00:00:14 Speaker 1: 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 to be as rugged as the place as we explore. Did you know that one of our friends just got struck by lightning? 00:00:48 Speaker 2: Crazy, so it's been on the podcast. 00:00:51 Speaker 1: 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 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 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. 00:01:48 Speaker 2: Yeah, no doubt. 00:01:49 Speaker 1: And uh it was my friend Josh Barger. I will call his name. He had never been struck by lightning. 00:01:53 Speaker 2: We're never been struck by lightning. And I guarantee he's got no drainage issues at his house. 00:01:57 Speaker 1: 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 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. 00:02:29 Speaker 3: Yes, that's me and uh and I'm a kind of doctor that don't do folks no good. 00:02:35 Speaker 1: As my grandmother would say, don't do folks no good. That's correct, Okay, that's what she said. 00:02:41 Speaker 3: 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 what she came back with. You're the kind of doctor that don't do folks no good. 00:03:10 Speaker 1: 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. 00:03:19 Speaker 3: That'd probably be a good idea. 00:03:21 Speaker 1: 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. 00:03:39 Speaker 3: 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. 00:03:54 Speaker 1: Wow, that sounds exciting. I can't wait to talk about it. 00:04:00 Speaker 2: Turkey season is in full swing. 00:04:01 Speaker 1: Full swing, full swinging beard. 00:04:04 Speaker 2: Oh look at that shoot. 00:04:06 Speaker 1: I was just in Mississippi this week. So I killed a turkey two days ago in Mississippi with Lake pickleady. 00:04:13 Speaker 2: Like taking a test. It was delicious. 00:04:15 Speaker 1: Yeah, we ate some of it yesterday some of this morning. Made a olmlet. 00:04:20 Speaker 4: Put a little hot sauce on there, that Alaskan hot sauce. 00:04:23 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:04:24 Speaker 4: 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 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. 00:05:05 Speaker 1: You know, you could just pull that meat off with a. 00:05:07 Speaker 3: Fork, sure, right out? 00:05:09 Speaker 1: 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 Turkey Stories episode. Were you able to listen to it? Bear, yep? Yeah you were on there, yep. I forgot about that. 00:05:41 Speaker 2: Featured guests. 00:05:42 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:05:43 Speaker 2: Second, what did it feel like? 00:05:44 Speaker 4: 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. 00:05:53 Speaker 3: What was Uh? 00:05:54 Speaker 1: Were you able to listen to it? 00:05:56 Speaker 3: Bushwhacker? 00:05:57 Speaker 1: 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 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, you get in trouble for that these days. 00:06:43 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:06:44 Speaker 1: 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, 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 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. 00:07:41 Speaker 2: 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. 00:07:51 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:07:51 Speaker 4: I think it's like you kind of come into the world and there's like a set way to kill a turkey. 00:07:55 Speaker 1: But like, you know, that's good. It's a pretty small box. 00:07:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, baron nuke breaking all the rules and and. 00:08:03 Speaker 1: 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, 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 is killed to Jake. And there's nothing you know where it's legal, there's nothing wrong. 00:08:51 Speaker 3: With that, right. 00:08:54 Speaker 1: But uh, but it was a great it was a great seria. It was a great great stories. 00:08:57 Speaker 3: 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 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. 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 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. 00:10:19 Speaker 1: Yeah, did any of the stories stand out to you like you were like that was that was funny? Or I enjoyed that? 00:10:25 Speaker 3: 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 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 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, 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 it's gonna happen. 00:11:54 Speaker 2: Yeah, this episode did have a shocking number of stories of people's pants down. 00:11:59 Speaker 1: 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. 00:12:16 Speaker 3: And off, and he kept saying it was super cold. 00:12:19 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:12:20 Speaker 3: 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. 00:12:32 Speaker 2: Yeah, he's hardcore when it comes to turkey hunting, that guy's hardcore. 00:12:35 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:12:36 Speaker 1: 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, 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 cold and and uh and then gets over there and gets his turkey. 00:13:25 Speaker 4: 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. 00:13:33 Speaker 1: 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? 00:13:42 Speaker 2: 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. 00:13:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, he's funny. 00:13:54 Speaker 2: 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 to hunt. She loves to go out there and kill turkeys. Man, she is a turkey killing machine. 00:14:22 Speaker 1: 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. 00:14:33 Speaker 2: 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. 