|
 COMPTON
- Kenneth Oliver didn’t waste time when the December elk hunt opened
along the Buffalo River. But it took a chase for him to get a large
bull.
Shortly after daylight Monday, Dec. 5, the opening day of the five-day
hunt, Oliver spotted three bull elk near the Erbie horse camp in Newton
County. But the elk spotted him.
“We chased them through three meadows,” Oliver said. “Then I had the
pick of the three. One was a 5X5, one was a 6X6, then there was this
one.” He killed a 6X7, the largest in body size as well as antler rack
of the three. He took the bull at 150 yards range with two shots from
his 7mm Magnum rifle. The elk had an antler spread of 33 inches.
Oliver lives at Rosston in Nevada County. He had previous elk hunting
experience in Wyoming and won his Arkansas permit earlier this year from
about 9,000 Arkansans who applied for the free permits. Twenty permits
are issued each year. Four permits were for bull elk in late September.
The other 16 were for the December hunt.
Kevin Sears of Jacksonville got his cow elk early the second morning of
the hunt. He spotted several elk in a field on the Gene Rush Wildlife
Management Area, picked out two female elk away from the group then
circled and got into shooting position.
He fired once from 80 yards away. “The elk didn’t flinch. It just walked
over the hill like they told us in orientation that elk do sometimes. My
helper (Dave Corley of Jacksonville) asked me if I hit it, and I knew I
had hit it. We went about a hundred yards, and there the elk was, dead.
 Sears’
cow elk weighed 410 pounds. Nicole Peterson, elk research biologist with
the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, estimated the young cow was just
a year and a half old.
Larry Fletcher of Timbo killed a cow elk just before sundown Monday off
the North Ridge Road along the Buffalo River near Pruitt.
Celeste McCollum of Alma, one of two women hunters in the field for the
December hunt, killed a cow elk Tuesday morning near the river in Searcy
County.
Mark Zimmerman of North Little Rock scored with a cow elk late Tuesday
in the Erbie area. “I was using a 7mm Mag, and the elk went about 75
yards then went down. We were glad to find her because there wasn’t any
blood trail at all.”
The December hunt will continue through Friday, Dec. 9. |
