Ep. 645 - Five Oaks: Research and Education in Waterfowl Habitat Management

In this episode of the Ducks Unlimited podcast, host Dr. Jerad Henson welcomes guests from the Five Oaks Ag Research and Education Center in Stuttgart, Arkansas. Dr. Ryan Askren, the center's director, shares insights about the facility and its mission. Students Emily Van Der Veer, Tyler Wick, and Brendan Hood join in to discuss their experiences in the certificate program. The conversation provides an overview of the research initiatives at Five Oaks and highlights the importance of agricultural and forestry practices in wildlife management. Tune in to learn more about this vital work in Arkansas and the contributions of the Five Oaks team to the field.

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Creators & Guests

Host

Jerad Henson

DUPodcast Conservation Host

What is Ducks Unlimited Podcast?

Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.

Jerad Henson: And whenever you're ready. All right, here we go. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm Dr. Jared Henson, and I'm going to be your host today. I've got a great episode for you. We have some awesome guests from the Five Oaks Ag and Research Center over in Stuttgart, Arkansas. I've got Director Ryan Askren, Dr. Ryan Askren, hanging out with me here. Ryan, welcome.

Ryan Askren: Thank you very much. Thank you for having us, Jared.

Jerad Henson: And I have three of the graduate students in the certificate program that have also joined us today. We have Emily Vandeveer. Hello. We have Tyler Wick. Hey. And Brendan Hood. Hey, how are y'all doing? We're doing great. Thanks for coming over. Finishing up Split in Arkansas, since this is all Arkansas audience and including myself. We're going to be a little biased today, so sorry about that. But we're going to talk a little about what Five Oaks Ag Research Center is, and I'm going to let Ryan talk about that. But first, have you been on the podcast before, Ryan? I have not. No, sir. Oh, well, guess what? That means I need a bio on you. Can you introduce yourself to the audience as well? Tell me a little about your background and kind of how you ended up at Five Oaks.

Ryan Askren: Yeah, I'm Ryan Askren. I'm the director of the Five Oaks Ag Research and Education Center. So I come from Iowa originally. So I grew up just hunting wood ducks along the Mississippi River. I was pumped to shoot my two or three wood ducks back in the day, but really developed a passion for waterfowl through photography, through hunting. just the wild places that ducks and geese inhabit. I was able to work some really neat jobs up in Canada and Alaska, and that kind of pushed me into this career path. I went to school at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for my undergrad, then ended up down at University of Arkansas Monticello for my master's. That's where I met. Where we met, where we met. And then ended up going up to the University of Illinois to work with Dr. Mike Ward and Heath Hagee for my doctorate. And once I wrapped that up, this five oaks program was kind of coming online. Mr. George Dunklin, Jody Pagan and Doug Osborne and kind of kind of thought it up and brought it to fruition. And Doug asked me to come back as a postdoc on it, kind of a research associate position. So that's how my wife and I ended up back down in Arkansas, back down there.

Jerad Henson: And that manifests into the director position that you're now in. Yep. Um, which I think is an awesome fit because of all of the different aspects of, of that job and what you have going on. You mentioned photography got you into waterfowl. Well, Ryan got me into photography as well. He had me one morning helping him on his master's project and we're laying in the middle of a field, uh, on the Monsanto farm. Yep. Yeah, and I don't know, I had 60,000 specs. Unreal. Everywhere in this field, except for on the bait pile. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Let's not chat about that. But watching that experience and getting to see that, I was like, man, we've got to capture this. And Ryan was like, yeah, camera. He's ready for it. And so he got me into it, and it was awesome.

Ryan Askren: Yeah, and it really is. I mean, it's been an incredible opportunity. I would say it's my dream job. I never imagined I could tie the research side of things, the habitat management, the hunting, and the education all in one. There really aren't positions like it. Yeah, I know. I'm incredibly fortunate to be there.

Jerad Henson: Hey, well, that's the position I'm in. I mean, working at DU, who would have thought that position exists, right? I'm technically a project manager, but I'm over here as a podcast host. I get to do some education, which I really enjoy, which y'all know. And so, well, it's great to have you on. Thank you for having me. I want to sit, Emily, can you tell us a little bit about your background? We're going to go through, through everybody here and just get a quick brief background on everybody. And then we'll talk a little about five Oaks.

Emily Van Der Veer: Yeah, so I'm Emily Vanderveer. I am from Iowa. I got my undergrad in wildlife biology from a small private university called William Penn University in my hometown of Oskaloosa, Iowa. I worked for a county conservation board all throughout college. And then after I graduated college, I worked as a federal park ranger for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And then I worked for the Iowa DNR, and I was like, well, I have all this background, but I don't really know how to apply it to get to this upper level of management. And so I was on Instagram actually, and I saw the Five Oaks page, and that's what intrigued me. And I talked to a former student, and she encouraged me to apply, and here I am.

