Hunting is popular in Arkansas, drawing both residents and visitors, and the state is rich in public lands where hunting seasons are carefully managed to keep a healthy pool of wildlife thriving.
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However, the state also allows hunting o n private land under a number of different circumstances. Hunting of feral pigs, for example, is allowed year-round on private land, by landowners directly, and unrelated hunters with the landowner's permission.
Furthermore, the state leases hunting rights from owners of vast tracts of private property in the Arkansas hinterlands, and manages hunting there according to the same principles that apply in the surrounding or adjacent public lands in wildlife management areas.
Hunters are charged a fee to offset the cost of these leases, providing landowners extra income from what might otherwise be marginal terrain, helping to preserve the state's natural habitat and wildlife populations. Bears, deer, and rabbits, after all, have no respect for boundary marks.
It's not as simple as loading up the truck with hunting rifles or archery equipment and bagging daily limits. Here are a few things landowners should know about hunting on private property in Arkansas.
Wildlife Officers Can Come onto Your Property at Any Time
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission warns that armed wildlife officers may at any time enter "any property outside of private dwellings, posted or otherwise, in the performance of their duties," and detain anyone they reasonably suspect of hunting, trapping, or doing anything else that affects the region's wildlife.
No Property Is an Island
If your land is surrounded by public land of a wildlife management area (WMA), it is subject to the same rules as the WMA as regards hunting seasons, bag limits, allowable weapons for that prey and season, and so forth. (Lands surrounded by a National Wildlife Reserve are subject to additional regulation under Federal rules.)
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Nuisance Animals Are Fair Game
You as a landowner can shoot "nuisance beaver, muskrat, nutria, coyote, raccoon, opossum, squirrel, and striped skunk" any time of the year, or you can designate someone else to do so.
You Control Hunter Access
Regardless of season, no one can hunt, trap, or fish on your property without written permission from you. Unless they're kin: a "spouse, parent, child, sibling, uncle, aunt, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, niece, nephew, grandchild, or grandparent" needs only verbal permission to hunt your land.
This article is for information only. Please check current regulations before hunting.
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