A True Conservationist: William F. "Bill" Hailey 1930-2010

Some of this country’s greatest conservationists are people who work tirelessly behind the scenes to protect the outdoor wonders so many of us take for granted. One such person was William F. “Bill” Hailey of Little Rock, Ark. who passed away this morning at the age of 79.

You probably never heard of Bill. In part, this is because he never sought recognition for anything he did. He worked diligently throughout his life to protect our wildlife resources, yet never stepped into the limelight. The things he’s done have had far-reaching, positive effects, however, and all of us who love the outdoors owe him a debt of gratitude for devoting himself endlessly to the conservation ethic.

On March 11, 1957, at the age of 26, Bill Hailey fulfilled a dream he’d had since he was very young of becoming a conservation agent for the Missouri Dept. of Conservation (MDC). He might have begun this career earlier except for a couple of things. First, he voluntarily joined the Marines during the Korean War and spent 14 months in active combat as a tank crewman in that country. Second, the MDC had a requirement in those days that conservation agent applicants must be between the ages of 25 and 33, and Bill wasn’t old enough to apply until a couple of years after he returned home from Korea. During the interim, he worked as a guard in a Missouri state penitentiary.

In 1957, however, Bill was one of eight men chosen to become conservation agents for the MDC. He was assigned to an 860-square-mile piece of Ozark Mountains territory and lived in the town of Potosi—an ideal location, he felt, because the area was laced with streams full of smallmouth bass. In his off-hours, Bill enjoyed fishing and canoeing.

Soon after, Bill met the former Goldie Lee Wilson, a young lady teaching eight grades of school children in a one-room schoolhouse in Berryman. They were wed on July 10, 1960 and never parted. They would have celebrated their 50th anniversary later this year.

Because Bill married a girl who lived in the same area in which he worked as a game warden, the MDC required him to move. So immediately after his marriage, he was reassigned to Carthage in Jasper County, Missouri. His salary that year, he says, was $3,780, and “We basically started with nothing.”

What Bill did possess was an intense passion for his job as conservation officer. He was enforcing game and fish laws in the field practically every day year-round. And to improve relations with local residents, he took on additional tasks. He wrote weekly newspaper columns about wildlife law enforcement issues for the Carthage Evening Press, the Joplin Globe, the Sarcoxie News and the Golden City Herald, and made regular appearances on local TV and radio programs. He also was a regular guest speaker at every civic club group in his assigned area, and later an active member (and president) of the Lion’s Club.

Bill’s work as a conservation agent opened up a world of interesting opportunities. He was part of a bird-banding team that spent weeks in Alberta, Canada, working with waterfowl, and was responsible for annual censuses of prairie chickens on Missouri’s virgin prairies. These tasks led to a lifelong love of birding, a passion he often indulged.

Bill later worked in Missouri’s Ripley and Ozark counties. Then, in 1981, he retired from his decades-long career with the MDC and moved to Little Rock, Arkansas where he became assistant chief of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission (AGFC) Enforcement Division and head of the state’s new Boating Education program. Soon after he was promoted to Education Division chief where he helped launch the state’s fledgling Hunter Education program.

While Bill excelled in his work in education, wildlife law enforcement was what he loved doing most. When his friend David Herman became chief of AGFC’s Enforcement Division, Bill accepted Herman’s offer to come back to his former job as assistant chief of the division. During the months that followed, Bill continued as he always had—working diligently to ensure that wildlife laws were enforced fairly yet firmly. And through it all, from the time he became a conservation agent in 1957 until he retired almost 40 years later, he was guided by the principles of our nation’s great conservationists, including people such as Harold Alexander in Arkansas and Werner Nagel in Missouri who were among his many close friends.

In particular, Bill was a student of Aldo Leopold, one of the foremost conservationists of the 20th century, and he was constantly guided by the principles Leopold laid out in his Sand County Almanac, a book Bill made required reading for every cadet who went through the AGFC enforcement academy.

“Conservation is a state of harmony between man and land,” Leopold wrote. That principle guided Bill Hailey as he supervised, taught and mentored people of all stripes who joined the ranks of state wildlife agency employees.

