Ep. 312: Render - Market Hunting in Arkansas with Dr. Buckley Foster - Bear Grease

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
My name is Clay Neukleman. This is a production of
the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render where
we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear,
American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed

(00:36):
to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Did you know that one of our friends just got
struck by lightning?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Crazy, so it's been on the podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Yeah, Well, I'm not open to violate hippo rules of
like giving out medical advice here, so I won't tell
you who got struck by lightning, Josh. But uh yeah,
one of one of our friends just got struck by
light and it's like thunder and raining. I was checking
all the drainage on my property today tests like lots

(01:11):
of stress points. If it rained a little bit more,
I probably would have got a little water in my
house better. That's what you have to do when you're
an adult and you have like a normal haircut, is
you as you when it rains. I learned this from
a guy that was like a better dad, father, landowner,
patriarch than me. We were the same age, but one

(01:32):
time we were here at my house and it was raining,
and he said, he was like, where's your shovel at?
And I was like shovel and he was like, yeah,
this this is when you need to get out in
your yard and start digging trenches and see how the
water flows. And I was like, man, this is some
next level stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, no doubt.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
And uh it was my friend Josh Barger. I will
call his name. He had never been struck by lightning.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
We're never been struck by lightning. And I guarantee he's
got no drainage issues at his house.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Nothing, wow, nothing. But so that's what you did. So
that's what I did this morning. I put on all
my my rain gear and I went outside and was
standing in the water watching it, and I man, I
got big ideas for you and me this year. Bear
on drainage out here. Welcome to the bear Grease Render.
I'm very excited about today. We're going to talk about

(02:18):
some of these Turkey stories, but mainly we're going to
talk to Buck Foster, who's here with us, Doctor Ruk Foster,
doctor Buck doctor, doctor Buckley T. Foster.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
Yes, that's me and uh and I'm a kind of
doctor that don't do folks no good.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
As my grandmother would say, don't do folks no good.
That's correct, Okay, that's what she said.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
But because her her her grandfather was an m D
and her on the other side of the family, we
had a great grandfather that was an MD and she
I was the last. I was the youngest of the grandchildren.
And she said, I want you to become a doctor.
And I finally became a puh and came in and
I said, look, I'm finally a doctor, and she that's

(03:04):
what she came back with. You're the kind of doctor
that don't do folks no good.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Well, I think doctors like you do people a lot
of good. And that's why you're here. But like, if
we're looking for medical advice for our buddy that just
got struck by lightning, maybe we would go elsewhere.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
That'd probably be a good idea.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
But yeah, so we're going to we're going to be
talking about a book that you wrote called So Great
was the Slaughter, and it's about market hunting specifically in Arkansas.
But I think we can extrapolate it out. I mean, really,
a lot of the trends that probably happened here were
happening in a lot of parts of the country.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
That's correct. Actually, we're one of the kind of the
late to the party because we remain wild much longer
than our neighboring states. So they thin out their wildlife
and then they come looking for hours.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Wow, that sounds exciting. I can't wait to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Turkey season is in full swing.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Full swing, full swinging beard.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Oh look at that shoot.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
I was just in Mississippi this week. So I killed
a turkey two days ago in Mississippi with Lake pickleady.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Like taking a test. It was delicious.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah, we ate some of it yesterday some of this morning.
Made a olmlet.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
Put a little hot sauce on there, that Alaskan hot sauce.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
I thought it was gonna be about like tabasco or something,
and so I like drenched it and it like overtook
you up. What I did is I is I took
the I took the drumsticks and the thighs off a
wild turkey, which a lot of people used to throw away.
I mean for real, twenty years ago people breasted turkeys

(04:46):
and they were like that dark meat's no good man,
that that is done. Like people don't do that anymore.
We keep the thighs in the drumsticks. And all I
did yesterday morning was, uh, put them in a crock pot,
diced up and un onion, and put barbecue sauce on
them and turned it on low in about seven hours later.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
You know, you could just pull that meat off with a.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Fork, sure, right out?

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, you pulled a little man. A wild turkey has
some serious tendons, like seven or eight big you know,
cartilaginous tendons that that hard tendons that that go down
to the feet and pull those out and then I
just chopped it up and it was good. It was
super good. But uh, so we did we did this

(05:34):
Turkey Stories episode. Were you able to listen to it? Bear, yep?
Yeah you were on there, yep. I forgot about that.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
Featured guests.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
Second, what did it feel like?

Speaker 4 (05:44):
The Bushwhacker about the same as the first one? The
first What do you mean the first time I was
on the Burgeries podcast? Okay, felt felt like that.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
What was Uh?

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Were you able to listen to it?

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Bushwhacker?

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah? Yeah, you know this this episode owed the turkey
hunting purist, which I mean, I want to be in
that group of people. There's all there's always a spectrum
of people that hunt, you know, and and there's the
guys that just kind of dabble in something, and and
then there's the guys that really take it serious and
oftentimes might care a little bit of a hint of

(06:18):
of uh elitism on their shoulder in the way that
things are done. I could be that guy. I'm in
that camp. I want I want things to be done.
This one had a little bit of kind of redneckery
in the in this like like wing shooting turkeys. Uh,
trent allis shooting a turkey at sixty yards like you know,

(06:41):
you get in trouble for that these days.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
And I get it. I get it. And then Johnny
Johnston teaching us how to shoot a fly in turkey.
Johnny Johnston he told me multiple stories, and two of
them involved him intentionally spooking a turkey so it flew
so he could shoot it. And I was like, what
do you mean you wanted it to fly? And he said,

(07:06):
there's thick brush. I couldn't see him. If he runs,
he gets away. If you make him fly, these Eastern
turkeys fly straight up and you shoot him. I mean,
it's like, if you want to get a turkey, that's
what you do. So so there was a little bit
of that, so there could be some criticism and then bushwhacken.
There are people that are like, you shouldn't shoot a

(07:28):
turkey unless you call it up and it's goblin, and
that's probably pretty extreme. I mean, but I you know,
to me, if you're if you're hunting inside the boundaries
of the wall, you.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
Know, basically you're trying to outwit a turkey. So if
you're calling him, you're trying to outwit him, make him
think you're a hen. There just went about outwitting in
a different way.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:51):
I think it's like you kind of come into the
world and there's like a set way to kill a turkey.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
But like, you know, that's good. It's a pretty small box.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, yeah, baron nuke breaking all the rules and and.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
The thing about what bear situation was is that, I mean,
you're probably not gonna just call those turkeys up like
me and Lake did on this piece of private land
that we were hunting in Mississippi. You know, that's not
getting a lot of pressure. And these birds, I mean,
it's just a it's different worlds. I mean, he's hunting
over here in a place with I mean, these birds,

(08:25):
they're just getting pressured so much. It's like, if you
want to play the game, you try to, you play
the game that you're dealt, you know. But it was
an exciting if oh, and Andy Brown shooting that Jake,
you know, that would that would get some get could
get nobody's going to get fired up about that. I mean,
anybody that's turned down it for more than twenty years

(08:46):
is killed to Jake. And there's nothing you know where
it's legal, there's nothing wrong.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
With that, right.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
But uh, but it was a great it was a
great seria. It was a great great stories.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
Isn't the mark of a good hunter to overcome adapt
the situation. So if you've got high pressure birds that
won't come to a call, you figure out what works right,
just like you would with any other pursuit. You figure
out what's going on. To me, it's not Yes, it'd
be great to go out there and sit down and

(09:19):
you know, you scout, you you sit, you watch, and
then you call them up and you kill it. I mean, yes,
that's the way they did it. They've done it all
that way. But that doesn't mean you had to do it.
If you can't, if that's not the way the situation unfolds,
then you go. I mean when I was growing up,
stalking was new. Go stalk a deer. Nobody did that.

(09:41):
You know. I grew up in South Logan County and
basically you hunted with dogs, you know, dog hunting, and
if you weren't a dog deer, if anybody got up
in a tree, we laughed at them. You know, that's
not the way. And then of course have other family
men that are with bows and this is the only

(10:03):
way to hunt. This is you know, you guys are
breaking all the rules. And you know what rules there aren't.
There are no rules. There's no right and wrong way
to hunt unless it's illegal, right, So I've always I
thought that was interesting. So I appreciated Bear's story.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, did any of the stories stand out to you
like you were like that was that was funny? Or
I enjoyed that?

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Well, I mean all of them had a little bit. Obviously,
everybody's after turkey. So the big one that I always
because I'm not a turkey hunter, as I said before
the podcast, my my father was a fierce turkey hunter,
so I was familiar with turkey hunting and the pursuit,
and I know about the repopulation efforts here in Arkansas

(10:47):
and when all that occurred and things like that. But
the thing that I guess hit home with me is
the story of getting out there and having stomach issues.
Because if you spend any time whatsoever in the woods,
you're gonna be there, yeah, sooner or later, and sometimes

(11:08):
much sooner than you expect. And it's again being out
like in the duck woods. You've got waiters to contend with.
You've got ice, and many a lot of times you
have ice, not so much this year, but you have
ice and snow and all kinds of different things to
contend with. And water because you're you know a lot
of times you find yourself and waste deep water, you know,

(11:31):
not of its not all of us have private land
and private blinds and things like that, so we basically
just set up wherever we can. So there's a whole
lot of pre planning that goes in. As as I
have become older, I have known that the best it's
best to pre plan, pre plan, Yes, yeah, just make

(11:53):
it's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, this episode did have a shocking number of stories
of people's pants down.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
It's you know what's funny is we don't really I
wish I could say we planned this. We really didn't
plan it that way. But you know, the first two
stories had to do with going to the bathroom in
the woods, and then Med Palmer had to do you know,
he had to take his pants off, skin.

