(upbeat music) Steve Wildman Wilson here.

I'm your host each week right here on Naturally Wild right here on Arkansas TV.

I want to thank you for watching.

Well, it's finally here.

It's about time for kickoff.

Everyone's been waiting for months for this weekend to get here.

It's finally time to kick off the season, but not the season that you think I'm talking about.

I'm not talking about football season.

Yep, there's more than one season that kicks off this weekend.

Hunting seasons.

You know, you always see TV shows all over about football teams where they interview coaches and the players, and they're letting the fans know what they can expect this season.

But you never see anybody doing a preseason forecast show on hunting seasons coming up.

I mean, think about it.

We'll have more folks sitting on a deer stand opening morning of deer season here in Arkansas than most football teams will have in their stands all year long.

Well, you can consider this show your official kick off season preview for hunting seasons.

Here with me to talk all about the upcoming hunting seasons are two guys that are in the know about hunting here in Arkansas.

First of all, our director of the Game and Fish Commission, Mr.

Doug Schoenrock.

How you doing, Wildman?

I'm doing good.

Good.

I'm ready for season to start.

Me too.

Hey, you brought deputy director here.

Brad Carner.

Hey, Steve.

Good to see you, Brad.

Good to be here.

Now, we've worked together before, hadn't we?

For a while.

For a while.

Yeah.

Give me a little background.

Let's introduce both of y'all.

Because you've been here a while and he's a little bit newer to us.

Kind of green.

Yeah.

You're green.

We'll break him in.

Yeah.

Tell us a bit about yourself, Brad.

Yeah.

So been with Game and Fish coming on 28 years now.

Wow.

From little town of Lake City in northeast Arkansas.

Spent most of my career in our wildlife division.

So I have wildlife biologist background.

Went to Arkansas State University there in Jonesboro and spent most of my career in various positions in the wildlife division and four years now as Deputy Director over our Private Lands Habitat division, Wildlife Division and conservation support.

Now, you started out though as just a field biologist.

So you you worked your way up so you know what they're going through out there in the field, right?

Yeah, I actually started out when I was still in graduate school as a part time technician on Shirey Bay Rainy Brake WMA in northeast Arkansas.

And 28 years.

Yeah.

It's flown by.

You've been in the office, Little Rock office, the last four deputy director.

You enjoy that more than out in the field?

Or can you say that in front of the director?

Yeah.

There's days it would be good.

It's good though.

Lots of good stuff.

Moving in a good direction.

So I appreciate the opportunity.

Well, thanks for being here tonight.

Appreciate that.

All right.

Doug.

You haven't been here 28 years.

No sir.

Have you been here, 18 months?

I've been here about 15 months.

15 months.

Yes sir, I have.

Give us a little background.

Well, I grew up in Tennessee.

Tennessee?

I did, south of Nashville, about 80 miles.

Tennessee?

Yeah, I did go to the University of Tennessee, and I apologize for that.

Thank you.

I hadn't been to your office.

You don't have any orange in there?

No, sir.

In fact, I have nothing orange in the state of Arkansas.

It's all red.

It's all red.

Okay.

You know what?

I actually bought some stuff at a sporting goods store a couple of weeks ago that had the hogs on it.

What?

You're getting there, Yes, sir.

You better.

Yes, sir, I am.

So you've been here about 15 months.

Give us some background.

Where were you before?

So I grew up south of Nashville, about 80 miles, and went to University of Tennessee and then actually have a degree in agriculture and a master's in agriculture, and didn't really want to go back and manage the farm.

So I went in the food business.

And so I spent a long time in the food industry.

And but during that process was fortunate enough to be affiliated with a 501(c)3 Ducks Unlimited.

You may have heard of that.

I talk about Ducks Unlimited a lot.

I was on that board about 22 years, and I chaired a few national committees, and that organization is kind of run by national committees and kind of honed my conservation DNA.

In addition to growing up out rural and riding the bike with a shotgun strapped to it or a fishing rod strapped to it.

Yeah.

And anyway, I think they ran out of things for me to do, so they ended up making me the 45th president of DU.

Wow.

And then became chairman of the board after that.

And that was kind of a I thought was the capstone on my conservation career until I got the call from Arkansas Game and Fish.

Yeah.

