 COMPTON
– The 2006 December elk hunt opened on a feminine note along with
bone-chilling weather.
Rachel Ornsbey, just 15 years old, started the successes by hunters
along the Buffalo River by downing a 4X5 bull elk in Searcy County, the
lower portion of the hunting area. Ornsbey lives at Rover (Yell County)
and won her permit in the public drawing at Jasper last summer when her
name was picked from a cage with more than 7,700 applications.
It was her first elk. She didn’t hesitate early on the opening morning
when she found the bull within shooting range.
Later the first day, Laura James of Rogers dropped a cow elk in the Gene
Rush Wildlife Management Area of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
It was her first elk hunt also.
James, 26 and a recruiter for the J.B. Hunt trucking firm, said this
year was the first time she had applied for an elk permit, which are
free. But she is an experienced hunter with several deer, turkey and
other game to her credit.
James had her father, Frank James, as her hunt helper. They found a
group of elk in a field in the Three Fingers area of Gene Rush WMA, then
sneaked through woods to get closer. Another group appeared – three cow
elk and a calf. She picked one, aimed and fired from about 120 yards
away.
“The elk was hit but she didn’t go down. She started moving away so I
shot again, and she went down this time,” James said.
Daybreak temperatures in the teens were a challenge for the 16 hunters
with December permits, some of whom camped along the Buffalo. It was the
coldest start for an Arkansas elk hunt since the 2000 one that was cut
short after two days by an ice storm.
Also successful in getting elk were:
Belynda Bailey of Waldron, cow.
Larry Hopkins of Mountain View, cow.
Chad Binz of Ozark, cow.
William McCutcheon of Jacksonville, cow.
John Mark Gillihan of Batesville, cow.
Eric Francis of Fayetteville, cow.
Roy Prouty of Mountain Home, cow.
Tanner Nichols of Jonesboro, 5X6 bull.
Derrek Nokes of Prescott, 6X6 bull.
Arkansas elk hunting is in its ninth year. The elk are a major wildlife
success story, re-introduced in the state beginning in 1981 after being
wiped out more than a century earlier. The elk now number 450 to 500,
and 20 hunting permits are issued each year by the AGFC.
The application period is in the spring, then the drawing for the
permits is an annual feature of Jasper’s June Buffalo River Elk
Festival. |