Lets Read
speaker
6,482 appearances
7 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 8 Sep
Lets Read’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 4.
Appearances
I've been an employee of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission for almost 10 years now, and while I love my job, it's hard going sometimes.
Now to cut a long story short, we're the agency responsible for taking care of the state's wildlife, along with the various habitats that they call home.
Now, it's also our job to issue licenses to hunters that we deem safe and responsible, and we handle a lot of the educational materials regarding stuff like hunting and boating safety.
Now, we also run conservation programs to ensure the state's natural beauty can be enjoyed for generations to come.
But it's not all rubber stamps and giving lectures to elementary school kids.
There's a dark side to the job, and that dark side mostly consists of investigating hunting accidents.
Our wildlife officers investigate reports of animal attacks, but also accidents like tree stand falls, and then we try to integrate what we learn into prevention programs so repeat incidents don't occur.
But in more severe cases, especially those involving criminal negligence, which, God forbid, result in fatalities, we coordinate with local law enforcement for more thorough probes.
Now, I've been unfortunate enough to have been involved in about two dozen investigations of that nature, and each and every one of them involving serious injury or loss of life were both physically and mentally challenging.
but there's only one such incident that manages to send shivers down my spine, even all these years later, and it's this one.
Just over six years ago, we got a call one day from the Marion County Sheriff's Department saying that there had been a real nasty hunting accident up near a place called Yellville.
Accidents are rare, so we were shocked just to get a call like that, but once we heard the details, we just about had to pick up our damn jaws off the floor afterwards.
Apparently, there had been two hunters out in the woods, and they'd been stalking this old buck for hours and hours.
They'd noticed it had been acting a little funny while they'd been trailing it, but nothing too out of the ordinary, so they kept on its tail till they had themselves a decent shot.
One of the hunters lines up his sights, takes his shot, and the buck goes down.
But then instead of walking straight over there to take their pictures and haul it away, they stopped, watched, and waited.
You see, hunters can't just walk up to their kills after they go down because sometimes the deer is just stunned and can wake up and choose violence as soon as the hunters start poking and prodding around.
Our safety briefs advise folks to wait at least 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the animal and where the shot landed.
This way they can ensure their prey is passed on and won't be a threat to them during trophy pictures or transportation.
Our two hunters up near Yellowvale weren't cowboys either.
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