And now this is the capstone for sure.

I can imagine with your background there, you couldn't wait to get to the duck capital of the world, right?

Man, I, I've held a duck hunting license in Arkansas, I want to say, since 1990, maybe.

Wow.

And I lived in Memphis for 15, 18 years, and Arkansas was in my backyard.

So I was a strong public land hunter in the state.

And so I feel like I have a pretty good experience level of, of waterfowl in this natural state.

Well, we're going to be talking about water fowl tonight.

We're going to be talking about all hunting here in Arkansas.

But we're going to really concentrate more on deer and ducks because that's what most people come here to do.

But thank you and welcome to Arkansas officially, I guess.

Is this your first time over here at Arkansas TV?

First time at Arkansas TV.

There you go.

I did some other stuff with you in the past, you know, the past six, eight months.

Yeah.

And honored to be here.

And I appreciate what you're doing with Arkansas TV and getting the message out to our hundreds of fishermen and the folks that just like to be outside in Arkansas.

You know, I was there 37 plus years, and I still say we but I don't work there anymore.

I'm just a volunteer for you, but still love Arkansas.

It's a natural state, and I just want to tell more people about it.

Let's start off by by telling the hunters out there this year.

The first thing they need to do.

Really, they need to do something before they pick up one of these buy a license.

Yes, sir.

Okay.

Get your hunting license.

And there's a number of ways you can do that.

You can either get a small game hunting license for $10.50 or a hunting license, a big game for 25 bucks.

The better thing to do is just get the whole thing.

The combo license for $35.50.

Then you need to go get one of these and read it.

That's what you have to do.

Read it and then pay attention to it.

Guys, I know Brad especially, we've been through these regulation guide books for a long time making regulations.

Now you're on a two year cycle, which is better than the one year because it's a lot of hard work goes into that.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's hard thinking back over the years actually in not that many not that many years ago, we would have four separate regulation cycles each year.

And so now we've transitioned to a two year cycle.

We just wrapped that up in April of this year.

Our commission passed the Combined Hunting and Fishing Regulation packet that had over 200 changes.

Our our emphasis this year was really trying to simplify regulations.

We hear oftentimes how complicated and complex.

And if you have different regulations from one WMA to the next one one wildlife management area.

And so we spent a whole lot of time trying to consolidate and standardize.

We eliminated over 60 regulation codes in that process.

So definitely encourage people to look at the new this year section.

If you hunt on a WMA, check out those regulations, because there's a good chance that something has changed since last year.

And you did a good job of putting all those changes in the front of the book.

I know a lot of things stay the same, but a lot of things do change.

But this this particular book this year has, instead of four different regulation guidebooks, will have a hunting because this one has the turkey guides for next spring, and then the fishing will come out.

Fishing has already came out.

Oh that's right, that's right.

It came out in July.

That was another change this year that our fishing regulations and hunting regulations both went into effect July 1st.

Okay, good.

So our fishing guidebook has been out for for a couple months now.

All right.

We want to give the folks just a little idea of what they can expect with the hunting seasons coming up.

And I know, like we said, one of them is coming up this weekend.

Dove season.

How's it looking?

Any you hearing any reports from duck, dove hunters?

Yeah.

Usually when I know we're in drought hot and dry conditions.

Typically that's pretty good for dove hunting.

You know, usually lots of bare ground.

Crop harvest is already underway.

Farmers are harvesting corn fields and that sort of thing.

So should be things set up well for a good, good opening day of dove season.

So, they're mirgratory birds.

Well that's true.

They got to get here.

They got to get here.

Yeah.

So a lot of factors can affect that.

Well you know he mentioned drought.

So I would think about finding a pond or a body of water, Arkansas River, something along that line.

They got to have water.

Okay.

Other small game, I know we won't spend much time on small game here, but you know, you got squirrel, rabbit, quail.

Do you really do much individual management for those small game, or are they just kind of byproducts of what you do for the big game?

For squirrel and rabbit, I would say that's true.

We are intentional on our efforts with quail.

We've had a focus on quail restoration efforts for some time and have seen some positive successes.

We've recently, in the last couple of years, opened up permit quail hunting opportunities at a couple WMAs.

Stone Prairie, here in central Arkansas and Little Bayou WMA in southeast Arkansas.

