Chris Jones and Ricky Dale Harrington

Arkansas Democrat- Gazette outdoor writer Bryan Hendricks recently met with Arkansas gubernatorial candidates Chris Jones, the Democratic Party candidate, and Ricky Dale Harrington, the Libertarian Party candidate, to discuss issues of interest to the hunters, anglers and other outdoor enthusiasts of Arkansas. Hendricks interviewed Jones on Monday at Jones’s campaign head quarters in Little Rock. He interviewed Harrington on Tuesday at the Witt Stephens Central Arkansas Nature Center in Little Rock. The candidates were presented with the same questions, and we have printed their answers without adding editorial context or elaboration. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Republican Party candidate, declined our offer to be interviewed.

Do you hunt and fish? For how long?

JONES I’ve fished pretty much all my life. Down in Pine Bluff, my dad would take me to the pond or lake. We used worms or crickets. That’s where my dad taught me how to fish. I’ve taught my girls how to fish. I haven’t hunted nearly as much. I have friends who are avid hunters and their parents. I’ve been out, but not as much as I would want to. I enjoy bass because it’s a fighter. And catfish. I don’t necessarily go looking for a particular fish. I go to enjoy the time with my family and get away.

HARRINGTON I hunt and fish. I’ve been fishing as far back as I can remember. One of my fondest memories is my family getting together and going fishing at Lake of the Pines in East Texas. My grandmother taught how to fish. It’s one of those things you hand down, a skill I think people need to have, especially with the way food prices are right now. This natural resource that we have here in Arkansas might be a way for people to supplement the daily food needs that they have. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, I have to give them props on a lot of things. Getting a fishing license, a hunting license, you know the big package is $25 with the six deer tags, and we have plenty of wildlife management areas, places they can go hunt if they don’t personally have any land. That was one of the things that really opened my eyes when I moved to Arkansas because I never really saw any of those places in East Texas. Hurricane Creek is over there in the Searcy area. Plenty of time fishing up there, plenty of squirrel hunting, but not much deer hunting with me, and if I did do it, I’d probably have to do it with a crossbow. I like to fish for catfish, go out there, relax, take in nature and wait for somebody to get on that pole. When the crappie are spawning, I’ve got to get after them.

What’s your most memorable outdoors experience?

JONES Back when I was a kid, I used to love riding dirt bikes, going out to find natural dirt mounds and riding those is what pops into my mind when you say memorable.

HARRINGTON Oh, That’s a hard one. I would say my most memorable experience was going up there in the Pangburn area around the Little Red (River) and learning about trout fishing. Don’t know nothing about that from Texas. That cold water there, and it was probably about 100 degrees outside, just the difference between the temperature. Coming to find out you can catch the rainbows hand over fist with a can of corn was just shocking to me. Maxed out that day.

How do hunting and fishing fit into the fabric of Arkansas culture?

JONES I think it is the fabric. I think it’s a critical part, and yet I do think there are barriers we can remove to make it more accessible for a lot of folks. It’s an economic driver for our state. It’s a cultural driver for our state. It’s a way to bring people together. It provides food and can address some of our food insecurity issues that we have in the state. And I think it’s a brand thing. We talk about duck, yes. We talk about some of the fishing, yes, but I think we could do more. What I love, there’s a group of hunters that donate the meat ( Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry). Whether it’s Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry or making sure people know you can do your own hunting and fishing to provide food for yourself. To me that’s an opportunity.

HARRINGTON Well, Arkansas has had that frontier culture, that kind of self-sustaining culture of rugged individualism, which is also kind of Libertarian philosophy. And the heritage of living off the land is still available to us. Like I said before, people might not own land, but I’m grateful we do have public land and our culture, we just take a look at all the things that led to us becoming a state and going out and trying to start a business for yourself in those natural resources with fur trading and things like that.

What is your perception of how wildlife and fisheries conservation is funded?

JONES I know we have the optional additional fee you can pay. I know we can get it funded through the licenses and the like. I think we can and should have more of a dedicated fund for it. It’s at the intersection of some really important things. One, it’s at the intersection of education, economic development, conservation writ large, and when you’re at that critical intersection, I think you have to support it.

