(upbeat music) Hey, welcome everyone to Naturally Wild, where we talk about wild things here in the natural state.

My name is Steve Wildman Wilson.

I'm your host here on the show each week.

I want to thank you so much for watching.

You know, having worked for the Game and Fish Commission for almost 40 years, I've been retired now for ten years.

I still remember the mission statement.

The mission statement says their charge is to conserve and enhance Arkansas's fish and wildlife and their habitats while promoting sustainable use, public understanding and support.

Now, if you notice, the very first thing they're charged with in that statement is to conserve the fish and wildlife of Arkansas.

And a major part of conserving involves protection of those resources.

And that's exactly what my guests on tonight's show do for a living.

Please welcome, if you will, first of all, Sergeant Brady Baker and also Corporal Landon Mills.

And we got another special guest over there.

I'll introduce you to in a few minutes, but you might want to look.

Her name is Zoe.

How's she doing over there, Landon?

She's doing great right now.

Right now.

(laughter) It talks like it might not last long.

Right.

She's kind of feisty, but we're going to be doing a little bit more program on her in a few minutes.

Let's talk about you first, you guys, Brady you've been with the Game and Fish how long?

I'm in year number 27.

27.

Where did you start with the Game and Fish?

I started as a private lands biologist in Camden.

The regional office down there.

A PLB.

That's right, that's right.

That was under the Wildlife Management Division.

Correct.

And so when did you switch over to being a game warden?

In 2012, I went through cadet school with Landon here.

Oh, really?

And we we started our enforcement journey together.

So you guys kind of came up through the ranks together, and now you're a sergeant.

That's right.

Wow.

And you're a lieutenant.

Just a canine coordinator for the state, sir.

Oh.

I'll give you a rank, man.

You get on this show, you'll be a lieutenant, would that be a promotion?

Absolutely.

It would be.

Yeah.

Now, where are you from?

Where did you go to high school?

I grew up in Arkadelphia.

Okay.

You're pretty local.

What about you, Landon?

Sheridan.

Sheridan.

An old Grant County boy.

Yes, sir.

Good.

Now, you started as a game warden.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

What made you want to be a game warden?

I kind of grew up in a law enforcement family.

My cousin, he's a retired game warden now.

Randy Rhoads was a game warden at the time.

My grandfather was a state trooper for 20 some odd years.

So kind of grew up in that law enforcement background and always kind of wanted to to pursue that, but didn't know where I wanted to pursue it.

And I thought, you know, you know, pairing some of my passions, hunting and fishing with the enforcement side of things.

Why not be a game warden?

So it's really and you guys know this, it's probably every dream of every kid in Arkansas at one time or another to be a game warden or whatever.

And now you went to from wildlife to game warden.

What made you switch?

I did, I spent my educational career training to be a biologist, never really thought about law enforcement.

And then I went to work for Game and Fish, and I was able to spend time with the game wardens and and do ride alongs that, you know, I lived in Camden and didn't have a family at the time, so I was looking for something to do.

And riding with the game wardens was was kind of it down there and so.

Well, the biology degree had to come in handy because you guys do more than just check hunting and fishing license.

I mean, yeah, we do.

In fact, when I started, y'all were called game wardens.

Right.

And then somewhere along the line in there, y'all got different titles like wildlife officers.

Some states even call them conservation officers because you do more than just check hunting and fishing license and a lot of your stuff, biology, I guess, work with it.

That's right.

You get all the questions.

I mean, when you start driving that black truck with the badge on the door.

Used to be green.

All of them used to be green when I was growing up.

Yeah.

You become the expert, local expert on everything, so you need to you need to have a little bit of a background.

Talk about a typical day in a game warden's life.

What what's a typical day for you?

It kind of depends on the time of year, the season that you're in.

That's one of my favorite things about the job, is that it kind of defers what season you're coming into.

Like summertime, you're kind of focusing on boating enforcement, boating safety, fishing, sport fishing, commercial fishing.

Then you kind of roll into your fall months where you got dove season right around the corner.

Teal season.

Early archery season.

Then you roll right into modern gun, waterfowl.

It never stops.

Never stops.