So for quail, we have been intentional there.

But the others, you're exactly right.

It's just kind of a byproduct of of the other efforts that are going on.

But there are a large number of people that like to squirrel hunt.

Oh, yeah.

Chase rabbits.

Brad, talk for all those folks my age or older, quail hunting, it's coming back, but it really won't ever be like it was.

I mean.

Yeah, yeah, land use practices have changed, you know, before, quail numbers, quail, almost the entire state was considered, you know, pretty good quail habitat.

And really it's isolated now to where there's some intentional efforts.

Land use practices have changed, cleaner farming practices, all of that.

So you're right.

We won't ever see quail numbers statewide like they were many decades ago.

Things change.

But if you really want to talk about the good old days, I mean, they had quail in the good old days.

But, you know, one thing they didn't have in the good old days, they didn't have a lot of deer.

Not many deer at all.

Let's let's talk about deer.

Now, I know again, any idea how many deer hunters we have in Arkansas?

Like I was saying in the open, you know, we got more people in a deer stand on opening day of gun deer season than attends all these football games altogether.

I think we'll have 400,000.

400,000.

Yeah, yeah.

Just one weekend.

Opening weekend.

Wow.

There's nothing like that opening weekend of Modern Gun in November.

400,000 people.

And how many deer do we harvest every year?

Every year roughly now, last year or so?

We've been averaging somewhere between 185 to 200,000 annually for for the last several years.

So pretty incredible to think to where we used to be not that long ago.

I want you to listen to what he said.

We harvest somewhere between 185,000 and 200,000 every year, and within a year, they're replenished.

Yeah.

I mean, that's conservation.

That's that's what it's all about.

It's a renewable resource.

But it wasn't always that way.

I want to show you a slide just to kind of, if you're my age or older, you can probably relate to this a lot.

I remember talking to my dad about when he was growing up, that he he told me stories of if they went to deer camp and somebody in the deer camp found a deer track, that they would take all the members of the camp to go look at the track.

And if you look at that slide right there, I think the first year y'all started, I say, y'all, y'all weren't around then either, that they started keeping records of deer kills in Arkansas.

You have to check your deer was what, 1938?

Yes.

How many deer was checked in Arkansas statewide in 1938.

Is just over 200, 200 statewide.

200.

And folks, look at look at that line.

It just continues to go up.

Got one dip in it, but still close to 200,000 deer from from 200 to 200,000 deer.

That's a pretty good increase, isn't it?

You know, I went to Tennessee and I can't do the math, but I love it.

It sounds pretty good to me.

Yeah.

So I just want to say, these are the good old days of deer hunting when maybe quail hunting was better back then.

And of course, we're going to talk about ducks in a few minutes here.

So many opportunities for the deer hunter.

You know, there's a number of ways back then when they checked the 208, I think I remember growing up, we had one week in November, season, one week in December, and I think two days after Thanksgiving.

So just really a few days.

And that was Modern Gun only.

Now, we got over a month long deer season.

Now you've got archery, now you've got muzzle loading, alternative firearms and modern gun spears.

Talk about archery a little bit.

How many, how many deer will archers kill every year, roughly, in Arkansas?

It it'll range somewhere around, archery and crossbow combined, will be 25 to 30,000 depending on the year.

So.

And usually that's equally, relatively equally, spl between compound versus crossbow.

So you got you got a compound bow, you got a crossbow.

And now you've had the last couple three years a new addition, the spear.

You can actually deer hunt with a spear.

Could you do that in Tennessee?

No, sir.

Not legal.

Not legally.

Yeah.

Not legal.

You can do it legally here.

And folks, it's not necessarily what you think about chunking spears, but basically the deer underneath you and you're dropping a spear on it.

It shocked me how many deer were killed in Arkansas with a spear.

Yeah.

Which as part of our game check system, it's under the other category in weapon.

And so last year we had, I think, 88 that were checked to the other category, which could either have been a big bore air rifle.

Oh yeah.

Or spear.

So you know, probably 40 to or so checked with spear, which is pretty, pretty incredible.

I start to say that it shocked me.

I would have lost a bet on that.

It's only been around, what, two years?

2 to 3 years?

Yeah.

Two years.

Yeah.

