LITTLE ROCK — Members of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have been discussing some ideas about duck hunting, especially at Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area.
One concerns the daily “boat races” at the Lower Vallier area on Bayou Meto. The other centers on banning spinning wing decoys on WMAs but continuing to allow them on private land.
During a recent discussion, commissioners Steve Cook, Ron Duncan, Fred Brown and Ford Overton watched a video that Capt. Jason Whitehead shot recently at the Lower Vallier boat ramp. Whitehead is a regional supervisor for the AGFC’s law enforcement division. The video documents what he characterized as unsafe boating activity at the WMA’s boat access facilities.
The so-called “NASCAR start” to a typical day’s hunt at Bayou Meto is well known. A horde of hunters launch their boats simultaneously at 4 a.m. and race to the best holes along the Blue Line, a string of popular hunting holes in the flooded timber. Josh Teff described it in an article published in 2011 in Vertical Online Magazine.
“At 4:00 the first boat in line takes off and the race is on,” Teff wrote. “… The ditch is only wide enough for two boats and sometimes not, depending on the water level! So, needless to say, this can become a very interesting and hairy situation at times! All in the name of getting the spot you want to hunt first!”
Outboard motors are limited to 25 horsepower at Bayou Meto. Teff mentioned “souped up” 25-horsepower motors, suggesting they have been modified to generate more than 25 horses.
“The motors revved and we sped down the ditch at what seemed like warp speed,” Teff wrote. “The treetops on one side of the ditch were flying by and the spotlight was constantly scanning for logs and debris. Towards the end of the straight away I looked up and saw that the ditch was coming to an end, and we were going to have to turn right or left. As I laid back down, without ever letting of the throttle, the driver turned the 15-foot War Eagle on a dime and into ‘the cut,’ which is a 200-yard opening in the trees just large enough for one boat to fit in. As we were running through the cut, it seemed as if we were missing fully mature live oaks by just inches, and all at full throttle! To say it was an exciting ride would be an understatement! I was also a bit terrified!”
Whitehead’s video captured the chaos of that day’s launch and sparked concerns among commissioners that somebody will eventually get maimed or killed in a boating accident.
They discussed several remedies, such as holding a daily draw to award positions in a controlled launch. They also considered establishing a long no-wake zone. A more practical solution, they seemed to agree, might be to limit motors to 9.9 horsepower on Bayou Meto.
Dennis Campbell, a well known duck hunting guide in Arkansas, shared some strong opinions several years ago when the AGFC enacted the 25-horse regulation. He said hunters were happy with the system as it was, and that horsepower limitations punished boaters who have the means and skill to pilot powerful boats at high speed in that environment. The demands of high-performance boating tended to weed out those don’t have the skills or equipment to operate in that environment.
Curtailing the use of spinning wing decoys seems to be a case of needlessly stirring still waters. At best, it’s probably a 50-50 proposition, so changing the rules might agitate half of the constituency when there is no public demand to do so.
Commissioners were reminded that the AGFC originally banned spinning wing decoys nearly a decade ago because biologists believed they shifted too much of the annual kill to young mallards in the northern part of the Mississippi Flyway. Arkansas banned the devices expecting other states to follow. That didn’t happen, and the result was that Arkansas hunters were punished for harvest dynamics that were prevalent in other states.
The AGFC lifted the ban in 2008, with no apparent damage to mallard populations. In fact, 2011 and 2012 brought us two of the largest duck migrations in a generation.
On the other hand, the AGFC has the prerogative to define the hunting experience on public WMAs. If a preponderance of public land hunters clearly support banning spinning wing decoys on public land only, these four commissioners seem willing to consider it.
Sports, Pages 23 on 01/06/2013