Other things other than that though, I know you're kind of the you are kind of the Game and Fish in your county because lots of times you're the only Game and Fish representative there.

Right.

You do civic clubs and.

Yeah, especially in the more rural counties, you know, Pulaski County in the directory has a long list of employees that are there, but but when you get out away from the central part of the state or northwest Arkansas, you'll have just a couple, maybe just the two game wardens in that county.

And so you do all the civic clubs and school school visits and things like that.

Wow.

Well, let's talk about enforcement in general.

I know you guys been there 20 something years and and it's grown.

Lot's changed a lot since we all started.

How many officers statewide does Game and Fish have now?

Enforcement Division has 201 positions.

201 positions.

181 of those are sworn positions.

So if we were at full capacity, we would have 181 sworn officers working the state.

So 75 counties, 181.

So a little bit more than two per county, right.

There are handful of counties have three game wardens assigned to them.

How do you determine that land base or?

It's usually population based.

Yeah, yeah.

Any idea looking at that, I mean, all those officers and all the land and the water to cover, I mean, how do you, you can't do that.

I mean, some of these counties have thousands of acres and thousands of acres of lakes.

How do you do that?

It's it's tough.

I mean, so you're spread pretty thin.

And you working on, a lot of our work is complaint driven.

So you're not just out there, you know, wandering around looking for something to do.

We're focusing on complaints or previous violations, areas that have had a high frequency of previous violations.

So now, you know, you think about a state trooper or an officer or a sheriff.

Usually more of their job is a response.

In other words, there's a car wreck or an accident, robbery, whatever.

They call them and you come, but a lot of yours is kind of investigation.

You have to kind of be out there and catch them doing it.

It's a lot different.

Right.

Unlike other law enforcement agencies, we don't have criminal investigation division and forensics and all that.

The game warden in the county is it, you know, you do it all.

So we're out there and we we try to cross train the cadets in, in everything so that they're familiar with all aspects of the job.

And the guys at the training center do a wonderful job doing that.

Well, I would imagine in some of these smaller towns that you guys have to work with the sheriff's office.

I mean, it's all hands on deck there.

We need all the help we can get.

And you guys have full police powers, don't you?

We do.

You are trained to have full police powers.

Statewide jurisdiction and full police powers.

And especially in those rural counties, you're just another hand on deck when when something big is going on in the county.

You know, a lot of people don't see what y'all do.

They may see a few of you around town here on TV and some of the programs like this, but a lot of your work goes on behind the scenes at night in the country.

Any idea how many different contacts your guys and gals you have, some lady, you have some lady female officers?

We do.

Yeah.

I think we had one when I started.

We have a few more than that.

Yeah.

But they do a good job too.

Any idea how many people y'all contact total in a year?

I know it's got to be a lot.

But it's in the thousands, for sure.

A majority of those don't end up in a violation, violation or anything like that.

And, you know, I would say venture to say 90% of those are all contacts with good folks who are just trying out hunting fish and enjoy the outdoors.

They're doing their job.

You're doing your job is to check them, make sure everything's good.

So you say roughly 90% of them are good.

Let's talk about the 10% a little bit.

How many citations do you guys issue in a year's time, roughly?

So last year we were a little over 8600 officer violator contacts.

That means where the the game warden encountered an actual violation.

Okay.

And that involved about 7500 people or just over 7500 people.

And the percentage wise, as far as warning to to paid citation went, was about 62% warning to 38%.

Okay, so how many people were roughly 7500 people?

7500 people were issued some sort of paper.

Either a warning and a large percentage of those were just warnings.

Right, right.

But like Landon was saying, most of the people you contact are trying to do the right thing.

There just out there trying to have a good time.

And so our our main job is regulation compliance with, with the state wildlife regulations.

And so we encounter those people and they go about their business and we go about ours.

You guys have been in business quite a few years now.

Have you seen a change?

I mean, I was in the communication division.

We've done TV shows like this.

Radio shows, try to educate people about the raw laws and rules and ethics.

Hunter safety classes.

Have we seen any change?

Have we seen a change in the attitude of today's sportsmen versus years back?

What do you think, Landon?