And I forgot about the big, the big pellet gun, if you will, because they're legal now.

You're getting a lot of people doing that as well?

We don't really have a good handle on how many people are actually doing that.

We know how many people are harvesting deer with it, but how many people are actually hunting, kind of unknown.

I know we had some people that actually, you know, requested that of the commission going back a few years ago.

And so we we investigated it and put in some specifications around what would be allowed to ensure that you had a humane, clean kill and all that.

So there's size restrictions and, you know, pounds of force and all of that that you have to, refer to your guide.

Pick it up.

Yeah.

And another thing there too is alternative weapons is something new in here.

We just started a couple years ago.

It's just more opportunities nowadays than what we had back then.

But you know, you got how many deer killed.

That was the old muzzle loader season.

Now you can still use a muzzle loader, but you can use alternative weapons as well.

Roughly how many deer killed during that season?

Yeah.

So last year we had a little over 21,000 harvested with alternative firearms and I think about 13,000 with muzzle loaders.

So in just, you know, 2 or 3 years time, the popularity of that has surpassed the use of people that are using the traditional muzzle loaders.

But overall we haven't seen a total increase in harvest.

It's really just shifted the harvest, giving them a different opportunity at a different time.

I think a lot of guys like to do it all.

Yes, sir.

I mean, you know, muzzle loader, archery, crossbow, because you do get more extended season.

Of course, the big one is Modern Gun and that starts in November.

And that's where you kill the majority of your deer, probably more people in the woods during that time as well.

And how are we doing, before we move to ducks, we got to do that before run out of time, y'all will have to come back.

We have to do a couple more shows.

But I know one of the goals of wildlife management and deer management is the fact that you're looking for a balance of your herd.

For so many years, we put so much pressure on our bucks, the one with antlers, and we got out of balance there with so many does.

How are we doing on getting that balance now?

Yeah, we're we're we're doing pretty well.

If you think back to the to the graph that they had up earlier, through those years when our harvest was really increasing, most of that time most of that harvest was bucks only.

And as as the population grew and we needed to stabilize the population, we started adding additional doe harvest opportunities.

And so our desire is to have a balanced harvest each year where you have equal number of does and bucks.

And so, we're getting close to it?

We had a period of time a few years ago, for the first time in our history, where we had a couple of years where it was exactly balanced, maybe just slightly more does.

And now we're we're close.

We have a few more bucks if you factor in button bucks in the harvest.

We're, I think around 100 and a little over 100,000 total bucks and 82,000 does this past year.

If you give me one word to wrap up the forecast for this upcoming season, you see any big red flags coming up for this season?

It should be another good one.

I would think it would be very similar to last year.

I think we'll be in that 185, 190,000 range.

Another strong, strong season.

So definitely encourage everyone to get out there.

All right, let's talk about ducks a little bit.

Yeah I know what you're turning now.

But ducks are a small game.

You don't have to have a big game license to hunt ducks in Arkansas but obviously very popular.

You've hunted here all your life.

How many duck hunters do we have here in Arkansas?

You know, we have about between 100 and 105,000.

Over 100,000 duck hunters.

And neat thing is about half of them are nonresident.

Oh, so we got a lot of folks traveling to Arkansas to duck hunt.

Well, there's a good reason why.

Yes, sir.

It is.

You know, we're kind of known as the duck capital of the world.

We are known as the duck capital of the world.

We like that.

We want to keep it like that.

Hey, why is that?

Why are we known as duck capital of the world?

Been known that as long as I can remember.

Well, you know, we're located in the Mississippi Flyway, and there's there's four flyways across the country, and the Mississippi is is a it's a broad flyaway that catches a lot of birds, that comes off the breeding grounds.

Way up north, you can see them coming down.

There we go.

Yeah.

And look at where they funnel, right through the prairie.

I mean through the delta of Arkansas.

Hey, we're not only in the funnel.

We're at the bottom of the funnel.

And that's a good place to be.

It's sort of like real estate location, location, location.

Exactly.

And so, you know, we we have we're blessed with the opportunity to be at the bottom end of the funnel.

Yeah.

And and so Arkansas for years has been able to set the table for wintering waterfowl to spend their winters here so they can refuel and go back north to the breeding grounds and do it all over again.

And so we're blessed there.

