BPOP, May Ponds and Robert Riley

The annual Breeding Population and Habitat Survey left much to be desired for midcontinent mallards, though improved May pond numbers offered some encouraging news. Cason and Brent provide their annual breakdown with eastern Arkansas native Robert Riley, who grew up hunting the famed Claypool Reservoir near Weiner, where his grandfather—and later his uncle—served as caretakers. Robert joins the BPOP discussion and shares a few personal stories about hunting Claypool and the lasting influence of his late grandfather.

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SPEAKER_05 0:04

Welcome to the Standard Sportsman Podcast, where duck and goose hunting's hottest topics meet a mission to leave the resource better than we found it. Lifelong Arkansas hunter conservationist Kate Stork and Brent Burch bring you thought-provoking conversations with entitled guests before, during, and after the season. Glad you're here. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Hey, it's Brent and Cateman back with another edition of the Standard Sportsman Podcast. We are uh in, I guess this would make week two of the Two Duck Stamp Campaign that we've uh pushed pretty hard and obviously gotten a lot of support within the the waterfowling community for this movement too. But we're kind of taking it up a lot. Uh Kasen had a really good idea on uh how to perpetuate this thing and get it, you know, even some more momentum and carrying through until the season or even into the season, uh, if people get wind of this late. But uh Casey, you want to talk a little bit about kind of the concept you you've uh come up with and some of the people you've talked to that are on board and and more to come.

SPEAKER_03 1:10

Well, I'll I'll be very clear here. The same as the the two duck stamp was definitely not my idea. That was that was yours. Uh, I don't know that I'll take credit for this either. Chris Harrell with Harold Sons actually brought this up to us uh and was the first to to offer up, but he suggested we get some brands on board and start doing some giveaways for people that have purchased more than one stamp and have you know picture evidence, whatever, have the receipts, so to speak. Um, so yeah, Chris brought that up to you and I, and and we've talked to a couple others. Uh, I know John Adams at Natural Gear was was happy to get on board. I was able to talk to Jimbo Ronquist last night with Drake. They want to get on board with it. Heavy shot uh as well. Wade Shoemaker offered up their uh participation in it. Ducks Unlimited as well wants to get in there with it. So sounds like we uh sounds like you and I are gonna have to get off our rear ends and make this happen because there's some brands that are that are eager to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yeah, it's exciting. Uh I mean it we've said it before, it's a no-brainer. I mean, it's truly the best $25 a duck hunter can spend. So uh it's good to see the the the waterfowling industry rally around it. Uh they realize the benefit. I mean, because without ducks, um that that will obviously dial back our duck hunters, and with no duck hunters, they they don't have anybody to sell their their wares to. So uh it's a good fit. They have the audience, they they can cast a lot bigger net than we can, and um it just makes a lot of sense. And I and you know, with this kind of early momentum doing you know, with this angle, we'll reach out to some more um because we have a lot of friends in this uh this business that I think will be eager to jump on to. So as listeners and and fans of the podcast, I'd be staying tuned. You might pick up some really good gear just by spending 25 bucks, an extra 25 bucks on a duck stamp.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Yeah, maybe the best investment you uh you ever made. Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah. Kudos to Mike Brazier last night on that live deal. Uh, he was happy to plug that. I know DU is involved with it, but I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it there. Um, you know, again, there's a lot of brands and a lot of hands involved in this, and it's a good example of what we can accomplish when we quit caring about what color camo we wear.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Oh, that yeah, no doubt about it. No doubt about it. So uh yeah, I appreciate that too. I I did catch that part of it. And then we do plan to talk about uh, you know, your appearance last night. By the time this comes out, it'll be a week ago, but uh, you know, the the Ducks Unlimited uh live stream discussing the B pop and the Maypons and what all this means. Uh I would love to jump into that and and talk about it last night a little bit and and talk about kind of some of our observations and thoughts uh you know coming out of that. We usually do an episode related to it, and I think some of our listeners would be disappointed if we didn't uh talk about it. But uh I want to uh uh pull in our guest that that we're gonna have on today, too, because he he's got some pretty good takes. I speak with him quite frequently. Uh we met a year ago at the uh Ducks Unlimited Expo there in Memphis. I was there with some books in the Tom Beckby booth, and he came to introduce himself and shared this really cool story about his grandfather that ended up in this year's greenhead. He he actually wrote a piece uh for us in the magazine. Uh and and he is one of the few people that you could probably get on a microphone that actually has spent quite a bit of time hunting the famed Claypool Reservoir. Um so we'll we'll get into that a little bit too on the back half, but uh at this front half, I think the three of us will kick some of that stuff around. But I want to welcome the show Robert Riley.

SPEAKER_04 4:52

Hi guys, thanks for having me on this morning. I I really appreciate the opportunity. And uh Kasen, it is uh it's a pleasure to meet you, man. I first have a question. So I have seen you uh or listened to the episode with with Mike on it before. Is he does he pronounce his name Brazier? Because I'm related to some brashers from Calhoun County, Mississippi. Uh, but they pronounce it B-R-A-S-H-E-R. Brasher, not Brazier.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

I I've always heard it as Brazier, but that's interesting. Uh I know he I can't remember where exactly in north central Mississippi he's from, but it can't be that far from Calhoun, right?

SPEAKER_04 5:27

I mean Calhoun, it's kind of southeast of Oxford there, uh just a little bit, but my grandfather, Johnny, that ran clay pools, his grandmother uh was a brasher, uh and and their family was uh was still down there.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

But okay is that where you're from?

SPEAKER_04 5:46

No, I'm I'm from uh Crichton County, Arkansas. It's it's West Memphis, Marion, you know, so flat. You can watch your dog run away for three days and get it here. I grew up here, uh which is Memphis area, right? I mean I grew up 15, 20 minutes from downtown Memphis. Um uh but my part of my dad's family's from down in that area of Mississippi, and my mom's family's from that area of Mississippi, and then the other part of our family is uh from over in Tennessee. We're actually relatively new to Arkansas. We've only been here about a hundred years, so we're not not that recent, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Well, I I think it's gonna be cool to talk about Claypool a little bit because uh you know we've all seen the fame picture, we've all heard about the the wild, wild world of sports uh video and all that, and but you don't really get to talk to a lot of people that have spent a lot of time on it. Um I know uh there's been some other episodes talking historical about the place, but um I think it'll be cool to talk about it. But before we but before we jump into that, let's uh let's talk about this this show that you run last night because I think it leads into discussing some of the B pop and MayPon numbers and and and some of those things. But uh I got to watch bits and pieces of it. I didn't get to watch the whole thing end to end because it did run pretty long. Uh and for anybody out there interested, you can go back and watch it. It's it's on YouTube, uh, readily available on Ducks Unlimited's YouTube channel. Uh but it was a it was a good cast of of guests, uh, tables with some live, some uh you know, over Zoom. But uh I thought I thought it was an interesting piece. I really enjoyed the parts where the the duck hunters got to visit. Not taking anything away from the science guys, but I liked it when uh you guys got to kick it around in there.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