During the years Bill worked at the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission and Missouri Department of Conservation, he was a respected leader who dedicated himself to working with a wide variety of conservation groups. He was a longtime member of the Wildlife Society (serving as president of both the Missouri and Arkansas chapters), served for many years on the board of directors of the Arkansas Audubon Society, was secretary/treasurer of the Law Enforcement section of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies for 10 years and a longtime member of the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators. In addition, he annually taught wildlife law enforcement to students of the national Wildlife Management Short Course at Colorado State University, he was long-time secretary for the Fraternal Order of Police, an active member of his church, and served as AGFC liaison to the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services.

Bill worked as assistant enforcement chief until 1993, when finally, after a career that spanned 36 years at two state wildlife agencies, he decided it was time to retire. Retirement didn’t suit him, however. A month after leaving the AGFC, he returned and started working part-time for the Wildlife Management Division, taking on a variety of tasks that included everything from managing fur-buyer records to answering questions from the public about wildlife and wildlife laws. During this period, too, he served as a mentor for many young employees, teaching them lessons about conservation and human nature that no doubt will serve them well throughout their careers. Never has there been a greater teacher of conservation and ethics than this gentleman who taught by example as well as by words.

Bill Hailey was one of my best friends, and I am fortunate to be one of those who learned from his example. I will never be able to emulate his life as a dedicated conservationist, but as a writer, the sentences I craft will always contain a measure of the things he taught me about conservation, ethics and service to others.

In writing this column, I had only one real goal: to be sure Bill is remembered for being the one thing he strived ever day to be—a true conservationist. After two full careers with two of the nation’s top wildlife agencies and years of dedication to scores of conservation groups and their causes, he deserves nothing less. He is one of the unsung heroes to whom we owe much more than we can ever repay.

A World of Bass

When it was announced recently that a 22-pound, 4-ounce, world-record largemouth bass had been caught in Japan (photo courtesy of IGFA.org), a lot of U.S. bass anglers were puzzled. A friend of mine said what was on the minds of many: “A world-record bass in Japan? I didn’t even know they had bass in Japan.”

Here’s another bit of bass trivia unknown to many: largemouth bass have been exported to at least 61 countries. And many of these introductions began back in the nineteenth century.

Originally, largemouth bass were found only in the eastern United States, parts of southern Canada and perhaps parts of northern Mexico. But since the late 1800s, their range has expanded to include portions of every state in the U.S. except Alaska. Largemouths are now available to more U.S. anglers than any other species of fish.

According to FishBase.org, a worldwide web electronic publication full of interesting scientific data about fishes, Belgium and France were probably the first foreign countries where largemouths were stocked. Bass were exported to those countries in 1877. England got largemouths in 1879, Germany in 1888 and Italy in 1897.

The first South American fish were stocked in Brazil in the early 1900s. And more American bass were exported to Argentina, Bolivia and Colombia.

In 1907, the Philippines became the first Asian nation to get bass. Largemouths made it to Japan and Hong Kong in 1925, to Fiji in 1962 and to Korea in 1963.

Africa received its first stockings in 1928 when bass from the Netherlands were stocked in South Africa and bass from the U.S. were stocked in Kenya.

Hawaii received its first imports in 1897, 62 years before it became a U.S. state. Among the many island nations to receive largemouths were Cuba (1928), Puerto Rico (1946) and Madagascar (1951).

Soon, the countries where bass had been introduced were introducing bass to their neighbors. European countries started stocking other European countries. African nations stocked other African nations.

Fish from Germany, for example, were stocked in Poland, Finland, Denmark, Hungary and Austria. South African largemouths spread to Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho and Botswana.

And the U.S. continued exporting bass to countries around the world.

The trend continued throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, with largemouths finding new homes in Panama, Spain, Cyprus, Russia and many more countries. In all, at least 61 countries have received exports of North America’s favorite sportfish.

Largemouths didn’t thrive everywhere they were stocked, and you may be surprised to learn they weren’t welcomed everywhere they did thrive either. Introduced bass have, in some places, affected populations of native fishes through predation, sometimes resulting in the decline or extinction of such species. In some lakes, introduced largemouths wiped out all the native fish that had previously existed.

Here’s another fact I found rather astounding. Largemouth bass are on the list of “100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species” created by the New Zealand based Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG), a branch of the World Conservation Union. According to the ISSG, alien invasion is second only to habitat loss as a cause of species endangerment and extinction. And the largemouth bass is among the worst alien invaders. Other species in the top 100 list include the feral pig, Indian mongoose, zebra mussel, house cat, gypsy moth, kudzu, black rat, European starling, fire ant, avian malaria, Asian tiger mosquito and common carp. I had no idea bass kept such company.