Speaker 3 (12:16):
And off, and he kept saying it was super cold.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Yeah, but he never came, he never circled back to
it because I thought, oh my lord, he's you know,
he was saying it was so cold he couldn't even
hardly see the beat on the end of his barrel. Yeah,
And I was like, and you just skinned off and
went into water. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, he's hardcore when it comes to turkey hunting, that
guy's hardcore.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
I would have to say Med's story just kept compounding
and difficulty. You know, it was in Med. He has
that southern Mississippi accent, and you know, he's just kind
of funny. But when he started telling about crossing that
river on that inflatable mattress, I envisioned a river, you know,

(12:59):
a little little river, you know, thirty yards across. He
said it was like two hundred and fifty yards across.
It's like a huge river, and I would imagine it
was kind of like a he said it was shallow
for a long ways, so you know, he's just like
wading in the water. But finally in the main channel
he gets out there and off he goes, and it's

(13:19):
cold and and uh and then gets over there and
gets his turkey.

Speaker 4 (13:25):
But he did talk about how the wind blew him
over to that bank. I was just curious about how
he got back. Me too, That's exactly what I thought.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, yeah, I guess after you got your turkey, you
just weren't really that worried about it didn't matter what happened. Josh,
which story stood out to you?

Speaker 2 (13:42):
I it's a it's a tough one because they were
good stories this year. I really I really like Trent's
story because I just think Trent is funny.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, he's funny.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
But having got to meet the Clarks, yes, I mean
just they're the best kind of people, Like, they're the
kind of people you want to know. And they're custom callmakers.
I hadn't I had them make me a beautiful custom
box call. But I think just knowing them them telling
their stories about about her being taught by him how

(14:17):
to hunt. She loves to go out there and kill turkeys. Man,
she is a turkey killing machine.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
She probably undersold herself because as she talks, she's like,
my husband had just taught me how to turkey hunt. Yep,
But I mean she she's killed a lot of turkeys.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
When I was at their house, they showed me a
string of beards that they'd killed, and I think he
said the last nine or ten years, and they travel
all over the country, not just killing these turkeys at home,
but I bet there were sixty beards on that thing,
and they just they just kill turkeys together, and they
and the neat thing about him is there there and there.

(14:56):
I think they said there were seventy two. They've been
married since nineteen seventy one, and they're just the best
of friends. They just love doing things together. So I
really enjoyed their stories.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, yeah, I thought they were really good too. I'd
have to say, man, they were. They were all good.
I like Johnny Johnson's story of of uh, of getting
bit in the nose by turkey. I mean it's just like,
what were you doing, Johnny? And and you'd have to

(15:27):
know Johnny to kind of know his sense of humor.
He'd killed this turkey and he he was playing with it. Yeah,
I mean, which you know, I don't know, he's celebrating
this turkey's life and uh, but he's but he's just
just kind of like pretending like the turkey's talking and
uh and if you knew Johnny, I don't think that's

(15:49):
that surprising. And then the thing reaches over and bites
him in the nose so hard that it basically makes
him bleed.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
You know.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, that that was that was funny. Yeah, that had
to be my favorite story. Oh was it really? Did
it kind of surprise you? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (16:01):
I mean getting bit on the nose by a turkey
and was like you almost couldn't, you know, like think
of a way that that could even happen.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Uh And I love here in the way that people
talk and the phrases they use. And he he used
that phrase we went to him like a bidon sow. Yeah,
and uh and when he said it, I just like
checked it off in my mind. I was like, that's good.
I mean again, I mean you, I mean, something's coming
at you like a bidon sal You're backing up and running,

(16:34):
you know, and uh and then I asked him about
it at the end. I said, I've never heard that before.
And he said, that's some serious advance. He said, coming
at you like a bouton sow is serious advance. And
I love that.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
But that was a good one. And then hear and
Andy Brown laugh.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
So the guy in the story there he it was
the third story, Andy Brown. He told about the turkey
that gobbled really low, he said, and he he threw
a pine nod at a fox and then he shoots
the bird. He thanks the big one and it's a
jake and then he just he just cackled. He just laughed. Man.
Andy is a he's He's been on almost every Turkey

(17:21):
Stories episode and he just just is a great storyteller.
And like that was I've said this before. Most really
good turkey hunters have two or three stories that are
really good like that that they just want to tell
you sure that that just something wild happened, and there
was there was it was funnier. It was a bird

(17:42):
did something just extraordinary. And that was probably Andy's like
like uh, s story A B C D E F
G H, I j k L b q R S.
He's on S. I mean like he just he just
he's uh so much and he's just a good and
he can make any story fun to listen to, just

(18:05):
with details like the fox and how low the turkey
gobbled and and uh and when he was telling the
story to me in person, he had he had his
arms out like he was set up this way, and
he said, and the.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Turkey appeared over here, and I have no idea how.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
It got there. You know, he's just kind of he's
just a good storytelling.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
Storytellers. Best storytellers have it and you you can visualize
it in your head exactly what's going on. I saw
that fox sneaking in when he was telling the story,
I was like, what are you going to do? Because
I thought it was going to lead to him shooting
the turkey and the fox running off with the turkey
or something like that. I was waiting, anticipating that was
what was going to happen. And I still it's always

(18:47):
been amazing. Well just like the bushwhack, I mean, turkey's
with their amazing eyesight.

Speaker 2 (18:54):
You know.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
One of the things I remember from my dad telling
me the story is like you cannot move, and he
would come home with these whelps across his face where
the gnats buffalo knats would bite him and he wouldn't
you know, he wouldn't move, he wouldn't swat, and he
didn't have a screen, He didn't have a anything to
mask or anything like. Yeah, like, no, he just went
out there because he smoked all the time. Anything. He

(19:17):
was like, the smoke is going to keep him away
from me, but it didn't.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
Hey, show me your dad's turkey calls, so you brought
So your dad was a turkey hunter.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
My dad was a turkey hunter and evidently known quite widely.
This is when I was really young. This is an
early box call of his and it says on the
bottom J. L. Foster's name is James Foster, April nineteen
sixty five. So this was a maid. He didn't make it.
A fellow made it for him.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
Yeah, look at that. I already checked that out. If
you make it sound.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
He always carried a piece of chalk on the inside
of it and it rattled around. That's all I can remember.
And of course you can see his That was a
rubber band once and it's all rotted off of there now.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
I've never seen one quite like that.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Now, this is his slate. Call. Of course, it's homemade.
And he didn't make this pouch. I don't know who
made the pouch for him. I'm sure it's literally, but
it's literally literally a piece of slate, a slab of slate,
that's right. And then his striker is a cone with
a screw to the end of it. Wow, check that out.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
That's so cool.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
So it's it's like a it's hard to describe it.
It's a piece of wood that's been drilled out almost
like a funnel, right like about two and a half
three inches in diameter, has a screw and then there's
literally a flat quarter inch thick piece of slave, but
as big as the palm of your hand.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
And it's got a thumb thumb spot for you right there.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
And uh, let me see if you ever can Yeah,
go ahead, can you make it make sound?

Speaker 3 (21:04):
It'll make the best thing. I think it can make
us a purr or a chirp or whatever you call it. Now,
put that thing here. I'm like I said, I'm not
a turkey hunner. So here's the thing. Put it like this,
and by making the cone in your hand bigger, it'll
be different, it'll change tone. That's the only thing I

(21:25):
do know. Probably gotta find it, you do, because this
is this screw is you know, it's old, basically worn
out on each side.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
But I mean, I can see how you can make
sounds with that, especially if you got good at it.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
There you go. That's the one I can That's the
only thing I can do. But he also agrees that
so that well, I was going to say.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
What I was going to say was a lot of
times like if this was a slate call that I had,
I would I would, I would send it.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Sometimes he spit on it.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Yeah, this this brings up an interesting point for turkey hunters.
The phrase now that people use to describe a circular
call with a striker is they call him pot calls.

(22:27):
I never I never even heard it called a pot
call until I started working at meat Eater, and I
don't know it somehow entered my vocabulary at that time.
I would have called every single friction call a slate call,
even if it had a glass because they use a

(22:48):
lot of different types. There's some that are actually slate,
some that are glass, some that are aluminum, and some
that are you know, like some kind of acrylic or something.
And uh, but anyway, I want to call every single
friction call that'll have a slate call call. But this
is where it came from. That's really cool, man. I've

(23:11):
never seen that. Yeah, yep, put it back in the rest.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
How cool is that?

Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Man, it just shows the ingenuity of people. Have you
ever seen anything like that? No?

