Share This Article
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission heard the results of an extensive public comment survey concerning recently circulated regulations change proposals during its meeting held March 18-19.
During Wednesday’s committee meetings, AGFC Social Science Lead Jessica Feltz gave a report on the public comment survey concerning regulations changes proposed at the commission’s February meeting.
“Of more than 24,000 responses collected, we kept 20,134 for analysis,” Feltz said. “After careful review, the Social Science Team validated each response. Staff removed responses that were duplicate entries from the same individual or potentially fraudulent responses, such as from a bot. Rest assured that a small team of staff went through the responses and comments to determine their validity and intent.”
According to Feltz’s report, most proposals had a majority of respondents select “Support,” although there were critical tones in some comments regarding certain regulation changes.
“One interesting note was a difference between hunters and anglers in how direct they preferred regulations to be,” Feltz said. “Anglers were ‘lumpers,’ meaning they preferred to have one regulation like a harvest limit or length limit be consistent across an entire region or the state. Hunters were our ‘splitters,’ and they wanted to have regulations target individual areas. The hunters still wanted consistency in some aspects, but they favored specific details over general areas.”
Multiple speakers during Wednesday’s committee meetings voiced concern for a change in the designation of the Camp Robinson Special Use Area and J. Perry Mikles Blue Mountain SUA to wildlife management area designations.
Commission Chairman Anne Marie Doramus clarified that activities such as field trials and archery tournaments would still be possible at these areas, and that many such events are held on other WMAs. The focus of the change is to ensure that wildlife habitat and open access for all users remain top priority.
Doramus and Commissioner Philip Tappan also asked staff to remove the regulation proposal to increase the size limit on mud motors from 37 to 40 horsepower, which received numerous comments during the recent regulations proposal survey. A large percentage of survey respondents were opposed to the change and further commented for increased restrictions on surface-drive motors due to their increased noise.
Tappan said the survey had a few questions that highlighted some of the public’s sentiments toward the equipment used by hunters and anglers.
“In visiting with the public and other commissioners, that regulation seems to have led people to believe we’re moving in a direction of opening things up on these types of motors, but we still have a lot of concerns about the level of noise they produce and have not seen industry leaders make efforts to address this.”
A report of the public comments survey is available at https://www.agfc.com/regulations. The commission is expected to vote on all proposed regulations during its April meeting in Monticello.
Commissioners also heard a presentation on the 2025 elk hunting season and 2026 elk population survey from Elk Program Coordinator Wes Wright. According to Wright, hunters harvested 22 elk last season, 12 of which were bulls and the remainder were antlerless elk.
“The harvest has stabilized from previous years, but is still much lower than the harvest a decade ago,” Wright said. “That decrease is really by design as a result of our detection of [chronic wasting disease] and our targeted response to the detection of the disease. We increased the number of tags and quotas and conducted targeted removals to reduce densities because elk have a much larger home range, and we were working to prevent the spread of CWD across the landscape as we were collecting data on where it had already become established. This led to a subsequent decrease in population, which prompted lower numbers of permits and quotas as we worked to stabilize the population.”
Wright said this year’s population surveys were lower than anticipated, but it was largely due to high winds during the survey period that prevented helicopters and drones from working as efficiently as usual.
“We saw 353 elk during the survey period, which is a decline, but the surveys we run determine trends more than absolute numbers,” Wright explained. “We still want to be cautious with our harvest, but one low population survey should not cause warning sirens, especially with the weather conditions taken into context.”
Wright says two of the 22 elk harvested last year were confirmed positive for CWD, following the trend of elk to have an apparent infection rate of 10 percent. Four additional elk carcasses were found during the population survey, and of those four, two tested positive for CWD.
“Two of the carcasses were too deteriorated to get a sample from or determine a cause of death, but the two that were confirmed with CWD showed no other apparent cause of death beyond the disease.”
Hunters likely will continue to see conservative harvest opportunities for elk on both private and public land to give the herd an opportunity to stabilize and recover.
“Elk have a much slower reproduction rate compared to white-tailed deer,” Wright explained. “Twin fawns are fairly common in deer, but it really doesn’t happen in elk on a regular basis. Also, many of the adult elk counted in our surveys may be yearling cows that have a lower rate of reproduction than second-year and older cows. The calf-to-cow ratio of 40 percent is fairly typical across the U.S.”
AGFC Director Doug Schoenrock gave a brief recap of some agency highlights from the last month, including the increase in entries to the Arkansas Legacy Lunker program, the recent public meeting on the revised plan to renovate greentree reservoirs in Dave Donaldson Black River WMA, and the recent Archery in the Schools State Bullseye Championship held in Hot Springs.
“I want to give a special shout-out to Arkansas Game and Fish’s own Ethan Stokes, who contributed a fish this year to the [Lunker] bunkers, and he did it despite not being allowed to participate in the [XPress Boats Giveaway] promotion,” Schoenrock said. “Ethan is a fisheries biologist from Russellville, and I’d like to just commend him for his dedication and support of the program; obviously, a great conservationist staff member who is passionate about this promotion and improving the fisheries in the state of Arkansas.”
In other business, the Commission:
- Heard a presentation from Michael Ankton and students from L.M. Goza Middle School in Arkadelphia about their experience in becoming a designated School of Conservation Leadership through the AGFC’s Education Division.
- Approved a minute order to increase the budget for the construction of Benzal Lane Bridge on Trusten Holder from $400,000 to $850,000. The project has received the proper permits to move forward, but increased prices since the Arkansas Department of Transportation’s original estimates in 2022 have necessitated the need for an increased payment for the AGFC’s obligation toward the construction. The money will come from Marine Fuel Tax money collected through ArDOT.
