| Conway hunter earns his 6X6 bull elk the hard way |
 ASPER
-- As it turned out, Jason Rose of Conway was unique on the September
Arkansas elk hunt. He was the only hunter in the field who won a permit
through the public drawing system.It took Rose four of the allotted five days, but he got his elk, a 6X6 bull killed near the Buffalo River in Newton County. The September hunt was with four permits. The other 16 permits of the prescribed 20 for 2005 are for the Dec. 5-9 hunt. This is the public land segment of the elk hunt. Running at the same time is a private land hunt with a different permit system. In September, just one elk was taken out of a hunt quota of five with 73 permits issued at $35 apiece. Another hunter who had a public drawing permit could not participate because of a serious illness. Two bull permits in the September hunt were issued through fund-raising auctions of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Rose paid nothing for his permit. It was the luck of the draw that he emerged with a permit from over 9,000 Arkansans who applied during the month of May. It was the first elk hunting experience for Rose, but he has a number of years of deer hunting under his belt. He followed instructions from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission that pointed out the need for advance scouting. This is a step that is short cut each year by some of the hunters with permits. The notion that getting an elk in Arkansas means merely stepping outside a vehicle and shooting it persists - and is erroneous. Part of the assumption comes from the familiar elk in Boxley Valley that are easily seen early and late in the day from a paved highway. But this area is closed to hunting. Rose went to the Buffalo River country in advance of the hunt, looked around his assigned zone, found elk, found elk sign in other places and laid his hunt plans. A required orientation for hunters was Sunday before the hunt began Monday morning. Another unique facet for Rose was he planned to hunt with a bow. But he took along a rifle. The rifle was used successfully the fourth day. Rose said, “We saw this bull in the far corner of the Angle Field (a locally named area next to the river) about 7 in the morning. I had hunted the first three days with my bow, but this day I had the rifle. I shot and hit a tree limb. Missed. I shot again and hit the bull. It ran downhill toward the river.” Rose and his helper, Buck Blythe of Conway, carefully tracked the bull, and it took time. Finally, about 10:30, Rose got close enough and in good view to put in a killing shot. The two had a dead elk of several hundred pounds on the edge of the river, down steep mountainsides from road and vehicle access. After going back to the top where a cell phone could be used, they notified the AGFC’s hunt headquarters then began the daunting task of field dressing the elk and getting it up to their truck. This had to be done by cutting the carcass into sections. “That hide was really tough just like they told us in the orientation,” Rose said. “They advised us to take along rope, and this helped in tying off the legs (of the carcass.” A couple of passersby helped in getting the sectioned elk up to the truck. Rose and Blythe had camped in the nearby Erbie Campground and had coolers large enough to handle the elk. “I used a .300 Magnum rifle,” Rose said, “a Mauser, bolt action.” Rose grew up at Greenbrier, graduated from Greenbrier High School and now works in information technology for ABC Financial Services in Sherwood. He’s 30 years old. All three of the September public land elk hunters scored with 6X6 bulls. The most impressive was one taken by Bob Wood of Monitor, Wash., a bull with a thick-massed set of antlers and with 850 pounds body weight. Wood won his permit at the Elk Foundation’s national convention auction. Walton Short of Magnolia won his permit at the Arkansas auction of the Elk Foundation for the sixth year. At the December hunt, the 16 permit holders will include three with bull permits, a youth with a permit for either a bull or a cow elk and 12 with cow elk permits. |
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