Spring Update

Despite all the duck seasons in North America being closed, plenty is going on within the world of waterfowling. Brent & Cason look at the impact the recent storms will have on this coming duck season, game warden access to private ground without a warrant, USFWS director confirmation hearings and waterfowl destination states desire to reduce pressure by limiting non-residents. Reducing non-residents to a few weekdays is the potential play for Kansas and Oklahoma...but will it work?

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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.

Hey, it's Brent and Cason back with another edition of The Standard Sportsman Podcast. We thought we'd do a little spring update because there's a lot going on despite it not being duck season anywhere, at least not in the North American continent. I guess you could still shoot snow geese if you wanted to. If you're that hard after them, you could still be shooting them. We thought we'd do a little spring update because there are some things going on that are away from what we do carrying a shotgun. One of which we just came out of, in fact, this whole middle part of the country, and I guess it shot itself up to the northeast part of the country, too. But epic rain here just last week that has got some impact. It will have some impact as we go through farming season and some other things that impact probably what we'll be doing come wintertime when the ducks get here.

Yeah, for sure. It's going to be interesting. You let off with it's not duck season, but man, it sure looks like it. We've got higher water levels right now than we do during duck season. Water is going down, fortunately. But the question is, how soon and what will it look like when it's gone? So I don't know. A lot to process there. Interesting, you mentioned the rainfall and that was the focus leading up to it. You and I talked about the rainfall. That's all that I heard about. That's really the only thing that was on my mind was how much is it going to rain? How is this going to affect our rice crop? Either the headline got buried or I ignored it. It was not fully prepared for the amount of storms we were going to have over that little outbreak. Much more severe or higher frequency than I anticipated. Not that this person will ever know that I mentioned this, but you sent me a little video of Dominator 3 outside your office. Right. That is a pretty good follow. You guys go check out Reed Timmer on YouTube when they're chasing live. That's a pretty good follow. I got heavily invested one night. They were chasing one made up towards Greer's Ferry, I think. An hour and a half, two hours into it, they're finally starting to touch down. They see it for one second, two seconds. And anyway, that's what I got for two hours of watching YouTube, but it was fun.

Yeah. That's when I knew we were in trouble. I walked out of my office downtown Little Rock and was going to get something to eat. And I see that machine trying to parallel park on Main Street, downtown Little Rock. And if you're not familiar with this deal, it is a tornado tank. That's what they call it. It's, you know, everybody's seen Twister and it's all armored up, got all these gadgets off of it. And that dude and his crew drive that thing in the middle of these storms. And they were obviously in Arkansas for a reason. And it ended up panning out for them because they did get involved in some of those tornadoes. I think it was Cave Springs. They were up there around that one, which is kind of north of Batesville. But yeah, the storms, the wind that came along with them was probably more of a story than the rain. I mean, yes, we got a lot of water in the landscape, a ton. I saw a video just a little bit ago of the Arkansas River here in Little Rock. And I sure wouldn't get on that thing in a boat right now. It had to be like an ocean liner because that river is rolling. But yeah, the storms, we had some damage all around Little Rock. I mean, there's, we talked about it earlier, there's some humongous oak trees that have been folded over here in Little Rock. So you got to think how much of that wet ground in the east side of the Arkansas, you know, in the Delta, how many blowdowns did we get with this storm? Because we definitely had some damage around the farm. The neighboring club had a tree almost hit their clubhouse, fell right beside a huge oak tree that fell. We had some portable carports thrown on top of duck camps and all kinds of stuff. And I think those were just straight-line winds. There wasn't a tornado even though we had a tornado to the east of us in Elmira that made some news and just missed a friend of mine's duck club there. Security camera on the back porch triggered and went off as this tornado rolled across the lake behind them. They got a little oxbow lake that the clubhouse sits on and it was a pretty wild scene but I think there were two tornados that touched down in Elmira which is right in the heart of the Grand Prairie, just kind of southeast of Stuttgart a little bit.