Speaker 1 (23:22):
I never have. I've actually never seen one like that.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Do you know if if he got that idea from
someone or did he do that on his.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
Own, it was what you know, existed way before me. Wow,
this is I would bet that this is probably sixty
or seventy years old.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
And of course that one was in nineteen sixty five.
So and in nineteen sixty five there were hardly any turkeys.
Yeah yeah, so he was going, you know.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Well, the progression of turkey hunting in America. You know
they they market hunting turkeys and we're shooting them with
shotguns or I mean rifles, and and it there were
very few people that were calling spring turkeys like in
the eighteen hundreds. By like as I understand it, you
may know this more than me, but like by the

(24:12):
I think lynch box call company came around in the
nineteen thirties nineteen forties, which was which was a commercial
box call that you goodbye, and so clearly people know
that you can call these birds, but people were hunting
them in the fall, not as much as they hunted
them in the spring, because in the fall you can
bust up fall flocks and call them back in with

(24:32):
the Kiki run and lost him call and different things,
and a lot of people were fall hunting them. And
then basically in nineteen seventy, Ben rogers Lee started a
call company that I'm not going to say it was
the first call company because it wasn't, but he was
kind of considered one of the first modern, kind of

(24:54):
modern style spring turkey hunters. And then Will Primo started
night eighteen seventy six, and after that it was just
a flurry, and there were a bunch of smaller guys
that never made big national status that these guys were
learning from. So it's not like it all started in
nineteen seventy, but that's when mainstream spring turkey hunting started,

(25:14):
it really, you know, and it also coincided with when
we started having turkeys, you know, It's like turkey started
to come up, and then so people started to learning
how to hunt. They made diaphragm calls and and people
started learning. But before that, people were calling on stuff
like literally a slab of slate.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
A lot of people. I don't have one. My dad
didn't use one, but I have a couple of friends,
and they were talking about they had turkey feather calls
where they hollow them ount and make them into.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
Oh like a like a wing bone.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
Wing bone. Yeah, wing bone calls, he said. One of
my friends said his dad had a couple of them. Oh.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
I had a guy send me this week from Georgia
a pipe call. Oh my gosh, I need to go
get it.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Like a trumpet call.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
It's a it's a trumpet call, but it's actually a
functional pipe. Oh really, you could sweet, you could smoke
with it. That's what I'm understood.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
If you were someone else, yeah, if you.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Were if you were into voodoo.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yah.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
But uh, it sounds really good and it's a real
work of art. I'm going to get it at the
end of the end of the show. I want to.
I want to show the people. But so, when did
you tell me about like your uh academic academic ascension,
Like how did how do you become a college professor?

(26:40):
And like, what's your specialty?

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Well, you go to school forever, that's one thing. I
ended up with two degrees from the University of Arkansas,
bachelor's and master's degree in American history, and then for
my PhD, I went down to Mississippi State and start. Okay,
and my mentor there is John Marslac, who is actually

(27:03):
a biographer of William T. Sherman Civil War. Anyway, I
am from Arkansas, born and raised in Arkansas. Always wanted
to come back to Arkansas, and so I found an
opportunity to do that and ended up at the University
of Central Arkansas seventeen years ago. I worked on the
Mississippi Gulf coast for five years, just in time for Katrina. Yeah,

(27:27):
it was good times. But got back here and I
was my specially he's nineteenth century South and again pretty
much I mean we're in Arkansas grade school required to
take Arkansas history. Yeah, did it in seventh grade? Did
it in twelfth grade? Had a mentor at University of

(27:49):
Arkansas who was the Arkansas historian there. Took classes there
and that was Genie.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
That was Dogannie lay.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Wane that's correct, and doctor Daniel Sutherland both. So basically
I was directed to that. So nineteenth century South and
Arkansas kind of came together. I hunt and grew up
on a hunting family, and so when I had the opportunity,
I decided to do more research. So a lot of

(28:19):
people ask, Okay, why this particular subject or what turned
you on this? Exactly? I about a decade ago, I guess, yeah,
it was about ten or twelve years ago. I read
an article about a war. And it was not a
war between soldiers on some distance distant battlefield, but it

(28:40):
was a war between Americans. It was a war between
market hunters and sportsmen. And the war happened on a
ten thousand acre lake in northeast Arkansas called Big Lake,
which was created during the New Matter of earthquake in
eighteen twelve. So I begin to dig more into that, and.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
This is not a metaphorical war, literally.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
No, it was a war.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
For me.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
They shoot at each other, Well, it's more of the
market hunter shooting at the sportsman, or actually the people
who work for the sportsman, because we have a fellow
named Joseph Acklan who actually happens to be the Tennessee
game warden State Tennessee game Warden. Also a millionaire, very wealthy,

(29:31):
also an attorney who is a crack shot, wins all
kinds of shotgun competitions. That was a big thing back then,
doing shooting competitions. And he would shoot one hundred glass
balls thrown into the air, you know, that sort of thing.
And a bunch of his friends. As again I mentioned before,

(29:53):
as our neighboring states begin to run out of things
to shoot wild life, they begin to look for places
to go, and Arkansas was one of those places. And
so Joseph Acklin and his friends, investors and whatnot approach
a timber company who owned which timber companies owned quite

(30:13):
a lot, because we're talking about the same time when
timber's big, mining's big, you know. Basically, Arkansas's first industries
are those that can take her natural resources. So it's
my coal, mining and timber and that sort of thing.
Those were the resources. And what happens is wild life
becomes a resource. It's a resource that is also pursued
by the market hunters. So Joseph Acklin and his buddies

(30:38):
they formed a big Lake shooting club and they buy
a ten feet strip around the lake ten thousand acres,
and they claim the lake under riparian rights, which is
basically rights that nobody can be on it because they
call it non navigable. So they basically say, now this
ten thousand acre lake is ours and the great and

(31:00):
they build clubhouses, which market hunters end up burning to
the ground twice really, And they hire a bunch of people,
and there's caretakers, and there's pushers, the people that go
out and push the boats, and they have live decoys.
I mean, basically everything you would think of anywhere, but
they do it. All these people are from Nashville or

(31:21):
the surrounding area in Tennessee, and they own this huge hunting.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
The rich guys that own rich we're from Nashville, that's correct.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
And the locals, of course, a lot of them lived
right there on the lake, a lot of the market hunters.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
And they're market hunting ducks.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Market hunting any kind of waterfowl whatsoever. Remember is a
big market also in plumes, plumage. What year was this
specific when they come. Well, the war lasts over twenty
years because it's not only like what we think of
where they're burning things and things like that. But there
they go to court. Okay, there's an injunction put forth

(31:59):
by a judge that says the locals can't be out there,
and so they get even more angry. The locals get lawyers,
and it just goes on court cases. And when what
was that time period basically eighteen eighty five ish until
the very last part What ends the war that we

(32:21):
could get to what ends the war in nineteen fifteen
is that the Big Lake Shooting Club gives the land
to the federal government, and so that is why it
is a National Wildlife refuge today. It was a preserve
at that time, and so that's what they turn it into.
And so the war against the market hunters moves from

(32:42):
the Tennessee Sportsman and goes to the US Biological Survey.
They take over. They still well, they have game wardens there.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
I read in your book that this was kind of
like just an astonishing figure that kind of puts then
puts a number on the volume of market hunters. But
our market hunting. But in nineteen eleven, half a million
ducks were shipped out of Arkansas from three counties. In

(33:10):
October and November nineteen twelve, and on one October day
in nineteen eleven, ninety thousand, six hundred ducks shipped in
one order. Ninety thousand ducks in a single day.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
That's correct.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
And now where were those ducks going.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
They were going to markets in big cities. Those were
probably have to look it up those particular ones, but
they're probably going to Chicago because remember this is the
exact same time when all the cattle drives are happening
out west. Chicago's becoming the slaughterhouse capital of the nation,
and so that is primarily where all those go. And
they may be sent on further by rail, or they

(33:49):
may be used to feed the Chicago population. But we
sell market hunters sell game to the big cities around US.
Memphis is the closest, Saint Louis, New Orleans, and Chicago.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
Chicago's who's eating that many ducks? We don't eat that
many ducks today.

Speaker 3 (34:08):
That's true. One of the big things that you had
to think about is that even though we have you know,
beef and pork and that sort of thing, that it's available,
especially if you're wealthy, you want to serve your guests
these exotics.

Speaker 1 (34:25):
Something so wild game was exotic.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
It wasn't well point necessarily, but poor folks get it
too because it's so cheap, so you kind of have
both together. But see, the the canvas backs were the
ones that were the most pursued because they ate wild
celery much of the time, and they took on their meat,
took on that that wild celery taste, and so they
cans brought more than mallards, which brought more than teal,

(34:53):
and were that.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Was based on taste to taste, volume of meat, the
size of the bird.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Big time, big Lake one day shipped out ten thousand,
ten thousand.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
And these guys are killing them with punt guns at nights.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
No, no, no, That's one of the things that's very
interesting is that punk guns primarily that I at least
I've researched. I've seen one example of a punk gun
in Arkansas. Really story of a punk gun.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yep, how are they killed them? They're basically shot gunning them,
I mean like calling them in. No, they don't have to,
they're just coming in.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
One of the most I guess you could say the
one that the one way that they did it the most,
that probably killed the most is killing them on the roost.
They catch them, they go back in the trees and
there would be a big open area in there. There
might be ten twenty thousand waterfowling there and they go
in there in the night and just blast them.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
So they're doing it at night.