Yeah, I think that was part of their goal um to get a little more, you know, kind of duck hunter discussion there. And obviously you gotta you have to unpack all the details on the front end because the the whole thing is really about the numbers, you know. Um certainly you and I enjoy those numbers, look forward to them every year. So it is fun to digest those. Um, but just conversationally, the the back end of the show was really nice as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I I encourage anybody that that does like to hear kind of the ins and outs of all that uh from both sides, the science side and the the waterfowler side to go back and listen to that. I don't know how many people they had watching it live, uh, but you know, the beauty of the internet, it's it once it's out there, it's out there. So uh you can go you can go back and watch it. But let's uh let's talk about the numbers a little bit. You know, we're Waterfowl Management Academy was built to turn passion into stewardship. With over 75 years of combined wetland management experience at the private, state, and federal level, our biologist team helps landowners build better habitat and hold more ducks. From the management community and course library to one-on-one coaching, they give you clear, practical tools to manage with confidence through every season. WMA is for landowners who believe their property is about more than just a place to pull the trigger. It's about building habitat that gives back to the ducks and strengthens the resource for everyone. If that sounds like you, visit Waterfowl Management Academy and become a member today. 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. Um and and they're not great. Uh there's I don't I don't know another way to paint it. Um and we're on a pretty long string of them not being great. Um and I know a lot of people like to to go back and say, well, we've we've lost five million uh you know in 10 years. Um so but we uh we also at the same time you have to realize those were high high water marks 10 years ago. Uh you know, it it had a bunch more up and downs prior to that. But still, um that's our recent memory, and and we're really good at recent memory when it's convenient. We're really good, duck hunters are really good about going way back when we need it too, because we'd like to talk about, you know, if we would have had these numbers back in the you know, whatever whatever year you want to say, this would have been a 30 and three season. So we we kind of have selective memory about what we want to uh pull out of the hat to to fit you know where we stand on things. But yeah, Mallard's Mallard's not doing so great. No, they're not.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

And I guess if uh if I could have changed anything about that episode, it would have been I would have enjoyed a little more discussion on the front end about you know, kind of how the the hunters and everyone on that on that panel is a duck hunter. I don't I don't mean that. I'm certainly not disparaging the science guys, but there was kind of two groups there. It would have been a little better on the front end to hear you know some of our opinions and thoughts about what the numbers mean and and what we see as hunters kind of on the front end of that episode, because you know differ a little bit in in opinion on if these numbers are average, and maybe they are. I guess I would describe you know recent duck seasons as kind of being meh average. So maybe they are kind of average, you know. But but I made the point last night um because Scott Stevens, you know, he Scott's a pretty straight shooter. Uh you know, sometimes it may be a little doom and gloom, I think's how I called it last night. But you know, it'd be easy to look at the the May ponds being up a little bit and be excited about that, but then you need to remember that only once in the last 20 years have MayPons been lower than they are right now. So it's you know, there's some improvement. It's not much to celebrate, like you're really grasping for straws there if you want to celebrate that. And then I think if you, you know, you've if you talk about what that means, right? Because some people kind of misunderstand that. We we look at the beepop and we look at the maypods, and then we can kind of guess what production will be. And production matters because that's what we're hunting, right? We're hunting juvenile birds. The the mallard that's been to my farm the last six years is not likely to die in his seventh year because he's gotten pretty good at surviving as it is. So production matters, right? But if you look at the decline in the last year in mallards and then the uptick in ponds, do they offset? Does it matter? Is it enough to matter? Is El Nino gonna is it gonna keep them all north? Are they all gonna get consumed along the Canadian border right now? And you know, I I you know, for us in Arkansas, I anticipate more of the same. And my big concern right now, and I think Scott kind of expressed that on the show, what is this El Nino season gonna mean for the prairies? Okay, we got a little more moisture last year. That's great. That's a starting point. That is something to be happy about. Can we build on that or do we give it all back up this year? So I just said a lot there, we can pick it apart, but that was kind of my overall sentiment. And I wish maybe we could have expressed that a little earlier in that show.

SPEAKER_04 13:00

You know, I saw the MayPon thing coming out as up, and full disclosure for anybody listening to this, I am not a scientist, but one of the things that popped into my head is, you know, is that number up because ducks are potentially more concentrated due to some of the loss of wetlands and how dry it's been up there? I mean, I know they're they're doing these surveys out of airplanes, I don't know if they're incorporating drones, but you know, with the number of places for a duck to go being down, uh it may, you know, at least in my mind, I'm looking at it, I'm like, well, shoot, maybe maybe they're saying it's up because that's what they're flying over and they're seeing these numbers down there, but that's just because you don't have the dispersion that you used to have or the dispersal that you used to have.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Well, I think a big part of it is uh what it what's really important in all this is the timing. And and I know there's been some talk of some changes to how the surveys are done, the timing of the surveys, how they count. Um I and I, you know, Mike Brazier alluded to it last night. He's he's confident there's gonna be some changes in how these counts are made. So we we could see some numbers kind of jump all over the place comparing uh these last handful of years compared to the next handful of years, because they're gonna change what they do. I I know there's been some talk of doing away with the assumption that if they see from the air if they see four uh mallard drakes or less by themselves, they assume there is a hen tied to that drake. They don't see the hen, but she's she's counted as such. So, you know, pe sometimes you hear people laugh about paper duck, paper ducks, you know, that what is this, what does that even mean? Well, to me, that's uh the the the automatic counting of a hen just because you see a lone Drake, that's a paper duck. That nobody saw that hen. She might be in the grass, but she might not. He might just be hanging out by himself or with three of his other buddies. Uh that kind of deal. So uh we're gonna see some numbers change on on that. There's uh probably also gonna be some numbers change because of the timing. They're talking about change timing, you know, the uh flights and and when they do it because these ponds it's it's obviously an index to compare to previous years. And uh it's the timing is everything because you when when they fly and they get a big rain a week later, well, there might have been a whole lot more water in the landscape, but but the window they flew in, this is what they saw. Or the inverse of that, uh all the water, uh they don't get any more rain after they flew, and it all dries up, and the ducks don't have anywhere to go. But I think what what they saw this year is the water wasn't there yet when a lot of the mallards came through and they pushed farther north. Um that's why you you know uh uh North Dakota's numbers were were really low on the breeding population count. They released their own and they released it much earlier. But then they commented that they had were seeing better brood success because they got some land the water on the landscape after the timing of their flights uh to do all that counting. So they felt like the ducks that did stop in North Dakota, they did better. And and that's what the that's all these variables that are out there for us to sift through. It's not as clear-cut as these these two numbers, B pop and May Ponds, because it has a lot to do with timing. Um I'm guessing a lot of the ducks flew through all the way to the parklands, which stays much wetter, but it's also much less productive. Uh, you got a you got a higher predator issue there. Uh, and then if they push all the way to the boreal, um, you know, it's always wet, but again, productivity is really poor. So where the ducks settled is just almost just as important as these two numbers. And then what what precipitation did you get before or after uh when they settled? Um just a lot going on, and really hard to to put your finger on it uh as to you know how successful is this breeding season gonna be and what are we gonna see this fall when the season is underway.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Yeah, it's so uh let's talk, I guess, a little bit about the ins and outs of that of that survey, right? So Robert, to kind of answer your question, they're not using drones yet. The I think that technology is kind of on the horizon, which could be great, you know. Um, but it's not there quite yet. And as far as dispersion and concentrations, you know, the transects that they fly every year should avoid any anomalies like that, should, but it is still up to the human eye to count and all that. So there are some variables there. Um, so just kind of to maybe kind of clear that air a little bit. But, you know, it's very interesting. I I'm gonna start by praising everybody involved in that survey because I think it's a it is a wonderful survey. Uh, it is done very well. It's, you know, if you and they mentioned this in the show, if you study any species of wildlife on the planet, that survey of waterfowl is probably the envy of everyone else. It is very good. Um it is still estimates, there are still, you know, factors that go into it, and it's hard to be perfect. And then all those guys admit that, you know, things that we thought were right 20 years ago were wrong. And probably things that we think are right today are still wrong, but it's evolving and it's getting better. Uh, I think that's why you're seeing, you know, kind of the review that Brent was talking about there in terms of sex ratio, because I think that's that is a very interesting thing. And Brent and I've talked about it on here. We've talked about it with winter banding studies that talk about sex ratios and biologists down here that are not seeing the same ratio that that AHM had been accounting for. Um, so yeah, you do hear that comment. You hear people talk about paper ducts, and then I know the science community gets very, very dismissive of anybody that kind of calls things into question. And I tried to allude to that a little bit on the show that you know we need to we need to not be dismissive of those people that are in the middle, right? There there are extreme opinions that you you're not gonna reach, you're not gonna be able to deal with, but there are people that that have legitimate questions, and we should try to learn and educate and and work together versus just dismissing each other automatically. So it's a great survey, but there are some limitations to it, just like Brent mentioned, you know, assuming that there's a hen attached to every solo Drake under four, right? So when you look at low populations like we have, and if the sex ratio is off, then we've got a lot fewer hens than we thought. And then that comes into harvest, and you know, at what point does harvest become additive instead of compensatory? And it just opens a lot of questions. And I think that's why you're starting to see the review, and maybe that's not, maybe it's just time to review AHM and see if it's working. But I'm glad that those conversations are happening.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

