Welcome to the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast, the official podcast of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

We are talking hunting, fishing and conservation with engaging guests and in-depth discussions with game and fish staff.

It's Arkansas Wildlife, the podcast for all things outdoors in the natural state.

Welcome to the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast.

If you listened in or on our last episode, we were talking about new fishing regulations in Arkansas, where we're turning the page a little bit and we are going to talk new hunting, wildlife management area regulations, kind of the terrestrial side as opposed to the aquatic.

And joining us for that is Brad Karner.

Brad is deputy director here at Arkansas Game and Fish.

Brad, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

Hey I appreciate the opportunity.

It's good to be here.

Well, you say that now we've got a lot to talk about.

That's okay.

It's okay.

We kind of alluded to this in the in the last episode, fishing and hunting rigs were done together, and, fishing regs will go into effect July 1st.

Whereas in the past they went into effect January 1st.

Our hunting regs have always kind of been on that cycle starting on July 1st.

That's the fiscal year for the state of Arkansas.

So fiscal year for us at Arkansas game and Fish two.

And it kind of lines up pretty well.

The hunting seasons are start in about a month or so.

But Brad kidding aside there there were a number of regulation changes on the wildlife side this time.

Yeah, yeah.

In total the fishing and hunting side, I think there were 218 total changes.

So, I think maybe about 90 of those were fishing related.

So 128 or so, hunting, hunting, changes.

So, yeah, a lot lots, lots to talk about and, encourage folks to stay tuned and look for guidebooks and what's new and all that in the coming months.

Well, that is a great thing.

We always, in the guidebook put what's new this year.

It might take a couple extra pages this year.

Now, we are going to talk about several of the more substantive changes in the changes that are going to, practically affect our hunters out in the field, and wildlife watchers, for that matter, because there are some related to may access.

But I think it's important to note, right, when you say 218 changes.

And we talked about this in the last episode with Ben Batt and a lot of the a lot of the changes.

A number of those are high volume.

We're kind of cleaning things up, eliminating things that were archaic or just not writing any tickets for those our game wardens because they just don't see those violations.

Explain that, if you will, some of those outdated regs give me an example of some that might might have changed.

Yeah.

As we kicked off this, two year, biennial regulation cycle.

And that that is one point I wanted to make that this packet, would be the regulations for the next two years, so would go into effect, July 1st of 26 and would go through June 30th of 2028.

But our commission ask us, staff really to be intentional about looking for opportunities to simplify regulations, reduce regulations?

If we could standardize, that along those lines.

So, we, actually are using a new software to manage that process.

So, for the public, they can actually, look at our website under the regulations section and they can find a searchable of version of our code book.

And so we use such a. Such a giant leap forward to be able to do that.

It seems so simple.

But when, when you have not had that capability, you, Yeah.

You don't appreciate how useful that exactly.

So staff on both the fisheries and Wildlife side this year really looked for, do we have conflicting codes?

One code that says this is allowed and somewhere else it says it's not.

Do we have old, outdated references?

You know, with, concealed carry, changes in state law in recent years, or we had eliminated codes, but those old code numbers were still referenced in multiple places throughout our code.

But.

Right.

It's like you pull one string and then they start to unravel in other places.

Yes, yes.

We had situations where, a lot of our lands, you know, the three over 3 million acres of public land in the state, most of that is owned by someone else.

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission only owns about, 400,000 acres.

So, you know, 12% or so of the total public land.

And so in many cases, those are federal agencies, U.S.

Forest Service, Corps of Engineers, National Park Service.

And so we had regulations in our code book that were really, laws for those federal lands that that those federal agencies also had regulations for.

So, you know, redundancy there.

So we eliminated some of those, our game wardens are still able to enforce those regulations.

So those did not come off the books for per se.

But they're no longer within our code book.

Examples of those are, ten horsepower motor restriction on the Buffalo National River.

Some, restrictions of firearms in Corps of Engineers recreation areas.

That corp engineer still maintains that.

And they're still approved in horsepower in parts of the buffalo, but it's just not in our code.

Not in our code.

Yes.

Yeah, that that that is a good explanation.

And again, if you want to, you know, if there's something here's the thing about all wildlife and fishing regulations, you know, I get hammered about like asking questions on or on the radio, about what what is this rig or is that rig?