HARRINGTON My perception of it is a lot of the funds do come from the licenses for fishing. Some people might have a problem with it, but I see the wonderful benefits because of the revenue that’s generated from licenses that we do pay to continue on these services. Some concerns I do have, we’re starting to see CWD (chronic wasting disease) pop up in a lot of counties in Southern Arkansas that didn’t have it. If I recall, Union County not too long ago had to deal with an outbreak there. I don’t know how we’re going to accomplish it, but I would advocate for more research dedicated to ending that so we can preserve our deer population. It would be terrible for the population to be wiped out.

What is the governor’s role in conserving our state’s fish and wildlife?

JONES One is an ambassador role, being a promoter and ambassador of the value of conserving our land, appropriate licenses and fishing and the like. Two, ensuring there’s a conversation around what are the appropriate regulations so that people have a freedom and ability to go out and fish and hunt as much as they want to within the bounds that will allow us to be long-term sustainable. That comes down to who the governor appoints to the boards and commissions.

HARRINGTON As governor, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is in the Executive Branch, and the role there for the governor is, of course, to administrate the duties, functions and mission of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. And some of the things I would like to administrate is to eradicate some of the invasive species, particularly bighead carp — silver fin — as called by some people that want to sell those fish. And the only way really for us to get rid of them is to eat them out of existence. Maybe advocating for allowing night hunting for hogs, maybe for extending hog season to eradicate feral hogs on public lands because wild hogs decimate natural vegetation. Some of the natural mushrooms, fungi and fauna, they just obliterate it, so any avenue we can take to allow people to harvest those animals and maybe to get food for their families to bring that population down as much as we can.

How important is hunting and fishing to Arkansas’ economy?

JONES It’s huge, but, you know, I think it’s one of the three or four most essential aspects of it. Transportation is huge. Hunting and fishing is huge. Tourism has the potential to [be huge] but, you know, we’re not quite there. So I put it in the top three or four.

HARRINGTON Well, I know that there are not that many hunting ranches where someone can come in and harvest an animal at a big game ranch. It’s my understanding that they have been reducing the number of permits they are giving. If they wanted to start to get tourism, particularly outdoor tourism coming to Arkansas, you have to remove the red tape and open the market up. That’s what we have to do.

How do you view the Game and Fish Commission taking a lead role in promoting shooting sprots amont our state’s young people?

JONES I think it helps the national debate because it promotes appropriate safe gun use and gun familiarity, which I think is essential, and I think it changes the narrative around the gun culture, so I think it’s a really good thing. But I don’t think it’s divorced from the other [gun violence]. I think they are connected, and it helps us enter the conversation around safety writ large because to me it’s another venue by which you can understand the tool. I think about karate. You don’t learn karate to go out and beat up someone. You learn karate as a safety mechanism to help your body, and as you learn it, you actually become more disciplined. And so I think the educational aspect, teaching kids, actually helps them develop that discipline, so they can help somebody else develop discipline.

HARRINGTON I think it’s absolutely responsible and (Game and Fish) the right group to be leading the discussion. Sometimes someone may jump into a discussion that may not be the right person to be leading it. We also have to have hunter’s education. In hunter’s education we learn what to do when you’re getting out there in the woods. Let somebody know that you’re going out there. How to protect yourself so nobody thinks you’re some wildlife out there and end up getting shot. How to handle your firearms, where that muzzle is pointed. It better be pointed a direction that is not a human being or someone’s living area. Be safe with your firearms. There’s a lot of training out there that’s already available to educate people in how to deal with firearms, how to deal with going out to public lands. In my opinion, they’re doing a wonderful job.

Should Game and Fish be more aggressive to recruit a greater cross section of our state’s population in hunting, fishing and target shooting?

JONES Absolutely. I go back to my own childhood. By diverse, I assume you mean people of color, women, different cultures. I don’t want to see anyone left on the sidelines. I want everybody in the game, and I believe that being intentional will only help the industry because then you have a larger cross-section of people. It’s related to access 100%. I think the barrier to entry, at least the perceived barrier in terms of the cost of your hunting tools, your clothes, location … The educational barrier to entry also is higher. I think that is what prevents it.