Rice has helped.

A rice field, a rice crop has been phenomenal down a little bit this year, but rice has an energy level that gives ducks a lot of stamina to make the migration back north again.

And and then, you know, once the ducks got here, many, many, many years ago, they figured out that they liked acorns too.

Oh, yeah.

And so they started using what we call green tree reservoirs, which is something that's pretty unique to Arkansas.

And that's why a lot of duck hunters come to Arkansas is to hunt a green tree reservoir and see those ducks kind of waffling through the trees.

And, you know, when I grew up in Middle Tennessee, I didn't know what a green tree reservoir was.

And if you told me that a duck would fly in the woods, I would have never believed it.

But they do.

And it's a it's an amazing sight to see.

And, you know, every, every year everybody's want to know when the ducks are getting here and how many ducks we're having.

And there's so many things, so many variables in there that are out of our control.

I mean, weather is huge, isn't it?

Weather is everything.

Weather moves birds.

Yeah.

You know, ducks migrate based on something called photo period.

So when the days get shorter they get a little itchy and they want to come south, okay.

And by then they're young are able to fly and they take off.

And you know, they get on the right front.

They can get here pretty quick.

Sometimes it takes them a couple of weeks or a month to get here, and that's really weather dependent.

But if there's not enough ducks to really fill that flyway.

Yep.

That's due to breeding condition habitat, which is water on the prairies and that kind of stuff.

When you say prairies, we're talking about way up north.

We're talking Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and up in Canada.

So if they don't have the right type of water and habitat and ponds, then they'll never get hatched.

And they can't get here unless they get hatched.

Pretty much all our ducks come from there.

Well, yeah.

And once they get hatched I know they have a lot of predators there as well.

Do they, you know, they they lose the biggest predator of hens, the biggest cause of death in hens is nest predation.

Yeah.

In the in the breeding grounds.

Well, it's, people think it's to the gun.

It's really not.

It's to the, it's to the predators in the breeding ground.

So trapping is important up there.

But then if they are hatched you think about it.

They got to fly.

They're going to make it all the way down that funnel.

Yeah.

And all those states have hunting seasons as well.

They do.

You know, by the time they get here they're sparked.

Yeah.

And I've heard they know what kind of duck caller you're using.

They they know it.

And but I tell you, you take an Arkansas duck hunter and put him up north.

He does pretty good, you know, because they're used to calling ducks here that have been called out a lot, you know, during their migration.

And that does make a difference.

Pressure.

Yes, sir.

It does.

Yes it does.

If you had to kind of give us a forecast, I know it's a little early because so many things depend on weather and that can change in a, in a day if you will.

But what what's it looking like breeding grounds up there this year I heard some.

Well fortunately there was there were pretty wet prairies.

That's good.

During the breeding period.

So they got up and they started nesting in April, May.

They hatched and then the breeding period is called is in July.

And they had decent water when they got there to breed.

They didn't have to fly away up north in Canada, the breeding area was decent in the Dakotas it was drier north of there, so they were stopped where their traditional breeding grounds were.

So the brood numbers in July were up pretty good, about 50% in July of this year from last year, but the fall flight is up estimated at about 9%.

Okay.

And so as duck hunters, we get pretty fired up about that.

About hearing that, they still have to get here, you know.

But some people would ask, well gosh, 55% brood increase, only 9% migration increase.

That's called nest predation.

Yeah.

There's a lot of a lot of critters that like to eat little ducks, you know, in the prairies.

And so there'll be another survey that comes up about the migration survey.

And we'll see if that 9% forecast that came out of North Dakota holds true.

All right.

And we'll know that in just a short time, two or three weeks.

That's good news there.

And we'll we'll be back with you with more predictions and forecast as you hear it there at Game and Fish.

I know you have to keep on top of that.

I just want to say thank you guys for taking time to come in here and share a little bit about the forecast, what we can expect out there in the the woods and the water this this fall.

Thank you.

Thanks, Steve.

You bet.

Hey, y'all, make sure you pick up one of these hunting regulation guides.

Not only pick it up, but read it.

And then more than that, obey it.

That's that's the way it ought to be.

Thank you all so much for tuning in.

And I'll see you next time on Naturally Wild.

And I'll see you next time on 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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