Big Squirrel Challenge draws youth, adult hunters

More than 110 teams participated in the statewide Big Squirrel Challenge held Jan. 13-14 with a youth team from Yellville claiming the day’s heaviest three-squirrel limit.

Hank Duren and Sophia Layton brought a bag of three fox squirrels to Fred Berry Crooked Creek Nature Center in Yellville that weighed in at 5 pounds, 5 ounces. Not only was this good enough to take top honors in the statewide youth division for a bag of fox squirrels, it was the heaviest three squirrels any team turned in for the day. The J.B. and Johnelle Hunt Family Ozark Highlands Nature Center in Springdale was also a weigh-in site.

Yellville produced another team that took statewide honors. The team of Emma and Zoey Wyatt brought in the day’s largest three-squirrel bag of both fox and gray squirrels in the youth division with 4 pounds, 6 ounces of bushytails.

Four categories were listed for this year’s competition, two adult and two youth. The difference between the categories was whether the participants weighed only fox squirrels or had a mixed bag of fox squirrels and gray squirrels.

In the adult competition, Blake Goodine and Kristian Starnes took the statewide fox squirrel title with 4 pounds, 9 ounces. They weighed their squirrels at the Springdale nature center, where the first Big Squirrel Challenge began.

The adult fox squirrel/ gray squirrel bag division saw a tie in the statewide competition. Cameron Tatom and Chad Rader weighed in 3 pounds, 13 ounces of squirrels. Their score was duplicated by Robby Beene who brought his squirrels to the Camp Robinson Firing Range in Mayflower operated by Game and Fish.