Jerad Henson: Awesome. Yeah. We'll go out here on the outside. Tyler. Gotcha. Yeah.

Tyler Wick: So I'm from Indiana. I got my, uh, undergrad at a small private institute called Franklin college. And, uh, Oh yes. With Dr. Ben O'Neill. It's a small world by the way. And, uh, I spent, uh, three, almost three and a half years on a urban Mallard research internship and post-baccalaureate work with him studying the urban Mallard dynamics and putting on bands, transmitters and whatnot. So then, uh, he's actually Dr. Ben O'Neill is who got me connected into this program. Awesome.

Brendan Hood: Brendan? Yes, sir. I was born and raised in Ruston, Louisiana. That's where I'm from. I eventually went to Louisiana Tech University and got my bachelor's in forestry with a concentration in wildlife habitat management. And I've worked with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. I worked as a student worker out of Monroe for a summer. And then two summers ago, I worked with Delta Waterfowl up in Minidosa doing some nest searching and banded a little bit there too. That's a great experience. It was a great time. That's really what got me into waterfowl in general. And then this past summer, I worked out at Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge.

Jerad Henson: Oh, that's a cool place. Very cool. So you got to hang out with Paul.

Brendan Hood: A little bit.

Jerad Henson: Yeah, I'm pretty partial to black bellies, if y'all don't know. But that's a different episode. Yeah, I didn't fill them in. So, yeah. We'll chat on the way home. Well, cool. So, we've met everybody, and I want Ryan to talk a bit more about kind of what the Ag Research Center is, the Five Oaks Ag Research Center is, and then a little bit about kind of how it came to be, what its goals are and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a really, really cool opportunity to not only just do something for land managers and for things like that, but also the education side and something that's missing in kind of that, the traditional academic setting, in my opinion.

Ryan Askren: So yeah. So yeah, Five Oaks Ag Research and Education Center was founded really out of a duck lodge and Mr. George Dunclan, former president of Ducks Unlimited, just great conservationists, really had the passion for this property that he's been managing, using as a hunting operation. on that property. He's got an incredible passion for the conservation and wants to ensure that that's there for the long term. So he entered in conversations with the university, with Dr. Osborne at UAM about really how he can benefit wetland waterfowl conservation in that area. And they developed this idea to form a partnership between UAM and Five Oaks. So we're an independent nonprofit, agricultural research and education. And yeah, and enrolled that that partnership back in 2021 that form the graduate certificate program that also funded some some research, mostly working on the five X properties, but really, our emphasis is. wetland waterfowl conservation in Arkansas, specifically bomb and hardwood forest ecosystems as one of our passions. And and really we're we're interested in the whole system, not just bomb and hardwood forest, not just GTR, it's not just moist soil, but how we can work with those systems all together to form these wetland complexes that really support wintering waterfowl. Right.

Jerad Henson: Yeah, we we found out and we know that it takes a lot more than one type of habitat to support waterfowl on a landscape setting. Absolutely. And this isn't It's not a new endeavor as far as research for Five Oaks. Five Oaks has been doing, I know, ag research. They had a test plot right behind. I think still do, right? We moved that down the street, yes. And then, you know, Jody's been, Jody Pagan has been, he's been tinkering with things for a long time in his own research.

Ryan Askren: Jody is a former USDA staff employee, did a lot of work early in his career with potential natural vegetation. saying they're gonna look at the landscape and try to understand how the soils and other characteristics influence what vegetation should have been there. So his understanding of everything from the soil up to the botany and then to the wildlife is absolutely incredible. And he's been a manager there at FIWOA. I think he started in 2015 or 2016. Yeah. And really just took our management there to the next level. I should say 2005 or 2006. Yeah. It's been further back than that.

Jerad Henson: Yeah, because he was around when I was finishing up undergrad. Yeah. Yeah. Which has been a while ago. A while ago. Well, cool. So that's a little background. So y'all focused on research, the certificate program, which we're going to talk about a little bit, and then education. And so I know y'all do some youth education. Yep. Can you talk a little bit about that? And I did see a tease. Y'all do a good job as far as social media.

Tyler Wick: Oh, thank you.

Jerad Henson: Because I saw the the camp in a box type thing get teased recently as well. So I do want to hear a little bit about that. But can you talk a little about the youth education?

Ryan Askren: Yeah, absolutely. So Hillary Horner is my director of youth education. So we've we've really made an effort to reach out So really our interest is ensuring that we've got people going into conservation that come from a conservation through use background. So we want people that, you know, are fisher men and women that grew up hunting, that understand the North American model of wildlife management and how that feeds conservation. So really that's, I mean, that's our big push kind of across the board is to make sure we've got these really kind of applied research and education programs to push that.