In some countries—Japan, for example—wars have been waged between bass fishermen who consider largemouths desirable and other groups who contend bass are alien nuisances that should be eliminated before they further damage fragile ecosystems. Ol’ Micropterus salmoides is no more highly regarded in some areas than snakehead fish are in American waters.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times about six years ago, Minuro Sato, the director of Japan's National Federation of Fisheries Cooperative Association, said, “Japanese bass fishing is a ‘dark fishing’ and cannot be called a sport. Bass anglers are very bad mannered — parking a car on a plowed field, interrupting traffic, cutting off lures if gotten caught in fishing nets. It is a lawless situation regarding a foreign fish.”

Those words express the feelings of many foreign nationals toward bass. Nevertheless, there still are many exotic destinations where an angler can try his hand at catching largemouths. These include Moncoutant, a fishing-oriented center in France, which encompasses 250 acres of bass waters; Lake Caspe, Spain, site of the 2004 European Bass Classic; lakes Odeleite, Beliche, Funcho and Santa Clara in southern Portugal; Midmar and Inanda Dams, South Africa; Darwendale Lake in Zimbabwe, which produced an 18-pound, 4-ounce largemouth in July 2004; Lake Ait Aadel in Morocco; Lucchetti and Guajataca reservoirs in Puerto Rico; and lakes Caliraya and Lumot in the Philippines.

And, of course, let’s don’t forget Japan’s Lake Biwa where, on July 2, 2009, Manabu Kurita caught a 22-pound, 4-ounce largemouth that tied George Perry’s 1932 all-tackle world record. In coming months, this lake in the Shiga Prefecture near Kyoto will no doubt be one of the world’s top destinations for bass anglers.

Largemouths may not be welcome introductions everywhere, but isn’t it interesting to know that the most popular sportfish in America can now be found not just in the eastern U.S., but throughout the world?

The Fun And Challenge Of Handgun Hunting

The wooded bottoms along Dirty Creek in Muskogee County, Oklahoma, are full of squirrels. Bill Scherman of Muskogee has been hunting squirrels in these bottoms for years. But today, there’s a new twist to his hunt. Instead of hunting with a rifle or shotgun, Scherman hunts with a .22 handgun.

“I’m glad we don’t have to rely on what we kill for our supper,” Scherman says. “Otherwise, we might go hungry tonight.”

Scherman is one in a group of outdoor writers and natural resources professionals gathered in Muskogee at the invitation of Smith & Wesson to try handgun squirrel hunting. As the regional wildlife supervisor for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation in this area, it’s his job to help us find game.

“These bottoms are full of fox and gray squirrels,” he says with a sweep of his hand. “We usually look for fruit or nut-bearing trees along the logging roads, then sit and wait for the squirrels to come. Or we ease through the woods till we find them.”

The three in our party--Scherman, myself and Covey Bean, a writer from Oklahoma City--split up to hunt the Dirty Creek bottoms. Another group hunts a large pecan grove a few miles away.

Though I consider myself a competent pistol shooter and squirrel hunter, I figure this will be a difficult hunt. I haven’t shot a handgun in several months, and on top of that, a drizzling rain is falling. As it turns out, there are plenty of squirrels along Dirty Creek; I see 12 in two hours of hunting. They’re skittish, however, feeding on treetop leaf buds, not low-to-the-ground mulberries.

The handgun I’ve chosen to shoot is a top-of-the-line target pistol--a Smith & Wesson Model 41 .22-caliber autoloader outfitted with a Bushnell 1X handgun scope with an illuminated dot reticle. But fancy equipment can’t compensate for my lack of practice. Twice, I center the scope’s red dot on the head of a squirrel. Twice the squirrel escapes unscathed. My woodsmanship isn’t what it ought to be, either. The other 10 squirrels scamper away through the treetops before I’m close enough to try.

Scherman and Bean are better marksmen. When we rendezvous at our appointed meeting place, Covey has a gray squirrel dangling from his belt. Bill has two--a fox and a gray.

“I don’t know how the cowboys in the Old West did it with their handguns,” says Scherman. “Guess we wouldn’t go hungry, but it’s a challenging way to hunt.”