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SPEAKER_04 21:08

Again, not being a scientist, just what I've observed on my end of the flyway and when I'm out of the line. But there have been times you look at a I mean my uncle called them courtship flights, uh, but you would see, you know, eight, nine, ten drakes, and there might be, you know, a hand in the wad. And it's like I, you know, I figured by the time they got back to Canada they might be paired off. So one for four. It definitely sounds like an assumption to me. I don't I don't know, but that's uh you know, down here. I mean I've I've had the opportunity to look at some really really big groups of mallards and uh you know not that my word is science or anything close to that, but I I don't know that I'd stretch it that far.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Well, yeah. I mean what a hunter sees, uh you know, if if a hunter is truthful and Tries really hard not to be biased because their season's going good, bad, or indifferent. Because you can get biases uh all over the place. If somebody's season's going great, they're oh no man, I'm seeing plenty of hens. There's hens everywhere. Every group comes in, it's 50-50. And then you talk to somebody that's having a poor season. No, I don't see any hens. I we'll have groups come in, it'll be eight drakes, and there'll be one hen with it, or you know, some some ratio like that. And they're seeing some of that too on the banding side. It's always going to be biased towards males. Males are more aggressive to getting in those traps and and things like that. But uh, Dr. Osborne will tell you it's concerning how wide the gap is, uh, even though it's always going to be skewed towards drakes. Because a lot of the paired up hens and drakes don't they don't fall into that trap. They don't want to be by all the other ducks. So there's always some some uh gap there, but not like they've been seeing. So we do got to figure out uh what's going on with these hens. And we know we know a lot of it, and we know they they're they're very vulnerable uh during breeding season and all that, but you got to think about what happened, what's the number gonna be when if they remove this assumption that four lone drakes have a hen and they come up in another way to count them that I assume is gonna be much more conservative, we're gonna see that gap widen in this from the statistical standpoint, not just the anecdotal eyeball observation. And so is that is that gonna kick us to you know reducing the hen limit and being more concerned that man, we don't have as many hens as we thought, and we we didn't have that many to start with, even when we were assuming there was one with a lone drake.

SPEAKER_04 23:48

Well, my presumption that it would hopefully wake some people up that that maybe, yeah, the hen limit needs to come down from from two to one and uh take that into account. I mean I don't know. My personal opinion is is two is too many anyways. Um but of course I don't I don't again make rules or regulations. But yeah, I mean if they if they come out and they say, hey, we're off by you know 10% of what we thought our hand count was, and it's actually lower, you know, that might actually open the eyes of of some people out there that are are you know shooting hens doesn't matter, right? That's some people have that opinion. Uh I'm on the opposite side of that, not afraid to say it. Science may say that I'm a nut for thinking that, but you know, well, probably not the other way.

SPEAKER_03 24:36

So I've got a I've got a question for you guys. Um got into this topic on the on that show a little bit, and I'm probably gonna lean more towards it matters more when you kill the hen than if you kill the hen. Uh I brought that up. You know, certainly January 31st is a lot more harmful than September 1st in terms of hen harvest. But I'm I'm curious your thoughts, because this seems to be where we're at with management, right? Like the the decision makers are scared that if we reduce opportunity or we make it more difficult to ID burrs or you know, more likely that you'll have an infraction because you shot too many of this or that. It seems like the focus on R3 is really driving the boat right now. So that's that's gonna be part of my question. And uh, but I want to get into this as well. Would it would it change your would it affect how you hunt? I mean, we we know we know that we don't limit hens and basically any other species, and it doesn't drive their population, right? Cadwall, blue wing teal, geese, like you you name it, you know, there's no hen restrictions, those are species that are kind of hard to tell depending on the time of the year, and it has no effect on them. So the two, I guess it's a two-part question. Do you believe that hen harvest matters more for mallards because there is the distinction? It is easy to tell the difference. And do you guys as hunters think if we went to a restrictive hen limit, it would turn hunters away?

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Brent, do you want to go first or you want me to uh go ahead because yeah, I got I got a thought and I'm looking at something to see if I'm right. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 26:21

So Casey, your first question was or would mallard hen harvest the only hen harvest that matters? Uh I mean if you look at the I don't think so. I mean, you look at the the pentails too, they're they're not doing so hot right now. Uh their numbers are down. And you look at kind of some of the other species, I I mean, is it so great that you could say, oh, shooting hens is is a problem? No. Uh for like Gadwalls, I mean, it looks like they were up, you know, long-term average anyways. They were up here recently, down a little bit. But I think mallards are at least in the Mississippi Flyway and definitely in Arkansas, right? Like that's the that's the the boon and crockett duck, if there is such. Um so, you know, uh people and I'm sure you know this running an outfit, but there's a lot of people that measure a hunt by how many mallards did you shoot, you know. Well, you're you're I'm sure you heard the term scrap ducks, right? You got your four mallards and your two scrap ducks. And uh so I as it relates to your first question, no, I don't think mallard hen harvest is the only hen harvest that matters. I think it's just the biggest issue as far as hunters in the this part of the flyway, at least that I can observe, because if you're out there in the blind and there's a group of five gadwalls that are working and there's a group of 10 or 15 mallards hanging out above them, you know most of the people I've ever hunted with will say let the gadwalls get out of here and see if we can work the mallards in. And then, you know, they want to try and rain them out. So I think it's just kind of more more attention on that. But no, I don't necessarily think it's just a mallard issue.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

Um it it is it uh means more. I don't know if that's the right phrase, but I mean we just can't we shoot more mallards. Our impact on them from a harvest standpoint is is higher, at least in Arkansas. I mean, uh I just looked at our harvest numbers that just came out from last year, and side note, they have made it very, very difficult to go in and analyze harvest data. Uh, this is a new way that they're reporting, they make it, they've made it very difficult. And I don't know if that was intentional uh because more people are paying attention and taking these numbers and breaking them down and making podcasts and making the you know social media posts about it, but it is not easy to go uh get snippets of information and and try to make some dots connect. But I did just look at our, you know, we uh for Arkansas, a quarter of the ducks we shoot are mallards, all the other species make up the rest. So um maybe that you know that that's why you know the hen does have uh some breaks on it versus the other species. We just we just shoot a lot more of them. But I and I would I would think that's pretty consistent in the Mississippi flyway. I think mallards are the predominant uh duck. You might see Louisiana with more gadwalls than well, I mean you for sure will now. Uh their their uh their mallard harvest is pretty pretty poor, um if you look at the the statistics. But uh yeah, and I don't know that that's gonna drive people away. I mean, I I I agree with you. Some of the opportunity is is outweighing the experience and the way we're managing waterfowl. Um I think that's pretty clear um what's what's being pushed and and what we're hanging on to, trying to keep people in the sport. I mean, you you've seen the the implementation of the three-splash rule. You can shoot three of anything you want, but when you shoot three, you're done. Uh, but that's to that's to uh keep the lowest common denominator, so to speak, in the sport. You know, if you struggle to identify ducks or you make some mistakes before the sun gets up or whatever, I mean that that bells you out. You can shoot three mallard hens if you want to. But I would think the most people that would do that, they're not really hurting the population significantly anyway. I don't think a lot of hardcore hunters are gonna pick the three-splash rule in those states that are providing it. So um yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:33

