LITTLE ROCK — My high hopes for muzzleloader season so far have been unfounded, but others have had much better luck.
River Newcomb, 9, of West Fork, killed her first buck Saturday in Washington County while hunting with her father, Clay Newcomb. Clay is the founder of the Arkansas Bear and Buck Journal.
Also, P.J. Spaul, the recently retired spokesman for the Corps of Engineers Little Rock District, killed his first buck with a muzzleloader early Saturday morning. It was a 9-point buck with an inside spread of about 14 inches. It was eating acorns in a hardwood strip behind Spaul’s stand.
Mike Romine of Mabelvale, who along with Spaul is a member of the Old Belfast Hunting Club in Tull, said he saw a big-bodied buck early Saturday, but there wasn’t enough light to count points on its rack. Old Belfast Club rules require a buck to have six points in any combination, and Romine couldn’t distinguish six. And, true to form, he hasn’t seen that buck since.
Acorns were the only consistent theme from this weekend’s hunting. Hunters in northern Grant and southern Saline counties said deer are eating acorns almost exclusively right now. We have a really heavy acorn crop in central Arkansas. They seem to be everywhere, so you can’t pinpoint a particular area that deer are using. Deer also seem to be feeding mostly at night.
I spent opening day hunting over a food plot that I planted in September. This spot has it all, turnips, chicory, oats, wheat, rape and rye. Deer haven’t touched it. The only tracks are very old and worn, and there is no deer sign in any of the other openings.
It was the quietest opening day in four years. As usual, there was a short flurry of gunshots at 7 a.m., but probably a third of the number I usually hear. There was another small flurry at 8 a.m., but again only a fraction of what usually occurs.
There’s a corn feeder at the end of the opening in front of my box stand about 80 yards away. For the three previous years, I could almost set my clock to a deer appearing next to that corn feeder at 9 a.m. It happens as soon as the first beams of morning light the ground around the feeder. A deer steps out of a thicket from a trail like an actor stepping into a stage light. It was so predictable that there was no real reason to be in the stand before 9, even though I am always there before sunrise. It didn’t happen this year.
Does usually appear in the clearing at sunset, but given the lack of sign in the area, I didn’t return to that stand.
Instead, I went to a hanging stand in an oak thicket about a mile from the box stand. I climbed the tree at about 3 p.m. amid what sounded like a hailstorm of acorns. Gray squirrels skittered among the branches and released barrages of acorns every time they rustled a new cluster of leaves.
About an hour before sunset, I heard footsteps crunching through the leaves. It was a doe and fawn, and they came within 20 yards. I wanted a buck, so I let them be, and I saw no other deer.
At 3 p.m. Sunday, I visited a hanging stand in a different spot. It’s in a middle-aged pine stand at the intersection of two young pine thickets and a streamside management zone. It’s a beautiful place where the evening glow over those young pines — against the reds and golds of the oaks, hickories and sweetgums — just takes my breath away. A buck had been using the area. I smelled it every evening as I walked out from bowhunting, but its odor was absent Sunday. The day ended with no sign of a deer.
At 3 p.m. Monday, I went to another oak flat in a different streamside management zone. This is one of my favorite turkey hunting spots, and I have a popup blind there. It provides a good view in three directions and a decent view in a fourth direction. Acorns rained and pounded the top of the blind. I heard a deer walk through the thicket behind me, but I did not see it.
Mosquitoes tormented me the previous two evenings. I wore Deep Woods Off, and while the mosquitoes didn’t land on me, the buzzed my head mercilessly. I used a ThermaCell on Monday. The skeeters didn’t come near me.
Sports, Pages 21 on 10/25/2012