Deer-hunting regulations become more complex
Zones help state biologists manage growing deer populations
Joe Mosby

Deer hunting in Arkansas through the years has ridden a pendulum. Back and forth, restricted and liberal, the significant changes have come annually for a couple of decades now after years of the same seasonal formats.

For next fall and winter, the 2008- 2009 season, this deer pendulum is swinging a bit to the left - left implying more liberal and right meaning more conservative.

"Why can't they leave it alone," some deer hunters complain. Ask around and you'll find a hunter who will express a longing for the old system of two weeks of deer hunting

- a week in November and another in December.

What has also evolved over the years is a deer-hunting regulations package that is highly complex, so much so that some Arkansans say they've given up the pursuit of deer.

Biologists with the state Game and Fish Commission readily defend this complexity, saying different rules are needed for different areas in which deer numbers vary greatly.

Dividing the state into deer zones is a result, and some of the state wildlife biologists favor even more than the current 21 deer zones.

FAWNING FOR THE CAMERA JOE MOSBY PHOTO Healthy deer, like this young fawn, are the key factor in more-liberal Arkansas hunting sea-

In the 1990s, a proposal for 50 deer zones was pulled down quickly when Game and Fish commissioners objected.

If hunting dates have fluctuated, so have the deer themselves, according to biologists and historians.

Land clearing and unrestricted or little-restricted hunting took down Arkansas deer to the point a hundred years ago many people began expressing concern. The Game and Fish Commission was created in 1915, but under the control of the state General Assembly. By 1924, the growing shortage of deer was evident enough that Guy Amsler, secretary of the commission and in reality its director, launched a magazine called The Deer. It contained articles on the problem of declining Arkansas deer.

The magazine's named changed to The Conservationist, but Amsler's attention to the deer issue remained.

In 1939, a statewide survey found Arkansas had less than 5,000 deer. In 1944, Amendment 35 to the state constitution was passed, going into effect July 1, 1945, making the commission largely autonomous.

Restoration of deer had already begun, with some intensive work on a handful of "deer farms" around the state. Gradually deer responded in numbers.

Restricted hunting was part of the restoration, and increasing numbers of deer, though not well distributed, led to a week of hunting growing to two weeks.

In the 1970s this increased to six days in November, six days in December and two days just after Thanksgiving. That 14 days of deer hunting was virtually set in concrete to many Arkansans.

The two Thanksgiving days were known informally as "the kids hunt," since they allowed for the taking of doe, female deer and youngsters were out of school.

The deer season pendulum swung well to the left in the late 1980s when, along with the multiple zones, seasons were lengthened to a month in many areas.

Then some zones have five weeks, 35 days, of deer hunting.

Deer taken by hunters zoomed in numbers, approaching 200,000 before the pendulum took a swing to the right. Deer numbers declined, and season were shortened along with the arrival of antler restrictions on bucks.

Now, for 2008, the AGFC commissions have set seasons ranging from two days for modern gun hunting (Zone 4, in northeast Arkansas) to 48 days (Zones 16, 16A and 17, southeast Arkansas and inside the Mississippi River levees).

An additional two days statewide is set for Dec. 26-27.

That will be 50 days of modern gun deer hunting in a small part of Arkansas - probably unimaginable to Arkansas outdoors people a half century ago.

Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas' bestknown outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at jhmosby@cyberback. com.