To your point about opportunity if you lower the hen limit, is that is that gonna drive people away? I mean, kind of step one, day one of hunter education is you know, know your target and know what's behind it, amongst other things. But you know, is it really gonna hurt you? Is it gonna make or break your day if you take an extra, you know, five or ten seconds at gray light? I mean, if you got ducks coming in and and you are a little more choosy, and you know, other side of it is from a conservation standpoint, you know, kind of tying this into the age-old question of do you need more hunters? We need more conservationists and we need more people that are conservation-minded. And so if somebody goes, you know, I I'm getting away from this because they've said I can't shoot two hens, now I can only shoot one hen, or or you know, if they went even more drastic than that, uh I don't you know, I don't know what that would look like. But is there a way to keep that person in? Maybe. Maybe you sit down and have the conserv or you know conservation talk with them of, hey, look, you you guys need to focus more on on why this is going into effect as opposed to just what it's affecting. Uh and I mean most guys, especially most people that are are hunting public, are not killing, you know, a full strap of mallards every time they go out, anyways. It's not the you know, not the early 2000s anymore. And um I mean you've seen a lot more mixed bags. So I don't necessarily know that it would drive people away.

SPEAKER_03 32:04

Uh but well, I I think you nailed it that we need more conservationist. Um and I would argue when we're worried about people leaving the sport, and we should be concerned about that, could the way the you know the North American management plan works, hunters fund conservation. So we need hunters point blank. That is that cannot be our cannot be argued. Um you may not you might not like them. So I don't yeah, you may not like them in your part of the woods, but but we gotta have them, you know.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

Well, just so I don't just so I don't get soundlighted and and uh and canceled, I'm not saying that we need to dissuade people from joining our sport. We need everybody on board we can, but we need them to be conservationists too. You know, we don't just need somebody out there with a gun uh that's just there to, you know, kill. I mean, we want somebody that knows why they're doing it and kind of appreciate the history behind it and and and conserve.

SPEAKER_03 32:53

Yeah, and I would argue that you're a lot less likely to lose the conservationist as a hunter than you are the guy that is just a hunter and knows nothing of the sport. You know, that guy that cares enough to invest, he's in it for the long haul. So our our best bet is to convert hunters to conservationists. And and that's my that's my stance on the end limit. I think it sends a very good mess and message about conservation. Does it make any tangible difference? It's unlikely, but it's a really good message. And I I'm with you guys 100%. Um I think you could you I think mallards are different than every other species. You hear that rebuttal all the time, you know, that oh well we don't we don't have a hen limit for anything else. Okay, I get that. But at least in our part of the world and probably everywhere in the US, the mallard is the target species. It it's the species that we set aside from pentails, like we we study them, we set limits by them. You know, this is the gold standard of duck. So it's it is a little different, and I'm comfortable with it being managed differently than than blue winged teal.

SPEAKER_04 34:01

You just said there about does it make a difference? Maybe, maybe not, and and it it may not, but it's something that the individual can control, right? When I'm sitting in a duck lawn in eastern Arkansas, you know, I can control what I shoot or don't shoot. Uh, I can't necessarily control what somebody on the prairie in Saskatchewan is doing with drain tile, right? Directly. But I can control, you know, if I pull up and decide whether or not I'm gonna let a hen have it. Um, which I will say, full disclaimer, I have shot plenty of hens in my life when I was a younger person. I was I was pretty rough on them when I was in the killing stage of, you know, wanting to wanting to get everything I could. But as I've gotten older, I've I've tempered way back from that. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

Well that's so that's a that's a great point that you made right there about, you know, it it's something that we can do, right? So we we hear them talk about when I say them, the science community, um, you know, levers that we can pull. Uh and we can't pull a lever to increase more habitat, we can't pull a lever to make it rain, we can't pull a lever to protect more wetlands, right? Like they've got to be for sale, we've got to have the funding, we've got to be competitive. Most of all these things are outside of our control. And I'm gonna preface this by saying I'm not advocating for less opportunity. I've talked about that on that that show as well. But the only lever we have is our regulations and our framework. And there is a huge appetite from hunters to see somebody try to do something. And it may be for not, but making some adjustment, I guess, would it would appease people? Uh, is that worthwhile? I don't know, but again, I brought it up, uh, I believe it was Taylor that mentioned, you know, the last time we went to restrictive season, we lost half of our hunters. And I commented to him, I said, well, did we lose half our hunters because we went restricted, or did we lose half our hunters because the population was so poor it wasn't worth going? You know, all the opportunity in the world is worthless if we don't see ducks and we don't kill ducks. So which one do we want to manage for?

SPEAKER_04 36:09

Right. But a year a year-long season would give you plenty of opportunity, but you you're thanks you're not gonna get them down here in July. So um, you know, I I I get that. Uh you know, one thing, yeah, you talk about it, it's it's something we can control. My dad, uh he was a pilot by trade, uh, and he used to do some road warrior flying. He'd, you know, black little airlines all over the country before he transitioned to FedEx. But he was living in Minnesota in the 80s, uh, and those were pretty rough times for for ducks and duck hunting. And uh there was a Delta campaign up there at the time called Duck Seasons End, but not for me. You ever heard of that? Y'all guys ever heard of that? No. Yeah, so there was there was a bunch of hunters up in in that part of the world, and and they just voluntarily abstained. And I I I think it was Delta. I'll have to go back and look and see if if that's who was promoting it. But he was telling me about that yesterday when I told him I was coming on the show. It's he said, yeah, when I was living in Minnesota in 1986, it was uh a big, big push up there. A lot of people, you know, had these duck seasons in, but not for me, hats and and shirts on, things like that, just because uh 80s were were rough years uh for duck hunters, duck numbers, and uh farmers too.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

So you know, it's yeah, similar, similar conditions for sure.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:30

Go ahead, Brent. Yeah, I was gonna say it was interesting you you brought that point up because I was talking to Jason Smith, who's a buddy of mine and been on the show a couple times and and kind of has pulse on things. And we were talking about you know how this has already been plotted next year, not this coming season, the next season will be another 60 and six because of the way it plotted on the matrix. And and he brought up a pretty decent point. And I I've seen bits and pieces of this, and this might be an interesting, you know, kind of discussion to have amongst you know a couple duck hunters is why don't we voluntarily if we if we have a problem with you know we need to cut the limits back, or we need to we need to hunt 45 days, not 60 days, why don't we have the self-control to say, all right, I'm making my season 45 days? Or I'm I'm not I'm gonna shoot three mallards, I'm not gonna shoot the four mallard deal. And I my my response to that was it's really hard to pull back on the days that are good where you you're gonna go out there and you and your your friends or family that you're hunting with, it's you know, it's a good day. It's hard to pull back and and not you know have the most success you can have on that particular day because those are so few and far between now. Um and he made the point. Well, I mean, you got all these people out here complaining about fossil fuels and and all the you know, everything we're doing to the earth, but well, why don't they walk everywhere they go? Well, I mean they they still drive cars and and everything else that pollutes the the air, and it's just uh our nature as humans, I guess, is it's hard to hard to put restrictions on yourself sometimes, uh and you almost have to have it told to you. But uh I've I've heard of some clubs that have cut back that you can take uh I know of one that's in my area, a legacy club, very historic place, that you can take as many guns in there as you want, but you can only shoot 24 mallards. That's it. So if you take a big group in there, and sometimes they'll have some groups of eight, eight guns, uh, but that that equates to three mallards a man, you know, simple math. Uh so you have seen some people throttle back. Uh, you know, we obviously see a lot of people with time restrictions they put on themselves. You know, a private land hunter can stay out there from dawn to dusk if they wanted to, but they put some rules in place. Okay, everybody's gotta be out of the woods by nine o'clock or you know, whatever it is. Or we're not, we don't, we don't do afternoon hunting. Or we only hunt this particular place this day, this these days of the week. I know some clubs like that too. Yeah, it's not open seven days a week. So there is some throttling by by some people out there, but it's pretty few and far between.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

