I’ve always had a special affinity for the late blackpowder season, which in recent years the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has shortened almost to nonexistence.

Here in the Ozarks I often hunt this entire season without seeing another hunter, even when hunting areas that crawl with orange-clad hordes in November.

AGFC harvest figures pretty much illustrate that lack of pressure. In total, 13,827 deer were taken with muzzleloaders in 2005-06, but only around 2,700 of those were taken during the late-season period.

But over a lifetime spent chasing whitetails, I’ve come to understand that other reasons exist for hunting at a time when most hunters have retired to the couch for their annual hibernation. Let’s consider both some of those positives and, to balance out the view, a few negatives.

PLUSES
• Without heavy hunter pressure, deer are more likely to be in “normal” movement patterns, which at this time of year pretty much revolve around food sources. That theoretically makes deer easier to find, because you know where they’ll be.
• Deep-winter hunting is likely to be attended by rough weather. While this may not sound like a plus on the surface, I think hunter and hunted both enjoy cold weather more than the hot conditions often present during the November gun season. Throw in the fact that bad weather often means rain, which makes game less wary and stalking quieter, and there are far more good things surrounding bad weather periods than bad.
• Without that same heavy hunting pressure mentioned above even older bucks are more likely to be on the move.
• Throw in the occasional flurry of daytime rut activity cold weather may bring, and your chances of seeing a big boy go up.

MINUSES
• Fewer bucks are available than were earlier in the year — there’s no denying that.
• Even though there is lessened hunter pressure, it takes a while for the deer to sense that fact and to revert to daylight movement. How close your rifle season runs to the opening of late muzzleloader will certainly have an effect in this area, along with the intensity of hunting pressure in any given area.

HEAD TO THE MOUNTAINS FOR LATE-SEASON SUCCESS
To my knowledge, no large state wildlife management areas or federal national wildlife refuges in the eastern half of the state allow blackpowder hunting in December. Since relatively few such public areas lie in the Gulf Coastal Plain to begin with, most late-season public-land hunting is confined to the mountain regions.

In the past that may have been bad news, because of lower deer numbers in the uplands, but AGFC personnel tell me that the herd seems to be rebounding in most areas. Most of that is due to the one-buck limit (which is no longer in effect), and the quota doe harvest.

Together the Ouachita and Ozark national forests total more than 2.5 million acres of open hunting.

The two large WMAs within the Ozarks, Piney Creeks (north of Russellville) and White Rock (north of Interstate 40, primarily in Johnson, Franklin and Crawford counties) comprise roughly 460,000 acres alone. Both offer mountain hunting at its best. The landscape is rough and rugged, with lots of up-and-down to go with the fantastic beauty. Get out a topo map and look for spots over a mile from roads and ATV trails, those may well be the security areas that one old buck migrated to back during gun season. He’s likely still there.