Speaker 3 (35:49):
Yes, And another thing is you got to remember you're
talking about turkey hunting with spring hunting and things like that.
They were killing them both ways. On the migration. Yeah,
they kill them. They had a spring the spring shoot,
which which is one of the things that one of
the first things that they attempt as far as lawmakers go,
is to stop spring shooting because that's when they're pairing
up and you know, trying to go back and have babies. Wow, hatch.

(36:13):
But yes, the number is incredible. And let me let
me tell you something about that number that can be
potentially misleading. It's like, you know, not all those ducks
were killed in that county or those three counties. They
were just so they were shipped out from there because
there is a bill that has passed. Because when Arkansas
starts trying to pass game laws, they're doing it piecemeal.

(36:36):
They don't have a general game law per se, and
so they'll do something that covers maybe two counties or
three counties or half a counties or whatever. And if
the if the representative from that county didn't want that law,
they would get an exempt from their county. Okay. So
one of the biggest, I guess counties that's most guilty

(36:59):
of flaunting all game laws and saying we want to
be exempt was the county that Big Lake was in
and so, and I knew you'd say that, and they
just left me.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
It's not Is that in northeast It.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
Is, yes, northeast Arkansas. No, Nope, not correct. I don't
think of in a minute. The man I can remember
them and represented it was named little I do remember that.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
Anyway, they exempted themselves. Well that was kind of the
not only and one of the reasons they did that
is because the market hunters pressured his money. It was
a bunch of money involved, and so he made sure
that they were exempt. So if anybody wanted to, if
any market hunter in any other part of the state
wanted to ship out of the state, they sent it there.

(37:50):
And so they piled them on, put them on trains
and sent.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
Them because there was the laws were different in that county.

Speaker 5 (37:56):
In that county, that's right, Okay, if you were if
you were given just like a high level overview of
the animals that were that were market hunted in Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
What was the biggest thing, what what was the prime animal?

Speaker 3 (38:13):
Depends on the time, Okay, it depends on the time period,
because of course we have had market hunters or some
sembilans thereof market hunting since Arkansas, since Europeans came to Arkansas. Uh.
That's why Arkansas Post was established, was to make trade
with the Native Americans and bring fur to them.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
And then so Arkansas just to Arkansas Post is a
town at the confluence of the Arkansas White Mississippi River.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
That's correct.

Speaker 1 (38:45):
And it was established in like the mid sixteen hundreds,
truck six, Yeah, it was at the time it was
the Furthest.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yes, this was the very first further.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
It was like the Furthest West European outpost on the
cop at the time.

Speaker 3 (39:01):
Yes. And the man who established it was Enre de Tonty,
and he basically set up he was given what's called
the seniory, which LaSalle was his boss, and he gave
him this land and two and so he's going to
make his fortune. So he sets up this post.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
And we've got a town named after him, just right
up here, Tonty Town.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
There you go. So he sets us up and that's
what they're doing. So you could say the first real
occupation in Arkansas hunting, I mean it truly is the
Spanish do it. Primarily it's the French that come in
and do it. So it doesn't really matter whether it's
under the French colonial system or the Spanish colonial system.
The French don't leave when the Spanish take over. The

(39:45):
French are the French hunters are still hunting and doing
all their all their operations around And so to get
back to your question, thereafter the fur so whatever fur
bearing animal you want to think of with primarily beaver
though here's a big one for that, because there's such
a demand.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
And that would have been I mean it would have
I mean the sixteen hundreds, I mean there were just
so few Europeans in the trade network was not as strong,
but by the seventeen hundreds it was rocking and rolling.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yes it is. And there actually is a great study
by a lady by the name of a professor, sorry,
by the name of Kathleen Duval, who explores the hunting
war that happens in the Arkansas River Valley between the
Oceage Qua Paul, the Cherokee, the French, the Spanish, and
the Americans. It's basically a war over fur in the

(40:37):
Arkansas River Valley through the seventeen hundreds, where the Osage
are the dominant and everybody else tries to team up
to drive the Oceage out. Wow, because they claim Arkansas
are good majority of Arkansas as they're hunting ground, but
they don't live here full time.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
That's like their area, like non resident h Yes.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
And even after the first treaty between the oce Age
and the United States, they seed fifty million acres over
the United States. But and so here, this chunk of
land is and so they decide, the American government decides,
let's send some Cherokee over. You're driving the Eastern Indians
over to the west. And so the Cherokee come over

(41:17):
and settle on some of that old o Sage hunting ground.
And the oce Age say, whoa, whoa, we gave you
the land, but we didn't give you the hunting rights. Oh,
and so we don't like the Cherokee hunting this. This
is still our game. They can live here, but they
can't hunt our game, and so it becomes like I said,
then by that time, the Cherokees jumping on the fight

(41:39):
that's been going on between the Coapau and the French,
and then the o s Age, so they had another
player in the game. So it's a long drawn out.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I probably did the same thing. I'd be like, you
can have the land, but we're gonna hunt it. Wow.
So there they are. So that that early Arkansas post
stuff that was when there, that's right, that's there after

(42:09):
the would the progression be that as civilization as as
as larger European based cities began to form closer to
the Mississippi River, there were these big cities that needed meat.
I mean, because it switches from fur to meat correct correct,
And then they're they're probably still shipping some firs.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Yes, it basically becomes an opportunity, a target of opportunity
when you do the fur. Uh. And that continues, of
course all the way until the nineteen hundreds and beyond.
But yes, it makes a transition. Uh. So those early
guys are after fur, and like I said, beaver's a
big one, but they're also hunting bear and selling bear meat,
bear grease, bear oil bison are killed out. By then

(42:57):
we have our last five when the last reported bison
that I have found. Now that doesn't mean that I'm
the expert on the bison because that was not my area,
but the last ones I found were in a cane
break on the White River in eighteen thirty five. That
was the last recorded report that I found, and it
was just a small number, very small number. So you

(43:19):
could probably argue that most of the bison were killed
out before eighteen hundred, for the majority.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
I mean, what about Gershtocker killed the bison when he
was in Arkansas.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
Possible? Yeah, absolutely, I mean there are limited locations, but
it's not like you can make a living by killing
bison by then. What I'm saying, yeah, you got to
have a there's a transition that goes through as the
Bison league. Those are truly making living by bison. When
the bison are killed out, they move, just like many
of the most professional market hunters keep moving or change

(43:52):
their quarry one of the other. So the big game
begins to be killed out very very early because there's
a market for it. Beavers of course go uh and
then as we go and begin to transition post Civil War.
That's when industrialization, urbanization, immigration, more numbers and there's more,

(44:12):
and then the fair bears are beginning to be gone.
And so it changes over to where a true market
hunter is not after first per se there instead after
meat and its various meats that you killing deer, deer, deer,
as much as they can beer continue. The bear continue
to be killed out. The deer which had been killed
out there continue to be killed out, uh kind of

(44:35):
putting a I don't know what you call final nail,
the coffin to use something. And then they go after
they begin to go after birds. One of the first really,
I guess the species that you would see that disappears
the first that's that's not I mean the past your pigeon.
We've always are, you know, heard the story of the

(44:56):
past your pigeon. You know. Right across the border in
oak Homa was what they call a stool, a giant stool,
which basically that they said that there were you know,
upwards millions of birds that would roost there, and there
were people that would from Arkansas that would go over
there and they'd catch them at night. They're all up

(45:17):
in the roost in the trees. They'd set fires underneath them,
smoke them out, and they just hit the ground and
they just pick them up in baskets by the thousands.
So that's one of the things one of the things
that's pursued very early for food. Another is and the
first one that really catches the attention of Arkansas lawmakers
actually is the prairie chicken or the Panadi.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
Grouse, which we don't even have here anymore.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
There's a reason for that because they were all killed
out back then. Yeah, they were completely killed out and
they even that was really the first, I would say,
other than fish. Now, fish is kind of the first
where we see our first transition of any kind of
laws whatsoever, because everybody was fishing. Every single person was fishing.

(46:01):
It wasn't just market hunterson or sportsmen or things like that.
Everybody was fishing, so they could see those effects the earliest.
But as far as the panadd grouse goes, they're the
very first species that gets a species specific game law
on a five year moratorium. You couldn't shoot them for
five years, and that like took it was too late.

(46:23):
I mean, there wasn't a sustainable population. So when it
came back in five years later Boddy killed anything because
they were already gone. They're gone.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
What timeframe was that?

Speaker 3 (46:35):
That's that's very early. That's like eighteen eighty compared to
the study. And I shouldn't say very.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Early, because we just have how do you say that grouse.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Penated grouse, woodland grouse. It's it's, you know, like a
prairie about West Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
Yeah, in now East Arkansas's where we would have had
like prairie though.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
That's true, But there's a lot there's actually I just
saw a a presentation the other day about how many
thousands of acres. It's a lot more than you think
there are prairie. There were prairies all over the place.
But yes, I mean the Grand Prairie of course, is
the one that we think of when we think about
around Stuttgarten and that area. But there are other pockets

(47:16):
of prairies, ye for sure. And where we are on
the west as well, there's some over there too. Yeah,
there were some over there too.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
You know what surprised me inside of this is how
much talk there is of squirrels in market hunting huge well,
I mean, describe who is Josh Barr like they're like
talking like putting specific regulations and like shipping huge quantities
of squirrels out of Arkansas. Who's eating squirrels?

