Bella Vista resident has successful elk hunt
Posted on Monday, December 17, 2007
BELLA VISTA - A Bella Vista hunter will be bringing home a mountain of meat after bagging an elk during the first day of the December elk-hunting season.
The accomplishment was completed by Joshua Burns, who snagged one of the few elk hunting permits issued by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission this season.
The permits are released each year based on what research shows is healthy for the herd, according to Mike Cartwright, the AGFC's elk-program coordinator.
This year, fewer than 30 permits were issued to a pool of nearly 8, 000 applicants.
Each permit stipulates the dates and eligible game of the hunt, Burns said. His permit allowed him to take an antlerless elk during the December season, which ran Dec. 3-7.
Burns and his father, Buddy, traveled to a national park along the Buffalo River, which served as an eligible hunting ground for the season.
"It is one of the few national parks that you can actually hunt on," Joshua Burns said. "There are four hunting zones that stretch over 60 miles of river."
Burns and his father went down to the camp before opening day, but they didn't get much rest that night.
"We woke up at 2: 30 in the morning. We were so excited that we couldn't sleep," the younger Burns said.
The two set out early for the hunting area they scouted previously. They arrived on location and set up just before 5 a. m., with morning frost still on the ground.
"It was so cold that my binoculars and scope would fog up when I looked through them," said Joshua Burns.
The pair waited out the morning cold without much luck. They returned to camp for lunch and re-evaluated their plan. Certain that elk were in the area, the men decided to return to the same spot.
After an afternoon of waiting, their patience paid off.
"We started hearing them up in the woods when it was almost dark," Joshua Burns said.
He then started using an elk call to try to get the animals closer.
"They make kind of a mew sound. " For a moment, he thought his plan had backfired. "They just shut up," he said. The men waited silently for a moment, then heard something approaching. "They snuck up behind us," Joshua Burns said. He positioned his 7 mm Remington Magnum and took aim on one of the four cows. "One shot was all that was necessary. "His shot struck what turned out to be a 453-pound elk, he said. After the animal fell, Joshua Burns called representatives from the AGFC.
"The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission was great throughout the whole process. In fact, I called them after downing the elk, and they arrived in a specially equipped truck to pick her up. They needed to collect some data from the animal, so they even gutted her."
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