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. 00:15:05 Speaker 1: 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 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 that surprising. And then the thing reaches over and bites him in the nose so hard that it basically makes him bleed. 00:15:55 Speaker 3: You know. 00:15:55 Speaker 1: 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? 00:16:01 Speaker 4: 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. 00:16:09 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:16:10 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:16:11 Speaker 1: 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, 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. 00:16:48 Speaker 3: I love that. 00:16:50 Speaker 1: But that was a good one. And then hear and Andy Brown laugh. 00:16:54 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:16:57 Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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. 00:18:18 Speaker 3: Turkey appeared over here, and I have no idea how. 00:18:21 Speaker 1: It got there. You know, he's just kind of he's just a good storytelling. 00:18:25 Speaker 3: 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 been amazing. Well just like the bushwhack, I mean, turkey's with their amazing eyesight. 00:18:54 Speaker 2: You know. 00:18:55 Speaker 3: 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 was like, the smoke is going to keep him away from me, but it didn't. 00:19:29 Speaker 1: Hey, show me your dad's turkey calls, so you brought So your dad was a turkey hunter. 00:19:36 Speaker 3: 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. 00:19:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, look at that. I already checked that out. If you make it sound. 00:20:01 Speaker 3: 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. 00:20:12 Speaker 1: I've never seen one quite like that. 00:20:14 Speaker 3: 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. 00:20:35 Speaker 2: That's so cool. 00:20:36 Speaker 1: 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. 00:20:57 Speaker 3: And it's got a thumb thumb spot for you right there. 00:21:00 Speaker 1: And uh, let me see if you ever can Yeah, go ahead, can you make it make sound? 00:21:04 Speaker 3: 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 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. 00:21:37 Speaker 1: But I mean, I can see how you can make sounds with that, especially if you got good at it. 00:21:45 Speaker 3: 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. 00:21:57 Speaker 1: 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. 00:22:04 Speaker 3: Sometimes he spit on it. 00:22:06 Speaker 1: 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. 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 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 never seen that. Yeah, yep, put it back in the rest. 00:23:15 Speaker 2: How cool is that? 00:23:16 Speaker 1: Yeah? 00:23:16 Speaker 2: Man, it just shows the ingenuity of people. Have you ever seen anything like that? No? 00:23:22 Speaker 1: I never have. I've actually never seen one like that. 00:23:25 Speaker 2: Do you know if if he got that idea from someone or did he do that on his. 00:23:29 Speaker 3: 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. 00:23:40 Speaker 2: Wow. 00:23:40 Speaker 3: 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. 00:23:49 Speaker 1: 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 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 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 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, 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. 00:25:36 Speaker 3: 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. 00:25:48 Speaker 1: Oh like a like a wing bone. 00:25:51 Speaker 3: Wing bone. Yeah, wing bone calls, he said. One of my friends said his dad had a couple of them. Oh. 00:25:57 Speaker 1: I had a guy send me this week from Georgia a pipe call. Oh my gosh, I need to go get it. 00:26:05 Speaker 2: Like a trumpet call. 00:26:06 Speaker 1: 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. 00:26:14 Speaker 3: If you were someone else, yeah, if you. 00:26:16 Speaker 1: Were if you were into voodoo. 00:26:18 Speaker 2: Yah. 00:26:19 Speaker 1: 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? And like, what's your specialty? 00:26:42 Speaker 3: 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 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, 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 Arkansas who was the Arkansas historian there. Took classes there and that was Genie. 00:27:55 Speaker 1: That was Dogannie lay. 00:27:56 Speaker 3: 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 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 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. 00:29:05 Speaker 1: This is not a metaphorical war, literally. 00:29:08 Speaker 3: No, it was a war. 00:29:09 Speaker 2: For me. 00:29:09 Speaker 3: 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 the surrounding area in Tennessee, and they own this huge hunting. 00:31:26 Speaker 1: The rich guys that own rich we're from Nashville, that's correct. 00:31:29 Speaker 3: And the locals, of course, a lot of them lived right there on the lake, a lot of the market hunters. 00:31:34 Speaker 1: And they're market hunting ducks. 00:31:35 Speaker 3: 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 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 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 the Tennessee Sportsman and goes to the US Biological Survey. They take over. They still well, they have game wardens there. 00:32:49 Speaker 1: 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 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. 00:33:24 Speaker 3: That's correct. 