Arkansas predator hunters

yotehunter57

yotehunter57

New member
Let's band together and petition the AGFC to make night predator hunting with lights legal.
The AGFC public meetings will be January 31st at several locations around the state.
Let's get serious about getting this legalized. Even if we have to buy a permit and call an 800 number on the nights we go, I would go for it.
I know they will say spotlighting deer would be a problem. We need to know how other states handle this.
Whether it is making spotlighting deer penalties stiffer or banning previously caught poachers, there has to be an answer.
Anyone who has any possible answers or input, even from other states, It would be welcome.
Anyone who wants to participate can PM me and we'll see what we can do.

Shayne
 
I'm from Arkansas and moved to Montana last year. Up here you can spotlight even during deer season. Arkansas game and fish needs to understand that if people are going to spotlight and poach deer, they are gonna do it regardless of spotlighting regulations. I don't believe the penalties are any worse up here than in Arkansas. I hope you are able to get the laws changed. Good luck convincing the game and fish.
 
I have been going to meetings for a while, wrote some nice letters to them but ultimately, it is up to Blake Sasse in the "NonGame" species division, even though Coyotes are considered a Game species in Arkansas. If you can PM me your email address, I can forward what they told me about that issue. (Frankly, ignorance is the issue in that department.)

I tried my best during the recent Turkey meetings to get something done about it. We have lost over 2/3rds of our turkey pop. Deer numbers are falling in certain areas and they can't seem to figure out that predators rising might have an effect.

I asked the wardens why Coyotes were not treated the same as hogs. (Hogs can be night hunted with lights on private land) but they responded with "We are easing regulations on coyotes" which meant allowing any caliber to shoot them on WMAs that are Game and fish owned or US forest service land.

Frankly, I'm tired of it. The Delta region in Arkansas is a perfect place for this activity and is also the locations which have the highest losses in Turkey and Deer and the AGFC thinks that "Next year will be better" The other answer that came up was that we could get a depredation permit from AGFC through the land owner. But I have never been able to get a warden to give a permit for crop land, so that doesn't apply.




 
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Actually, I will just post his response here for everyone to see. Maybe it will open up the discussion and we can gather points to counter the issue.

Read Below - The guy that controls our Furbearer regs




Hello,

At the large scale, most folks support hunting so long as some use is made of the animal but understand the need in certain circumstances for killing wildlife that is causing property damage of some kind without using the animal later. This is why we have pretty liberal rules regarding killing nuisance coyotes. However, we need to be pretty careful about allowing hunting of animals that aren’t utilized so as to avoid reinforcing the impression that some in the general public have about hunters killing animals just for fun and since there is almost no market for coyote pelts during the winter and no use for them outside of that time period I think we need to be very careful about expansion of recreational coyote hunting seasons.

The AGFC would certainly like to reduce statewide coyote populations but we have to consider whether recreational coyote hunting can help us do that or not. As you probably know, you have to kill a large percentage of the coyotes in an area every year in order to make the population go down – if you just kill a few they can almost immediately bounce back through normal reproduction and there is some evidence that light hunting pressure can actually cause them to produce more pups than they normally would. That being the case, it doesn’t seem that recreational hunting reduces coyote populations since there is never enough sustained hunting pressure on any area to make a difference. If it did, we would actually see some measure of control in those states that allow everything but nuclear weapons to be used against them. And while we have seen an increase in interest in predator hunting in general, the number of people doing it is still seems very small and unlikely to significantly expand.

Since recreational coyote hunting won’t help us control coyote populations on a statewide basis and our nuisance wildlife regulations give landowners the tools they need to control local problems (including the ability to get a Depredation Permit to shoot coyotes at night), we have to balance whether altering hunting seasons or methods is worth the effort it would take to develop, manage, and enforce the regulations.

With night hunting in particular this is a tricky judgment call. If all we had to do was issuing a permit it wouldn’t be a big deal, but for something like this we would need to know a great deal of detail about when and where that permit would be exercised so that when someone calls our officers to report shots fired at night they would already know that there was someone there with a night coyote hunting permit. Otherwise they would waste a lot of time responding to those calls only to find out that the cause was someone with a night coyote hunting permit. As you mentioned poaching is a concern, so officers would need to spend some time checking on those with such permits to make sure they weren’t doing that. Such a system would need to be pretty sophisticated and cost some money and the question is whether there would be enough interest (which would be low in my opinion) in this activity to justify the expense of setting up and running it. What I’m looking at is altering our regulations to allow an activity that probably won’t kill many coyotes, won’t help us meet our management objectives, and will require a lot of time and money to implement in order to increase opportunity for a small number of hunters.

I guess what I’m saying is that if I thought statewide night coyote hunting had the possibility of actually helping us reduce coyote populations, I’d be all for it, but it just doesn’t seem to make any difference.

This may be more than you really wanted to know, but wanted to let you know how I look at the situation.

Blake Sasse, Certified Wildlife Biologist™
Nongame Mammal/Furbearer Program Leader
Arkansas Game and Fish Commission
213A Highway 89 South
Mayflower, AR 72106
Telephone: 501-470-3650 ext 235
 
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If they don't allow it, haven't tried it, how could they
possibly know if it would make a difference or not ?

Typical bureaucratic mumble jumble rectal speaking.
 
Originally Posted By: ARDaveAGFC is about is screwed up as it gets.
+1 on that brother. They say deer numbers are up statewide. Maybe, but in the White River bottoms just a few miles from me it's not the case. The spring floods hurt them bad. Even the local Wildlife Officers say It's that way all the way down.
The Wildlife Officers do a pretty good job, but the office staff are clueless. They look at paper and say it's so.