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Yeah, yeah. And that's going to be interesting as duck clubs start to inventory. You know, after the water falls out, they can get out there and eyeball things. You know, did they lose some good trees or some key trees? Because, you know, I mean, we all know it. We all hunted the woods. You know, trees, you know, ducks will use certain trees as, I don't know if they use them as navigation points, as markers, the way they'll work around them, over them, beside them, whatever it is. And you always wonder, you know, how many of those trees are going to be, you know, laying flat on the ground next time you go out there. And then you got to think about, you know, the state-owned ground, you know, the GTRs and what kind of, you know, damage some of that took on. So it's going to be real interesting to see what kind of impact these winds had on some of our timber, which a lot of clubs alongside the state-owned, you know, the WMAs are fighting to keep these trees healthy. And right now, you've got water standing on them when they're trying to butt up and leaf out and everything else. And then you're going to have what happened to the weaker trees or ones that were sitting in some soggy, soft ground that just got rolled over by this storm.

Yeah, that'll, we'll shift gears back to the water. I don't know what it's going to do, right? So there, we'll start, I'll start by saying there is some potential upside. Late enough crop can end up leaving a little more waste grain on the ground, right? We've hashed that out here a bunch of times. We had over a thousand acres of rice in the ground. I think the vast majority of it will be fine. There's a hundred and fifty two hundred acres or so that I'm kind of concerned about in terms of, and maybe more than that, we'll see as the water comes down. Never really had this before. We've had water over rice, you know, when the rice is two, four, whatever inches tall, but usually that's warmer weather and a shorter duration of flood. So I don't know that I've ever experienced this type of prolonged flooding, cool weather, really, really early in the growing season. Matter of fact, I don't think any of our rice had really started to come out yet. So now it's kind of germinating. You can see it standing up, you know, as the water goes down in places. I don't know what it'll do. I don't know what the outcome will be. So you got two things there. You know, you could increase some waste grain in some areas. If you got to come back and plant it later. On the flip side of that, for us, this rice we had planted early, all indications we were in good shape to make another ratoon crop. How is that going to affect that? If we've got to go back and replant, that's going to affect that obviously tremendously. We won't have that opportunity to grow that ratoon crop. So there's a lot of unknown in terms of just in the ag community, what this will do in terms of duck energy days on the landscape here in Arkansas, let alone what it does to the timber. We know it hurts. How quantifiable is that, though?

Yeah, that's going to be the trick. And everybody's going to be looking at it, because all you got to do is drive around and you see trees falling over. You got to instantly think about your duckwoods a little bit. So that will be interesting. We've been able to run off quite a bit. Well, we didn't get as much rain as predicted. And I posted on my at the Grand Prairie Instagram, you know, which is my personal one, some footage from 2021 when we got that huge rain and how it turned the lower part of the farm into a lake for a little bit, because we weren't able to get the water off until June. Now, since then, we've put a different pipe in. It's bigger, has different control structure to it. And I guess for whatever reason, because our farm dumps into a ditch that dumps into Biomita, it's been able to, we've been able to drop it out faster than what we anticipated. So now we're just waiting on the ground to get dry because we haven't put any crop in the ground yet. We've turned dirt, but that's it, which is not that out of the ordinary for us. But so we're not necessarily behind because we don't harvest rice until, you know, probably, typically October-ish. We've talked about that on the show before. So we're not from that standpoint, but I think we've talked about it on a few previous shows. There were a lot of people that got beans in the ground already. And what is this going to do to them? Because if they're underwater, those things might struggle. They're obviously not as tolerant as rice.

I was going to say, I can answer that question. If you've got soybeans on the ground, they're done. They're done underwater. That's an easier pass or fail. Ours is a sliding scale of what you will tolerate, I think.

That's right.

I thought about my grandfather the past couple of days this morning recently. My grandmother's birthday was April 17th, and he had a pretty hard fast rule that we did not plant rice before her birthday. And I thought about it. He'd probably be pretty happy this year if he waited. But we'll see. It may not be all for loss. Another interesting thing is what's it going to do to all the more soil units across the state that have completed their drawdown, soil disturbance. Now you've got all this water in, the process starts over. And I would have to think, will overall diminish the amount of food available. It will certainly change the composition of those more soil units and the type of food they're going to provide later in the year.

