The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) is asking the public for their input on potential regulation changes for the upcoming hunting and fishing season. The survey includes more than 155 proposed regulation changes, however, participants can choose which resolutions to comment on.
According to AGFC conservation social scientist Jessica Feltz, says the new survey will take less time to complete and roughly half of the changes being considered are administrative.
After completing the survey, respondents will be sent to a webpage where they can enter to win prizes, including gift cards and outdoor merchandise. The information collected for the prize drawing is separate from the survey and cannot be traced back to an individual’s survey responses.
Among the hunting regulations being considered are:
– Eliminate the Private Land Antlerless Only Modern Gun Deer Hunt, require GPS tracking collars with behavior correction capabilities on all dogs pursuing wildlife, restrict nonresidents pursuing deer with dogs to only the last nine days of modern gun season where deer dogs are allowed and limit them to one deer each.
– Allowing straight-walled centerfire rifle cartridges during modern gun season in Deer Zones four and five, opening a special three-day “velvet buck” archery deer hunt for the first weekend of September, allowing nonresidents only one turkey in their seasonal bag limit and creating a nonresident turkey license product.
– Opening frog-gigging season on June 1 instead of April 15 and reducing the daily limit to ten bullfrogs, increasing spearfishing daily limits to match hook-and-line limits where spearfishing is allowed.
– Changing the 13-to-16 inch slot limit on largemouth bass in Brewer Lake and Lake Barnett to the statewide daily limit of ten, but only allowing one fish over 16 inches to be kept per day, prohibiting the harvest of trout, other than rainbow trout, from 30 minutes after sunset instead of 30 minutes before sunrise, limiting white-fronted goose season to only be open when duck season is open, replacing the current 30-day nonresident waterfowl hunting days from a set schedule of dates to any 30 days of their choice during duck season through the purchase of up to 10 three day Nonresident WMA Waterfowl Permits.
Restricting access to nonresident waterfowl hunters on WMAs while greentree reservoir infrastructure renovations are under construction, establishing a 25-shell limit for waterfowl hunters on all WMAs where common restriction A boating regulations are in place and three options changes to the 2024-25 duck season.
Additionally, the Commission is taking public opinion on the possibility of prohibiting all surface-driven motors on WMAs and opinions on opening the statewide muzzleloader season to straight-walled centerfire cartridges of .30 caliber or greater.
The survey can be found at www.agfc.com and will be available from Feb. 16 through March 15.
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