Little Rock, Arkansas – The Arkansas muzzleloader deer shooting season opened on October 21.
The current gun season is about to start, and over 300,000 hunters are expected to enter the woods, according to Arkansas Game and Fish.
According to AGFC, deer hunting is the other major fall activity in Arkansas, aside from football.
According to AGFC Assistant Chief of Communications Trey Reid, the number of persons who shoot deer in the state of Arkansas could nearly fill War Memorial Stadium six times over.
Twenty thousand deer have been checked in the state since muzzleloader season opened on the first weekend in April.
Reid stated that the deer and hunters were probably impacted by the warm weather.
“Muzzleloader season kind of got off to a warm start,” Reid said. “It was relatively warm. We had some pretty cool weather earlier in October, but it kind of warmed up this past weekend and probably kept hunter participation down a little bit. The deer are out there. They make a living whether it is hot or cold: they are doing their thing. Sometimes as hunters, we do not get as excited about going out when it is really warm and you are swatting mosquitoes, you have red wasp flying around in your deer stand and that sort of thing.”
Wearing hunter orange is advised by AGFC for hunting safety if you intend to venture into the woods.
Reid advised hunters to always inspect their stands before heading out to hunt, stating that the majority of hunting-related accidents are caused by hunters falling out of elevated stands.
Reid claimed that although hunting has been declining nationally over the past 15 to 20 years, Arkansas is lucky since it is a rural state where hunting has long been ingrained in the state’s culture.
“I would say the thing that makes Arkansas unique or distinct in the hunting world is our diversity of geography, our landscapes,” said Reid. “We are southern but we are sort of Midwestern. We are a little Western. We are close to Texas. But the diversity of our geography from the Delta Lowlands to the Ouachita and Ozark Uplands, the Gulf Coastal Plain, which is where a lot of deer hunting takes place, there is just a lot of different types of habitat.”