Jerad Henson: Lots of focus on that next generation. Looking forward, there's a lot of foresight. That's one of the things I have in my notes is it's like seems like everything that y'all have going is really looking to make sure that we have the people in place in the future to take care of the landscape as well as interest. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Landscape and people will appreciate that.

Ryan Askren: Yeah. And that's where our youth education program comes in. And it's largely been elementary and middle school focus so far. We're working to expand that into, into high school. And I mean, we're always hoping that we had a class when you're a Christian brothers come down. So we're always happy to host any group, but really our, our education program is focused on elementary school for the most part to where we're bringing in fourth and fifth grade classes from around the region into five oaks. We cover everything from bus fares to the meals and everything. So we we try to offer this at no cost to some, you know, traditionally underserved communities around us. The the delta of Arkansas has been struggling for a long time. Yeah. And it's it's a relatively impoverished area. So being able to do that for free makes a huge difference on actually being able to get those classes to five oaks.

Jerad Henson: And I think it really helps because a lot of those communities, I mean, my family is from some of those areas and those communities. And so I think it's really important to help connect those younger kids and show them that that land has value. People are moving away from those areas, right? And show them some of the value on that and how to appreciate that rice field that's next to them or those woods that are full of mosquitoes over there, you know, right? I know, assuming y'all from the Midwest. By the way, rice fields have mosquitoes.

Emily Van Der Veer: Yeah, figure that out real quick.

Ryan Askren: You guys learned. Yeah, so we have those classes out. We go through four different stations. They all have a wetland conservation theme to them. a little bit of shooting sports. So we now have an archery station. We have Wacky Waters, which we go sweep for invertebrates, pick up some mosquito larvae, all the, you know, toe biters and all the other cool, predacious water bugs that are out there. Really talk through those ecosystems, how the vegetation's important, because based on the vegetation, you have different kind of suites and a diversity of insects in those. We also have a green tree reservoir station, basically, where we go out We talk about forest ecology, we talk about some of the animals that live there, the food web, as well as we've now included a reservoir. I'm pointing to Tyler because he's the one that taught it this fall. Awesome. But talk about water conservation through that. Oh, and then, yeah, how could I forget? Our bird identification station. So we go through waterfowl IDs, really the emphasis, but we talk about some of the other, you know, forest songbirds that we have in the area.

Jerad Henson: There's a lot of specific songbirds and just a plethora of other organisms, especially birds, that really do depend upon those habitats, right?

Ryan Askren: Well, and that's yeah. And our our big, you know, we're we're ecosystem management focused with with Mallard's in mind. Of course, we are all duck hunters. We do have to be holistic. But that holistic perspective, one, it benefits the mountains, but also benefits just a huge, incredible suite of species that

Jerad Henson: And have all sorts of values and… Yeah, and us as waterfowl managers and waterfowl experts have to realize that we're going to have to leverage those benefits, right? Yeah, yeah. Because only so many people care about a green-headed duck.

Ryan Askren: Right. Right. Yeah. It's hard to believe.

Jerad Henson: A lot of people care about clean water and pretty songbirds and, you know, nutrient management. Yeah.

Ryan Askren: Nutrient management. Fish populations. Yeah. Great nursery grounds for many fish species that we have around there.

Jerad Henson: So yeah, I'm glad that y'all are focused on that. Um, what else we got? So I think one of the other things, let's talk, we talked about land management. Let's go ahead and jump into the certificate program. We have some great examples here, and this is which class? This is our fourth class. Fourth class. Yes, sir. So I wasn't sure if it was third or fourth class. So y'all put this out. So tell us a little about this program and what kind of the goal is.

Ryan Askren: Yeah, so this is a graduate degree, graduate certificate. So these guys all already have their undergraduate degree coming out. Really, our focus is to give them the applied side of conservation. So we know undergrad universities do a great job of teaching the ecology, the biology, all that really fine skill stuff, but really miss the ball a lot of times on field experience and actually training people to be ready to go into the workforce and make a difference for conservation.

Jerad Henson: Yeah, and that's something that I thought was really impressive because especially coming from the academic side myself, it's really easy to teach people what birds look like and the basic principles behind it. I don't have the laboratory space for them to learn how to turn on. a tractor or run water management and infrastructure. I don't have that ability, right? And we all do. And that's a cool thing. So you get this waterfowl expertise, you get the biology, but you also get practical land management, which I think is a skill set that obviously is lacking. Because with farms being much more mechanized, less people working on them, people just don't have that experience. Like even my generation, I mean, I can say I did grow up driving a tractor and things like that. I know a lot of newer generations don't.