And I usually say, well, let me go look at the code.

But because I don't, I don't I don't know them all.

It's hard to know them all.

But most people have something like, you know, most people or, you know, they focus on deer or they're, you know, a rabbit hunter or they're a waterfowl hunter.

And, obviously some people do a lot, but they hunt certain areas.

And so the that zone they're in, it's like you go to the code book and, you know, again, with this new searchable software at ABC.com, it is a lot easier to find the answer to your questions.

Right.

Let's let's dive into some of those.

One of the things you already kind of alluded to it, probably some of that's going to touch the most people I would think would be wildlife management area deer regulations, because we just have more deer hunters.

What, what what is the what did we do there?

To to kind of align and make those a little more uniform.

Yeah.

And, want to start by giving, our deer program coordinator, Ralph Meeker, a huge shout out.

He and Ralph literally spent months and months, coordinating with our partner agencies.

We have a 140 W maize in the state.

Agfa only owns a little over 50 of those.

So, you know, almost 90 of those are owned by other entities.

And so Ralph spent an incredible amount of time coordinating with those partners, with our local field staff, trying to look for opportunities to standardize w my dear regulations.

You mentioned how someone is, you know, may only have 1 or 2 areas that they're familiar, that they hunt.

The places that are close to them or where they grew up hunting or something like that.

Right.

But one of the, the, concerns that we often heard was that where our written regulations from one w May to the next so different and it's confusing.

It it in our guidebook, it's, you know, you have so many different, scenarios.

I think as our communication staff were working on the last guidebook, I think there were some something like 76 different combinations of deer season structure on w mile.

Yeah.

And so this, this, regulation cycle looked at how can we standardize those to the extent possible.

And so you will see, a lot of moving, the dates on w semis to where they align with the opening of the statewide modern gun or the statewide alternative firearm seasons.

You will see, we may talk here in a minute about the early archery buck hunt.

But when that was first implemented two years ago, it only applied to Agco owned W maize.

Now it has been expanded virtually to all w maize and moved earlier to the last weekend in August to eliminate any potential, conflict with opening of dove season.

Okay.

But, yeah, the, w my dear Riggs, there will be significant changes.

So certainly want to encourage everyone, when guidebooks come out and look, look at at your area or areas that you hunt typically because it's very, very likely that something has changed.

And I don't want to give a false impression that I talked about uniformity.

They are more uniform, but they're not they're not all the same because you can't really manage deer like that.

Right.

Mean a a w may like McElroy Madison County in the Ozarks is going to have a very different type of, deer herd than, Choctaw Island in in the delta behind the Mississippi River levee.

Yes.

We will still have some areas.

Will have permit hunts.

Quota permit hunts.

We tried to standardize those.

We had some in the past that were two day hunts, some three day hunts and five day hunts.

We have standardized those to the extent possible that all permit hunts will be five day hunts.

Debbie, my bag limits have been standardized to three deer per W. My, deer zone bag limits are four deer per zone.

Our statewide overall, bag limit has not changed.

It remains at six.

In order to get, your full bag limit of six, you would have to, you know, travel to, to, more than one.

And good luck to the 134 hunters who actually killed six deer.

I'm kidding it, but the number is not much more than that now.

That I think that's pretty close.

Yeah, yeah, that's not not many.

I bring that up.

Rabbit.

We were talking about this.

We've been batting on the fishery side of things, in the previous episode, but there's a lot of these regulations that just an existing rule that just didn't apply to very many people.

And like, while you see some of these changes and I'm not trying to say that it's not going to affect because there's there are significant, substantive changes here.

But in a lot of cases, some of us are never going to even notice this.

And really, as we as staff went through this process, we we really looked at it through a lens of, okay, is is this change, going to have a significant impact on the deer population on an area or the bear population or whatever the species at hand?

And if, if, the answer to that is it's unlikely that that it's going to have much impact.

Then we went ahead and made the change.

Gotcha.

And so with that, that was kind of a lens that we look through throughout this whole process.

Otherwise if you just look one individual rag by individual rag, you can find yourself year after year.

You're adding more rags, you're adding complexity.

You don't intend for it to be.

Yeah.

To to reach the point where you have a code book.

That's this thing, right?

You find yourself there after a few years.

Yeah.