I think so.

I think there's there's a lot more options out there for enjoyment, especially for for youth nowadays.

So it's a struggle to to keep that heritage, I guess being passed down from generation to generation, as you can see all around, not just our state but the United States, you know, hunting, fishing license sales are on a decline.

And that kind of falls back on, on us, our generation to keep keep that going, keep that heritage and that tradition going.

But there's still some out there that that enjoy that are die hard hunters and fishers, enjoy the outdoors.

And we just try to try to do the best we can to bring maximum enjoyment for those people.

For sure.

But there's always a few, I don't care what generation you're in, that's going to disobey.

Yeah.

So when we're out there patrolling, we're looking for major violations.

I mean, our goal, our goal is to to have some effect on the major violators, you know, and there are people that leave their homes with the intent to to violate game and fish regulations.

That's a fact.

And when you talk about major violations, you're talking about spotlighting at night, market hunting.

I mean.

Road hunting, trespassing.

You know.

They do it intentionally.

While I'm thinking about this, we might want to show people this.

This just came out.

Pick up a copy of these.

I think they print a half a million of them and not only pick them up, but read them.

That's right.

Because there are changes every year.

In fact, I know you guys just went through a huge, I guess, a monitoring of these where you're trying to get them easier to read.

Simple.

I heard over 200 changes.

Right.

Not in necessarily the laws, but the wording to make it easier to understand.

But these I mean, that's the Bible when it comes to rules and regulations.

That's right.

When I was a kid, I mean, we, you know, people couldn't wait for that book to come out.

And there was one in every bathroom, on every coffee table.

There still is.

In every vehicle.

That's why we put in 100, 500,000 of them for 300,000 people.

But these things used to be a lot smaller too, back in the day.

Hey, talking about citations money wise, how many of those citations, what kind of money are you talking about money wise to the Game and Fish Commission out of those citations in a year?

Yeah, typically around between 500,000 and $600,000 in fine monies that come to that are collected by the counties.

500 to $600,000.

Where does that money go?

It stays in the counties and educators can apply for for that money for wildlife programs in the classroom, or shooting sports programs and and other wildlife and outdoor related activities.

I kind of set you up on that because I, I started at the Game and Fish in the education division, and I'm glad to see all this money that's citations, these guys don't get any of it.

It's not meeting a quota.

It doesn't go to buy their trucks.

It all goes right back to the county where the citation was issued and right into education.

So that's a good, I love that.

It never leaves the county it was collected in.

All right.

That's general enforcement.

Let's kind of move a little bit to special operations.

I know you have different sections within the enforcement that's over things.

Honor guard.

You're you're a member of the honor guard.

Talk about that just for a minute.

I am.

The honor guard is a group of guys who trained together for ceremonies to honor fallen officers.

We do occasionally do flag presentations that at events and things like that.

But for the most part, the bottom line is, is to provide honor to the families who have sacrificed it, you know.

Sure.

What about, let's move to the dive team.

I know that's I've seen them on TV a little bit where, talk about the dive team.

I come from a heavy recreational boating district, and so sadly, we have a lot of the boating accidents occur in my district.

So we were fortunate to have a well trained dive team, and those guys come out and help us with recovery of of equipment sometimes and people as well.

But they they also aid other law enforcement agencies and article searches.

They did that in my county not long ago on Lake DeGray.

Not a fun job.

Well, they are good at what they do and they're proud to do what they do, even though it's not the easiest thing in the world.

Another one I have on here, I've heard a lot about y'all disaster relief teams.

You send them all over the United States, I guess, and floods and hurricanes and so forth.

Yes, sir.

There's a select group of us that are a part of that team.

We respond to any natural disasters in state, whether that be a tornado, flash flooding, earthquake, if it come to it.

And then we also have responded, when requested, out of state too.

I know we've been to Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Irma, that was in Florida here several years back.

And Hurricane Harvey, that was around Houston area.

Yes, sir.

And again, once again, they do the same for us if we have.

Yes.

If we have catastrophe.

We just we just kind of fill in the gaps where if it's search and rescue they need us for, we'll we'll do that.