Speaker 3 (47:45):
Okay, so again we have to look back at our
time and not think about it as food because local
folks eat eat the squirrels. But the market hunters are
killing squirrels for the tails because this is the birth
of sports fishing, and they would they want they want
the tails when when you were growing up, you didn't

(48:07):
look in the back of the magazines and they would
like maps would buy squirrel tails from Yeah, yeah, well
that's what it was about.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
They're not shipping meat at no.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
No, I mean there were no pumped.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
People in like Saint Louis were eating a squirrel.

Speaker 3 (48:24):
Now does that say that that they didn't ever do that?
The ever ship meat. I'm sure they shipped some squirrel meat,
but it would probably have been across the river because
it wouldn't have been worth the time and the effort
to deal with them. But it would kind of like
the kind of like why would you kill herring? You know,
why would you kill the sorry, the blue heron, Why
would you kill the heron? It's because they're not eating

(48:45):
the heron. They're after the plumage, you know, because that's
also coinciding at the time when all the women are
wearing the big hats, giant hats with the big plumes
on them, Right, that's what it is. We had one
of our very first wildlife refuges preserves, what it was
called then, it was called walker Walker Lake and it

(49:07):
was over in East Arkansas and it was a nationally
protected heron. Rookery and market hunter snuck in there and
killed them all out till they here, and they they
removed Walker Lake from the preserve because they were all gone, wow, wow,
killed them all. Yeah, it's pretty. It's just, uh, there's

(49:30):
so many things again digging through this, so I'll circle
back around to the original thing. And so I went
into Big Lake trying to want I wanted to write
a book links story of.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Big that's correct.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
And so when I begin to dig I began to
realize and there's nothing out there that has been published
that I can piggyback on to talk about Big Lake
until I build this big contextual story. There has to
be placed in context, and that story, all the stories
that you read in that book, the whole fight about
the Arkansas game and fish Commission. There are some little

(50:08):
small articles here and there about market hunting in Arkansas
and that sort of thing. But this is all for
the most part, really because I tried to stay Arkansas
specific as much as possible, but put it in a state,
a regional and a national context around it. What's happening
all that sort of thing, And so I knew I

(50:28):
had to write this book before I could tackle.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
So you got another book coming out.

Speaker 3 (50:34):
The next book actually coming out for me in this
area is the federal side. This is all state. I'm
going to talk about the federal side and the next book,
which Big Leg's going to be prominent in it.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
But like that when you say federally mean.

Speaker 3 (50:50):
Like no federal efforts in Arkansas. In Arkansas, correct, Because
interestingly enough, we had the very first Jewish federal court
judge named Traber, and he will the very first national
bird law is passed, migratory bird law, not the Migratory
Bird Act, but the Minatory Bird Law. And it was

(51:12):
passed and in Traybor's courtroom in Arkansas, he declared it
unconstitutional and it was struck down in Arkansas a national law.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Now tell me why that's significant.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
It's significant in that it forced the United States to
go back and create the Migratory Bird Treaty because you
cannot strike down a treaty because of unconstitutional grounds. Now
I'm really starting to get outside my area of expertise here,
but say, let me say this. When states join the

(51:45):
United States, they give up their ability to make deals
or negotiate with other countries. Understood, Therefore, the United States
can so when it makes a deal with another country,
it cannot be declared unconstituted because the Constitution dictates the
state power.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
So did this judge here in Arkansas be like, hey,
we can't we can't regulate these birds because they don't
live here all the time. Is that what you're saying?
Like interpret for me, I don't fully understand, and maybe
it's not worth going into.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
But right, he just said that the Federal Gunment was
overstepping its powers, that it didn't have the ability to
do what it was trying to do, and so it
was struck down there, and like I said, it forced
them to go back in. And this is some stuff
that I haven't had a chance to research fully either. Yeah,
and that's but that's what I want to do in
the next book. And the thing was is Trabor was

(52:37):
an incredible early conservationist, but he was following what he
thought was a letter of the law. And he was
a one when you broke federal law. I told you
Big Lake became a preserve when they went in there
and broke the law. He was the one many times
that the poachers ended up in front of and he
would you know, hammer them because he thought that was

(52:57):
the right thing to do. Yeah, that was one of
the steps that I want to look into. And there's
a lot of other players that get involved. And our
buddy Vizard, who is kind of he has a chapter
of his Arsaw's first game, Arkansas's first game, ward not Arkansas's. Well,
he covered the whole state, but he was not hired
by the state. He was hired by a sportsman's Associationly,

(53:19):
that's right. They saved money and they were like, the
state's not going to do anything about it, and so
we're going to hire this guy to be enforced the
game laws that exist.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
But he couldn't arrest people, he couldn't give them tickets,
and he didn't really have any power. He'd just kind
of be like he would do that kind of like
me shaming people for shooting Turkey to the podcast. Yeah
he had to go get a local deputy. Oh really, Yes,
he had to go get a local deputy. So he
basically went around and gathered information and turned it over

(53:49):
the local deputy and and that deputy would would handle it.
But he was he was a real hero though, I
mean he really was. He was really what was his
full name, Ernest Vivian Vizard and he was from like
nineteen oh six to nineteen fifteen or something.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
He was, Yes, because he becomes a federal warden. So
he actually gets the job for the federal warden and
the very first enforcing mytor bird law. And so he
ends up back in Arkansas doing enforcement for this said.

Speaker 1 (54:19):
This is a picture of him, but he actually had
quite a bit of philosophy for it, felt like he did.
I mean, just like he kind of cast vision for
why people why it was advantageous for people to preserve game,
and why we wanted them and if we just obey
the laws, there's going to be more game. I mean,

(54:40):
he was a pretty he was kind of a visionary.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
He really trying to do the best he could with
what he had, which wasn't much. He was very much underfunded.
And if you read the chapter where he is, it's
called the Prince and the Pauper, which is when his
relationship with Tabasco air McElhenney, Yeah, you have the millionaire.
And then he basically on this before it's all over with,

(55:03):
he has sold his furniture. Vizard has trying to continue
to fight and make pamphlets and and and all that
sort of thing. When he's begging mclelhenny for a job
or anything, any mclhenny suggests he starts selling magazines, sporting
magazines door to door. Really, as he goes around the
state the enforced laws, he's like, why don't you just

(55:23):
you got a captive audience, why don't you sell magazine subscriptions.
So he does that for a while while he's still
the state game warden. But yes, he has no power,
and here's the here's the kicker, and I'll even get you.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
I'm gonna read you tell me well.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
I was just going to say, I'll tie it in
even more. When when the game is fish commission finally
is established and we finally have wardens number one, we
only have eight wardens for the entire state, and they
won't let them have any more. But there will be
a time when you look at the last few chapters
where there's a fight against it to destroy it. They

(56:00):
make the arrest powers away from the wardens.

Speaker 1 (56:04):
Interesting. I want to read the quote that you opened
up this chapter six with, and this is Ernest V.
Vissert in nineteen ten, Arkansas's first game warden, hired by
this private company.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Arkansas State and Sports Association.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
And he writes, I will guarantee that if the good
farmers of the country will assist in securing the passage
of a bill that will protect the game and fish
of the state, as they have assisted in the enforcement
of our present laws for the past six months, that
within five years our fields will swarm with pheasants and
other game birds that will aid them in the destruction
of insect life. There was a big deal about birds

(56:40):
killing insects.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
Big and Bolt Weaver was the big farmer for quail.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
And so they were leaning on farmers. And he says,
our streams will be filled with the choicest fish, and
their children may enjoy a few hours of sport with
hook and line, as like their forefathers did a few
years ago. So I mean he was like a he's
kind of like a he was casting vision and just
then interesting guy for no doubt.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
And what's even more interesting is he has no background.
He's not a biology he's not a scientist, he's not
he's not anything as is in that area. He's a
failed businessman basically.

Speaker 6 (57:16):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
His father was a doctor from Arkansas County that's stuck
Art over by Stuttgart, who evidently was well known for
his malaria treatments. And his father, that would be his
visit's grandfather, was an exile from Belgium and he was
a part of the aristocratic class over there, and evidently

(57:40):
there was a scandal where there was an assassination and
the VisArt family became kind of soiled, and so he
picked up and left and came to all places Arkansas
County and started a californ cattle farm. Wow.

Speaker 1 (57:53):
And so let me let me back up a little
bit and and give me a maybe a little bit
of an of an overview. It's kind of tough an
overview of Well, I guess we've kind of already done it.

(58:14):
I'm trying to think of the best way to describe
like Arkansas would would have the first game laws that
would start after the Civil War? Is that about right? Like, yes,
where were the first game laws started?

