HARRISON - Ronnie Ramsey of Harrison has an effective formula for successful elk hunting - give ‘em good groceries.

Arkansas’s elk in the Buffalo River country of the northern part of the state have demonstrated what other species of wildlife in the state have shown for decades. Readily available food supplies and adequate protection are a key to good numbers of healthy animals.

Ramsey, 47 and a automobile agency owner, has 800 acres in the Hilltop area of southwestern Boone County that he operates as wildlife habitat.  Elk use it, along with deer, turkeys, occasional bears, squirrels, rabbits and assorted nongame animals and birds.

In the recent December elk hunt, Ramsey killed a bull elk with an 8X9 rack, meaning it had eight points on one side of its antlers and nine on the other side. It had the most points of any elk taken in the seven years of elk hunting in Arkansas and is the largest bull taken in hunting Zone A.

Ramsey was acquainted with the big bull. “I have taken a lot of photos of it this year,” he said.

He was hunting from a tree stand in the afternoon. He said, I had been there about two and a half hours, and some deer came in. Then I saw the deer get alert. Four elk came in and started running around. Then after two or three minutes, they drifted back in the field, and the bull came in.”

Ramsey shot once with his .270-caliber Browning rifle, and the elk “dropped in its tracks.”

Ramsey’s 800-acre tract, he said, “has just 40 acres or so open. The rest is wooded. We have records of 10 years of wildlife habitat management. It’s a lot of work. We work the food plots year-round, but it pays off. We plant things like BioLogic, alfalfa, lots of clover and orchard grass. On some of our foot plots, we use orchard grass in the center and clover on the edges.”

Ramsey’s elk hunting was in Zone A, the private land portion of the annual Arkansas elk hunt. This is land in Boone, Newton and Carroll counties where some landowners and livestock raisers don’t like the competition from elk for pastures used for cattle grazing and hay production.

Hunting is by written permission. To get a Zone A permit, a hunter must furnish a landowner’s written permission with his or her application for the $35 permits. And the Zone A hunt closes when a quota is reached. The quota was five elk for the December hunt, and four were taken.

Mike Cartwright, elk program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said,  “The purpose of the private land hunt was to allow landowners to have some control on the number of elk on their property and in cases where elk were considered a nuisance, to reduce those numbers through legal harvest.  This has worked. We are getting fewer complaints about elk in this area than we had a few years ago.  At the same time, some hunters are able to enjoy pursuit of elk with permission from landowners.

“Those landowners who want elk have the option to also control numbers and allow elk to increase on their property through habitat improvement and limiting the number of elk hunters and thus legal elk harvest on their property.  People often call me seeking information about areas in north Arkansas where elk occur.  Many are interested in purchasing property within the elk range so they can enjoy seeing and hunting elk.  Private landowners in Arkansas’ private land hunting zone are very unique and special in that they have the opportunity to have four big game species (elk, deer, bear and turkey) on their property to enjoy viewing, photographing and hunting.  Landowners in the rest of the state do not have this unique opportunity.”

Arkansas’ annual elk hunt is in two segments, September and December, and in five zones - four along the Buffalo River, mostly on public land of the National Park Service and the Game and Fish Commission.