Ryan Askren: Yeah. Yeah. Right. And that's, yeah, there's, there's a big, there's a big disconnect now between academia and, and a lot of the land managers and these guys get thrown into everything that goes on to preparing a, preparing a property for duck season to the lodge side of things, to the hospitality side of things, uh, all the way to the tail end of cleaning a bunch of ducks and, uh, you know, rigging decoys when they come untied and those kinds of things. So,

Jerad Henson: What's the most interesting things y'all have seen so far done so far that you kind of surprised you or you're happy about or?

Brendan Hood: One thing I think that was really cool. I didn't even know existed until we came talking to five bucks was the drone that they use to spray the fields and use to spread seed and fertilizer. I never knew that existed. And the fact that that's a tool that we can now use is insane.

Jerad Henson: Yeah, and that's growing like crazy. I think when I was at the Wings Over the Prairie Festival, I think I saw two or three different drone companies like that that popped up. And that's, I mean, from a landscape management standpoint, if you can aerial-applicate on a smaller scale and not have to get a crop duster out. And you can also be a lot more accurate. Right pre program your your application that I won't get too far into it.

Ryan Askren: But yeah, I finally got licensed. We bought one started using it one for small plot kind of research things looking at some fertilization moist soil. But being able to fly with a survey drone actually use AI to map out where there's coffee weed and invasive species. And then say, OK, go target the coffee weed where it's above this density. So you're leaving a lot of those more beneficial broad leaves like smart weed. Right. Whereas if you have an aerial applicator come in, he's just going to nuke the whole thing. It's broad. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to have your grasses left. So being able to really target some of those has been. That's pretty cool. A fantastic tool. And I mean, it's it's a great research tool as well. That's awesome.

Jerad Henson: We're getting experience with that. What about you, Emily?

Emily Van Der Veer: Yeah. Well, I think just like on more of a broad scale, what I love most about this program is, like he said, the applied side of it. Because I did learn so much during my undergrad, but you know, and I have a decent background of like working for a wildlife unit with the DNR. You know, I spent a lot of time in tractors and stuff, but Having it more focused on waterfowl and waterfowl management and how I can take that further into the future, I've learned so much. I mean, there's been a lot of days where it's like we say, drinking from a fire hose, but it's incredible. I mean, how much you can soak in from being around people who know more than you and who are willing to teach you. It's been fantastic so far. You never know what you're going to be doing the next day and it keeps you on your toes, but No, it's fun. It's been a blast. Really fortunate to be in here.

Ryan Askren: When did you remember that you're going to be on the podcast today?

Emily Van Der Veer: Yesterday.

Ryan Askren: I'd like to point out, I did put it on our calendar.

Emily Van Der Veer: Yeah, well, yeah.

Jerad Henson: We got that. It was a short notice, but we got her scheduled. Tal?

Tyler Wick: Yeah, so being from Indiana in my region, and especially in my academia at Franklin College especially, I had very little Little to no forestry background, and that is such a crucial part of just wildlife dynamics down here. And just to learning about that and some cool things that we're doing with these red oaks is studying their growth and reproduction in different basal areas and different types of settings, just as research. And I think that's very cool. in the now and then later in the future, just to understand how long-term that affects the forest, the wetland, and all the wildlife that uses it.

Jerad Henson: Yeah. And I imagine y'all probably getting questions this year about red oaks. Oh, yeah. Because as someone who walks around the bottoms a lot, there's not much production this year at all. We've felt that. So I think that's across the board. That's something that… But I think it's important to know, to understand the ecology, right, of red oaks. Last year was like walking on marbles, right? And red oaks are two year, right? Still low probably for what it normally would be.

Ryan Askren: Yeah, it's shocking. We've been searching. So we've got a greenhouse that we're growing seedlings in now as well, and we've been out searching. I finally found some on kind of some higher ridges, some water oaks was really the main one, which isn't super important in the lower areas than the bottom ones, traditionally. But those were the only viable acorns I found anywhere.

Jerad Henson: It's scary. I deer hunt a lot, and so that's my thing. I've been walking a lot looking for acorns and not finding near as many of them as I had hoped. But that will be a whole podcast in itself in the future, so we'll come back to that. But since you brought it up, I wanted to hit on that. I think one of the coolest parts is y'all are getting this land management experience. Y'all, when did you start?

Emily Van Der Veer: We came down here mid-August.

Jerad Henson: Mid-August. Early mid-August. Y'all have been, you've got your feet wet. You've been doing a lot of landscape. What's it look like? What has it look like? What have y'all been doing to get ready for duck season?

Emily Van Der Veer: Oh boy.

