That single act is noteworthy, because it was the first step ever taken by our state game agency designed strictly to promote and improve buck quality.

Then, in 1997, a group down around Stuttgart formed the Arkansas County Deer Management Association. The ACDMA lobbied for, and received, a special county designation to operate under the same 3-point guideline that had been instituted three years earlier on those WMAs.

Soon hunters from other parts of the state began to query the commissioners about enacting similar guidelines in their areas. So in the spring of 1998 a survey was conducted to see just how many hunters really supported this “new” approach to deer management. It probably surprised most of those concerned when over 70 percent of those polled stated that they favored “quality” deer management as opposed to “quantity.”

With the input from that survey likely playing a major role in their decision, the commissioners voted in April of that same year for a statewide 3-point rule! The statement “If you kill a buck at 1 1/2, he will never be a trophy at 4 or 5” also came into vogue. In addition, but with far less fanfare, the commission also initiated a vastly increased doe harvest.

That’s all fine, you might say, but what about today? Well, let’s take a look at the state of the herd in different parts of the state.

SOUTHWEST
The area the AGFC terms the southwest region is made up of the extreme southern edge of the Ouachita Mountains, along with the most westerly parts of the Gulf Coastal Plain (GCP). That means that the region contains a mixture of leased timber-company land, public land in the form of the Ouachita National Forest, and tracts of private land of varous sizes.

Gregg Mathis, the regional AGFC biologist, has lived in this part of the state for more than 30 years. A couple of years back Gregg used Hempstead County as an example of the trends taking place there.

“When I first came here deer kill in Hempstead was something around 600 animals a year,” Gregg said, “but today that figure is annually somewhere around 2,500. That is pretty much indicative of how numbers have grown throughout this entire region.”

“As far as disease, we have seen only minor flareups of epizoötic hemorrhagic disease, and the effects of the ice storm that took place back in 2000 are slowly disappearing. Mast is always important as far as herd health is concerned, and we’ve had two years of good oak production. With a mild winter and wet spring and summer, we should have a good season next fall.”

However, changes that bode ill for the future of hunting in this part of the state are taking place. Many of the timber companies either are or have sold off their properties within the region, and hunters are often finding that the new owners have no plans to continue the lease agreements some clubs have had for decades. In other instances the prices to lease the property have gone up to the point where the clubs simply cannot afford to pay them. In either instance the changes may effect hunting there in the future.

SOUTH-CENTRAL
The south-central region consists almost entirely of the Ouachita Mountains, which includes the vast Ouachita National Forest. It is an increasingly important area for hunters in this day and time, since it includes huge amounts of open public hunting. With the lease prices mentioned above steadily rising, that has to be a consideration for many today.

Ricky Chastain, stationed in Hot Springs, is the longtime AGFC regional supervisor for the area.

“I believe that here in the Ouachitas our deer numbers bottomed out some years back,” Ricky said recently. “We saw a decline in numbers then, but in the past few years we’ve seen our numbers start to rebound. The zone quota doe permits have been a big help in turning things around here.”

As far as problems facing the region’s herd, Ricky mentioned only a few. “The ice storm of 2000 still has its lingering effects here,” he said, “and we still have problems in some areas with the red oak borer. But in at least some cases, even those disasters created openings which are now sprouting new growth.

“We have seen no indications of widespread disease here, we had a good mast crop last fall, and we have now had 2 or 3 mild summers in a row. All of those factors added together bode well for increased numbers in the Ouachitas in the future.”