Yeah, they will. You know, we have two small ones on the farm and, but that big rain, that huge rain we had in 2021, that left that water in there until June. That's the, that was by far that lower unit. It's the best season we've had out of that thing since we've owned the farm. And, you know, that was, and it was underwater from, I mean, what was interesting is the timing of that one was a little later. That big rain was in May. And so, but that water sat in there through the, you know, as temperature started to rise and stuff really gets going in those areas, it was underwater. And then the water fell out, and the SmartWe was still able to take off, and then all the other good stuff that's in there. And for whatever reason, of those years since, that one was definitely the best. The Ducks have used it. Now we've had good hunts in there still, and been able to do well, but not compared to that year that it was underwater until June. So, I don't know. You know, most soil units are pretty wild places, and what gets going in there, and what doesn't, and timing of all that. It's gonna be interesting to see how that plays out.

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Yeah, I do too. I do too. And it's up and down the flyway. This storm wasn't, this front that caused all this was not unique to Arkansas, because everybody's seen damage elsewhere all over the place. So, yeah, it will be. You think about it, it's so far off. Duck season is so far off, but we'll see. I'm the same. It's going to have some kind of impact. Yeah.

And you may not really notice it. It may be imperceivable, the difference, but it'll change some stuff for sure.

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Yeah, I think we'll see it again. And I don't know, I feel like discussing this. It's kind of like grabbing an electric fence and seeing how long you can hang on to it. So we'll give it a go here. I guess I'll officially say, I don't know that I really have an opinion. I see both sides of it. I also see a lot of overreaction to both sides. You know, one of the comments you hear from the detractors, is it all, while everyone's gonna bait, no one's ever gonna be able to catch them. I'm like, well, I mean, that's not true. You can still do surveillance. I think you can still catch people. I don't think it would create, it would create some hurdles, you know, and maybe some problems, but the same as any other investigation, it would come back to good old-fashioned police work. Maybe that's not what we want for that type of law enforcement. You know, that's yet to be answered, but I don't think it would create a just widespread issue. The one problem I had with it, I could not find it in the wording of it, but there was no exception for probable cause. It was just basically had to have a warrant, period. And I thought there should be some probable cause. I'll give an example. Let's say you, you know, enforcement agent, here's somebody shoot three minutes before shooting light. All right, now you've got probable cause to think that they're going to violate again. So I wouldn't, I wasn't sure how that would work out with that particular way that bill was worded. But I don't know, I definitely see the desire not to, I mean, it's kind of like warrants in your house, right? Like there is some, I think there's some carry over there in terms of your rights not to be illegally searched.

Yeah, yeah. And then that was, that's obviously a sticking point with a lot of people. And you got to keep in mind, most people out there are ethical. I mean, they're not, they're just not going to do thing. Now, the ones that are doing it, odds are they're going to do it whether a game or can walk on their piece of property or not. They're just outlaws. There's kind of no other way to put it. So, you know, but what was interesting to me is there's already been some states, or at least at a state level, that have basically thrown the open field doctrine out. And some of them are our neighbors. You got Mississippi, Montana, New York, Oregon, Tennessee just did it here recently, Vermont and Washington. And there's a couple of other states that have some lawsuits filed at a state level, basically saying they were, the person was saying they were illegally searched, you know, or the game orders were on their property illegally. And so those are going through some court system, which could change those particular states and how that works out. So, you know, it's kind of messy judicial system, you know, appeal it all over the place kind of stuff. But here in Arkansas, we're going to stick with the open field doctrine that's that obviously most states are already applying. And the premise of it is that wildlife and fish are not, you know, they're not, they're a public trust resource and that the law enforcement tied to that has to have the ability to go into the woods and the water and investigate things that maybe are going on. Now, you know, I'm sure there's been some questionable moves by game wardens and the way they went about a search or went about catching someone. But I think some people were really upset, you know, seeing game wardens triggering trail cams on their property when they didn't think they had any reason to be there. And so I don't know where that where that fit in with this particular state reps bringing this to the table. Was it a bone to pick personally? Was it a bone to pick with constituents? I don't really know. I haven't heard. But I don't I don't get the feeling, obviously, with it being withdrawn, that it got a lot of a lot of support and maybe it needed to go back to the drawing board and improve the bill a little bit.

