A number of Boone & Crockett record-book bucks have come out of a few counties in the south-central part of the state. Find out how to get in on the action.
February 12, 2019
By Kelly Bostian
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Check out this video to learn how to manage your small track of land to bag your trophy buck.
PUBLIC LAND OPTIONS
The nearest public access to “Deer Central” falls in counties around the edges.
One option is a relatively small Wildlife Management Area (WMA) operated by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation that first opened to hunting in the 2017 season. The 3,869-acre Arbuckle Springs WMA is in the extreme northeast corner of Johnston County on the southern Pontotoc and western Coal county lines. Because it is just-opened, not much habitat management work has been done.
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It is a walk-in and bowhunting-only area, which does offer primitive camping . “But it does have a good population of white-tailed deer,” Barber said.He emphasized the big-bucks-are-where-you-find-them philosophy and said in the past two years big bucks seem to be coming from all parts of the state.
“Like I tell everyone who wants to know where a big buck is hiding,” he said, “every year a buck gets killed that is impressive, and the location might surprise you. One of the biggest ever killed was in Oklahoma County, the most populated county in the state.”
Some of those outlying Boone & Crockett counties, such as Canadian, Oklahoma and Logan, also offer up scant public land opportunities, although Arcadia Conservation Education Area north of Oklahoma City is open to limited controlled-drawing archery hunts administered by the City of Edmond.Another one of the nearest public opportunities also is managed on a limited-draw archery basis, and thousands apply annually for the roughly 1,600 drawing permits issued. While the post allows a lot of hunting, those hunters are limited to traditional archery equipment, so wary bucks live a long time and grow large.
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The McAlester Army Ammunition Plant lands are in Pittsburgh County, but the land borders Hughes County, actually just about 28 miles as the crow flies from where Larry Wheeler took his two Canadian River bucks in Pontotoc.
The McAAP hunt is famed for its “10 Most Wanted” bucks captured on camera each year and posted at the hunt headquarters. Boone & Crockett bucks may be rare on the post, but Pope & Young bucks are a regular feature with 197 measured between 2002 and 2017.
McAAP Wildlife Manager Ryan Toby said the post is just coming off a record-setting fawn recruitment year in 2017 and notes that harvests of big deer tend to follow five to six years after big fawn survival years. The lands naturally produce big deer, he said.
“I’ve always said this cross-timbers area between about McAlester and Ada is some of the best deer country in the state,” he said. “It has that mix of timber and agriculture and hidey-holes where deer can grow, and it’s diverse habitat, so no matter what the weather does they have food sources. It’s just ideal for growing healthy deer.”