Speaker 3 (58:30):
The very very first that that wasn't like a local
but a statewide was eighteen seventy five and it was
a non resident license law. We were the first state
state in the nation to require non residents to purchase
a license. Really and it was you know, not in forest.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
And but that was because all the states around this, Missouri, Tennessee,
Mississippi had depleted a lot of their resources. In Arkansas
was this destination correct? It's so interesting. In the book
he talks about how the rail companies in Saint Louis,
in Memphis and different places, they were advertising hunting packages

(59:18):
like trips like round trip, like leave tonight being Arkansas,
shooting ducks in the morning. And basically they had this
package deal where you would buy a ticket on the
train and you could carry one hundred pounds again and
your dogs and your dogs, and they would take you

(59:39):
to Arkansas and kick you out for a week or
two weeks.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
Or a month however long you wanted.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
Yeah, And so what was happening was that the people
were coming here for recreation. People were buying land from
out of state. And because Arkansas was just this like
no man's land in a way. I mean, it was
just this underdeveloped, non progress I didn't have real strong
government at the time, probably crippled up from the from

(01:00:05):
the Civil War and infrastructure, and it was just like
but it was this wild place that had yet to
be really logged out much of much around us because
of the massive swamps in the in the mountains. A
lot of Arkansas wasn't heavily law I mean it was
starting to be.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
For sure, Right, that's happening. At the same time this
is happening, all of our resources are going out of
the state.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Well, and it's because of these railroads, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
Railroads is a big one.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Railroads are bringing out lumber and goods and game, but
also bringing in sport hunters, right, so basically everything. Yeah,
everything that we could export, we were, that's right, And
we were, but we were other people from other places
were saying, come to Arkansas and hunting.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
Yeah, And and the railroads were that advertising those packages.
But then they had pamphlets that they would publish and
it would say what is your game pursuit And it
would say, well, I want to go after you know quail,
and it would say, well, this is where, this is
the three stations you need to stop at. And then
it would say you need to hire mister Jones for

(01:01:10):
his wagon, and mister Jones will carry you four miles
away this direction and bring outfits to camp for a week.
And so it's a total guide on how to exploit
the resources wildlife resources of Arkansas. And they were making bank,
you know, because they would then haul them back. But
on the backside of that, you know, you've got the
market hunters that are also being brought by train. There

(01:01:31):
is a man in Chicago that becomes kind of the
meat man of the day. He is the meat King,
and he hires one hundred market hunters, hires a private train,
puts some market hunters on the Canadian border, and they
follow the migration down on the train with one hundred hunters,
and he sends railcars down with ammunition supplies and empty

(01:01:57):
boxes of ice. They pack up the goods, they send
it back and it comes just basically and they follow
it all the migration all the way down. Holy kill
kill kill kill Wow, ducks, ducks and geese and anything
that flies plover anything all the way up and down.

(01:02:18):
And that's just one example. There's no I mean, this
is an example of what's happening in many places that
had already happened. Yeah, you know, we're really as far
as now obviously if you go far west that that
happens post you know, in time, post nineteen hundred. But
as far as the east goes, this had already done it.

(01:02:41):
This has already happened.

Speaker 6 (01:02:43):
So we're like the last holdout in the We truly are,
we're I mean, we're we're on the edge that that
right butting up against the Mississippi River, Oklahoma, Indian Territory.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Oklahoma is pretty much with us because if you take
a snapshot, like eighteen twenty, Arkansas Territory includes Oklahoma. And
so they talk about, well, as this began, these animals
begin to kind of disappear, a lot of people begin
to talk about, let's go to Indian Territory instead. And

(01:03:17):
so it's that really, to me, is the last vestage
unless you go well out west what we would consider
west today. Remember we're west at the time. Yeah, yeah,
we're considered the west.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Yeah, it always it took me a long time to
wrap my mind right. Book, my favorite book, this booked
by Frederick Gerstacker. Yeah, he you know, his book was
called Wild Sports of the Far West.

Speaker 3 (01:03:40):
Yes, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
And you don't think of Arkansas as the far West,
but yeah, in the eighteen thirties it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
Was, yes, and people thought when they jumped the Mississippi River,
they were and separated from the from the east. So
one of the great things when you're talking about Gerstacker
and all those early travelers to Arkansas, there's a family,
all the billings Leaves, and they come very early to Arkansas,
and they come down to Cadron, which is Conway modern

(01:04:07):
day Conway, and they run into two families that have
two patriarchs. Who are they They feed their families from
the woods exclusively. They don't ho a row, they don't
do any kind of agriculture whatsoever. And one of them
is called Flanagan. One of them's called massing Gill. Well.
I began to I thought that those guys are pretty interesting.

(01:04:28):
Let me find out more about them. Each of them
had two wives and they had both had sack full kids.
They were Tories, they were loyalists really in the American Revolution,
and when they lost, when the Brits lost, they ran
instead of going to Canada or going you know, back
somewhere else, they ran and jumped the Mississippi River and

(01:04:50):
got to our back. Of course, they were outside of
the United States and thought they were safe, and that's
that's what put them here. Interesting they were Conway, Yeah,
and Conway, Arkansas ran off from the American post American
Revolution and came all over here. Wow. And I have
been told by some of my folks from Conway that
those families are still there. Is that right? That's right?

(01:05:13):
That name is the Flanagans and Masson Gills, and there's
a couple of others. They're still known in Conway.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
That is interesting. When we did our series on the
Bear State, and we kind of did this Arkansas. We
did two podcasts in Arkansas several a couple of years
ago on Bear Grease, and I mean, yeah, you you

(01:05:42):
you started to see the immigration patterns into Arkansas usually
was people that were running from something, were impoverished. This
was like not the place you wanted to go. And
that's that explains though, in a functional way, why why
wildness and wild game populations kind of held out for

(01:06:03):
an eastern region Because I mean, there just weren't a
lot of people here. I mean I think by I
think in eighteen twenty, I mean they were like I
want to say, there were like thirty thousand people in
Arkansas or something.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
I could be wrong about that, But in eighteen ten,
there's one thousand and sixty four.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Wow. Wow, Okay, so I think I'm right. Then by
eighteen twenty it was like.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Eighteen twenty it had gone up considerably, but it was only.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Still that's an astonishingly low number it is of people.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Well, you know, the big one of the big things
for Arkansas is our geography is a problem because if
you're let's say, depending on the time, let's just use
the goal Rush Mine or forty nine er. All right,
when people are going and they want to go farther west,
they're going to come across and if you look at

(01:06:51):
up map, the correct map from the time, let's say
an eighteen twenty map, then they're literally on the map
it says the Great Swamp on the eastern side of Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (01:07:02):
Is that right?

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
So if you're going to go to Oregon, California, you
know all that sort of thing, do you want to
go through the Great Swamp? Well, no, you're either going
to go north of that, or you're gonna go south there. Well,
how many times do these people actually make it to
their destination way out wherever they may go along and
all of a sudden you go along your trip and
Paul die. We need to set down roots right here,

(01:07:27):
We need to be right here. Well, if you've gone there,
you're setting up roots in Missouri. If you've gone down here,
you're setting roots in Louisiana. You don't have a chance
to set up roots in Arkansas because you never went there.
You never you were turned off by the so truly
for a long period of time, if you're in Arkansas,
you wanted to be in Arkansas, you had you wanted

(01:07:47):
to come to.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
The Arkansas saying is that the Delta region of Arkansas,
the swamp, made a barrier to entry, so people were
going north of it or south of correct.

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
And then when Indian territory is set up, who wants
you know, you hear all the terrible stories. People with
terrible stories will be killed by Indians, will be killed
by natives Native Americans over there, and so we are
not even going to take a chance because that's on
the other side of the Great Swamp. Even if we
even get through the Great Swamp, we're not going to
go through Indian territory. We'll be murdered. Yeah, and so

(01:08:19):
there's a double I think there was a historian. I'm
pretty sure there was a historian called it basically call
it a mill Pon effect. Yeah, you know, it's basically
what it was, and that's one of the reasons our population.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Was So now I've heard that, I agreed with you
and said, yeah, Millpon I guess I don't really even
know what that means, though.

Speaker 3 (01:08:35):
It's basically a build up where just stagnant, stagnated place.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
Just stagnant. And so but that caused us, I mean
for wildlife, that was good. We held that, we held out,
but then we became this destination, a hunting place. And
so your book deals a lot with this conflict between
market hunters and sport hunters right at the at the
around the turn of the century, that's correct, and when when?

(01:09:00):
And it's such an interesting time for those of us
interested in wildlife today because so many of the modern
ideas about wildlife conservation were being forged, you know, with
the Boone and Crocket Club and Teddy Roosevelt and all
these great patriarchs of the conservation movement who were you know,
kind of rewriting the way that people thought about wild game.

(01:09:21):
And so there was this like fifty years of I mean,
I don't know if it was fifty years, but probably
of just conflict between people that would have viewed wildlife
in a certain way as a commodity, not as a resource,
not as something to be to be protected intentionally. And
then you had these guys like Roosevelt that we that

(01:09:43):
were trying to that were sportsmen that wanted fair chase,
that wanted to have an experience with the wild and
go hunt, and it meant more than just getting game.
It meant, you know, some kind of quest in a way.
And so it was like these this and that's a
lot of what you're book talks about and the legislation
around quantifying that those ideas.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
Yes, and you remember this is also a time when, uh,
the government's trying to get you to dip your cattle,
and so there's you know, all these sort of governmental
regulations and trying to you know, I do a lot
of change, uh, And there's a lot of pushback, a
lot of pushback from from a variety of different reasons.