I could, again, you know, wasn't really for or against it. I can see the merit of, you know, the illegal search and surveillance and all that, because I fully believe in that. But I could definitely see where this bill was not. When I read it, I was like, that's not good either. So there's got to be a better balance. But it's interesting that you mentioned, you know, kind of this, the wildlife being managed as this trust, right? This public trust. I'm going to skip ahead a couple of topics to the end of what we're going to finish with, because I think this is a good segue. But if it's this public trust, then why are we trying to limit access to non-residents? I'm not just picking on Arkansas or anybody else. I mean, left and right, you look at all these states, I mean, like the big push, big game to waterfowl right now is, you know, rules for the but not for me, right?

Yeah, there's a lot of it going on. That is for sure. Yeah, and it's kind of existed in the big game. It's existed, I guess, at some level with Turkey for a while. And now it is the soup of the day for waterfowl. I mean, it seems like every state that's a destination state for waterfowl hunting is looking into this. And some are a lot more serious than others about it. It's going to be really interesting how it shakes out. Kansas has probably made the biggest move this off season, or this legislative season, I should say, which coincidentally cranked up in earnest right after duck season ended. But theirs has been really interesting to follow. And I've got some friends in Kansas that have followed this really closely and kind of keep me updated. But the first effort for them to keep the nonresidents off, that bill was pulled I guess because of the language or it wasn't going to work. So they went back and restructured it and slid it into a bill regarding senior citizen hunting licenses. So the main part of the bill was about this senior citizen hunting license, but they tucked in, oh yeah, nonresidents can only hunt here Sunday, Monday and Tuesday on public ground. And I think Outdoor Life wrote a big article about it, but I don't think they mentioned that this just applies to public. This does not apply to the ability to go hunt with an outfitter, or go there and freelance on knocking on doors, whatever. This is strictly public land nonresidents. But the first one did get tabled, and you and I have talked about this on the show before, that we really shouldn't be managing wildlife for the economics of it. And that was the big stink that when it was on a stand-alone bill, legislators or somebody had either lobbied them, told them, whatever it was, they got completely caught up in, man, we might lose some money over this. People might not come here. And that's going to be X amount of dollars in license sales that we're going to forfeit, and X amount of dollars to mom and pop convenience store in the middle of nowhere, where the ducks go in Kansas. And that's a, you know, you and I, like I said, we've talked about a lot. That's a real sticking point for us anytime economics is at the forefront of managing a resource. And this is a point blank, very obvious. That was their first instinct. It wasn't, what is this doing to the ducks? What is this doing to our public hunting ground habitat? Any of that. What does it mean to the bottom line? And that was a red flag concerning the way they did it, but they're going to get it through. As far as I know, it's passed everywhere it needs to pass, and it's sent to the governor for signature. So it looks like Kansas is going to be the first to pull the trigger on this. And Oklahoma is dragging their feet, it appears. I looked at the bill this morning and they're going to limit them to Monday through Thursday. So basically, you can't hunt Friday, Saturday, Sunday if you're a non-resident on public ground. Again, just public ground. But theirs is kind of stuck in committee and hasn't advanced too far. But Kansas is rip-roaring to go. And I know Missouri is surveying their hunters to some of their opinions on non-residents. So they're feeling it out, even though they already have a draw system in place and some other stuff that kind of controls that to a degree.