Or if it's just filling in for those local law enforcement agencies on patrol, when they get tapped out of resources, we can we can do that as well.

One last thing we'll talk about before we move to our special guest here.

Special Investigations.

We just want let people know that we do have undercover agents out there.

We have worked undercover cases before.

At one time we had guys that did nothing but the undercover stuff.

But we still when when necessary, we'll we'll have game wardens that do that kind of work.

This be like an undercover boss right, that, just, you never know who you're hunting with.

So be careful out there.

But that's great.

Those are special operations and one we want to concentrate on the rest of the show is the K-9 unit.

I mean, you got you got ten different canines, but this is the best one, right?

Absolutely.

This is Zoe.

Zoe, tell us a little bit about Zoe, Landon.

So Zoe is a female black Labrador retriever.

She's two years old.

We acquired her from Sand Country retrievers.

It's a breeder dealer that's down in Kingsville, Texas.

We trained them on human tracking, wildlife detection.

So that's deer, waterfowl and turkey meat and also evidence recovery.

So that is anything with human odor on it that we might need to find.

They can help us locate that.

Did you go down when they trained them or did you just get her after?

So we just acquire them either through a breeder, dealer or a trainer.

We've had anything from a rescue lab up to some high dollar retrievers from, from from duck dog trainers.

And we do all our training in house.

Me as a canine coordinator, I facilitate that.

Most of your new dogs will go through around 400 hours of initial training.

Once they get here.

So they're already trained, but once they get here, they go through additional training.

Yes, yes.

So we'll put them through a basic canine handler course with with their basic handler.

And then after that, once they're certified in all all three aspects, they're required an additional 130 hours a year.

I see you go to a lot of schools that might be out in the field looking for deer meat, and the next day they might be in the middle of a bunch of kids at school.

Yes, sir.

Yep.

What did they like the best?

Probably the school programs.

Probably.

They love it.

They get petted, huh?

Yep.

Love getting petted on, but they love working too.

Everything they do is for a toy.

So what I mean, tracking, finding bad guys or evidence or illegal wildlife.

They're doing it all for the enjoyment of, they get the toy at the end of it.

Now what's the toy?

Could be anything from a tennis ball to a Kong or a rope tug.

That's their favorite.

Yeah.

But really they do it because that's what they love to do.

I mean, they're labs, they're trained to do that and that's their real reward.

But they're energetic.

How long have you had her?

About a year and a half now.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

Now, give me an example of a couple cases that you you've had are on where it actually ended up with a citation.

She's going into her her second hunting season.

And last year we helped find some illegal bait sites on area maze.

They're really beneficial in that.

Would that be corn or what?

Yes.

Would that be illegal bait sites for deer or turkey?

Yes.

I mean it's obviously it's illegal.

Her place at the table.

She's trying to be the star of the show.

But yes, I mean, they can track in to, you know, if we've got somebody that we suspect that's committing a violation on May, they can help us track into those.

She's helped locate lost dementia patients, mental health patients.

Really?

She can help with those.

And then we've also been tasked to find homicide weapons for local law enforcement agencies that need help, that can't find that stuff.

So she's she's done a little bit of everything.

Is it obviously the scent, is that the key here?

I know they they can smell spent shotgun shells and the human scent.

Anything with human odor on it or spent gunpowder powder residue or obviously those three meat odors as well.

Now, you've had her for a year and a half about what's expectancy of their work life?

Kind of depends on the on the dog.

We've had some work eight, nine, ten years.

Really?

Just kind of depends on their physical ability.

Once we handlers, you know, we know them best.

Once we can see them start kind of slowing down, losing a step, they can we can replace them with a with a new with a new dog.

Brady I'm glad they didn't do that to us when they saw us slowing down.

They just replace you.

That's that's what happens.

It's called retirement.

That's right.

Will you get to keep her after?

Yes.

Oh you will.

Yes, absolutely.

This is actually my second canine, my first canine, canine June.

She worked with me for about eight years and she, she's retired now.

And she lays on the porch or on the couch.

For you?

Yeah, on the couch with the kids and just hangs out as a family pet down at the house.

Yeah.

Wow.

I know you'll have her, does she ride with you every day or does she stay home?