00:33:24 Speaker 1: And now where were those ducks going. 00:33:27 Speaker 3: 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 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. 00:34:03 Speaker 1: Chicago's who's eating that many ducks? We don't eat that many ducks today. 00:34:08 Speaker 3: 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. 00:34:25 Speaker 1: Something so wild game was exotic. 00:34:27 Speaker 3: 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, and were that. 00:34:53 Speaker 1: Was based on taste to taste, volume of meat, the size of the bird. 00:34:58 Speaker 3: Big time, big Lake one day shipped out ten thousand, ten thousand. 00:35:03 Speaker 1: And these guys are killing them with punt guns at nights. 00:35:05 Speaker 3: 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. 00:35:16 Speaker 1: 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. 00:35:24 Speaker 3: 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. 00:35:47 Speaker 1: So they're doing it at night. 00:35:49 Speaker 3: 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. 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. 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 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. 00:37:10 Speaker 1: It's not Is that in northeast It. 00:37:13 Speaker 3: 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. 00:37:27 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:37:28 Speaker 3: 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. And so they piled them on, put them on trains and sent. 00:37:53 Speaker 1: Them because there was the laws were different in that county. 00:37:56 Speaker 5: 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. 00:38:07 Speaker 1: What was the biggest thing, what what was the prime animal? 00:38:13 Speaker 3: 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. 00:38:37 Speaker 1: And then so Arkansas just to Arkansas Post is a town at the confluence of the Arkansas White Mississippi River. 00:38:45 Speaker 3: That's correct. 00:38:45 Speaker 1: And it was established in like the mid sixteen hundreds, truck six, Yeah, it was at the time it was the Furthest. 00:38:53 Speaker 3: Yes, this was the very first further. 00:38:55 Speaker 1: It was like the Furthest West European outpost on the cop at the time. 00:39:01 Speaker 3: 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. 00:39:20 Speaker 2: And we've got a town named after him, just right up here, Tonty Town. 00:39:23 Speaker 3: 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 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. 00:40:03 Speaker 1: 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. 00:40:14 Speaker 3: 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 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. 00:40:52 Speaker 1: That's like their area, like non resident h Yes. 00:40:54 Speaker 3: 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 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 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. 00:41:47 Speaker 1: 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 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. 00:42:33 Speaker 3: 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 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 could probably argue that most of the bison were killed out before eighteen hundred, for the majority. 00:43:26 Speaker 1: I mean, what about Gershtocker killed the bison when he was in Arkansas. 00:43:31 Speaker 3: 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 00:45:38 Speaker 1: Grouse, which we don't even have here anymore. 00:45:41 Speaker 3: 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. 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. 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. 00:46:33 Speaker 1: What timeframe was that? 00:46:35 Speaker 3: That's that's very early. That's like eighteen eighty compared to the study. And I shouldn't say very. 00:46:41 Speaker 1: Early, because we just have how do you say that grouse. 00:46:43 Speaker 3: Penated grouse, woodland grouse. It's it's, you know, like a prairie about West Arkansas. 00:46:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, in now East Arkansas's where we would have had like prairie though. 00:46:56 Speaker 3: 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 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. 00:47:23 Speaker 1: 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? 00:47:45 Speaker 3: 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 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. 00:48:14 Speaker 1: They're not shipping meat at no. 00:48:16 Speaker 3: No, I mean there were no pumped. 00:48:20 Speaker 1: People in like Saint Louis were eating a squirrel. 00:48:24 Speaker 3: 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 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 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 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. 00:49:40 Speaker 1: Big that's correct. 00:49:45 Speaker 3: 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 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 had to write this book before I could tackle. 00:50:32 Speaker 1: So you got another book coming out. 00:50:34 Speaker 3: 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. 00:50:48 Speaker 1: But like that when you say federally mean. 00:50:50 Speaker 3: 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 passed and in Traybor's courtroom in Arkansas, he declared it unconstitutional and it was struck down in Arkansas a national law. 00:51:22 Speaker 1: Now tell me why that's significant. 00:51:25 Speaker 3: 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 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. 00:52:04 Speaker 1: 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. 