Jerad Henson: I'm going to lob a big, vague question at you. So what are some of the things y'all have done to, as I'm going to quote Jody and set the table. I know. Yeah. Can you tell I've talked to Jody before? Yeah. So what have y'all been doing?

Tyler Wick: Yeah. So one of the things we've been doing is, uh, in a big part of five Oaks is managing our most, most souls. And a lot of that is, uh, keeping stuff out and in. So like as Brendan brought up, we've been using our aerial applicator drone a lot and, uh, And also our survey drone, just to see what's there. We want to keep some Egyptian weed that Ryan had planted out earlier in the year for coverage, for thermal and visible coverage, because that's a huge part of the disturbance factor. And keeping ducks in the general area, not scaring them off. And wanting to keep Most coffee weed out, still want to leave some of it for the same thing, that visible structure.

Jerad Henson: Vague number of what, 30%? Something like that, a random vague number that they suggest. Which I would challenge. Well, I'm just saying that's the number that's thrown out. What else have y'all been? So you've been Boy Soul Management, GTR Management, obviously, trying to do some water management up until this, and I know we got a lot of water, and then we had no water, got a lot of water, and then had no water again. Yeah, yeah. So what does that look like for y'all?

Ryan Askren: These guys have been less on the water management this year, especially with as little water as we've had. I mean, we are almost entirely surface water driven. Right.

Jerad Henson: Y'all do have some really cool tailwater.

Ryan Askren: We do have some great water conservation, tailwater recovery reservoirs. Those are as dry as I've ever seen. Really? Yeah. So yeah, we've been Not struggling, we've been fortunate that we've been able to get some of the water that we need to kind of keep and hold ducks, but we're struggling on that side, but we're probably about 40% flooded up. Still have a lot of moist soil fields to go. Still have some of the millet and what we'd call the hot crops ready to flood for the later in December and January.

Jerad Henson: Well, I mean, there was a lot of natural food out there when water hit it because we hadn't had a frost yet still. So things are still growing in late November.

Ryan Askren: Still lots of bugs moving around.

Jerad Henson: Yeah. So that's pretty cool to see. So you've got moist soil, you've been doing GTR management. What else?

Emily Van Der Veer: A lot of, a lot of decoy rigging, brush and blinds getting, you know, hunting areas ready and making sure it's up to snuff. And I mean, that's, that's taken a lot of time, but it's fulfilling. I mean, it's satisfying once you're done. You're like, yeah, I mean, it took a while, but we got it and it looks good.

Ryan Askren: How many decoys do you think you guys rigged?

Brendan Hood: Do you know the number? Cause I know I haven't a clue. It's been a blur. It was a lot. But, you know, it's been really cool to see this side of the prep. I've never done anything like this. So, this was really cool to see the prep you do to each blind and pit and the decoys you got to do for all that. And it's been really, really, like you said, fulfilling because you get to go see it all and then eventually get to hunt it.

Jerad Henson: We've had, you've had our first nine days, ten days? Yep. Right?

Brendan Hood: Ten days, I think.

Jerad Henson: How was that rewarding? How did all that come to fruition? Like, did y'all have a pretty good opening split? I mean, it was hot.

Brendan Hood: It was decent. I know I got to hunt one of the ones that we helped brush up and everything and that was incredible. Awesome. And I enjoyed that. I haven't hunted anything like that in a while.

Jerad Henson: Well, I guess one of the other questions, not just from the hunting side of it, is it cool to watch the birds respond to your habitat manipulations, right? Y'all have been taking care of the habitat. And as someone who is a waterfowl hunter, but has also done some habitat management on the side, it's almost as addicting as blowing a duck call in decoys, right? You're getting the birds to respond to something you did. So what does that look like? What's some of the cool things that y'all have seen on that side?

Brendan Hood: So far, one of the fields that we got for moisture is right next to the highway. They call it the highway field. And right in the center of it right now, it's got some water on it. And there's ducks and a lot of snow geese that Ryan doesn't want in there. But there's some ducks in there too. And it's really cool getting to see them use something that you know that you helped put work into. That's really fulfilling.

Emily Van Der Veer: It is. It's so special.

Tyler Wick: Yeah, it's special. Like earlier, earlier in the year, me and Daniel, we took a tractor and rolled a Kelly out there to make some paths. And you can just from, from on the road, you can just see him cuffed up going into those places where you laid it down.

Jerad Henson: And for some of our listeners that are not ag specialists.

Tyler Wick: Oh, neither am I. What's a Kelly? A Kelly is just a, it's a very low, shallow tillage tool that you put on the back of a tractor. And it really, it doesn't till up much. It really just lays a lot of stuff down and makes it flat.

Jerad Henson: Real good for stubble management, right?