Well, again, I think the, the take home key message here is that the guiding light through this regulation cycle was simplified, clear of, streamline, make it easier on the hunting public.

Yes.

Once you mentioned, the, I want to skip over to the early Buck Archer hunt.

So it's basically starting a little bit earlier, last Saturday in August, whenever that is.

Yeah, yeah, for three days, still three days.

A one buck limit.

Like I mentioned, it has been expanded to almost every family now.

And then the, the private land zones as well.

So yeah, that we, that's.

What, what is unofficially called the velvet hunt, right?

Yes.

And this will provide, you know, even a larger percentage of bucks that would still be involved at that.

Because it's a little earlier, it's a little early and won't conflict with dove season.

Right?

That's important for me.

Yeah, yeah.

Staying with the deer theme, I think a big one.

And this.

I get a lot of questions about this.

How do you check a button, buck?

Well, there is, as far as we're concerned, there's just antler.

And antler was deer and button bucks are antler loose going forward.

That's.

Give me give me a little rationale reasoning of why we made that move.

And really was a simplification for the hunter.

Previously, most folks will remember that within our zones, within those counties, we considered button bucks to be analyst.

But if if you were outside of a cedar zone, they counted as a buck.

Okay.

And so we had those, you know, added confusion, to simplify, and just, have a blanket application across the state.

We're just now going to consider them, analysts, whether it's on a that BMI or, whatever zone, private land, deer zone, it's in really we don't anticipate much impact to the population.

I know some, will argue that it's still a buck.

It should be checked as a buck.

You're going to have impacts to your population overall.

Really, within the CWD zones and in areas where that's been implemented, we really have not noticed that much change in the overall button.

Buck didn't ride the button.

Buck harvest didn't just shoot up as a result of those specific regulations.

And so in this instance, that's one of those examples where we feel like that change.

It's a standardization.

It should be simpler for the hunter.

And we do not feel like it will have a, a negative impact on, on the deer population.

Okay.

Another one deer related.

Very specific.

Northeast Arkansas, modern centerfire firearms are now legal and zoned four and five.

And I've heard people ask, you know, why can we can we have that?

Can we have fire, you know, modern centerfire rifles as opposed to, shotguns before, give a little history, Brad, you're you're from that part of the world, right?

Yeah.

That's that's where you're you were born and raised.

What's behind that?

What?

Why did that regulation exist?

And why have we seen it?

You know, okay.

To change that now?

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're correct.

I'm from, Craighead County, a little town like city, grew up, deer hunting there on Saint Francis Sunken Lands, WMI.

And initially, the modern gun deer season there was restricted to shotguns with slugs.

Then it was expanded to shotguns with slugs or muzzle loaders.

In recent years we added alternative firearms to that.

In and over the years, we have always had requests to consider modern centerfire rifles there.

But as we would go to the public, as we would, we've had public meetings.

We've, you know, considered that multiple times.

And then we would also get an equal amount of people on the other side that wanted to leave it alone, under that conservative seat, weapons restriction.

There has the the deer herd up there has grown.

It's it's expanded well beyond what it was in the late 80s and early 90s when when I was growing up there.

And, it's no comparison now to the, how many more deer there are now, though.

Yeah, 30, 40 years ago.

Yeah.

And so really, I think it probably was a combination of very low deer numbers at that time, very limited deer habitat.

It's predominantly agriculture area, and Crowley's Ridge area.

But, as deer numbers have expanded and it, it came down to it where that was the only two zones in the state that did not allow modern centerfire rifles.

And so as we're considering standardization, if you want to.

Standardization.

If you want to say that there's safety concerns there, there's just as, there's other areas of the state with just as, you know, either urban or limited deer habitat where we have successfully and safely had modern gun deer seasons for many, many years.

So we're really it's, It's hard to argue against the change.

I mean, as you're starting to like.

Yeah.

You know, and again, you said, a key factor that our staff looked at was like, will this have a negative impact on populations?

Yes.

And it's, you know, it's it's.

I think we will see a minimal, impact to overall harvest.

But with all of these changes, we will monitor we will monitor.

This point.

As we move forward.

And if if data indicates that we need to make a change, then we will certainly, you know, bring that forward.

But, we we this is an adaptive process.