HARRINGTON I’ll make a joke here. And, uh, I’m not trying to be offensive at all, but you know the conversations that we have behind closed doors. It was always when we [were] coming up that hunting and fishing was a thing that white people did, right? At least some of the young folks that I hung around with back in the day. But it’s really not. It’s an American thing, being able to go out, hunt and provide for yourself and family. And if you’re not much of a ‘I need to fill my freezer full of meat,’ type of person, then just the enjoyment because there’s a lot of opportunities to get overstressed in the world right now. Being out in the peace, nature, and seeing the wonderful creation that we have here in the state, it would be nice to encourage it more for other people.

What should Game and Fish efforts look like to be more inclusive in these areas?

JONES That’s a question I would want to sit down and really talk with folks about, but I will say what comes to mind are things like making sure you’re showing up. Making sure Game and Fish has a tent or booth at UAPB’s homecoming. It’s a black college. It’s an agricultural college. It’s a natural synergy. It’s in South Arkansas, so you’re really integrating there. It’s a perfect fit. Imagine if the two worked together and they showed up in a major way in that space. That’s what I would say.

HARRINGTON I hate to use the line from ‘identity politics’ or anything, but when we do some of the, pretty much propaganda, but it’s not in the negative sense of propaganda. Anything that we put out to change peoples’s minds in essence is propaganda. But showing other ethnicities or people groups out there hunting would encourage that to be a part of just who we are as Arkansans. We have to work to be more inclusive without being offensive and do it in a way that doesn’t rile up peoples’s anger, but focuses back to the main thing, which is this natural resource that we have and the availability for all Arkansans to reap the benefits of it.

How do you perceive Game and Fish intrastructure needs?

JONES Funny you mention water management. My very first research project was at UAPB, and I built a laser device to measure the muddiness of water. There’s a laser on one end and a detector on the other end. The idea is that in clear water, the laser will give a certain signal - return time, the strength of the signal and what-not. In muddy water it takes longer, so the intensity is lower, and what I was doing in building that device was doing it so you wouldn’t have to take a sample, but you could real-time figure out the turbidity of water. All that’s to say is I think — that was 30 years ago — and that’s not equipment that’s used, but I think it’s important to look around the corner. So to what extent are we developing new equipment and using our educational institutions to help? How are we using drones? Because that to me, with the right infrastructure and equipment, we can attract folks to the space more.

HARRINGTON I think about the Sulphur River Wildlife Management Area. They’ve been doing a lot of work with the Mercer Bayou trying to reestablish the fisheries down there and to make it a little bit, just to build infrastructure a little bit more. I appreciate that work down there. And I walked into this place ( The Witt Stephens Central Arkansas Nature Center) free of charge. And a lot of the centers like this are free of charge to Arkansans, and you can’t really argue with that, and this is a wonderful museum here just showing us what we really have and not to take it for granted.

How do you perceive the role of public land in porviding recreational activities like hunting and fishing to Arkansas citizens?

JONES Again, I think it’s an important role. What I’ve loved about the campaign is being able to go out and travel the state and really explore. Anytime I can pull aside and enjoy the public lands, I think it’s helpful. It also helps for long-term sustainability.

HARRINGTON As I said before, it just completely opened my eyes whenever I first came here to Arkansas and to have access to those public lands. I would never have been able to hunt if it hadn’t been for public lands, just plain and simple. I wouldn’t be able to because I don’t own land. Maybe there are more people in Arkansas that are like myself that don’t own land but are avid hunters and fishers, and, I mean, we couldn’t do it without it.

What qualities would you look for in the people you would appoint to the Game and Fish Commission?

JONES Love Arkansas. Have care and concern about all Arkansans. I’d do a gap analysis of the knowledge that’s needed. You don’t need everyone to know about all the regulations. You don’t need everyone to know about economic development. You don’t need everyone to know about how the funding mechanisms work, but collectively you need it. And then, folks who have been in it for awhile, who understand the culture, who have been around for awhile. That’s what I would look for.

HARRINGTON Number one quality is integrity obviously because we’re dealing with natural resources that we’re managing for the people of Arkansas.

Jones

Harrington