I grew up on one of those places, right? Uh I mean it's it's it's never been kind of a a new or irrational theory. And I know I am in the extreme minority of hunters, but I mean when I was a kid, duck hunting was three days a week. It was Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays. Um, you know, now also I recognize I was just born lucky and I it was the Augusta National of duck hunting, right? But I mean, even when Wallace Claypool started that place and you know, we started building it actually in the 1940s, acquiring the land and building it, he he recognized all the way back then that you know ducks needed a place to rest, they needed time off. And you know, um as far as most hunters would consider, it was it was pretty draconian as far as you know, Mr. Claypool had it, they didn't go out and they didn't start really hunting until eight o'clock in the morning, and and most people didn't carry more than a pocket full of shells and you know, only hunting three or four guns per hole. Um I mean that was you know eighty years ago. And then that's that's uh definitely something that that the larger duck hunting population probably doesn't how to say this. You talk about the self-control factor, right? Um season's in, got to get them while we can. I I paid for the lease, I paid for the waiters, I you know a pair of waiters is a thousand bucks now, right? Or, you know, 500 to 1,000, and you get the shells and the gun and the lease and everything, and you're like, okay, well, I feel like I have to to make the ends justify the means. I've I've heard some of that in uh some of the local stuff here around Crittenden County, right? Um but yeah, I I think people will have a lar a hard time hard time imposing that self-control. Um at the same time, I would say though, and and respond back, there are certainly a number of hunters that hunt all 60 days, but it's not that much of the hunting population, right? Most of your I mean, unless it's an an outfitting service and you know that those guys are kind of running a different racetrack than uh non-outfitters, but uh I mean private hunters, right? Or and I say private, I don't just mean private land. I mean people that hunt private and public. You know, very hard to find somebody that that's truly able to hunt all 60 days.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

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SPEAKER_01 42:59

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SPEAKER_03 43:44

So, Robert, I'm I'm curious about your opinion on this because you know, when you were talking about the 80s, it kind of occurred to me that maybe there's a certain generation of us or certain age group of us that lived through I'll call it the duck depression, right? Like If you hunted, if you hunted, if you remember those times, if you remember the 80s when it was so dry and so poor, I feel like you kind of have a different outlook on things today. Um, doesn't make us better than anyone else, just our perspective is different. But I'm I'm interested to see your opinion, you know, talking about Claypool and what they were doing. You know, my my grandfather started in 53, and we were very, very similar, even even with guiding hunts, for as long as we have, you know, we we don't hunt every day, we don't hunt afternoons, we are very limited and impose a lot of self-restrictions on on what we do and practices. Do you think that's because that that particular generation actually did come out of the Great Depression? Like do you think that you that they remember some of those lessons learned and that kind of shaped how they were as stewards?

SPEAKER_04 44:49

I definitely think that's that's the case. Um, you know, they they got used to living without and they saw what was happening. I mean, you look at look at a man like Wallace Claypool, right? He was born in the 1880s. Uh, he got to experience, I mean, even before there was any regulation whatsoever, right? He got to go experience some of the the craziest, most inconceivable duck hunting in the world where they're shooting, you know, 100 ducks, 150 ducks, as many ducks as they can fit in the boat, you know, out of the Wapanaka outing club with lead shot, right? And then to see those numbers fall, to and to get to the point that really that's his whole motivation for doing the place, is he he got so enthralled with waterfowl conservation, he's like, I'm gonna buy a place for the ducks. And um, of course, he was not alone in his thinking. He might have been ahead of the curve there, but a lot of that was was passed on uh to those those that picked up the club after him. And when he sold the club, you know, Claypool got out of it in the 60s and sold it to a group of guys from Memphis. And in the old clubhouse, there was a picture, um not the famous Claypool picture, but a different photo. Purpose made quite a few photos out there. But anyways, it was a picture that had this little bronze plaque on it and said, you know, to my four friends, and it had their names on it. I leave to you my life's work, right? And and so to to kind of see the resource go down to the point that they, you know, even the government got involved with, you know, some of the Migratory Bird Act and uh you know, Pittman Robertson, a few of those other things that to try and help conserve wildlife in general to to see that. Yeah, I I definitely think that shaped it. And then I think it shaped the generation of stewards that came after them. And then, you know, people in my generation, and I say my generation, I'm 31. Uh a lot of them don't remember anything about the 80s. I don't, I wasn't born, but I was raised by people who did. And that was kind of, you know, and instilled in me from a very young age. And it kind of goes to a bigger thing, Brent and I talk about some is a lot of the people in the sport now, I mean, they weren't involved in the sport or weren't connected to anybody involved in the sport that hunted through the the hard times, right? Um all they know is is 60 and six, and all the person that got them into hunting knew is 60 and six, or on the other side of that coin is you know, maybe they got themselves into it through social media and and they just have, you know, it's hard for them to appreciate A what they have now and B what they were missing back then because they just never, you know, don't have any tie to it. And I'm not saying that in a derogatory fashion at all. It's just a a simple fact, right?

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Yeah, we we've we've kicked that topic around, you know, the mentorship, the the you know, the who did you learn this sport from, and then who's who's mentoring you ongoing, uh, because it's a it's a factor and you you can spot it pretty pretty quickly, uh, those that that had a mentor or a quality mentor versus those that haven't. And that's not to point fingers and anything like that, but I mean, we're all aware there are people in the sport of duck hunting that man, you almost wish they'd go do something else. Uh and and that's that's gotta be a big factor in all that. Uh, and to to think that that all that has been passed down to you, because I mean you're significantly younger. I mean, my older son is the same age as you are, pretty close, but um it's interesting that you have that take, and and we uh uh referenced Greenhead again. Uh there's an article in this one too, where I interviewed a handful of uh guys a little bit younger than you. Most of them, I think all of them were in their 20s, but it was kind of getting their take on this sport. And but what was interesting, it was it it was clear in their because a lot of them I know their their dads, that's how I know the kids to contact them to interview them. And uh, you know, they learned this sport from their dad, and that's why the the thoughts that they emoted in the interview process was was a reflection of of how they were introduced to this sport. So yeah, I think that that goes a long, long ways, and and we need more of it, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_04 49:21

I I agree, and I think that uh the best thing to do is just have that conversation and you kind of it's very hard and something I avoided and have avoided for most of my life of having conversations with you know a bunch of people about my takes on conservation and duck hunting because people go, oh you you know you you grew up hunting clay pool, right? You don't you don't know what it's like to scrap it out in a boat race in the public timber, and I don't. Um or you don't know, you know, what it's like to spend 60 days in a bunch of rice fields, uh and and I don't. So finding that line of, hey, you know, I'm not holier than thou, I'm not better than you, because I'm not. I really I I I promise I'm not. I uh but you know I think we as stewards of the resource have to find some way to get those that are coming into the fold and kind of tie that back into the conservation thing, right? I mean it's it's things that have worked in the past. Uh if they, you know, if they hadn't worked, the sport wouldn't be where it is today. And if you're old enough to remember it or if you grew up with somebody who remembered it and taught it to you, uh you can you could tie back into it, right?

