Deer herd

A layman's and an expert's view on deer numbers

ointing out flaws in government workings is a favorite hobby of many Americans. Sometimes, it seems like any of us could do a better job than the folks planning and building highways or taking care of the environment or whatever else government does.

And Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is no exception. Lots of hunters and anglers believe they know better how to manage wildlife than the biologists and others at AGFC.

For the most part, I’m not in that camp. I generally defer to AGFC on matters of how to have healthy wildlife across the state because I believe those folks have done a good job over the years.

For example, one of the best things to ever happen to the deer herd in the area I and my family and friends hunt (Calhoun County) is the three-point rule.

Before the 1998-99 deer season, AGFC implemented the rule, which requires that a buck have three points on at least one side of its antlers to be legal.

Prior to that rule, bucks around our lease were, charitably, pitiful. Members of our club tacked up antlers of the deer they killed to the cabin walls over the years. Some of those racks look like they came from toy deer. Even the biggest ones are relatively small.

But, after the three-point rule went into effect, we almost immediately started seeing more and bigger bucks. Now, our small camp routinely takes three or four bucks each year that would have been monsters back in the day, and our cameras usually show two or three more really nice deer that we don’t ever get a shot at.

Couple that with the fact that we see a ton of four-points and spikes each year, and I think it’s pretty obvious that the three-point rule was a wise move. Kudos to AGFC.

However, my anecdotal evidence tells me that it might be time for the commission to throttle back on the deer harvest limit, at least in Zone 12.

We’ve hunted in our location for 30 years, and while the terrain has certainly changed, many of the deer patterns haven’t altered that much. Deer in our area have always used a particular draw, and they run up and down a slough that borders our property on a regular basis. In other words, we see deer where we have always seen deer.

Two stands that have been in the same spot all this time make my case.

One is Uncle Bill’s stand in what we call the Offset 40, a stand of pine bordered by hardwood on two sides and the nastiest, gnarliest thicket on the planet on the other two. Back in the day, it wasn’t uncommon to see 10, 12 even 15 deer in a morning, and not the same deer passing through five or six times. I’m talking about a herd of deer coming through more often than not. That stand is still a good one now — Bill killed a nice eight-point off it a couple weeks ago — but none of us have seen even a handful of deer in a single day off that stand in years. I saw eight in that area one morning three years ago, but at least three of them could have been the same deer.

Another of our hot stands is what we call Pallet Stand. It used to be made out of wooden pallets. It’s not difficult to kill a deer off that stand, but just like Bill’s stand, we used to see deer by the dozen there. Not now. One. Two. Four, on a good day.

To be sure, we still see a number of deer, but it has been several years since any of our members saw 10 or more deer in one sitting. Dad was the last, if memory serves, though some of the deer may have been the same ones cycling back through.

Point is, we’re simply not seeing as many deer as we used to, and I wonder if the harvest limit has something to do with that. In Zone 12, hunters can take up to six deer each year, and that bag limit has been in effect for several years. For a few years before that, the limit was five. Back in the time when seeing eight or 10 deer in a morning or afternoon was somewhat common, the limit was three or four deer per year.

Deer harvest numbers, according to AGFC, have remained somewhat constant over the years, at about 180,000 deer. Enforcement, though, isn’t what it used to be. I wonder how many more deer are getting killed each year that aren’t finding their way into the AGFC log books.

Cory Gray, an AGFC biologist out of Monticello, told me that most hunters check one deer each year. He said that few hunters ever approach the six-deer limit. He acknowledged that he doesn’t see as many deer as he used to, but he attributed that to habitat changes and predation, including from feral hogs. He also said that there are certainly a number of deer killed each year that aren’t checked in, but he suggested that those numbers aren’t enough to affect the herd.

OK. He knows better than I do.

Back to the drawing board.

Rick Fahr is managing editor of the News-Times. Reach him by email at [email protected]

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