across the river
Senior Member
I think you may want to do a little more research about your assumptions. Waterfowling alone led to over $100mil in revenue for the AGFC alone. They get license fees, and a portion of the sales tax for all hunting related products.
The fed got about the same amount out of AR. Waterfowl hunting generates of 18,000 jobs in the state of AR and the fed collect taxes from. Im guess that’s a pretty huge $ too.
With organizations like DU, And Delta Waterfowl AR can lease land from farmers or set up conservation easements for rest areas for little to nothing. Arkansas did dig themselves a hole by not looking at the long term. They have even admitted it. There is plenty that state can do to increase duck numbers. They need to go back to what they were doing 20yrs ago before they let anti hunting corporate jack legs take over the agency.
If you had actually read my entire post before you started responding, the “research” was done for you and the links are actually in the post I made. The argument made, to which I responded, was that Arkansas was loosing out of state hunters due to the restrictions on them, and should have acquired a bunch of land to deal with the influx of hunters. There wasn't an "influx", at least of any significance.
In reality, Arkansas resident license sales fell from 2014 to 2019 and the only significant increase in any license period was non-resident small game, which would be tied to OOs'ers duck hunting, who were supposedly no longer showing up. Arkansas sold ~40,000 non-resident small game license in 2014 and ~47,000 in 2019. That is a nearly 20% increase in small game license purchases, and while that might be noticeable on some WMAs when waterfowl hunting, it isn't close to enough people to generate $100 million dollars or provide income to the state to purchase a bunch of land. It dang sure doesn't come close to making up for the large drop in hunting licenses overall. I think you need to do some more research. Fortunately for you, the links are still there.
I have hunted Arkansas, nearly every year since the early 1990's. The early years on public all over the place to mainly private land since the early 2000s. The private land, which had been pretty phenomenal for years, has been abysmal recently compared to what it once was. I didn't even go the last two years, because the couple of times they had a few ducks I couldn't get out there. The drop off on that place has zero to do with OOS'ers, pressure, or the AGFC. Migration patterns have changed, especially in the Mississippi flyway. Blame farming practices, global warming, whatever you want to, but I have hunted MS, LA, and ARK all enough of the last three decades to have seen the change first hand, especially on private land that gets as little, or even less, pressure now that it did years ago. I'm not saying they don't still get ducks passing through, or that you can't kill birds there, but it is different for sure. All this, its the DNRs fault stuff is ridiculous. They aren't managing a trout stream or stripers in a lake where they have control over what gets put in and taken out. It is what it is. You can either adjust, or continue to complain.