00:52:16 Speaker 3: 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 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 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, 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. 00:53:28 Speaker 1: 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 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. 00:54:04 Speaker 3: 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. 00:54:19 Speaker 1: 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, he was a pretty he was kind of a visionary. 00:54:42 Speaker 3: 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, 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 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. 00:55:36 Speaker 1: I'm gonna read you tell me well. 00:55:39 Speaker 3: 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 make the arrest powers away from the wardens. 00:56:04 Speaker 1: 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. 00:56:14 Speaker 3: Arkansas State and Sports Association. 00:56:17 Speaker 1: 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 killing insects. 00:56:42 Speaker 3: Big and Bolt Weaver was the big farmer for quail. 00:56:45 Speaker 1: 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. 00:57:04 Speaker 3: 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. 00:57:16 Speaker 6: Uh. 00:57:16 Speaker 3: 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 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. 00:57:53 Speaker 1: 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. 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? 00:58:30 Speaker 3: 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. 00:58:51 Speaker 1: 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 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 to Arkansas and kick you out for a week or two weeks. 00:59:42 Speaker 3: Or a month however long you wanted. 00:59:44 Speaker 1: 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 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. 01:00:22 Speaker 3: For sure, Right, that's happening. At the same time this is happening, all of our resources are going out of the state. 01:00:27 Speaker 1: Well, and it's because of these railroads, that's right. 01:00:29 Speaker 3: Railroads is a big one. 01:00:30 Speaker 1: 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. 01:00:48 Speaker 3: 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 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 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 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. 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. This has already happened. 01:02:43 Speaker 6: 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. 01:02:55 Speaker 3: 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 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. 01:03:27 Speaker 1: 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. 01:03:40 Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. 01:03:41 Speaker 1: And you don't think of Arkansas as the far West, but yeah, in the eighteen thirties it. 01:03:45 Speaker 3: 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 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. 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 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? That name is the Flanagans and Masson Gills, and there's a couple of others. They're still known in Conway. 01:05:20 Speaker 1: 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 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 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. 01:06:15 Speaker 3: I could be wrong about that, But in eighteen ten, there's one thousand and sixty four. 01:06:19 Speaker 1: Wow. Wow, Okay, so I think I'm right. Then by eighteen twenty it was like. 01:06:23 Speaker 3: Eighteen twenty it had gone up considerably, but it was only. 01:06:26 Speaker 1: Still that's an astonishingly low number it is of people. 01:06:29 Speaker 3: 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 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. 01:07:02 Speaker 1: Is that right? 01:07:02 Speaker 3: 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, 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 to come to. 01:07:48 Speaker 1: 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. 01:07:59 Speaker 3: 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 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. 01:08:30 Speaker 1: 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. 01:08:35 Speaker 3: It's basically a build up where just stagnant, stagnated place. 01:08:38 Speaker 1: 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? 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. 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 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. 01:10:05 Speaker 3: 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. 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 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 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, 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. 01:11:48 Speaker 1: 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 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. 01:12:34 Speaker 3: And evolution of a man. 01:12:36 Speaker 1: 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, 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 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 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. 01:13:48 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:13:49 Speaker 1: No, man, I mean there are guys. 01:13:50 Speaker 2: Some significant pushback. 01:13:52 Speaker 3: 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. 01:14:10 Speaker 1: 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 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. 