Ryan Askren: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Really, really fast. Pretty high speed tool. It's been pretty cool.

Jerad Henson: And y'all can do that with Moisul.

Ryan Askren: Yep. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And please don't do that with your rice or millet. No, no, no, no.

Tyler Wick: That's frowned upon.

Ryan Askren: Yeah, so yeah, in our Moisil and one of the things Tyler touched on me was Brendan, that coffee would component. So coffee weeds are very tall growing for our listeners that don't know. Coffee weeds are very tall growing legume that rice farmers absolutely hate. It's got a pretty woody stock, just makes kind of ugly, provides great vertical structure though. And one of the things we're dealing with now is, even in our moist soil. So I used to always say moist soil, natural, these natural, non-persistent emergent vegetation is really important because snow geese can't exploit that quite as easily as they can cereal grains, rice, millet. It's amazing. Even our moist soil right now has been covered up in snow geese and they've just been mowing it down. Except where we have thick coffee weed and the mallards, you can see them working up into that coffee weed and still still feeding around.

Jerad Henson: Yeah, I know that's a big thing that I've heard about on the landscape is we will, you know, we've talked about changing rice agriculture, but snow geese have really, really hit the availability of rice on landscape when the ducks get here. The geese did get here late this year, though.

Ryan Askren: The snow geese did. The specks were about on time for us. But this year, we had a really early harvest, and then we had some rains right after harvest. So we had a lot of green up. So I feel like the geese were hitting that green growth for quite a while. Now that they're starting to feed that off, and these frosts have started to cause that to senesce and die, that they're They're getting pretty heavy, right? Which, which can be frustrating to see, but well, part of God's creation too, I guess that's it. They got to eat too. Yep. Just adaptable. Just trying to get by.

Jerad Henson: That's it. What, so what other stuff do y'all have going on at, at, the research center there. I know y'all have got some land management seminars that y'all have put on. So teaching these not just to graduate students, but to industry professionals.

Ryan Askren: Yeah. Yeah. So we do a lot of outreach work with local duck club managers, property managers, owners, really trying to share what Jody and what we have learned at Five Oaks, what we've done that hasn't worked, what we have done that has worked. Really big emphasis on moist soil management. Uh, different kinds of tools and tricks like the Kelly has been one of them. That's kind of been a big change over the last five years. Uh, that's really changed how we manage that, uh, working with some of these research ideas to, to understand how we can better monitor and actually measure the benefits of those, uh, trying to share what we learned from that. Some of the other research we're doing transmitter work, uh, some DNA. Diet work, sharing the results of those to really, you know, say, Hey, this is, this is what's important to Mallard or what's important to ducks in our, in our region, in our geography.

Jerad Henson: That's a good segue because I did want to talk about some of those other research programs. Yeah, yeah. So what other research do y'all have going on?

Ryan Askren: Yep. So we, we started, uh, really interested in, in bomb on hardwood forest. So we're still, I shouldn't say we start interest in bomb on hardwood forest. We're interested in bomb on hardwood forest. We funded a project, uh, really doing a forest inventory to understand. Uh, our forest health across these different elevation gradients, which of course relate back to hydrology. Uh, we funded a soils project. So understanding the chemical and physical characteristics of soils and these GTR is hopefully learn some, what could be limiting. uh how you know the the man-altered hydrology into those GTRs, how that's influenced soil, yeah. Over several decades now, how that might be influencing those soils and in turn, tree health. We've also done some work. Sitco was kind enough to fund a thinning of one of our bottomland hardwood forests to really mimic what they've done on a lot of the WMAs in Arkansas. So we had one of the same foresters that marked a lot of timber on the WMAs come in. We did patch cuts, variable retention, which basically just means they change up how many what the basal area is across that area, and then a mix of the two, as well as a control. We then went in and planted seedlings back through all those at different elevations within that GTR. So now we can go back. We've got a bunch of them RTK fixed, random subsample those. We've got really fine GPS locations for each of those. We can go back and repeatedly measure, see how many are surviving, see what their growth rates are. Like and then relate that back to the canopy openness the light that's making it down to those those seedlings as well as the hydrology and the water depth. Messing a little bit with the with the sprayer drone fertilization boy souls one of those things that. Some people are doing, I wouldn't say it's super common, but like I know Fish and Wildlife Service used to do some, they've actually stopped because they weren't sure they were seeing a seed yield response to that. So now we've been going back and, you know, experimentally fertilizing some small plots in our moist soil fields.

Jerad Henson: And with the drone stuff, I know that I've talked to you and seen some stuff y'all been doing in the past too with The survey drone you were talking about, you also can take from, obviously LiDAR is fantastic, but you, from what I understand, you're able to get an idea of some topography as well just from the camera itself. I know, I don't remember what that's actually called.