“It’s a good thing we aren’t cowboys,” says Bean. “If we had to face an outlaw for a shoot-out in the street, we might wake up dead. I count three squirrels, and I heard at least a dozen shots.”

“Must have been Sutton shooting,” Scherman says grinning.

The group in the orchard has better luck. Ken Jorgensen from Massachusetts reports nine in the bag for three hunters.


“These big pecan groves are ideal for this,” he says. “There’s no understory to contend with like you have in the woods, so you have more open shots. And the trees are full of fox squirrels. You couldn’t have asked for a better handgun hunting situation, though admittedly, we missed our share, too.”

“It’s fun, though” says Scherman. “And I intend to try it again. With some practice, I might actually be able to kill enough squirrels for a mess.”

Despite the enthusiasm of a small but devoted group of followers, hunting squirrels with a handgun remains a pretty esoteric business. Its satisfactions are great, but its practitioners are few.

Handgun hunting for other game, however, is a growing phenomena. More hunters are going afield with handguns every year, more states are allowing handguns to be used on big game, and better products are making it all feasible. If you’ve considered hunting with a handgun, now’s the time to accept the challenge.


Handgun hunting appeals to a variety of sportsmen. There’s the hunter who has taken all sorts of game with rifles and wants to try something new. It’s for blackpowder and archery hunters who can employ their stalking ability for a successful handgun hunt. Serious handgun shooters and competitors who are proficient on the range are applying their handgun skills in the woods and on the prairies.

There have been tremendous improvements in guns, ammo and optics in recent years. A little research and some hands-on experience can help you make the right choices.

The handgun of choice should be capable of accomplishing the task at hand but also one with which you’re comfortable and can develop adequate marksmanship skills. A .44-magnum revolver, for example, can deliver the accuracy and power needed to take deer, antelope, wild boar, or even elk. A .357 Magnum can be relied upon to take many game animals if the distance is reasonable and shot placement is precise. A friend of mine used a.41 Magnum on a couple animals last year and said he was very pleased with the performance. He noted it was more pleasant to shoot than some .44s and certainly did the job.

Twenty-two-caliber pistols and revolvers are ideal hunting handguns for squirrels, rabbits or other small game. Twenty-twos are fun to shoot, inexpensive and also make great practice firearms. You can put hundreds of rounds downrange for a few dollars while you learn sight alignment, trigger control and other basics.

Choosing proper ammo also is essential. There are many new and improved bullet designs marketed today. It used to be you made a choice between expansion or penetration, but that’s no longer the case. Today’s ammunition is better at providing both, and there’s a factory load for every quarry. Consult ammunition guides and other hunters for help in making a decision.


After equipment is chosen, the important work begins. The three most important things for a handgun hunter are practice, practice and more practice. Shooting a handgun accurately, especially at the distances many times needed in hunting situations, takes lots of practice. You must be good enough to hit your target when it counts.

Safety also should be stressed. There are four rules each handgun hunter always should follow: 1) Treat all firearms as if they are loaded; 2) Keep you finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until ready to shoot; 3) Don’t point at anything you’re not willing to shoot; and 4) Be certain of your target and beyond. These are rules that we can all live with.

Handgun hunting is a challenge worth pursuing. Cover the basics, develop your skills through practice and you’ll find the sense of accomplishment in a successful handgun hunt is well worth the effort and discipline.

Chain Reactions

Chain pickerel don’t get very big. The world record weighed only 9 pounds, 6 ounces. Average fish in most waters seldom exceed 2.

Chains aren’t great table fish, either. Their flesh is sweet and firm, but the fillets are filled with tiny bones, requiring troublesome preparation for the frying pan.

Let me tell you why I love pickerel, nevertheless.

Picture a winter day with big snowflakes floating down. Not a sound do you hear except the sound of your paddle.

Curtains of icicles sparkle along lakeside bluffs. An eagle gazes down as you pass. Wood ducks flush up ahead.

The world is virgin white, with scattered beams of color. Cardinal red. Cedar green. Shadow blue. Winter swaddles you in contrasts.

Up ahead, a patch of emerald glimmers beneath the crystalline water. You cast a silver spoon beyond it and retrieve, watching the lure flash as it darts over the weed bed.

Suddenly, the flashing stops. You react quickly, setting the hook with a snap of the wrist. Fish on!

