Twenty years of hard choices and fine-tuning have turned Arkansas' deer herd into a bull market.
"When you look at harvest trends in other states, it's been a downward trend," said Cory Gray, deer program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. "Ours is either flat-lined or climbing."
Arkansas will never rival Iowa, Kansas or Illinois for big antlered bucks, but Gray said it holds its own with other southern states.
"We've come a long way with bucks we are taking," Gray said, noting that the Quality Deer Management Association ranks Arkansas high in the percentage of 3 1/2-year-old and older bucks. "We're up there with rest of the Southeast."
Hunters checked 208,075 deer during the 2014-2015 seasons, a 2 percent decrease from 2013-2014 when hunters killed 213,199 deer, but it was also the third consecutive year that hunters killed more than 200,000 deer.
The killing of antlered bucks declined by 2 percent, and a decrease of 3 percent was reported for button bucks. That should translate into more antlered bucks in the herd next fall, and more older age bucks.
In the recent past, a 50/50 buck-to-doe kill was inconceivable.
"It wasn't too many years ago that we were harvesting a 70-30 buck-to-doe ratio," Gray said.
Some places needed that, Gray said, such as the Ozarks, where the AGFC discouraged killing does while it tried to increase deer numbers.
"Now we're trying to maintain or stabilize the herd, and we can withstand a 50-50 harvest," Gray said. "In some zones, like 12 and 17, we're actually taking more females."
The age structure of the male and female segments are better than ever, Gray said. Antler-point restrictions that went into effect for the 1998 season shifted hunter pressure away from bucks 1 1/2 years old and younger to 2 1/2 years old and older.
The three-point rule, which requires a legal buck to have at least three points on one beam, was controversial in 1998, especially after the 1998 season when the buck harvest plummeted. Hunters have killed more older bucks since 2006 than they did before 1998, but there are also more older bucks available.
"Prior to 1998, a large portion of buck harvest was yearlings," Gray said. "Two-and-a-half-year-olds were in there a little, but 3 1/2- to 5 1/2-year-olds were absent."
Arkansas hunters kill a lot of does, but Gray's data suggests they are killing the "right" does. Gray said 72 percent of the Arkansas doe herd is age 2 1/2 years old or older. In 1981, only 59 percent were in that age range. Older does, Gray said, are more productive.
"Our data suggests that fetal counts are 1.7 for an adult doe vs. 1.1 in a yearling doe, and that lactation rates are 65 percent for adult does vs. 15 percent in a yearling doe," Gray said.
Lactation rates correspond to fawn recruitment into the general population. Does 2 1/2 years old and older give birth to more fawns than yearling does and take care of them better, date suggests.
Gray said he disagrees with hunters who say they don't see the large numbers of deer that they used to see and that translates to fewer deer overall..
"You've got 70 percent of the doe population producing 1.7 fawns, and 65 percent of those fawns are being recruited into the population," Gray said.
Arkansas hunters killed a record 194,687 deer in 1999, but that's about 8,000 fewer than last year. Remember, hunters have killed more than 200,000 for three consecutive years. That's not possible with fewer deer. The difference between now and 1999 is there are fewer does in the population and more adult bucks.
"Adult bucks have learned how to live," Gray said.
Deer numbers should remain stable under current regulations, Gray said. Hunters knock them back in the fall, and deer recover the numbers lost in the spring for a sustaining cycle.
One big challenge is the growing number of deer in urban and suburban locations, Gray said.
West Little Rock, for example, contains an excellent patch of refuge cover at Two Rivers Park. Deer live there during the day, but at night they damage private property and pose traffic hazards.
"You can be as liberal as you want to be in a [deer management] zone, but deer may not ever leave a sanctuary to be vulnerable to harvest," Gray said. "They've got a good food source year round with all that watered, fertilized vegetation, and the only pressure they ever receive is from vehicles.
"You have to change your strategy and try remove them where they are. That's what we try do with urban hunts."
The AGFC says Gray deserves credit for the numbers, but Gray credits hunters for properly managing Arkansas's deer.
"I'm proud of our hunters, of how they are accepting our changes," Gray said. "It takes hunters to manage deer, and we can see that when we adjust our strategies, hunters respond so that we get the adequate number of deer removed."
Sports on 04/19/2015