Ryan Askren: Yeah, it's an oblique ortho mosaic, but it does some three-dimensional modeling of the canopy.

Jerad Henson: And so you can do different. like canopy levels as well.

Tyler Wick: That's a really cool thing.

Jerad Henson: I've seen some of your presentations that you've been doing. I think that's a really cool skill set to get a much better idea of how that variation in that forest health, right, can dictate how birds respond to it, and just in general how the ecosystem is acting, right, with a substory, without, those types of things.

Ryan Askren: I thought that was pretty neat. Yeah, and that's kind of my pet project is we're doing, as with a lot of groups, we're doing some Mallard transmitter research. So we've been deploying about 45 transmitters pre-duck season, every year, that the Mallard show up in time that we can catch them and bait out of the water. well before duck season, but really using that to hone in on kind of the fine scale habitat selection, what those forests look like that mallards are selecting for and how we can alter our forest management to really reflect what those… And where y'all are putting those out, that's really cool.

Jerad Henson: One of the cool things about the location for Five Oaks is you have an incredible mosaic of private duck clubs, public land, ag land, and you can look at use across all those different things within that three, four mile radius of kind of what I guess people would call a duck home range kind of idea, right? So you're not looking at big movements, you're looking at local daily movements, and I think that's a pretty cool look at that big model.

Ryan Askren: It is. I mean, the insights it's given us already, scrub shrub habitat is one of the things that's coming out as really the most important land cover, so things like bunbush, reservoirs, willow sloughs, those kind of things, really, I mean, it's emphasizing how important habitat that minimizes disturbance on a duck is.

Jerad Henson: It's the lacking habitat, too, in that landscape, if it's all mostly ag and… Yeah, it's very limited.

Ryan Askren: So, yeah, it's been really neat to see how those transmirrors are moving around. We actually, on the way up, I checked the transmirrors, and we've got one that's hopped over to Tennessee. Yeah, it's over on Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge. I don't know why he left Five Oaks and decided to come over here. Dangerous movie.

Jerad Henson: Is their season in now, technically? When's Tennessee come back in? They went out for a little bit. I think they come back in today.

Ryan Askren: Well, at least he moved during the split, too.

Jerad Henson: He wasn't getting shot at to move at that point. Yeah. That's weird. It is. So you've got some partnership projects as well. Like you mentioned, you work with some of the people at UAM as well. I know you've had the CIG, which project was that?

Ryan Askren: Yeah. So that's looking at a conservation and innovation grant with USDA. So really looking at the soil benefits of moist soil management. So working in kind of our units and how we manage already. using some of the history of how we've managed that to now understand the soil health, to really go to USDA.

Tyler Wick: It's a hot topic. It is.

Ryan Askren: It is. And really to get programs implemented to help fund farmers to do some of these duck-friendly practices, but also understand how that's improving the soil and incentivize those, provide payments to them. So that's a conservation innovation grant. We just had a field day. I guess just a couple months ago, but had a bunch of local landowners, you know, people that hopefully will be practicing some of these moist soil management practices and kind of subpar fields, areas that they aren't making a lot of money on being able to… Right, it could be a way to hopefully repair the soil health in some of those areas that have just been plowed and plowed and plowed for three years.

Jerad Henson: Yeah, while providing some habitat. And I know y'all had another partner project that was an IRA, like a Climate Smart Grant, looking at, is it, it's forest biomass, right?

Ryan Askren: Carbon accumulation a little bit. It's very multifaceted, and we're just partners on that. So that's Dr. Osborne, Dr. Nantian, Dr. Pelkey's on it. And there were a few other folks that I should remember all their names from.

Jerad Henson: Well, it's just really cool to see that. Trying to get it all those different benefits, right? Yeah, of the habitat, right? Not just sell duck benefits.

Ryan Askren: Yeah, right. And this one, it is it's multifaceted and it's working to understand, you know, carbon sequestration, some of those really climate change driven. areas of research, but also looking at how it can affect landowners and how these incentive programs can benefit landowners, as well as the duck side. So we've got some transmitters working on that to understand how ducks are using these areas, which is something like 700,000 acres that we've restored in Arkansas, which is absolutely incredible. I mean, that's one of the only wetland you know, gains that we're getting back.

Jerad Henson: Arkansas and Louisiana are the two that are putting the, we like to, we like WRE.

Ryan Askren: Yeah, WRE is fantastic for farmers and for ducks.

Jerad Henson: Exactly. I think I've got a much better idea of what y'all are doing. Now I'm going to tease you for a migration update. What are y'all seeing on the landscape? I know y'all just drove over this morning.