Sometimes you just take her out when you need her or how does that work?

Yes sir.

She's with me every day when I'm in the truck.

I joke a lot of times, I probably spend more time with her than I do my wife and kids because she's with me eight plus hours a day.

And we will not even go there.

Okay.

I know the dog's always happy, right?

Yes.

That's all we have to say about that.

Yeah, and it is.

And.

And now she's not the only one we have.

No.

Let's be fair.

She's probably the best by far, right?

I might be a little biased, but I think so.

But let's kind of show the others.

We have nine others around the state, and we can just pop those up on the screen, and they're all, just talk about where they're located, different parts of the state.

We have some kind of spread out all around the state, northwest part of the state.

We have a few more here in central part of the state with me, southern, southern part of the state, Columbia, all the way down to Columbia County.

We got some all the way up to the northeastern Mississippi County, part of the state.

So we're kind of spread out strategically all across the state.

All Labrador retrievers.

And of course, they they bring in a lot of money.

Some of that, some of that 500 and half $1 million is because we we have those on staff there.

Yes.

Wow, beautiful dogs.

All of them labs?

Yes.

Yes, sir.

Wow.

Different colored.

Different color labs.

Chocolate.

Yellow.

Black.

Oh, there they are.

Look at the group shot.

Oh that's awesome man.

That's just super right there.

They become pretty integral parts of the local law enforcement community because we do we do have other agencies calling all the time requests in our K-9 officers too Sure.

To come over and like Landon said, look for murder weapons or track a subject that ran on a, you know, in a foot pursuit or something like that.

Unbelievable.

Well, very neat.

Good information.

Any idea how many cases they make a year?

Roughly.

I looked in around the last five years, we've been deployed around average 450, 500 times a year.

Wow.

So several deployments and a lot of those are our own cases.

I mean, that that either game wardens or your local law enforcement need need help finding.

Like I said, it could be anything from apprehending a poacher or somebody who's illegally baiting all the way up to, you know, finding a homicide weapon on the side of the highway that somebody tried to hide.

Guys, you know, you look at this.

It takes us all.

It really does.

I mean, to really preserve, conserve, manage wildlife, protect it.

It takes the wardens, takes the dogs, takes other enforcement units, but it also takes the public.

Why don't you talk just for a minute on how the public can help, all of us, do you do your job there?

Well, I mentioned earlier that a lot of where we work is influenced by complaints or information.

And when I say complaint, I mean information from the public.

And that's not necessarily a landowner complaining that somebody is on my property right now, but maybe just a passerby that that sees something that doesn't, you know, that makes their spidey senses tingle.

Or whatever.

We get that information and then we can focus on those areas.

So there are only two of us at best in most counties, and sometimes only one, because we're not at full staff right now.

And it's hard to stay full staff, fully staffed.

So we need all the help we can get from the public.

All all the eyes are better than just, you know, the game wardens.

Tell us how they can help.

There's an 800 number and text a tip number.

That's right.

You can you can look in the guidebooks, have those numbers, and you can get online, agfc.com and find the ways to report violations there.

And not only do you get the satisfaction of getting some of these violators out of the woods, but you can also receive some money from this.

Isn't there a reward if they do get a citation?

We have a watch line program.

If the caller is interested in that, then the officer or the game warden can pursue that, you know, avenue for for the caller.

I heard it's like up to $1,000 if they get a citation.

So you win on both ends there.

But it depends on depends on the amount that's generated from the conviction.

But it's 800 stop poaching hotline and text a tip so you can text it in as well.

And so let's all join together to help protect the wildlife there.

That's right.

Guys, we're out of time.

Great job.

I appreciate all y'all do and all the other officers out there and all the other canines.

What do you call them?

Game game wardens.

Canine officer.

Yes.

Canine officer.

That's what they are.

Thank you all so much.

Thank you all for watching tonight.

It's been a good show.

I appreciate you tuning in.

Like I said, be here next week, we'll be here with another Naturally Wild.

This program was made possible by Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry, East Harding Construction Company, David's Burgers, Greenway Equipment, Arkansas Farm Bureau, and the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas.

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