(01:10:28):
There's a people, there's politicians that don't want that that
are actually making money from the market uh, selling selling
game and fish. Uh. And there's folks, of course, and
you can if you're from Arkansas, you can relate with
this statement. There are people, uh common folk in Arkansas
believe that if their grandfather hunted and this time of

(01:10:52):
year and this game, then by GOLLI ought to be
able to do it, and no regulation is going to
stop me. Yes, you know that still happens today, that's right.
And and so that's that mentality. And that's one of
the things when you're talking about Vizard trying that was
like a newspaper article. He's basically trying to convince everybody
he can on the benefits of doing that. And that's

(01:11:13):
also what a lot of are new organizations. There's a
women's organization and what they do is see visits trying
to convince adults and the smaller women's organizations, they're about
songbirds and things like that. They're educating children in schools.
They're putting out pamphlets about the benefits of the robin,

(01:11:34):
the benefits of the songbirds, because most of those are
migratory birds. Too, and so there's a big effort basically
to educate the public on a lot of different levels,
and of course some refuse to accept it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:48):
You know, to this day, I'm amazed at the lingering
ideology of families of just groups of people that lasts
so long. I mean, all foreshadow a touch on the
podcast that's going to come out next week on Bear Grease.
It's a podcast about a particular man's engagement and views

(01:12:15):
on wildlife law. Essentially, it's about a modern guy that
basically was a pretty bad turkey outlaw. This guy still
alive and we interviewed him and he's not a turkey
outlaw anymore, and that's kind of why we talked about him.
It's kind of a human interest story more than anything.

Speaker 3 (01:12:34):
And evolution of a man.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Yeah, And I made a statement when I was writing
that podcast. The part that I write is I said,
it feels like people like when I look back on
people that I know and I engage with, it feels
like people that were adults by the nineteen sixties typically,

(01:12:58):
or there's a group of them that can have a
very different view on game laws than people born later.
I mean, like game laws are kind of just a suggestion,
and it's and it's it's it's interesting because as I'm
reading your book and talking to you today after I
wrote that, it's like we were having game laws in

(01:13:19):
the eighteen seventies. I mean, it's not like this guy's
granddad was a market hunter. Well I guess he could
have been that. Maybe that proves my point is that
that it feels like something. It feels like y'all just
be able to wake up and be like, all right, guys, hey,
we can't shoot ninety thousand ducks and ship them to
Chicago anymore. Okay, we're gonna become sport hunters. We're gonna

(01:13:41):
go out and obey the laws, and you're each gonna
kill six but only for ninety days a year. And
it's like, oh, okay, that's great, let's do that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
No, man, I mean there are guys.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Some significant pushback.

Speaker 3 (01:13:52):
Yes, I mean, remember that's their job. That's how they're
making live and feeding their families and things like that.
And and so that's the that's attitude saying you're taking
my job away after change what I may have done
for twenty years, and so you're saying that I can't
do that anymore, and I'm not you know, it's not
gonna work. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
I Like, it's really easy on this side of it
to be like, I know exactly where I would have stood.
I would have I would have I would have said
game laws, But man, I would have bid I had
a hard time not standing with the people that it
probably would have mattered who I loved. Yeah, like if
my I mean, I I find I'm really empathetic towards

(01:14:31):
people that I that I that I love and I'm
connected to. And it's like, at that time, it really
wasn't a moral Maybe maybe they were starting to make
it kind of a moral issue, but it was more
like a maybe almost like a business issue.

Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
You know, definitely economics involved. Of course. One of the
interesting things is, uh, there it depends, just like you said,
depends on where you stand and who you're with. But
if let's say your grandfather was a timberman and had
done timber all his life, and all of a sudden

(01:15:09):
they said no more timber cutting ever, or you can
only cut so much timber but it's not enough to
make a living from, then that's the pushback. I think
you had to think of wildlife as a natural, as
a resource as a commodity like coal and timber and
now this, and so that's the mentality of the market.

(01:15:30):
So when there's rumblings of possible game law to slow
that down, they kill even more because they think it's
gonna go away so or or not even game all.
They're disappearing like the grouse. It's like this stop, not
not let's stop, it's kill all we can before they
go away.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
Isn't that wild?

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
That's totally different things, you know, because the sportsman was like,
oh no, we must pass these laws. But the market
hunters are going to kill them all before they're gone.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):
Better, we better get them before and again.

Speaker 3 (01:16:01):
And that was a whole deal. That was one of
the big push you know, big pushbacks, is they're they're
simply not going to stop. And what was interesting is
even after the the biological survey took over places like
Big Lake, they kept showing up and kept shooting illegally. Wow,
you know. And the big one of the things I
said that fishing was kind of the first place where

(01:16:22):
they started. And that was nationally too. Uh. During the
colonial American colonial period, they were passing laws on the
East coast about fishing because they were fishing out the
streams and salmon runs. Uh. That was very early is
where they started, was fishing, and it's one of the
places they started with Arkansas because I remember remember, like
I said, we're talking about the same time. So they're
building infrastructure, trying to build infrastructure at the same time. Right.

(01:16:45):
One of the big infrastructure pushes, of course as roads. Well,
you build a road up here in the ozarks and washtalls.
What's the number one tool to build roads before mechanization
dynamite m So every shaft along a road, stretch of
road had dynamite in it, so he was everybody. And

(01:17:06):
back then you could go buy dynamite, so you could
steal it or buy it, and they just let's go fishing.
Went fishing with it, absolutely, and that was one of
the big things that was I saw over and over
and over again as some of the very first trying
to make statewide game laws was against dynamite fishing because
they were destroying, completely destroying rivers, wow, with dynamite. And

(01:17:30):
they finally make it a felony to use dynamite. Really, yep,
they make it a felony, and then they realize it's
a mistake.

Speaker 2 (01:17:36):
What would have been that time period.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
That probably would have been Oh if I had I
wouldn't know off the top of my head, but it
would be probably around eighteen ninety, give or take. There's
a man that kills another fella in World War One.
During World One, two soldiers get a hold of some
dynamite and they're off, they're out on like leave or whatever.

(01:18:00):
And he thought he had a regular fuse. He was
unfamiliar with dynamite and he had a fast fuse and
blew him up and killed the guy next to him.
But that he was gonna get tried for murder. But
that was a big one. They tried to do that,
didn't They realized it was a mistake to make it
a felony because no jury would send a man to

(01:18:22):
prison for catching blowing up fish. So juries wouldn't convict
because they would not send him. It was mandatory one
year in prison for a felony. So they're like, we
have to change that back and lessen the penalty.

Speaker 1 (01:18:33):
Oh wow, because a man would stand up and he
would be like his lawyer would be like, hey, this
guy was trying to feed his fans, that's right to
send him to prison for his feet and trying to
feed his family.

Speaker 3 (01:18:42):
Exactly whether it would be true or not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:46):
Right, Wow, fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
Game laws to me are are so interesting, and because
we're so focused on conservation and hunting, this is the
thing that we've dedicated a big chunk of our lives too,
that we we love wildlife. We view it as like
essential for us to have the quality of life that
we want to have. I mean, wildlife to a lot

(01:19:13):
of people that are listening to this is like really important.
But the truth is, I mean it's not existential in
a way. I mean, like I'm thinking about a jury
that's going to convict the guy for dynamiting when probably
the week before they were trying a guy for for murder,
or for or for for robbing a bank or for

(01:19:36):
something even worse maybe and it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
The game laws just didn't seem very egregious.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Well I mean yeah, but it's like today, I mean,
I'm like, send him to jail, you know. But it's
it's kind of sometimes you have to. I mean, I'm
not suggesting we should have lesser game game laws. I
think sometimes they're way too light, but I think that
so it's it. That's why it's interesting. It's it's it's

(01:20:04):
it's that these things are so important and guys, guys
commit their lives to wildlife management and so you kind
of have in today. I mean, there's people whose careers
are involved around wildlife management, and so somebody that doesn't
take the laws seriously, that's breaking the law. Like he's
he's violating more than just killing an extra turkey. He's

(01:20:26):
messing with people's lives.

Speaker 3 (01:20:28):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
That's that's the way one way to think about it.
So like the punishment should be pretty severe, you know. Oh, man,
I can't wait till next week. When we were coming
out with an episode next week that tried me as
a podcaster in a way, and Josh helped me quite
a bit with it. And uh, because it's it's a

(01:20:49):
really interesting story with it with a man that I
actually really have a lot of respect for.

Speaker 3 (01:20:55):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
But it's a it's a it's it's an interesting story.
It's about game law violation.

Speaker 3 (01:21:00):
I look forward to it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Yeah, how long I have no idea this has been
so interesting out zero concept of how long we've been talking. Yeah, man,
this Uh, we didn't even scratch the surface of the book.

Speaker 3 (01:21:15):
You know, I'm I think one of the if you
take a look at the I think it's the very
first blurb on the back. I think that gives me
the most pride. Is it? Is it the one?

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):
Which one is? I'll read it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:27):
That's it? Yeah, it says.