Yeah. You know, you couldn't be more right. Anytime economics become a factor, you just disregard everything else because we shouldn't be managing for that. But in the same breath, I don't think we're managing for the resource when we're trying to limit non-resident access for X number of days. I mean, I think I've said this on here. I know I've said it in some of our advisory council stuff. If you're trying, if the goal is to limit pressure, then let's look at limiting pressure. All you're really doing, in my opinion, somebody would probably try to prove me wrong and they're welcome to it. You're not really limiting pressure except for in the area that you're applying this rule. And then you're only limiting it for X number of days. So do they just plan their trips differently? Now is the pressure even more increased on the other days? Are they hunting elsewhere? Have we moved this pressure now into the private segment? Is it tougher for local resident to go get an average lease now because we've driven cost up more? I just don't think it's... Where's the study? Where's the data? You know, do you have a bar? Like, is this how many people are hunting here? So now we have a baseline, we can measure success? Or did we just try to make our residents happy? You know, some of these knee-jerk reaction bills to appease some constituents. So, I am fine if we want to look at limiting pressure, you know, because you and I talk about it here all the time. Like, the private land is able to do what they do because they control pressure. And that comes at sacrifices that you and I make willingly. It's a whole lot different to get the consensus of the public to make those sacrifices willingly. I mean, how many times do you hear, and same for me, you know, well, we need to do this here, but I still hunt 55 days a year. Well, you're not leading by example. So, if we want to evaluate pressure, then let's evaluate pressure, and let's see where we're at, and then let's come up with a comprehensive plan to address it. Otherwise, I don't think it's really any more for the resource than managing for economics.

I'd agree with that, mainly because, yeah, you're really just shifting people around. Now, if I was a, say I was a diehard Kansas waterfowler and loved to hunt public ground, and I would go hunt on the weekends if the weather was right, but a lot of times I was just gonna kind of stay away or go hunt with a buddy on private or whatever, because there's so many people. On a weekend, obviously your traffic's gonna be pretty high. Now, if I like to hunt during the weekdays, if I have a job that allows me to do so, and I can go out there and hunt on a weekday when the crowds are lower, and I can really have more of my pick of where I want to go, and I'm not dealing with people shooting swing ducks and hunting on top of me, so on and so forth, well, now, you've taken those nonresidents that really want to be in Kansas and hunt, and you're shifting them now into the week. Now your weekdays potentially could be crowded. Now, we don't know because this is the first effort on a lot of these states that have kind of the higher traffic to try to do some of this. And I guess I can applaud them at some level. At least they're acknowledging there's an issue, and they're looking at ways to address it. Now, what's going to be the data point that says limiting the non-residents to these handful of weekdays was a success or a failure? Now, Kansas may do a better job of counting their hunters. I don't know if you put, if you flip that onto Arkansas, do we have those metrics? I don't know if we do either. I know they do some counts. There's been some cell phone counts of when a phone checks in. I know they've done some random parking lot deals where they're doing a sample of what's in the parking lot, license plate wise and how many trucks and things like that. I'm sure Kansas is doing something similar. I know California used to do a deal where you had to check in when you leave. And you actually, at one point, you came by somebody with a clipboard and they filled out info on you and knew, you know, how many was in the hunting party, how long were you out there, would you shoot, so on and so forth. So they had some metrics. So I don't think we can take this, I don't think these states can take this as an anecdotal, yeah, it was better this year. And if you talk to a handful of hunters and they say, oh yeah, it was great, or it was awful. This was, this totally changed the weekday hunting to where now, I don't know when I want to go, because weekends are crowded and now weekdays are crowded. So the states are going to be challenged with setting some kind of data point as to, is this the right way to keep going? Or do we look at some other things like in part of the plan, you know, Levi Pilla was a guest and the non-resident part got a lot of play out of their proposed plan of the Game of Fish, but they also had cutting back to three mallards, no spinning wing decoys, 15 shells, all things the Game of Fish has done before. But those were all those are all things that have the capability to reduce pressure. A lot of it has to do, you know, you got shot selection, you got how long you're probably going to be out there. You know, all those kinds of things that all play a factor in that and maybe those need to be part of a plan on top of a days of the week kind of thing. It's going to be real curious to see if this days of the week thing pans out, because, you know, we've talked about it. We talked about on that show with Levi, we talked about it before. People have so much more flexibility now. A weekday is not a big deal. To go hunt is not a big deal to people like it was even five years ago.

