Summer just started, but it's never too early to talk about deer hunting.
If you don't have private land to hunt, consider applying for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission's wildlife management area-controlled deer hunts.
The Game and Fish Commission will open its annual WMA deer permit hunt application period for the 2019-20 hunting season at 8 a.m. on Monday through July 1 at agfc.com.
Applicants must pay a $5 nonrefundable processing fee when they submit their applications. Successful applicants do not pay additional fees. Each hunter may submit one application for each type of permit hunt, which includes youth hunts, archery, muzzleloader and modern gun hunts.
Mobility-impaired individuals also may apply for mobility-impaired hunts. Applicants must be at least 6 years old, and hunters applying for youth hunts must be at least 6, but no older than 15, on the day the hunt begins.
Hunters applying for regular modern gun and muzzleloader hunts may apply as individuals or as a group containing up to four hunters. To apply as a group, the party hunt leader applies as an individual. The party hunt leader will receive a party hunt code listed beneath the application line on his updated hunting license via email. The party hunt leader may share that code with up to three other individuals.
Other members of the party then will apply and respond "yes" when asked if they are members of a party hunt. Then they enter the code and continue with their application and payment. Applying as a party does not increase the chances of each individual being drawn.
I have participated in WMA-controlled deer hunts at Dagmar, Wattensaw, Madison County, Harold E. Alexander and Moro Big Pine WMAs. They were fine experiences that produced some opportunities for exceptional bucks.
The best part of the experiences is becoming acquainted with the areas. Scouting will lead you to places where you can hunt in solitude. Those are the places where deer seek refuge when throngs of hunters descend on the woods.
Flood update
On Wednesday, Cale Davenport, assistant superintendent of Pinnacle Mountain State Park, said the Arkansas River has backed into the Little Maumelle River, which flows through the park. The Little Maumelle was rising so quickly that Davenport said he expected the park to close by 4 p.m. on Wednesday.
Miss Laura shot some astonishing video Wednesday at Toad Suck Park in Conway. Seldom have I seen water move so fast. We watch anxiously as the Arkansas River inundates portions of Fort Smith, where I worked during the 1990s.
For a change, property owners along the lower White River are not in immediate peril. They have been flooded three times in the past decade, but the White River is actually falling as the Army Corps of Engineers appears to be holding water in lakes Bull Shoals, Norfork, Table Rock and Beaver until flows abate on the Arkansas.
That might not happen for a while because Arkansas River flood control reservoirs in Oklahoma are at full capacity. The Corps is releasing large amounts of water from those lakes in a controlled fashion, and while the system is functioning as designed, it is still draining a vast volume of water into a compact watershed.
Exacerbating the problem are growing expanses of asphalt, concrete and rooftops that funnel water into swollen waterways instead of water absorbing into soil. This increases runoff into the Arkansas River, which has been converted into a ditch.
The Corps of Engineers learned this lesson the hard way on the Missouri River in the 1990s. Because of channelization, the Missouri River is about 120 miles shorter than when Louis and Clark explored it in 1804-06, but it still drains the same amount of real estate. In other words, the same volume of water drains down a tube that's 120 miles shorter, which means it also drains faster. The only place for water to go is up and out.
After the Great Flood of 1993, which precipitated the greatest economical disaster in Missouri's history, the federal government obtained Missouri River bottomland upstream from St. Louis and set the levees back a quarter of a mile on both sides. This allowed floodwaters to re-establish its braided channel while leaving the navigation channel intact.
The Corps should use this episode as an opportunity to restore the natural function of the Arkansas River. Notching the wing dams would be a good start.
Sports on 05/30/2019