One December morning about 20 years ago I got a call from my editor a few minutes after sunrise. From where I stood in a pine clearcut, the morning dew was frozen to the underbrush. Fumbling in a pocket deep within my layers of clothing, I found my cell phone and answered, still grasping the antler in my other hand and standing a few yards from where I’d parked the truck in the pre-dawn darkness.
My editor sounded distraught.
“There was a shooting at the Country Club last night,” he told me in a tone that suggested I should have turned in the story before the news even happened.
I exhaled a plume of foggy breath and glanced down at the freshly shot deer at my feet. I wanted to say, “Yes, boss, there certainly has been a shooting. I just killed a buck!” But I didn’t. I was out of breath from dragging the deer that lay before me, and instead replied with a subservient reminder that I had requested the day off. I was an hour’s drive from the newspaper office, and by the time I could have returned, the TV news vans would have already had the scoop and on their way back to Little Rock. Yet I wasn’t bothered that my absence from the newsroom was felt — my editor could take this job and shove it.
Deer season — particularly the modern gun opener, which traditionally falls on the second weekend of November — is a sacred holiday for thousands of Arkansans, myself included. There is no football game worthy enough to pull me from the deep woods. Any day of the week, I would choose the solitude of Ouachita County’s Lester Hills over a hypothetical offer from ESPN College Game Day to sit at their commentary table at the Battle of the Ravine. I’m no trophy hunter; I can count on one hand the number of bucks I’ve killed in 30 years. Rather, I’m just a guy who gets a thrill from sitting for hours on end with numb extremities in near- or below-freezing temps.
This Saturday, Nov. 8, will mark the first day of modern gun deer season, yet I’m hardly excited about it because modern gun season has lost its allure in Arkansas. Call me an old-fashioned curmudgeon, but this, in my unpopular opinion, is thanks to the alternative firearms season, which the state Game & Fish Commission opened for the first time in 2024. This “teaser” to regular deer season opens in October, a few weeks before modern guns are allowed in the woods.
The alternative firearms season only invites more gun-crazy rednecks and their side-by-sides to the woods, and with that comes more pressure on deer before the rut. By the second week of November, traditional hunters like myself don’t stand a chance — the deer by now are hunkering down after having been shot at for a month.
Some hunters may think my argument is moot given that muzzleloaders have been part of the equation for so many years. Yet muzzleloaders, as fun as they are to load and shoot, come with a whole set of headaches that just aren’t inviting to the average hunter, even with all the smoke pole’s modern advancements. I predict that hunters who once took advantage of the early muzzleloader season will eventually abandon those cantankerous, archaic firearms in exchange for one of the many calibers that fit the regulations for alternative firearms.
Considering the AGFC’s deer harvest statistics, the proof is already in the pudding. In the 2023-24 season, the year before alternative calibers were allowed, muzzleloaders claimed 7.3% of the deer harvested in Arkansas. When straight-walled cartridges were allowed the next year, that number dropped to 6.5% while straight-walled cartridges were used to harvest 7% of the overall total. Interestingly, modern gun harvests fell from 77% to 72.1% in those same two years.
Let’s take a look at deer harvests by month. In the 2023-24 season (again, before the alternative firearms season was introduced), 12.5% of the overall harvest was claimed in October. The following year, 15.9% of the season’s deer harvest was claimed in October, when the woods were flooded with hunters carrying straight-walled cartridges.
Interestingly enough, all that extra hunting in October didn’t seem to phase the November rut, at least not on paper. Hunters claimed 63.2% of the overall harvest in November 2023, and 62.3% the following November. One can only speculate that the available data suggests alternative firearms are filling a “gap” left by fewer modern guns during regular season — the hunters who are using their straight-walled cartridges in October are carrying that same rifle to the woods in November and tagging deer accordingly. It still doesn’t change the fact that last year was particularly slow for Yours Truly, who hunted hard the first week of season.
Perhaps my argument is pointless, but I’d love to hear a valid argument as to why some of my fellow deer camp members feel the need to hunt deer with a .45-70 (for non-hunters still reading, that caliber is well capable of taking down elk, moose and even elephants).
I suppose it’s all hogwash — even the sport of hunting itself. Yet come dawn Saturday, armed with a lever-action 30-30, I’ll be hunting (although these days I prefer calling it “sitting in a box in the woods”). Thank goodness the Country Club is no longer in the equation.
Joel Phelps is publisher of arkadelphian.com. Opinions in this column are his own.