Yeah, I think that's why your average hunter is impacting or having greater impact on pressure than used to. We're declining in numbers, but man, we reach more ground than we used to. It's interesting, I find it interesting that all this conversation about pressure and overcrowding and all these things, not once has any of these states looked at a reduction in days or limits. It's like whatever we can do to stay six and sixty, but if there's an issue of pressure, what happens if we reduce, I don't want to see days go away, but what happens if we reduce the limit to three ducks instead of six? I mean, maybe it's two mallards. What happens to all these people that are hunting in the woods? Do they get done quicker and leave? Does pressure go down? Does overcrowding go down subsequently? Because you don't spend as much time trying to kill three ducks as you do six. But excuse me, you really haven't heard that conversation anywhere. It seems to be we're going to limit this group of people because it makes this group of people happy.

Yep. I mean, that's the play because, yeah, nobody's looking at any of those other factors. And maybe they will over time. Maybe there'll be a situation where, okay, this days of the week thing helped, but it didn't move the needle enough. So what's next on the docket to consider? I mean, it maybe does. Maybe it does take some time. And then those are big decisions because there'll be a group of hunters that will raise hell that you're taking away some level of opportunity for them. And there'll be another group that, yeah, and there'll be another group that, man, we've been waiting on this for a while. And you're starting to hear more and more of people that, I've been waiting on this for a while. I'm okay with a limit of three mallards. I'm okay with no spinning wing decoys. I'm okay to be out of the woods by 10 o'clock, whatever it is. Private land already manages that pretty intensely. There are, of course, there are private lands, spots that burn them and shouldn't, but do. But more and more are very, very conscientious of pressure. And the public land hunter kind of has to think that way too. You can't want the ducks to use public ground like they use private if you're not willing to do some of the things that private land does. And you don't have a lot of say so on habitat, timing of flooding and all that, but you do have that element of the pressure management, which falls back into how much time you're spending in the woods, how much riding around in your boat you're doing, so on and so forth. And I think more and more public land hunters would benefit from kind of thinking like a private land guy. You know, Hunter talked about even them changing their boat lanes as to how they navigate around the ducks that are already on the water in the woods instead of rolling right through them. And, hey man, check out my cool iPhone video, you know. So you got to start thinking that way. And you really can't regulate that. I mean, game officials really can't put rules on that. I mean, they could go in the woods and create all new boat lanes, but you don't know whether the ducks sat down in one spot or another every day. I mean, once they start going, getting down, that's where they're going to be. I don't know, it's going to be really interesting because there's only so much of this you can regulate related to pressure and I think it's going to be a time will tell kind of deal.

Yeah, I just wish we had a benchmark.

That's it.

We could measure it off of. I mean, I'm fine for trying stuff, but how do we know if it worked? Because I promise you that you won't find a general consensus answer. Some will love it, some will hate it.

Oh, no question. No question. Yeah. When Kansas finalizes this deal and the governor signs off of it, you're going to see the crowd that's, I love it. Get the non-residents out of here. There will be others that hate it. You're putting all the non-residents during my weekday hunting, and then you're going to have a bunch that are just, I'm not real sure. So that's how hunting is on any regulation, any rule. You kind of get all sides and yeah, time will tell. 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.

