HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE — A two week urban deer hunt in Hot Springs Village was uneventful, Village officials said, perhaps even more uneventful than they had planned.
The number of hunters and the deer harvested during the hunt, which ended Oct. 8, were less than expected, so the Hot Springs Village Property Owners Association might cancel next year’s annual hunt.
“The number of hunters has fallen off, and it is being considered that we hold the hunt every other year,” said Steve White, Hot Springs Village planning and inspection director, who oversaw the hunt in the gated community. “The [Arkansas] Game and Fish [Commission] told us that more hunters might participate if the hunt was scheduled for every two years.” While 142 hunters received permits to participate in the hunt, fewer than 30 hunters actually took part, and only 118 deer were taken by the hunters during the hunt, said Michael Fox, spokesman for the POA.
“More than 3,600 pounds of me at were pro c e s s e d , enough for 14,400 meals,” Fox said. “Most of the meat was contributed to the Arkansas Hunters Feeding the Hungry organization.”
The hunters group received the first deer harvested by each hunter during the hunt. The program, which was started in 2000, asks hunters to donate venison. Meat processors cut and grind the meat, and it is delivered to food pantries around the state.
White said while only a few hunters came to Hot Springs Village to bow hunt for deer, the hunt still reduces the growth in the deer population in the community.
“It helps,” White said. “Every doe has about two fawns a year. If hunters take 100 does, that removes 300 deer from the area.”
With the growing number of deer in Arkansas, the animals are encroaching into urban areas, causing property damage and wrecks. The purpose of the hunt in the Village was to reduce the danger to residents and preserve thehealth of deer herds in the region.
White said he thinks fewer hunters came to the Village to hunt because six other urban bow hunts were going on around the state.
“There were other hunts inBull Shoals, Cherokee Village, Fairfield Bay, Heber Springs, Horseshoe Bend and Lakeview at the same time as ours,” White said. “Some of those last a couple of months, and ours started Sept. 24 and ended Oct. 8.”
In addition, White said, there were more restrictions on the hunt in Hot Springs Village than in some of the other urban hunts in the state.
“First, we are a gated commu nit y, a nd we do background checks, and some of the hunters don’t want to do that,” White said. “We also have a lot of Game and Fish officers patrolling the hunt. And we had volunteer teams to check out the deer that were harvested.”
In addition, White said, the Village hunt was one of the first established in the state, and he has been told that urban hunts can lose their appeal to hunters because of the restrictions that come with hunting an inhabited area.
The property owners association is expected to decide on the future of a 2012 hunt by the end of this year, White said.
Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.
Tri-Lakes, Pages 51 on 10/27/2011