01:14:48 Speaker 3: 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 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. 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. 01:15:50 Speaker 1: Isn't that wild? 01:15:50 Speaker 3: 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. 01:16:00 Speaker 1: Better, we better get them before and again. 01:16:01 Speaker 3: 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 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. 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 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 they finally make it a felony to use dynamite. Really, yep, they make it a felony, and then they realize it's a mistake. 01:17:36 Speaker 2: What would have been that time period. 01:17:39 Speaker 3: 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. 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 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. 01:18:33 Speaker 1: 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. 01:18:42 Speaker 3: Exactly whether it would be true or not. 01:18:46 Speaker 2: Right, Wow, fascinating. 01:18:50 Speaker 1: 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 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 something even worse maybe and it's like. 01:19:40 Speaker 2: The game laws just didn't seem very egregious. 01:19:42 Speaker 1: 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 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 messing with people's lives. 01:20:28 Speaker 3: You know. 01:20:29 Speaker 1: 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 really interesting story with it with a man that I actually really have a lot of respect for. 01:20:55 Speaker 3: Uh. 01:20:56 Speaker 1: But it's a it's a it's it's an interesting story. It's about game law violation. 01:21:00 Speaker 3: I look forward to it. 01:21:01 Speaker 1: 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. 01:21:15 Speaker 3: 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? 01:21:25 Speaker 1: Which one is? I'll read it. 01:21:27 Speaker 3: That's it? Yeah, it says. 01:21:28 Speaker 1: 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. 01:21:42 Speaker 3: 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, and these records had never been touched. 01:22:07 Speaker 2: Wow. 01:22:08 Speaker 3: 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 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 and it was his calling card and it had a turkey feather stuck in it. 01:22:52 Speaker 2: Wow. 01:22:52 Speaker 3: 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? 01:23:16 Speaker 1: Wow, that's cool. 01:23:17 Speaker 3: 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. 01:23:39 Speaker 1: I think we've got our new friends. 01:23:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, no doubt. 01:23:42 Speaker 1: For really we need you back on the burgeries probably the render just as a guest. 01:23:47 Speaker 3: 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. 01:24:02 Speaker 2: You know, it's serious one. That's too much for an academic study. 01:24:05 Speaker 1: They're like, yeah, dial it back down a little bit, doctor Foster. 01:24:11 Speaker 3: 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 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 to one person during that period, he would be the guy. 01:24:56 Speaker 1: He'd be the guy. 01:24:57 Speaker 3: 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 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, 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 Arkansas doesn't do it. Wow. And so he does it for Mississippi hm hm. 01:26:10 Speaker 1: And what land is that today in Mississippi. 01:26:13 Speaker 3: I do not know. 01:26:14 Speaker 1: Okay, Wow. 01:26:16 Speaker 3: It would probably be either a reserve preserve or a forest. 01:26:20 Speaker 1: He's probably split up. 01:26:21 Speaker 3: Yeah, it's probably in pieces and parts, that's correct. Be hard to get one hundred thousans. 01:26:25 Speaker 1: At least he did it somewhere on the flyway. 01:26:26 Speaker 3: 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. 01:26:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, don't buy to Alaska hot sauce you were using on the turkey thwack. Let's go back to Tabasco. Yeah, the conservationists. 01:26:45 Speaker 3: 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 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. 01:27:18 Speaker 2: Wow. 01:27:19 Speaker 3: I would bet you they do. Wow. 01:27:21 Speaker 1: 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. 01:27:32 Speaker 3: 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 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 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 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 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, and people don't one. 01:29:25 Speaker 1: Hundred years ago. 01:29:26 Speaker 3: 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 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. 01:30:07 Speaker 1: 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. 01:30:18 Speaker 3: Anway, I appreciate you having me. 01:30:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a true pleasure. I'm glad we finally connected and it won't be the last time for real. 01:30:27 Speaker 3: 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. 01:30:34 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:30:34 Speaker 3: Man. 01:30:35 Speaker 1: Well, hey, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. 01:30:37 Speaker 2: Before we go, everybody needs to check out the Meat Eater store. We've got new Bear Grease merch. 01:30:44 Speaker 1: Hitting what kind of stuff do we have? 01:30:46 Speaker 2: Hats, shirts, all kinds of stuff, So definitely check it out. That'll be going live Monday before this podcast comes out. 01:30:54 Speaker 1: New Bear Grease Merch yep, excellent 01:31:01 Speaker 3: Fe