire from the hunter is the same thing, just acknowledge that there's an issue beyond, you know, what everyone admits. So I definitely understand where you're at with that. And I think we agree that something needs to be addressed because the situation is only getting worse.

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And I think one of the other things that we live in such a fast paced world today that it is, it's like technology, you know. I mean, and we recognize the, it's like the 4 a.m. rule that they started a few years back whenever the boat race has become a problem. And, you know, that was a great tool for managing a few issues. But just the issues it created, you know, to solve those two issues, it created a hundred more. And so you've got to be careful, understand, and how you proceed, you know, in regulations and changing things that you try to have some forethought into, you know, how will this affect other aspects of our WMAs and our public hunting and our hunters. But again, you can't be, you got to have some courage, again, like we said earlier, to do something. You can't just sit here and not do anything and expect that ten years from now we're going to be okay because we're not.

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Yeah, I agree with that, wholeheartedly. Because yeah, it's big or small, let's start doing something because the road we're on is not sustainable. It just isn't. This is a different environment. Duck population going up. I mean, by the time that happens again, if we continue on the same road with our public ground, I mean, okay, we get a population bump, or the ducks even want to go in there. And we're seeing some of that, you know, with their resistance to set foot amongst all that's going on. And that would be a catastrophic mistake to allow that to happen without jumping in there. And starting to get a grip on some of these things. So I think it's, I appreciate what you all have done from a standpoint of trying to start a conversation, and trying to offer some ideas and see what shakes out. So that's better than just, you know, running to social media and filling up a Facebook comment group with just a bunch of junk, or just having coffee shop conversations, and it never leaves your circle. I mean, you guys are trying to make something happen, and if that has a trickle down effect to some of these other WMAs, I think, you know, with the right selection of tools to try to get a grip on some of this stuff, I think there's upside. And I think that's where the future generations benefit from it, versus kind of this track we're on. And I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show with us today.

Yeah, I appreciate the invitation. And one of the last things, you know, I am doing this as a public service. So anybody that's from Northeast Arkansas that hunts Dave Donaldson, or anybody that, from any aspect of that, that has any concerns about what we're dealing with with Dave Donaldson for out of state, in state, whatever, it makes no difference. But, you know, we're here available to listen. I want to get all these inputs. I want to take more of a consortium of everybody's perspective to the table, you know. And I know duck hunters are like truck drivers and farmers. You know, if you could stick together, you could solve all your problems. But everybody agrees that they're a problem. They just don't agree on the solution to the problem. But if we could all come together and at least have some general census of how we can get started down the right road, maybe we could build that support with everyone eventually and try to... That's the only way we're going to get this done. Are you getting any change made that's going to be significant enough to really make the difference that we all know needs to be made? Again, the courage is going to have to be built through relationships. And that relationship's got to be from the end user and the hunter all the way to the commissioners. You know, that these folks have got to have some, again, some working concern in a working relationship to get this done.

No, no question, no question. And that's, to get it done, people that have or want to have input, they got to think beyond their own decoy spread. And that's what's going to come up with a solution that will benefit everyone versus just a, I need, for my personal hunting, I need this. And that's probably not going to solve it. It's going to have to be a wider picture on all this. So Levi, man, appreciate you coming on the show and curious to see kind of how this plays out with all this. Of course, we appreciate all of our listeners listening to the show, our sponsors for sponsoring, and we will check in next time. Thanks.

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