Your rod bends. Then the pickerel goes airborne like a little rocket. Three times it jumps before you land and release it.

Another cast, another pickerel, another fun battle--and so on it goes throughout the day.

Other fish bite in winter--crappie, saugers, blue cats, walleyes, even bass. But few bite best in winter.

Chain pickerel do. They’re like little polar bears. The colder it gets, the more active they become.

That’s why I love these little predators. Pickerel add spice to a winter day on the water. They warm me when I’m cold. They give me reason to be outdoors when lakes and streams are quiet, uncrowded and uniquely beautiful.


Pickerel range from east Texas north to the Great Lakes and from Maine to Florida, inhabiting a broad spectrum of waters, from small natural lakes and tiny creeks to sprawling man-made impoundments and big-river backwaters. They resemble barracudas. The body is long and slender. Needle-sharp teeth protrude from a prominent duck-billed snout. A dark vertical bar, like a teardrop, extends downward from the eye.

Their name derives from the pattern of iridescent green “chains” decorating the fish’s sides. Common nicknames include jack, jackfish, jack pike, green pike, chain pike and chainsides.

Weeds in quiet waters are tip-offs to pickerel hotspots. No matter what the season, pickerel usually will be in or near aquatic vegetation in water with little or no current. Plants they favor include coontail, cattails, bulrushes, button willows, elodea, hydrilla and water lilies. Pickerel also have a fondness for dark hollows in cypress and tupelo trees.

Hidden in cover, the pickerel lies poised for ambush. When dinner approaches, the predator darts from its lair, gripping the victim with its sharp teeth before turning it head-down and swallowing. The pickerel then swims back to the same hideaway, where it lies motionless until hunger, belligerence or territorial defense urges it out of cover to strike again.

Four- to 6-pound monofilament line on a 5- to 6-foot, medium-action spinning rod is ideal for chain pickerel--light enough so 1- to 2-pounders can strut their stuff, yet strong enough to tame the occasional trophy. Despite pickerel’s sharp teeth, wire leaders rarely are needed. Cut and retie when line gets frayed.


The best baits are fish or fish look-alikes. A weedless, silver spoon with a trailing pork rind is an old standard, but small spinners, chugger plugs, slim-minnow lures, jigs, streamers and even plastic worms will elicit strikes. Cast parallel to cover, reeling with a steady, medium-speed retrieve; or, when using topwaters, cast to pockets in weeds, let the lure sit until ripples subside, then twitch the lure again, continuing to the boat with a twitch-and-stop retrieve.

Live minnows allowed to swim naturally near cover sometimes take pickerel when artificials fail. Use a size 4 to 1 fine-wire hook, attach a split shot or two a foot above it and add a small bobber. Hook the minnow behind its dorsal fin, then work it in and around weed beds. Live frogs hooked through a back leg and allowed to swim across weed tops also are first-rate enticements.

When thick weeds hinder an angler’s use of more conventional fishing techniques, pickerel can be caught by “skittering.” To do this, you need a 10- to 12-foot cane pole, jig pole or fly rod and an equal length of line. A pork frog or strip of fish belly is affixed to a stout hook, and the bait is jerked, or skittered, across broad openings in weed patches. If pickerel are present, they’ll hit with frenzied, chomping charges.


Many prime pickerel waters are largely untapped, so individuals have an excellent chance to attain maximum size, especially in remote waters such as oxbows and bayous. The 9-pound, 6-ounce world record was caught near Homerville, Georgia way back in February 1961. But I’m betting even larger fish are lurking in some seldom-fished waters.

If you want to zero in on a trophy, remember these tips. First, big pickerel are inveterate loners found only in prime feeding stations, having driven away weaker competitors. Savvy anglers therefore focus on locales known to yield heavyweight chains.

Second, trophy pickerel prefer foods they’re accustomed to eating. Use lures and baits closely resembling the predominant baitfish in the body of water you’re fishing.

Third, trophy-class pickerel are reluctant to leave the dark sanctuary of their favored niche. Present your bait in or very near heavy cover and keep it there for the best chance of hooking a muscle-bound brute.

I suggest you give pickerel a try this winter. They’re common in many waters, and ounce for ounce, they distinguish themselves in battle as well as any bass. Best of all, they’re eager to strike right now, providing a sure way to knock the chill off a winter day.