Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Duck season? Rabbit season
There’s more than just quackers to go hunt
While duck hunting is the main event for the next three weeks, you can hunt a lot of other game in Arkansas this month.
Unlike duck hunting, you don’t have to travel far to hunt squirrels, rabbits and even dove and snipe. In most places you will not have any competition.
RABBITS
Of course, the most fun and most productive way to hunt rabbits is behind a pack of small hounds. With the keen noses, breeds like beagles can smell rabbits, roust them from cover and run them back to within shotgun range of hunters.
It’s a communal style of hunting that promotes fellowship while being serenaded by hounds working a rabbit. The barking and yelping will get so faint that you’ll start to believe the rabbit has led the dogs out of the country. Eventually the dogs will turn the rabbit and the din will gradually get louder. When it reaches a certain volume, raise your gun to port arms because its very likely a rabbit will dash past. You will have only a mere window of opportunity to shoot, so you must be ready.
If you don’t have dogs, you can often enjoy a productive hunt walking up rabbits. The best place to do this is on your hunting lease. Most Arkansas woodlands, especially industrial timberlands, support healthy rabbit populations. Cutovers are excellent places to hunt because they have fresh vegetation for rabbits to nibble and ample water that collects in ruts made by logging equipment.
You will probably have to do a lot of walking for this style of hunting, but it’s a great way to familiarize yourself with your lease while getting some much needed exercise. Shooting a rabbit or two is really just a bonus.
The best times to encounter rabbits in the open are at dawn and starting about an hour before dusk. Brushtops and log piles are great rabbit cover. Kicking a brushtop or bouncing on it often unnerves rabbits hiding inside, and they will dart into the open for a shot.
SQUIRRELS
January is a great time to hunt squirrels. It’s so good that the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Gamo air rifles are hosting a statewide squirrel hunting tournament Jan. 13-14.
The great thing about hunting squirrels in the winter is that you can see them in leafless trees and get clear shots with single-projectile rifles and pistols. The downside is that squirrels are not as concentrated as they are in early autumn, so you might not get as many opportunities.
Again, the most productive hunting is with a dog or two. If squirrels are sparse, dogs can save you a lot of effort. They will find and tree squirrels and hold them in a tree until a hunter can arrive. It might take awhile to find the squirrel because they often lie flat and motionless on a branch. It looks a small dark mass that even a trained eye can easily overlook. A scoped rifle in .22 Long Rifle, 22 WMR or .17 HMR will bring it down with minimal damage to meat.
If you don’t have dogs, you can hunt squirrels by covering a lot of ground in the woods or by still hunting. You will often find them in winter feeding on tree buds and shrub buds. They also spend a lot of time on the ground digging up acorns and other goodies beneath leaf litter or buried in the dirt.
In this situation, squirrels usually don’t scamper up the nearest tree. They put distance behind a threat and then climb a tree. Watch closely to know which tree, and also to make sure it doesn’t try to escape through the tops of multiple trees. A savvy squirrel often goes up one tree, scampers across the tops of at least two other trees before running back down to the ground to lose an antagonist. For this kind of hunting, a 12-gauge with 1 1/8-ounce of No. 6 shot through a full choke is usually enough to end the game.
DOVES
Although most dove hunting occurs on opening day of the first dove season in September, many dove hunters believe better hunting occurs in the late season, which ends Jan. 15.
If you spend time hunting geese from pits or looking over a corn feeder while hunting deer in December, you probably have marveled at the large number of doves in those areas. During my post-Christmas deer hunt on Dec. 26, two flocks of about 30-40 doves buzzed the food plot.
You’ll also see them in fresh cutovers at industrial pine plantations.
This is nothing like hunting over sunflower fields in September when doves fly in from all directions. An army of hunters covers the field and does a lot of shooting.
Doves fly into cutovers a few birds at a time and accumulate in an fairly small area. Two or three flocks might be present at different places.
They tend to prefer certain areas. I most often see them feeding on high areas adjacent to draws. If spooked, they dive into the draw instead of flying up. That’s a much tougher shot. A rising dove takes a couple of seconds to gain speed. A diving dove is at full speed the moment it flushes.
The best way to hunt them is to watch from a distance through binoculars. Come back later and set up a chair in that area with your back to a log pile for concealment. If you’re patient, you might get a limit over a few hours.