But at this point in time, we were comfort One of the things we talked about with, with Ben Batten yesterday was the, the lifting of possession limits on fish, where used to be three times the daily limit.

And remember, a limit is still a limit.

You can still only catch x number or shoot x number of squirrels rabbits during a day.

But since you can possess more than that if you're like at hunting camp or, you know, staying at a cabin or camping or whatever the case may be, I didn't realize we've done the same with wildlife, with the exception of migratory birds.

And that's because federal frameworks and regulatory action takes precedence there.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely correct.

But yeah, the possession limit was another one of those things that was confusing to, you mentioned if you're at hunting camp or if you're, you know, on a long term camping trip, you know, when, when does the possession limit is it at your residence, is it at your, you know.

And so that was just.

What's in domicile.

Yeah.

It was just added confusion, that we thought that that we could, eliminate without having any, any impact on the resource.

A key point that you mentioned is daily bag limits.

Daily creel limits still exist.

The possession limits have been eliminated for everything except migratory birds.

Like you pointed out, we federal federal frameworks by the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

Still Trump and still, you know, take, you know, precedent there over any of our state regulations.

So, for ducks and geese and, Yeah.

Woodcock, it's about hunting down to anybody who hunts.

Those are early migrants.

Web washed migrants.

Yes, probably.

Again, not that many of us out there.

I do, woodcock, usually a couple of times a year.

Yeah, it doesn't apply there.

Again, because of the federal frameworks they were going to jump into.

Maybe one more here, and we're going to take a little break and wrap up this episode.

But, we're going to continue the discussion in our next episode.

So if we have not hit what you wanted to hear yet, wait a couple of weeks and we'll we'll be talking about some, some pretty big things, like some designation of our, special use areas now will be wildlife management area, specifically, Camp Robinson, Echuca and, Perry Michaels, Blue Mountain, Echuca.

A lot of a lot of talk about that.

We're not ignoring it.

We're just going to save it where we can we can talk a little bit more about it.

But but one thing I want to hit before before we wrap up this, we've talked about rules and regulations, but we also implement regulations and did so this time because when we acquire a new piece of property and we got a beauty down in southeast Arkansas.

Yeah, we're we're really excited.

This regulation packet will, establish hunting seasons on Oakwood WMI, which is just outside of Dumas in the Shade County.

It's been owned by the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service, and we've been working for many years on a land exchange that we're, in the final stages of closing.

And so, previously, for decades, there's been no public access to that property.

And so this, through this exchange, we've been able to secure, a public easement for access that will open up, I think it's just over 2200 acres now.

Man.

Of land for public hunting opportunity.

There will be, permit waterfowl hunts, deer hunting opportunity.

We're really excited about that.

Another one I'll mention to, is a partnership with, state, our Arkansas state Park.

Yeah, that's kind of.

Yeah, yeah.

The Willamette.

Right.

Queen Wilhelmina State Park conservation area.

So, that's the state park, has recently been expanded through an agreement with the U.S.

Forest Service there.

In total, I think it'll be a little over 8000 acres.

And so this regulation packet included, hunting seasons and, you know, similar to what, that that land, the Forest Service property had previously been open to hunting, and we're largely maintaining that as it was.

But now and through that WMI agreement.

Very, very cool.

I always like to hear when we've got more opportunities and more places to go, because we're not making any more land.

There's only so much of it to go around.

And, whenever Arkansas game and fish can, can efficiently and effectively, gets we're going to try to do that and create more opportunities for folks.

Well, Brett, thanks for being here.

Don't go anywhere.

Y'all, we're going to come back in our next episode and talk about waterfowl regulations, because that's probably a whole episode in itself.

But we're going to try to cram those in as well as with some, talk about, these changes to some of our May special use series becoming May's, as well as some changes to lease land, permits, I think had a very positive, development there.

Also talk a little bit about, hunting with, dogs on our, on public lands in Arkansas, for for deer, fox and coyote, subject of a lot of debate for decades prior to me, the a lot of talk about about, you know, hunting with dogs for years and obviously as this regulation cycle, came, came to pass, there was a lot of public comment on that.

So two weeks next episode, we're going to get into that with Brad Karner.

But for now, thanks for tuning in, Brad.

Thanks for being here.

We'll talk to you next time on the Arkansas Wildlife Podcast.