Ryan Askren: It was kind of a nasty weather, so you didn't get a great view, but we saw a couple fields of ducks, lots of snow geese.

Brendan Hood: I feel like I saw more than I did last week, but I couldn't be wrong.

Jerad Henson: There were some rumors, I think, the last Sunday of the season, I guess Sunday after Thanksgiving with that front that brought some birds in. Yeah.

Ryan Askren: So, yeah, we, we got the Halloween mallards, Mr. Jody calls them. So we, we had quite a few mallards show up right around Halloween. Some of the spots that we have always have early water is where they piled up first, lots of Pentel and Gadwall. Then really the two or three days right before season, we saw a big uptick in Mallard numbers. I'll preface that by saying we're really lucky that we've had some good surface water to flood up with so we're able to have water showing for those earliest arriving ducks when a lot of people around us didn't. And some of your neighbors did too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got some fantastic neighbors that do great management and really, you know, we all work together to keep ducks in that area. So we saw a lot of Mallards before season, then yeah, about right around Thanksgiving, we had seemed like another great push with those cold temperatures. And honestly, I think a lot of what people perceive as low duck numbers is just ducks altering their behavior to not move around and not be visible. They're good at. going places that they're not disturbed, not getting shot at. So we've had a lot of ducks. They haven't been super visible. They haven't been moving a ton. But like, for instance, you could go out at night and just watch them pouring onto our property from the neighbors when you wouldn't think there were that many ducks out there. Yeah, some of that's altered behavior, but I was really impressed with the number of mallards we had around. Really, our rice fields struggled the most. We really didn't see as many greenwing up around there, which is usually kind of one of our staples of hunting up there. Towards the end, though, I was starting to see bigger greenwing numbers, a couple thousand around a few of those farms. So hopefully, the second part of the season, they'll be around.

Jerad Henson: Well that's good news. Hopefully we'll get some water on the landscape for those folks who didn't catch it early. I know we just got a little rain in that region that kind of hit the mid-south and that's where most of this area is we're kind of talking about. Hopefully that rain will help out. Is there any closing thoughts that you want to say about the research center or anything y'all want to say before? we start to wrap this thing up?

Ryan Askren: No, I mean, we're here to provide research that's making a difference for waterfowl and wetland conservation, working to educate people. Happy to partner with folks whenever there's an interest there. We're getting ready to advertise for our next year's graduate certificate class. So if there's any undergraduates out there who are interested in getting a degree in waterfowl and wetland management, come to work with us. Please reach out to me. I'll take so between three and five between three. This is the smallest class we've had. We had five last year, but really, I mean.

Jerad Henson: And where do people go from here?

Ryan Askren: So that's kind of another question. We've had, I've got to count it up now, we've had at least three go to Ducks Unlimited, a couple in Fish and Wildlife Service, really not state agencies yet, several private landowners, so managing private properties, and then a few on for their master's or even doctorate coming out of this program. We, of course, we're focused on the management side. I come from movement, ecology, research background. Doug comes from research background, so they get roped into doing a lot of what I think is really fun research stuff. I'm not sure they'll agree with me at the end of February when they've been burning it at both ends, catching ducks for a month, but yeah.

Jerad Henson: And February gets real busy for y'all. It does. But it's really cool, the research coming out of it. And I think this program is really unique and it's something that the space needed. Y'all got anything y'all want to say?

Emily Van Der Veer: No, I just, I mean, it's a special opportunity. And if someone, you know, like you said, getting ready to advertise for the next class, it's something you think you'd be interested in, you know, it's worth a shot.

Tyler Wick: Yeah. Very, very rarely, maybe once in a lifetime, will you be able to dedicate practically a full year to ducks and wetland ecology. And that is a very rare opportunity and you wouldn't regret it. If you love ducks and avid duck hunter and you just appreciate the wildlife and God's beautiful creation, man, it leaves you speechless, leaves me speechless every day.

Brendan Hood: always is. Yeah, this is like a waterfowl dream come true here, this opportunity that we got to have here. And it's definitely something I've always wanted to do is waterfowl habitat stuff, because it's just an amazing opportunity to get to be there in person, doing the work by hand is the best thing you can do.

Jerad Henson: I'm jealous a little bit. I definitely need to find a way to come down more often. Yeah, you do. Definitely worst places to be. Oh, I can imagine. Well, we're going to close it out here. I really want to thank Ryan, Emily, Tyler, and Brendan for joining me today. Our special guest from Five Oaks Ag Research Center. Got to thank our awesome producer, Chris Isaacs, back here, the man behind the computer, and our listeners for joining in. We can't do this without y'all. So thanks for joining in. We're so glad that y'all hopped on this, and we'll catch y'all on the next one.