Arkansas Game and Fish Commission
104 episodes listed below
The machinery behind Arkansas outdoors.
Arkansas Wildlife is a grounded field-and-office look at outdoor management in Arkansas. Trey Reed talks with Game and Fish staff and partner organizations about hatcheries, mussels, deer hunts, lake habitat, education projects, and the decisions behind public wildlife work.
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Arkansas Wildlife presents conservation as a series of concrete jobs, choices, repairs, and partnerships across Arkansas. Trey Reed anchors the conversations with a plainspoken, staff-room rhythm. The show is outdoorsy, but it is also administrative in the best sense: it cares how hatcheries are designed, how grants become habitat work, and how rules make public programs possible. Fisheries are a major thread. Episodes explain warm water and cold water hatcheries, the renovated Joe Hogan Hatchery, trout production at the Jim Hinkle State Fish Hatchery, and the recovery work after the Mammoth Spring flood in April 2025. The details are often granular. That is the appeal. A discussion of northwest Arkansas fisheries can move from walleye runs and tailwater temperatures to Beaver Watershed Alliance projects and hundreds of cedar-tree fish habitat sites in Beaver Lake. The show also makes room for less familiar conservation subjects. Freshwater mussels are treated as vital aquatic infrastructure, with attention to filtering, dam impacts, thermal change, peaking flows, surveys, translocation, and culturing work. Hunting coverage is similarly practical. The urban deer hunt episode centers bowhunting, program requirements, International Bow Hunter Education, and the coordination behind archery hunts in developed areas. The Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation episode adds the support structure behind the commission, including nonprofit funding, education, game warden support, and a statewide board. Arkansas Wildlife is not built around hot takes. It is built around explanation. Guests speak from field experience, agency work, nonprofit involvement, or program administration, and Reed keeps the conversation moving without sanding off the technical parts. The result is a useful guide to how outdoor recreation is maintained after the photo-worthy moment has passed. It suits anglers curious about stocking and habitat, hunters tracking program details, conservation-minded residents, and anyone who wants a clearer view of public wildlife work in The Natural State.
Made for: For Arkansas anglers, hunters, conservation volunteers, outdoor educators, and residents who want to understand how wildlife programs actually operate. It especially rewards listeners who enjoy specific place names, staff expertise, and practical management detail.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by putting agency staff and conservation partners in the foreground, where hatchery renovations, mussel surveys, watershed projects, and hunting program requirements get patient explanation. It is less lifestyle talk than behind-the-scenes public wildlife work.
Arkansas Wildlife is the official podcast of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The show features hunting, fishing and other outdoor recreation in The Natural State. It also provides a look behind the scenes of the Game and Fish Commission's conservation work.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical look at the hatcheries behind Arkansas fishing.
Arkansas Wildlife spends its hour on the less visible machinery that keeps Arkansas fishing going: the hatcheries behind warm-water and trout production. It lands best when it treats those places as working infrastructure, not just buildings on a map.
A practical look at northwest Arkansas fisheries, habitat work, and the seasonal patterns behind the bite.
Northwest Arkansas fisheries are treated here as something practical and lived-in, not abstract. John Stein lays out how the region's waters, seasons, and habitat shape the fish people target, from Beaver Lake to the King's River and Beaver Tailwater.
A practical look at freshwater mussels, water quality, and the restoration work tied to Arkansas rivers.
Arkansas Wildlife turns to freshwater mussels, linking Arkansas's long harvest history for buttons and cultured pearls with the quieter work these animals do in filtering water. Trey Reed's talk with Dr.
Trey Reed and Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Deputy Director Ben Batten explain regulation changes taking effect July 1, including a one-smallmouth-over-15-inches limit on designated streams.
Arkansas Wildlife host Trey Reed interviews fisheries staff Eric Noss and Will Lancet about the first Legacy Lunker donation period, which produced 19 bass and a 12.63-pound largest fish from DeGray.
Arkansas Wildlife Podcast episode 89 focuses on the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s hatchery system, including four warm-water hatcheries and the Jim Hinkle Spring River State Fish Hatchery at Mammoth Spring.
John Stein, district one fishery supervisor for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, explains how Northwest Arkansas shifted from 500,000 people in 2020 to 630,000 today.
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission host Trey Reed and Dr.
This episode features an interview with representatives from the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation discussing its 40-year history as a nonprofit supporting the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission through education and conservation programs.
This episode discusses urban archery hunts in Arkansas, featuring experts from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and the Arkansas Bow Hunters Association to explore the program's history, regulations, and bow hunter education requirements.