Yeah, well, since we're having fun with politics, we want to get on the national level now. Just go for broke.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's a pretty big deal if you really think about it, just because of where ducks are, where Habitat is, and who oversees that, which is the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And with the change in administration, we're getting a new director. And Senator Bozeman, who is Arkansas Senator, heads the Senate Ag Committee. He was involved in the confirmation hearings for who President Trump has nominated for that, who is a guy by the name of Brian Nesvik. He's a former, he retired from the Wyoming Game and Fish as their director in 2024, and was a former game warden. He was head of all the enforcement at one time, and that's who President Trump has put in place. And Bozeman, I listened to his confirmation hearing where Bozeman spoke and asked him some very direct questions and made some very direct points as to how valuable waterfowl are to states like Arkansas. And based on what I heard, of course, it's a confirmation hearing, so most of the time, they're going to tell you what you want to hear so they make sure they get confirmed. But it appeared that he sounded very pro-duck and very pro-habitat. Now, time will tell with that, but Bozeman's real big points were funding, almost pleading, we really can't afford to cut any funding that goes towards waterfowl habitat. He directly referenced the surveys. Which I would assume are the Maypons and the BPOPS surveys. And keeping the funding up for those, which would trickle into pilots. Don't cut pilots, don't cut the researchers involved in that process because of how valuable it is. And the response was, I would take it as favorable, but he did say that he's going to get into the, kind of in the weeds on a lot of the, where the money's going with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And we just have to kind of hope or even push to our legislators to keep reminding this new director and his staff how important this is and how the funding doesn't need to be cut. Because that's what's going to allow ducks to rebound, is some of these dollars spent by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

For sure, I mean, I can't count the number of episodes on here. We've mentioned the farm bill and the significance of it, but still can't stress that enough how important it is. And I would love to see funding come back for a fall flight index. I know there's probably some that don't think it's that significant, but it was a really good metric to have.

Well, yeah, because it lets you know how the hatch was. And we're flying blind now. I mean, the conservation organizations and the US Fish and Wildlife Service kind of give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down or a thumb in between that conditions were good. It probably was pretty... We're seeing some broods here, broods there, but there's no index like there used to be. And I don't know what year we stopped doing that, or not we, but what year the US Fish and Wildlife Service stopped doing the fall flight survey. But it did, it gave you a marker of kind of what to expect. But they, you know, the funding for that was slim. Then they started to believe that the accuracy wasn't that great. And then there was also some talk about the expectations of the hunter based on what the fall flight survey said. And we all know there's more factors to it. There's weather, there's water on the landscape, food on the landscape. There's so many things that can factor into it. So just because the fall flight looks like an amazing number, doesn't mean everybody's guaranteed to kill them. And so they were juggling kind of those three things, funding, accuracy and hunter expectations and decided, I think we'll just kind of let this fade out. And yeah, I'm with you. I would love to have that number to at least give us a benchmark year to year on how a hatch went. Because I almost feel like we're flying blind. Yeah, we see the B-pop is this, but that's not what we hunt. We hunt the B-pop plus whatever was hatched for the year and has survived all that. So let's see that.

I guess some people think it's a little redundant when you get the B-pop next year. You kind of know what the fall flight would have been pre-harvest and mortality and all that. But I don't know. I still think it's a good metric to have.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that will probably never get it back.

So. No, I don't think so. I mean, we're seeing funding cut for banding. Banding's at an all time low. And you see the Osborns and the Coens and some of these banding operations on the wintering grounds. But the springtime banding in the northern part of the flyway and into Canada is really at a low, low number. And that is significantly important because banding returns and survival rates and all that factor into harvests and our season frameworks and our limits and everything else. And if you're only dealing with a small sample of bands you're putting out every year, how much are you having to extrapolate that data to get stuff you feel real good about? And until we come up with something better than banding, I mean, that's it. It plays a huge role in AHM.

Yeah, it's significant. And just to your point, the banding efforts on those grounds is such a wider scope, much, much, much larger sample size than what we get down here. On the wintering ground, I'm a big believer in the effort to study on the wintering ground. These transmitters are doing great things and we're learning a lot. But we really need both. We need wide scale banding efforts in the North, too.

Yeah. Yeah. And I hope that's coming. You know, maybe there's more private dollars to raise out there that can get some more of these on the landscape because I think that's where it's going to have to come from. I'm just, you know, everybody's, you can't help but watch the news or read the paper and you can say what you want about media and spin and everything else. But, you know, there's there's fear all over the place with federal dollars being cut and in all kinds of things. Some things way more important than ducks. But but we this podcast about ducks and geeks. So there is there's there's fear there's some dollars to be cut. I mean, there was there was even some early rumblings of them cutting back on US Fish and Wildlife pile biologists. Now, I don't know if that's happened or not. And and I need to follow up and talk to our our guy that we've had on the show, Phil Thorpe, because I did reach out to him and he wanted me to call him and I haven't had a chance to do that. I need to do that kind of see what's what's going on with the pilot community, because those guys are super important, especially the ones that have been doing it a while that have the the track record in the experience of count of counting ducks from the air versus just throwing a kid up in a plane and going, what do you think? How many did you see there? Because we all know what the counts and how important those are. And I'm not saying it's that loosey goosey, but it's not exact either. And even a pile biologist will tell you that there's a there's a method to the madness and all but, you know, counting ducks from the air is not the easiest thing to do in the world. So I'd hate to see some of those veteran pilots go by the wayside because of funding, if that's indeed the case.

