Leased land access gets boost

Southwest Arkansas has one of the densest deer populations in the state. Finding public access in this part of Arkansas is much easier thanks to special leased lands opportunities offered by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.

An additional 3,500 acres is available this year near the town of Amity to help hunters find a tree for their deer stand.

Game and Fish worked with the Olds Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Amity, to add the land at Big Timber Wildlife Management Area, which brought the total acreage of the area to about 45,000 acres.

The addition will offer more public opportunities to people around Amity, who had fairly little public property available nearby.

Garrick Dugger, assistant chief of wildlife management, said Game and Fish leases more than a quarter-million acres each year to open them up for hunting and trapping.

"A lot of these places just aren't for sale, but are owned by timber companies and nonprofit groups who work with us to offer hunting access as long as it doesn't interfere with their use of the land," Dugger said. "Game and Fish owns about 380,000 acres in Arkansas, and we use the leased land program to offer another 280,000 acres to hunters. It's all about giving people more places to hunt."

Dugger said leased lands also enable Game and Fish to expand hunting properties in the state without expanding manpower.

"It's extremely difficult to provide the manpower needed to manage the acreage we own, but these leased properties already have some sort of management and infrastructure in place to benefit hunters," Dugger said. "This means more land for everyone to access, and in many cases, the land is right in the heart of where people normally would be paying some high prices for deer leases."

Leased lands are still considered public hunting areas in regard to regulations concerning seasons and bag limits. Each leased area has its own regulations regarding harvest of all game species. For deer, they typically follow the same dates and bag limits as the private land deer zone surrounding them, but they do require the hunter to check their deer to the wildlife management area zone number instead of a private land zone number.

Leased lands wildlife management areas have one caveat: Hunting, camping and trapping on one requires an additional special annual use permit, which costs $40. The permit fee helps to offset a very small portion of the leased land program's cost and helps gauge hunter participation levels and interest on the property. Managers can see which areas have the most participation, and which areas are losing popularity.

"We take in about 20 percent of the program's cost through the permits," Dugger said. "Game and Fish pays for the rest of it, so people have an affordable option to go hunting. We can't provide land everywhere that Game and Fish owns, but we can help make it a little easier to get your deer without spending a bunch of money in the process."

Sports on 11/27/2018

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