Speaker 1 (01:21:28):
Foster's passion for Arkansas wildlife and conservation shines through in
this book. His research and primary materials is simply outstanding.
I doubt anyone has read and assembled more material in
Arkansas hunting and fishing in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):
Yeah. And I think that's the thing I'm most proud about,
because I truly tried to search every single source that
you could potentially reach, and I'm sure I miss some.
But I was in Maryland at the National Archives for
two weeks and just gathering information on the federal side,

(01:22:05):
and these records had never been touched.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
Since they had been placed there in the nineteen teen's,
twenties and thirties, they had never been open. The reason
I knew that is because they were all staple together,
and you can't use the staple materials, so you have
to take them up. You can't remove them yourself, so
you have to take them up there. Well, the first
week all I did was stand in line to get
the staples removed. And it was very interesting because they

(01:22:29):
were game and fish. There were some Arkansas game and
fish stuff too. US Biological survey primarily is what I
was looking at the management of Big Lake and that
sort of thing. And there was a turkey feather somebody.
There was a vendor who was a propagation guy who
was basically raising turkeys that wanted to bring them to Arkansas.
And so it was like his calling was a paper

(01:22:49):
and it was his calling card and it had a
turkey feather stuck in it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
And I pulled it out and it was like I
had just pulled out a nuclear bomb. They had people
coming from underneath the basements with lab coats on and
all kinds of stuff. It's like biological material must be
whatever they had gloves on, and it was it was
so interesting that they there. They didn't know it was
there because it had never been undone. Why these done
that had been there over one hundred years? That turkey feather?

Speaker 1 (01:23:16):
Wow, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (01:23:17):
And so that was interesting. Went to Fort Worth to
the National Archives. Down there, there are different branches that
was lawbreakers who broke federal law. The court records were down.
There been to just just lots and lots and lots
of places little every I tried to go to every
single county historical society that had any kind of archives
whatsoever about any sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
I think we've got our new friends.

Speaker 2 (01:23:41):
Yeah, no doubt.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
For really we need you back on the burgeries probably
the render just as a guest.

Speaker 3 (01:23:47):
Well, it's I've dug a lot of places, and like
I said earlier, this book's about fifty seven fifty eight
thousand words, and I removed seventy thousand the requests simply
because it was just too much for academic study.

Speaker 2 (01:24:02):
You know, it's serious one. That's too much for an
academic study.

Speaker 1 (01:24:05):
They're like, yeah, dial it back down a little bit,
doctor Foster.

Speaker 3 (01:24:11):
Yeah. So it's like I said, that's one of the
things that I really have tried to work on is
is finding and if you look at some of those people,
they're really identified. They're not just like this guy was
a judge. I'll try to say what he did for
his whole career, what he did for a living, where
he was at at the time, and all different pieces
and aspects to really give. You know, again, I'm an

(01:24:32):
I'm Arkansawyer and I'm trying to I mean, I was
looking at myself as an Arkansas hunter who would want
to read this book, and I want to know everything.
Whatever happened to that guy? Yeah, I want to look
in the notes and say, what happened to that guy? Yeah?
You know, the desert becomes my hero. I mean, I
guess I'm a defender of vizard. He has this bad
side too, but he really if you had to point

(01:24:53):
to one person during that period, he would be the guy.

Speaker 1 (01:24:56):
He'd be the guy.

Speaker 3 (01:24:57):
He would be the guy. And I want I'll tell
you another piece of information that people I guarantee you know,
very very few people know about this. So Tabasco Air mcklehenny, right,
he is a bird. He is a bird conservationist. His
the island, Avery Island down there. He turns it into
a bird refuge and he connects with a couple of

(01:25:21):
wealthy the one's a widow, railroad widow, Tycoons widow, and
then another person they're both they're all three of these conservationists.
Mclehenny's dream is to have bird refuges all up the
Mississippi Flyway from Canada all the way down, and so
they'll have places to rest and live. Okay. He connects,

(01:25:43):
Visit connects with Vizard. They get together and mclehenny says,
if Arkansas will pass meaningful game legislation to protect the birds,
I will give them one hundred thousand acres. I will
purchase the acreage in Arkansas and give it to the
state if they'll pass loss to protect it. Wow. And

(01:26:03):
Arkansas doesn't do it. Wow. And so he does it
for Mississippi hm hm.

Speaker 1 (01:26:10):
And what land is that today in Mississippi.

Speaker 3 (01:26:13):
I do not know.

Speaker 1 (01:26:14):
Okay, Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:26:16):
It would probably be either a reserve preserve or a forest.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
He's probably split up.

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):
Yeah, it's probably in pieces and parts, that's correct. Be
hard to get one hundred thousans.

Speaker 1 (01:26:25):
At least he did it somewhere on the flyway.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
He did, and he did it. They did it down
there in Louisiana too. Most of much of the state
land down there in Louisiana is old mccahoney ground. If
it's around the Mississippi.

Speaker 1 (01:26:36):
Yeah, don't buy to Alaska hot sauce you were using
on the turkey thwack. Let's go back to Tabasco. Yeah,
the conservationists.

Speaker 3 (01:26:45):
He came to Arkansas several times. He had a little
traveling slide show and he would the glass slides and
he had a projector that would project him up and
he would do, you know, conserve the animals, Conserve the birds.
He was a big bird guy. Conserve the birds. And
he had all these different birds on these slides. And
I'm sure the probably I bet Tabasco Archives, there's a

(01:27:06):
great historian down there. And he helped me a lot
on the on the some of the conversations. There were letters,
lots and lots of letters between visit and maclahenny, and
he helped me find some letters and things like that,
send them to me. I bet they still have some
of those slides.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
I would bet you they do. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
Well, hey, this has been fantastic. You can if you
can check out this book. So great was the slaughter Market, Hunters,
Sportsmen and Wildlife Conservation in Arkansas, Buckley T. Foster that
you can order that probably.

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
Just Amazon, University of Valbamba, Press, Barnes and Noble, all
of them. Yeah, or you know, I'm going across the
state one venue at a time doing book talks and signings,
so they can book you and they can contact me.
My website is Arkansas Wildlife hisstory dot com. You can

(01:27:54):
contact me through there and also has a Facebook page
same thing, and you can, yes, you can contact me
through there. One last thing before we wrap it up.
We get to nineteen twenty five. And it's one of
the reasons I end to my book in nineteen twenty five,
when you take a snapshot in nineteen twenty five, and
again I'm going to go back to say when I
say there are none, I don't mean zero, but I

(01:28:17):
mean not enough to do anything with. We get to
nineteen twenty five, bearer gone, bison or gone. We have
two thousand deer left in the entire state. There's over
a million now. Turkey are gone, Quail are basically gone,
panad grouse is extinct for the most part. The only

(01:28:41):
thing really we have left are squirrels and rabbits. That's it.
And of course migratory anything migratory we still have access
to that. I mean, I'm talking about animals that were here. Yeah,
all that's gone. So if it wasn't for the if
it wasn't for the efforts, and I don't want to

(01:29:03):
sound like a game and fish, Arkansas game and fish
hoo rah. But really during this time and what follows after,
if it wasn't for the Arkansas game and fish propagation
efforts in the thirties, forties and beyond, there would be
no game here to hunt or get after. They just
wouldn't be here. They're gone. They're gone by twenty five,

(01:29:24):
and people don't one.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):
Hundred years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:29:26):
That's right, they were gone. And see we you know,
you get on social media message boards there's a lot
of bashing against the game and fish commissions all over
place like that. And I'm not talking about modern But
if it wasn't for the early efforts of the early
game and fish, there would there would be no game
to hunt. I mean, that's a bottom line. Yeah, they
did it. They brought back turkeys in the seventies, that
brought back black Bear. I mentioned in the book my

(01:29:48):
dad was born in thirty six. He never saw a lot,
and he was all over the washingtalls. His grandpa ran
Faral hogs and so they were all over chasing Farrell
hogs in the washingtalls. And he don't never saw a
bear in the woods until he was seventy years old. Yeah,
because they weren't here. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:30:07):
Man, it's astonishing when you understand the context of what
we've got today that we can walk out of these
doors and there's probably a deer within two hundred yards
of us right now, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:30:18):
Anway, I appreciate you having me.

Speaker 1 (01:30:21):
Yeah, it's a true pleasure. I'm glad we finally connected
and it won't be the last time for real.

Speaker 3 (01:30:27):
I just right the road and I thought you were
further away, all right, sure, Yeah, it's our fifteen minutes
to your door from my door.

Speaker 1 (01:30:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:34):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:30:35):
Well, hey, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:30:37):
Before we go, everybody needs to check out the Meat
Eater store. We've got new Bear Grease merch.

Speaker 1 (01:30:44):
Hitting what kind of stuff do we have?

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
Hats, shirts, all kinds of stuff, So definitely check it out.
That'll be going live Monday before this podcast comes out.

Speaker 1 (01:30:54):
New Bear Grease Merch yep, excellent

Speaker 3 (01:31:01):
Fe

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Ep. 312: Render - Market Hunting in Arkansas with Dr. Buckley Foster

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Clay Newcomb

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 312: Render - Market Hunting in Arkansas with Dr. Buckley Foster