For many sportsmen, February is an idle time to recharge. But there is plenty of hunting and fishing to do before spring.
DEER HUNTING
Although the bountiful days of modern gun deer season are mere memories, bowhunters still have a full month of archery season.
Arkansas’ bow season begins the last Saturday in September and ends the last day of February. It’s the longest continuous deer season in the country, but it’s a day longer in 2016 thanks to 29 days in February.
Depending on how you look at it, bowhunting in February is either hard or easy. It’s hard because there are about 211,400 fewer deer in the woods than in September. That’s how many deer that hunters have killed to date, which means fewer opportunities.
Locally, the size of your deer herd might not have changed very much, depending on how many deer have been killed.
On the other hand, it’s easier to find and pattern deer right now because they are hovering around any green food source. If you have a stand of ladino clover or other good winter forage, you have an excellent chance of seeing deer.
Cory Gray, the deer biologist for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, recommends hunting away from food plots instead of over them. Intercepting a deer going to or away from a plot will not condition deer to associate that food source with danger.
If you hunt off the ground, take your time ascending and descending the tree. Strap yourself to a tree the entire time your feet are off the ground and use a modern, high-quality harness.
SQUIRREL HUNTING
If you’re too restless to sit in a tree on a blustery winter day, squirrel hunting might be a better option. You can slip around the woods and enjoy sometimes fast-paced hunting with a shotgun, rimfire rifle or small-bore muzzleloader.
The pace can be even faster if you hunt with dogs, but either way, February is a superb time to hunt. Bare trees allow you to see squirrels from great distances, and the lack of foliage makes it easier to shoot with .22-cal. rifles, muzzleloaders or air rifles.
In February, squirrels forage primarily on the ground and also tend to be concentrated, so you’ll usually find them in bunches.
A .22-cal. rifle with a high magnification scope facilitates making head shots, which preserves all of the meat. Of course, you can do the same thing with a shotgun if you know how it patterns your favorite squirrel hunting load. I like a 12-gauge with 1 1/8 ounce of No. 7 ½ lead through a full choke. Aim so that the edge of the pattern covers the head.
You can hunt squirrels in Arkansas with muzzleloading shotguns and muzzleloading rifles smaller than .40-cal.
The traditional method for hunting squirrels with muzzleloaders is “barking,” which entails shooting not at the squirrel, but at the branch under the squirrel’s head. A well-placed shot will hit the branch and kill the squirrel with shrapnel.
Hunting with an air rifle is challenging. You have to get close, and control of the trigger must be precise. There are some excellent hunting rifles available, including the Winchester 1400CS. It fires a.177-cal. pellet with a muzzle velocity of 1,400 feet per second with a cock of the lever. Such a light projectile loses velocity quickly, so shots must be close.
RABBIT HUNTING
There is no better way to pass a crisp, cold Arkansas morning than listening to a pack of beagles chasing rabbits through the brush and briars.
Listening to the dogs run is the highlight of the hunt. When a rabbit is flushed from cover, the quarry usually runs in a wide circle to throw off the dogs in an attempt to return to its warren. When you figure out the path of the chase, position yourself for the dogs to run the rabbit past you.
If you don’t have dogs, you can enjoy success by tromping around fields and clearcuts. During the day, rabbits often shelter in spoil piles and brush piles. Kick and stomp around a brushpile, or even bounce on top of it to flush the rabbit from cover. It will burst forth quickly, so be ready for a snap shot. To avoid accidental discharge, keep the safety on until you shoot.
QUAIL HUNTING
Quail numbers are declining, but bobwhites are not threatened or endangered, and there are places in Arkansas where they are plentiful enough to provide good hunting.
More than any other sport, quail hunting is all about the dogs. There is simply not a more graceful, more beautiful sight than that of a setter or pointer locked down on quail. They stand like statues, quivering with adrenaline. The hunter approaches the dog from the quarters, gun at port arms. The dog’s eyes dart back and forth from the hunter to the birds, and the tension is so palpable that it almost hums.
You know what’s coming, but no amount of experience can prepare you for the chaos ahead. Sometimes the birds flush all at once, sometimes they flush in trickles, two and three at a time. Their wings thunder way out of proportion for their small size, and it takes every ounce of discipline to pick out one bird for the first shot and the second for a follow.
If you miss, a pointing dog will give you a glare that will make you feel 2 inches tall.
FISHING
While fast fishing is at least a month away, you can still enjoy excellent bass, striper and walleye fishing on lakes and streams in Arkansas.
For big smallmouths, one of my best trips of the year is always a February float on the Caddo River with a couple of friends. We don’t catch many, but the ones we do catch are fat and brawny. One of my friends memorialized one of these trips by putting a photo of himself holding up a big Caddo River smallmouth on his debit card.
It’s like that for largemouths, too, but if you hit the lake as a low-pressure front moves in after a string of warm days, the fishing can be phenomenal.
And, of course, stripers and walleyes will move into the main tributaries of big reservoirs to spawn this month. You can enjoy excellent fishing in close quarters for big fish with light tackle.
Remember what grandma said about idle hands. There’s plenty to keep them busy in February.