Shayne
 
Guys the big picture is $$$$$$$. If it would make them more money they'd bevall over it. But the man is right it wouldn't decrease the population and they'd be getting calls left and right about people running around with lights shooting at night. I know some stateds you have to by a night hunting permit and notify the local warden before your gonna go hunting that night and let them know the area you will be hunting in. That kinda helps keep them from chasing down reports all night. Good luck to you all
 
From the tone of his comment, it sounds like the Predator Hunters of Arkansas need to form some kind of association and develope information as to actual numbers of those that would be hunting Coyotes in order to be taken seriously..

I don't know what the actual number would be to bend a regulation, but seldom does one or two individuals, speaking for themselves cause enough influence to get a policy or regulation changed, unless you happen to play golf and socialize with the guy on a normal basis...
 
Agreed, oldturtle, I,m trying to reach and join the Arkansas Predator Hunters organization and maybe get something done that way.
Numbers and orginazation is what is needed.

Shayne
 
Arkansas can be great with lots of access, but the small farms and dense woods can make it difficult.

We have Fox, Bobcat and Coyotes, but only the Fox and bobcats would be marketable. Coyotes with good pelts here are not going to compare with those up north and don't bring anything really.

We welcome you though if you come down.
 
Originally Posted By: RJM AcresIf they don't allow it, haven't tried it, how could they
possibly know if it would make a difference or not ?

Typical bureaucratic mumble jumble rectal speaking.


Exactly, but the issue is that he doesn't know and is not willing to learn anything about it. Heck, during the last meeting, I told all of them that I would take a warden with me if that was what they wanted.
glare.gif
The Chief of enforcement was there and sneered at me when I said that.

They are unwilling to admit they have a problem, just as much as they are unwilling to study the issue. Mike Freeze, a previous commissioner for the AGFC stated officially that the only records gathered for furbearer populations were reports from trapping sales. Other than that, they have no estimate of numbers of these furbearers and nest predators. But yet they keep shutting down Turkey season in order to let the turkey population rebound. (Yet it hasn't gotten better in 10 years.)

I asked them at the meeting directly, How can they succesfully manage any game species without having a good estimate of predation? They did admit there is a study being done at this time by ASU on Turkey populations in certain habitat and that the preliminary data showed that Coyotes are having a much larger impact on the tracked turkeys than they thought as a nest predator.
 
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Man, I love Arkansas. Been here all of my life. The AGFC is a sore subject for me though. Come on over Tay. The pelts ain't what they are in Utah, but I think you'll like Arkansas.
 
The AGFC is a sore subject with everybdy I know.
Tay, Arkensaw ain't a bad plack to live for a bassackward state. Like Dave said coyoes usually aren't worth skinning unless you want to tan one.
Does anybody here belong to the Arkansas Predator Hunters Association? Wondering what their numbers are and joining if possible.

Shayne
 
TayUt: you will be real disappointed when comparing Arkansas bobcats to your Utah specimens. No comparison fur value wise. As for coyotes the last ata fur sale back in February coyotes brought around $4 or $5 average if I remember correctly.
 
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Good luck guys. I mentioned this night hunting subject a few years ago to several AGFC employees and their response was laughter. I hope you get better results in Little Rock.
A few thoughts:
1) Night hunting is already allowed in Arkansas, as long as you are using dogs. Gunfire at night is already occurring, albeit usually with a 22lr. I don't think you will ever see night hunting with a 22-250 etc. allowed here, but shotguns would be great. Most night hunting is at much closer range anyway.
2) There is no actual survey of the damage caused by coyotes on deer, turkeys, or anything else for that matter. I mentioned deer loss to the AGFC and was told that coyotes are not a significant predator of deer. I agree in October, December, etc. Unless, however, they are out checking scat in early summer, the biologists really has no idea what the coyotes are having for dinner in June, other than just a guess, educated or just repeating the mantra.
3) Coyote populations can be reduced. Ask anybody ranching, hunting, etc in sheep country. Eliminated, no, but they can be controlled with effort.
4) It is hypocritical of the AGFC to not consider liberalizing the regs to allow more coyotes to be taken. Coyotes often have mange here, due to population stresses. The job of the AGFC is to manage the wildlife populations. In the deer herd, regs were generally liberalized or altered this year in an attempt to control the deer herd. Next year the bow season will open even earlier to attempt the same. If the population of coyotes needs controlled, then altering the current regs should be an obvious tool, rather than to hide behind old fears and philosophies. The fear is that a few precious whitetails will be poached by predator hunters. Those whitetails are already being poached. It is like the saying about outlawing guns will only leave outlaws with guns. I would assert that more fawns, poults, etc would be left by increasing hunting opportunities and options for predators than poachers will take illegally.
Just some of my thoughts on the subject.
 
1happyshooter, not trying to be a jerk, but racoons, possums and bobcats are all that can be hunted at night, and dogs are required.

(sorry about the spacing. don't know how to fix it)


Gray Fox, Red Fox, day hunting only.
Coyote may not be hunted at night.

Every thing else you said is correct.
The plus of night hunting for the AGFC could be an actual reduction in night deer poaching with more of us afield at night. The poachers wouldn't know if somebody is watching. It could be a deterent, and more of us out at night to report poaching could be a plus also.
If it's only in Jan. and Feb. after Firearm deer season and only rimfire and shotgun, it would be a start.
I'm usually not smart enough to give up once I start something. So if we need your support, please don.t give up on this.

Shayne
 
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