SPEAKER_01 50:36

Yeah, exactly. And y you just made a really strong point there. Uh, you know, there's a track record of places, and yes, location has something to do with it, but it's also how how they manage it and how they treat the ducks. And I think there is a contingency in the duck hunting world that could stand uh to learn from that. Uh there's a reason why the ducks go there, and it there's several reasons why. But uh one of those reasons is how the people that hunt that particular piece of ground, how they treat the ducks, and and that's a some of that's missing out there. Um and that's any wildlife too.

SPEAKER_04 51:17

I mean, that's that's deer arky hunting. I mean, that's you you have to be a a steward of the resource. And if you're you know, if you're just all gas, no brakes, I'm gonna go out and and get kind of harking back to one big question, right? Okay, everybody wants to go out and and get a limit and have a good day in the woods and all that, but what are you doing to to give back to the resource? And if you're if you I say ask yourself that question in the mirror when you're getting dressed in the morning, but you know, what are what are you doing, right? I mean, is it hey, we got a lease and we're only shooting it three days, four days a week? Is it, you know, I'm buying two duck stamps this year? Uh if if you can't come up with any kind of answer that actually is, okay, that's sort of a positive trend towards helping the resource out, maybe you need to work towards something that gives you that answer because kind of just yeah, part of being a conservationist, right?

SPEAKER_00 52:12

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SPEAKER_03 53:21

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SPEAKER_01 53:44

All right, let's uh before we before we talk about some of your your clay pool experiences, uh, just because uh you know that's a obviously a very unique place that that you only hear a lot of old history about. So I definitely want to talk about that. But one thing before we get off uh of some of these numbers that just came out, um, that by the time this comes out, it'll be last week. So uh but fresh data. Uh I wanted to talk about harvest data a little bit. Um because you know there's a there's a lot of talk about you know where ducks are settling and what's stopping them and migrations change and so on and so forth. So I did look at some of the harvest data for for Arkansas, and it did go down year over year as far as mallards go, about half a duck per active duck hunter. You can't really look at the total number of harvests because I mean, one year we could have had you know 125,000 hunters, and the next year we could have had 90. So you gotta you gotta average it out in what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service keeps up with is a statistic called active duck hunter. So you divide the harvest by that and you get an average for the season. But also looked at Missouri and Louisiana, uh, and this is just mallards, and uh Missouri went up almost two mallards per per active duck hunter per season. Um they made the jump from 4.72 to 6.65. And of course you're gonna say, well, that's 6.65. I kill that many, you know, in a good weekend, I'll I'll shoot my eight, and that's just a weekend, not a whole season. But you gotta remember there's a lot of people that come to these places and hunt only a handful of days. Uh it might be one trip a year, that kind of stuff. So the you know, whether the data sorts out right, uh, you know, I don't know. Uh it's real confusing anyway, how they collect harvest data on on something they don't count a single duck uh physically. So uh Louisiana went from one mallard per season per hunter down to 0.68. Uh so you know a dip there too. But what was interesting was to go back and look at that the somewhat long-term average back to 1999, which is when they kind of changed the methodology as to how they calculate harvest. So last year we we were at 6.56 mallards per active duck hunter for the season. Our average should be around nine. So, you know, looking back to 1999, but the but part of what skews that is 99, 2000, we killed over a million mallards in Arkansas. So you probably would have to go back and kind of throw those out, and you probably get a little bit closer. So we're we're not crazy off of our modern day average. Um Missouri last year, even though they jumped up almost two mallards, they're they're right about their long-term average, uh, dating back if you date back to 99. And Louisiana's down one mallard um modern day compared to their long-term average. So, you know, no, no crazy wild swings where you can go, well, yeah, they're killing way more now because that's where all the ducks are. So um it's a it's an interesting way to kind of back into where are all the ducks. And I think it gets back to the beginning of the conversation, and we talk about the breeding population is down, we talk about maypons are poor. It's because we don't have enough ducks. That's it. They're not somewhere else. Uh we just don't have enough of them, and that's gonna impact our harvest and our season success.

SPEAKER_04 57:23

Well, I you know, I listened to one of the your past episodes a couple weeks ago, and you had your your friend Lee. I'm gonna butcher the hell out of his last name, but Lee Jose or Kajose. Yep. Yep.

unknown 57:35

Mr.

SPEAKER_04 57:35

Jose, if you listen to that, forgive me for butchering your last name. But anyways, uh you know, he made a comment, it's like, you know, you you put 10 million mallards back on the landscape, and uh a lot of your issues, you know, go by the wayside, and and that definitely makes a lot of sense to me. The first thing he said uh about Missouri's mallard harvest being up, I was like, oh god, nobody tells Senator Kennedy about that. But um it's a joke in reference to his letter. Yes. Just just just just kidding. But um it's kind of interesting to me that numbers of mallard harvest are around long-term average for some of these states, but mallard numbers are continually trending down. And there is there anything, you know, any nuggets in that of, hey, whoa, you know, resource is steadily going down and harvest is staying the same. You know again.

SPEAKER_01 58:27

I'm not a scientist, so yeah, there's all all kinds of ways you can crunch these numbers um and probably pull something out that would fit what you're trying to a point you're trying to make. Uh we've we've obviously seen it with some of the the narratives out there. Um but that I mean, yes, you're right. That's a you know, we got a shrinking population. The problem is the hardest part is is we don't have a count of the fall flight anymore. So we we can kind of get some guesstimates on how production was based on yeah, there was some water in the landscape, or no, there wasn't. But we we we don't count it. There's no marker, there's no index anymore, and hasn't been for a while. So with not having something to measure the fall flight against, we really don't know that yeah, yeah, B pop was down. But you could have a you could start with a bad B pop, and if it was say we were at six million ponds, the fall flight could be awesome.

unknown 59:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 59:28

But the B pop would look cruddy because going into it we didn't have very many, but production was awesome because there was water in the landscape. So it's we're kind of missing some data points, and that's a big one. And that's that's why you can't get so hung up on the BPOP number and and assume that your season's gonna be terrible. Y'all made this point last night, okay. The assumption that BPOP means the season's gonna be terrible. Well, uh it might, it's but it's just one of numerous factors that influence that.

SPEAKER_03 59:58

Yeah, real quick, I want to mention, you know, you you talked about Missouri being up two mallards. Uh, I think it's very important that you mention the long-term average because yes, everyone south of us is gonna, you know, freak out and oh, it's oba, it's corn, it's whatever, you know. But but yeah, when you look at the long-term average, you know, there's ups and downs and warm years and cooler years and and all those things come into play. But did you uh, Brett, I know you probably haven't been able to digest the whole thing. Uh, did you catch the part where we talked about the brood survey versus the midwinter surveys?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:34

No, I did not.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:35

So I I brought that up because the the brood survey came up. So I asked all the science guys on that deal, like, what is more valuable to you guys from a data standpoint, a brood survey or midwinter? And without question, they all said brood survey. Now, brood survey went away because it wasn't being used as a data point for AHM, and I and I get that. Um, I think it's very valuable to us as hunters, and it does give you a good uh window from which to view the year, you know, better than B pop and trying to extrapolate what recruitment would be because that's what we're doing now. Um, but yeah, I mean I'd love to see it come back. Now, I will say someone else brought up a very good point that they would rather just see all that money go to conservation efforts, given that neither the midwinter nor the brood survey went into anything statistically.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:24