Yeah, I think that would be pretty detrimental to our efforts. I mean, anytime someone has been there that long, learned their craft that well, contributed that much, that would be a big setback. I don't know. Should we tease a little bit about upcoming episodes and what we've got coming up on the show?

We can, sure, definitely.

I don't know if that was all the politics we want to get into today. I mean, next week's episode, I think it's coming next week, should be pretty good. Sit down with a fellow from DU, talk a lot about efforts and stuff they've done in the South, get into the Partners Project and kind of what that was and what that looked like. And, you know, there's a lot of naysayers out there that claim that Ducks Unlimited doesn't do anything. Well, you know, it's all in the North or it's all private. It's all this or that. And, you know, we kind of get in the weeds a little bit on that and dispel some of those myths. And another one that's going to be pretty cool, which may lead to a follow up with another guest. But we have Bradley Cohen that should sit down with and record in the next week or so. So that one should be coming up here pretty soon. Talk a little bit about their banding efforts and some of the interesting things they're seeing on that side of the river.

Yeah, because those are the two, you know, between Osborne and Cohen, they put a lot of stuff out there for the public to kind of consume. Now, you know, it's usually one Duck going here, going there, coming back, excuse me. But they're out there doing it, and their banning efforts are becoming more and more important every year. So yeah, that'll be interesting. And there's an offshoot of that. One of his students, grad students, a presentation I listened to on flooded corn that was pretty interesting to listen to. And some of the stuff we've kind of hinted or talked about at a high level because we're not waterfowl biologists. But try to get that guy on the show, too, because it'll kind of clear some things up. Now, flooded corn is kind of one of those things that you believe what you believe and you hear what you want to hear. That we kind of talked about a few times here lately with some other subjects, but it was pretty interesting stuff. And I'm looking forward to trying to get that discussion going and maybe clear some things up about what it is and what it isn't.

Yeah, I think the follow up on that one will be pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, it was some charts and some graphs and some studies. It's not just somebody shooting from the hip or something anecdotal. It was an actual research project that they conducted. And I think that was out of Tennessee Tech, the school. So yeah, that'll be good.

Yeah. Got some cool stuff coming up. And I don't know, maybe another one that we can't mention just yet.

The Standard Sportsman is brought to you by Perfect Limit Outdoors, the creators of the designated puller automatic jerk rig. This is one product creating motion throughout your entire decoy spread. Check it out at perfectlimitoutdoors.com and make the water move. If that one shakes out, that one's going to be a must. A must listen, because it will be pretty interesting information. It will be disseminated to us and to the hunting community. I think it will be a worthy listen if that all shakes out.

Yeah, and it will be pretty timely, so that may bump around the order we just kind of walk through there. That's true. We've got some cool stuff coming through the off season. Try to stay on top of things, keep some relevant information coming your way.

Yep, that's it.

All right, well, I got to get back in the shop and finish building this little six-cylinder John Deere since I can't do anything else outside.

Yep, well, there's worse projects to have. I'm going to go back and sit at my desk, so there's that.

Yeah, it's all fun and games till it's not. Sometimes it really aggravates you, too.

That's right, that's right.

Well, appreciate everybody listening. Tune in. We've got some cool stuff coming up. Hope everyone is safe and dry through the storms. We know not everyone fared so well. So thoughts and prayers for anyone that had a lot of damage or injuries or anything else. So you guys stay safe. Appreciate you listening.

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