I don't know. Yeah, it's interesting. Um that would be a handy data point. Um, it would really give us a better idea. But they but I uh if I recall, now obviously those surveys are really expensive to do. That was one reason they weren't really using the data point in anything, so why keep paying you know this huge expense for something we're not really using? But it it definitely gave us a a marker. But I've heard some some of the science guys say, but yeah, it made people anticipate whether the season was gonna be any good or not based off of what the fall flight index was. Without considering, did you get the weather? Did you have water in the landscape? You know, Arkansas this year, it's gonna be interesting with our rice harvest being down and rice being cut so early again. So, I mean, there's all these other things, but people were taking okay, the fall flight is up, season's gonna be awesome. And when it wasn't, they're like, what the hell? That's a lot better or the inverse of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:19

That's a lot better reference point than saying scalp are up 99% in this one county of North Dakota. So that set that can set expectations. Yeah. But but but yeah, this this came up on that show. Uh Jimmy Robinson mentioned it, and he and I have had conversations, you know, all uh on the phone all the time about it. I think messaging matters, and I think if we're honest with hunters and we tell them, hey, numbers are low, it's gonna be a tough season. You go into that season expecting it to be tough, and you're appreciative of the days you get. If we sell some unicorn fairy, that it's gonna be great because you know, redneck grebes are up. No, no one's gonna have a good year because the greed population is up. I mean, I know some people kill them and post them on Facebook, and it happens every year, but you're not supposed to. So I just think we need to be brutally honest and and messaging matters.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:13

No doubt about that. I think that's what hunters are really struggling with is what they feel they're what's being messaged to them. Uh, and that's created some you you you said the word honesty, um, and I and I'm the same. I'm I'm not alluding to that either, but they don't feel like they're getting told the whole the whole thing, the whole painting, the whole picture. You know, you kind of got some smoke d smoke and mirrors. Let me worry about it when I'm in the blind versus creating six, eight, nine months, maybe it's twelve months of angst that that spills into social media and conspiracy theories and everything else, because I don't feel like I'm being told the whole story. Yeah, and that's just be just shoot it straight.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:57

Right. And then I I think it's also important that hunters feel like they play a role. And that's another dangerous point to harvest doesn't matter, you know. And I think that narrative is starting to change, certainly from Ducks Unlimited, and I applaud them for that because you know, at a certain point, harvest does matter. Now, unfortunately, the population is so low right now, and average ducks per hunter are so low that that they're correct. We're like changing the limit to something else is really not going to matter because not every hunter is going out and killing a limit every day. That's where we're at with the population. But it's a very dangerous thing to make a hunter think that he serves no role at all in conservation.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:40

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SPEAKER_04 1:05:14

You sit there and I mean last year I personally shot like nine ducks all season. Now I also had a son December 3rd, which definitely cut into the amount of time I spent outdoors. That'll that'll certainly do it. And uh I think it was the continued wanting to hunt in the future, and so not leaving my wife at home with two small children cut back into that. But uh you know to think that that harvest doesn't matter at some grand scale is is is uh I don't call me a lunatic, but I don't I don't agree with that. I I definitely think it matters.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:52

Yeah. Yeah. Well we've we've obviously made our stance clear on that uh on this show and and and had We have a lot of conversations offline that that would support that that blanket statement is highly inaccurate. Um and you just got different beliefs out there. But that's with any type of science. I mean, that you know, you can go all over the place and we could we can wear that.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:15

It was really good though on that point.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:17

I mean it's well, yeah, that's a messaging thing. That's basically was was the gist of that. Um that yeah, that let's change please change to some other slogan or catchphrase because that one's the hunters just aren't buying it. They just aren't. All right, well, uh we're we're edging towards um time one. I've got a a hard stop, but I definitely want to talk about your your uh your your your years uh of hunting claypool reservoir just because it's a a place that's so known uh not only in Arkansas but nationally. It's just it's just uh incredible history and legacy of that place. So maybe maybe talk about a little, you know, how your family was was got tapped into that and then you know, some some of your experiences there. Absolutely I know it's pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:09

It it truly is. Um you know, and and first of all, I just as my grandfather would say, luckier than a puppy with two Peters to uh to have grown up out there. Our family, it's not a a money thing, you know. We didn't get tied into the club because oh, we, you know, had enough money that to get into it actually. Uh my grandfather took over running the club. His name was Johnny Robert Riley Sr. He took over running the club in 1966. He had uh he and his father, who everybody called Gander, but his name was William. Uh he and Gander had had run a few duck clubs. Uh they'd run the Pink Willow around Wiener, and then they'd helped uh their cousin and nephew, Dick Denton, run Caney Slough and Willow Oak uh back in the 40s and 50s. And then they ran a pack of deer dogs, and uh Pop had a pretty good pack, and he got tied in over at the Brinkley Plantation, and that's where he met Snowden Boyle Sr., who was one of the four guys that Claypool sold to. And you know, it wasn't just hey, I I, you know, he he met these folks, and you know, we want you to come work for us, Johnny. My grandfather was born across the road from Claypool's. The uh the Riley family farm was just north of Rayburn Road there, uh just east of Wiener. I mean, that's that's where he was born. And he had actually been around that area and through that area his whole life before Claypool, you know, came up there and and got in there in in the 1940s. You know, my grandfather had already been, he was 10 years old by that time, right? He was born in 1930. Um he actually told me a story that that when Claypool was digging one of the one of the main ditches there, um, my grandfather used to ride his horse down a Lange River and go fishing. And Claypool was going to put a pipe in, and my grandfather said he was like 13 at the time. And uh he told Mr. Claypool, he said, you know, you know, you're putting your pipe in at the wrong spot. That's that's you're you're at the high spot. You'd have to push water up to that and uh to to let your water out. And he goes, I'd get on, you know, Claypool said, I'll get on either kid. You don't know what you're talking about. And lo and behold, my grandfather ran into him a couple months later and he was digging that pipe out to go move it. And uh, you know, so the connection is is kind of always been there. And so then my grandfather meets these people uh running his deer dogs down at the Brinkley plantation, and they had just happened to have bought the club from Claypool. And so it was kind of a natural fit. Uh my grandfather was kind of a rounder, you know, he had done a little bit of everything. He had been uh a duck guide, uh illegal market hunter. He had a few arrests for selling ducks when he shouldn't have. And he had been a bouncer at the cotton club in Truman. He owned a liquor store too, and just farmed a little bit, you know. Anything he thought could turn a dime. But he took over in '66. I mean, at the time my father was 10 years old. Uh, and and then from 1966 until about 2015, he ran that place, I mean, with an iron fist. And then 2015-2016, my uncle, uh Johnny Robert Riley Jr., who everybody in that area they called him Gunny. He was a 23-year veteran of the Marine Corps. Uh Gunny took over running it, but it was always a family affair. Um, you know, and to a lot of people, Claypool is so anonymous with the duck picture. But uh, you know, my brother and I really did truly get to grow up out there. It was where we caught some of our first fish, you know, it's where I killed my first deer. Um, there's no turkeys out there, sadly. They tried that a few times, but uh some of the best memories of my life out there. Uh and getting to grow up with people that had experienced uh hunting back then, and I say back then, you know, in the 50s and 60s and 70s, and then you know, kind of getting to carry that into my own experiences in the early 2000s and and up into the the last time I hunted it was in January 25. I mean, it just just incredible. Um one of my earliest memories though, man, I so there's this timber hole called Brown's hole. Um, it was named after Toof Brown, one of the guys that bought the club, and it's really easy to get to, turn in off the first main turn when you go through the gate and uh go down into the woods, and then you're pretty much there. And one of my earliest hunting memories is being piggybacked out there. Um, my dad would take me out to the blind, and I was so small I'd have to stand on a milk crate and watch the hunt. I wasn't even carrying a gun at the time. And to sit there and just watch ducks pour in the trees like that. It's just it's hard to explain. Uh, I know there's some videos floating around on the internet of of people with with big groups of ducks coming in, but I mean nobody's calling and shooting lights five minutes away, and you've got ducks falling in, you know, in the not in the tens and the twenties, but in the hundreds, right? It's just definitely not that way anymore. Certainly not, even out there. But uh, yeah, man. So I can tell you some Johnny Riley stories. He he was uh he was a character, or I can tell you just some of my personal hunting stories. Which ones do y'all want?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:36

Both?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:37

Oh yeah, yeah, both. Well, uh so let me see. One of probably one of my favorite stories uh at the time I was old enough to carry a gun. This was this was on a youth hunt. Um I was still standing in the blind at Brownshole. I wasn't big enough to stand out in the water yet. I didn't have a pair of waders, uh, but my brother was. And so we had these uh single shot HR20 gauges. Do y'all remember those? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So so my Aunt Patsy had given us a pair of those, and my brother was sitting on a board between two trees outside of the blind, and my dad's you know, standing beside the blind. I call this thing a blind, it's nothing fancy. It was, you know, maybe six feet, eight feet long. Three or four people could get in there. I say six to eight feet long, it was longer than that, but it was three or four people could have got in it, but I preferred to stand outside of it if he could. But anyway, so I'm in the blind, my brother's off to the left, and and there's a big group of ducks, uh, mallards, you know, working the hole, and this one uh green wing teal comes in, and you know, that little teal whistle they do or whatever, and that teal hits the water. And I don't know if my dad saw it or didn't see it, but this I mean, this group of mallards is just about to break the trees, and all of a sudden, boom, my brother had mountaintopped that teal with his little 20 gauge, and I mean, just as just as happy as can be. And uh, my dad, I kind of got onto him there for a second. He's like, What are you, you know, what are you doing? But um as I got older, it was it was just incredible to be able to go out there and be included in a lot of that. You know, there were some pretty high-profile people that that owned that place, and our family was never shy about having us around. My grandfather, when he was alive, had membership privileges, so he always got to bring guests with him, which was usually my dad, my brother, and me. Uh, and then as we got older, we, you know, had relationships with those people and and got to go hunt with them and some of their guests. And so as a as a young teenager and teenager, you know, you you're out there hunting with the members and and you're sitting there, you know, you're riding out in the Argo, going out in the reservoir, right? And there's you know, 30, 40,000, 50,000 ducks getting up, and these people are are ooing and oggling at at that. And it's just kind of a another day at the office for us. Still appreciate it. Um, but learned a lot about a lot about shooting, a lot about hunting, you know, having to shoot behind the members. Obviously, it's their place. You don't ever want to shoot ahead of them. But uh I'll tell you, so my grandfather, he was 80 at the time, this was probably 2010. My brother and I had been over there hunting with him, and he comes into clubhouse and he's got bloody knuckles. And we're like, Pop, what you know, what the heck happened? And he's like, Oh, this this guy from Alabama met me at the gate and told me he was gonna go in there and go hunting. So I hit him and I'm like, You did what he pop had some pretty verbose languages. Like, I you know, I knocked that knocked him down. And I was like, Pop, you're 80 years old. I don't you don't need to be getting in fights, you know. But uh I mean I'm just running back a lot of a lot of memories in my head. Um some of the best memories, the more recent memories, I kind of got to do a lot of freelancing out there when my uncle took over. And my uncle passed away, sadly, uh March of 2025. But, you know, we got to go out there and do a lot of hunting when the members weren't around. Um Wallace Quaypool and the old the old bunch, they hunted it three days a week, and then there were some changes, and they kind of got away from the three days a week model and they started just shooting it, you know, whenever. And so a lot of times my uncle would uh would invite us over to go hunting, and sometimes there were members there and sometimes there weren't, you know. But getting to drive that place like I stole it was uh was a hell of a lot of fun. I know Brent, I sent you, I think I sent you a few videos off my camera roll, but uh. I'm just I'm having a hard time describing, you know, how it is to to be sitting there under a group of you know 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 ducks, and all of them want to get, you know, right where you are. Uh you didn't have to call a whole hell of a lot if you were where the ducks wanted to be, you know, and you didn't have to be perfect with your decoy spread. I say all that to say I'm not any kind of aficionado with with calls or decoys or or anything like that. You know, I had one guy in college ask me, you know, my opinion on his decoy spread because he knew I'd hunt it out there, and I'm like, dude, you're asking the wrong person. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:52

Well that's a d it's a totally different uh standard.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:56

Um it is. It is. But we uh what's that?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:01

I said I've been places like that. You you know, they throw their decoys out, you know, you're you know, you're the guest and you see it and you're like, what are we doing? And then 30 minutes later we're picking them all up because uh you know the hunt the hunt was out of this world. So uh I know I've uh experienced the same thing. It's pretty special.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:19

Well, we it was a designated rest area out there that didn't didn't get hunted, but you know, the place is 1,300 acres, and and kind of at the freelancing end of it, when when my brother and I were getting to go out and and hunt our way, you know, all we would carry is a jet sled with maybe a half dozen decoys in it if we needed them. Um and then, you know, a pocket full of shells, but really it's just we had the opportunity to get where the ducks are, and uh that's something that that you know is very unique, right? Just to be able to see where the ducks want to go. Because I'm sure as you guys know, if you're where the ducks want to be, you do not have to worry about a whole lot else, right? You can kill them with a badman bracket.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:02

Yeah, that's accurate. That's accurate. Well, uh, you know, talking about some of this stuff, I wish we wouldn't have spent so much time on uh on all those numbers and stats, but it was it was fun discussing that stuff too. Uh, you know, Casey and I always do it, and I think this is the first time we've probably had a guest involved in rambling through kind of the all this the statistical information that's somehow gonna equate to what we see this duck season. So maybe we'll have to get you back on and talk a little bit more about uh your clay pool days and and all that. Uh oh yeah, there's uh this fascinating stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:37

I'd have more time. I can sit down and I I've started putting a lot of that to paper too. Uh, you know, my uncle who passed away last year when he was dying, I went and spent probably two weeks off and on in hospice with him, and I'd sit there for you know an hour at a time and record stuff, and then I've I've sat there, sat down with my dad, you know, because a lot of that that legs he's disappeared, and then I've started putting a lot of my own my own reflections on paper about it just because you know Warfare World has certainly changed.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:08

Yeah, it sure has. It sure has. Well, Robert man, we appreciate you joining us uh and coming on here and talking through that stuff and sharing some of your your experiences. Those are uh I I can only imagine the number of stories and scenes that are that are in your head. Case and I talk about all the time. Stuff we've been so blessed and fortunate to see a field that uh there's no way you could you could ever explain some of those things to another person, but uh cool to experience nonetheless.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:36

Having some trouble trying to, you know, trying to pick just one, right? It's uh it's it's hard to to to pick back through it. But um, if y'all have me on again, I'll I'll make sure I have you know some good ones dialed up for you. And and definitely some good Johnny stories, because there's uh God, there's a big one.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:52

Uh it has to be. He sounds like he's quite the character.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:55

He was uh I appreciate you guys more than you know for having me on. Thank you so much. And Brent, I really do want to say thank you for giving me a chance to uh to to publish that that piece in greenhead.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:05

That uh Yeah, yeah, it's a good read. Uh I encourage somebody to don't don't glance over that article. It's uh it's a pretty crazy story uh that uh is worth worth the read. But uh yeah, we appreciate you listening. You can catch us online at the standard sportsman uh and uh don't forget to buy your second duck stamp. We'll catch you next time.