Arkansas Out-of-Doors • September/October 2012 - 11
Bearcat Volunteers Growing By Ethan Nahté
The last weekend in September proved to be another successful work weekend at Bearcat Hollow. This year the number of Arkansas Tech University Fisheries and Wildlife Society students increased for the third year in a row. In addition, students and instructors from University of the Ozarks were able to finally make it up for the first time to work and enjoy the camping, great food and camaraderie. Officially, the last Saturday of September is known as National Public Lands Day. It is also the primary weekend that Arkansas Wildlife Federation volunteers team up with some of its cooperative partners such as AGFC, USFS, RMEF & NWTF for this particular weekend, as well as AWF’s previously mentioned school affiliates. The volunteers all travel from around the state to go do work up in the Ozarks at an area known as Bearcat Hollow. Some of the volunteers show up on Friday night and camp out while others show up early on Saturday and leave that afternoon. The die-hards don’t pack out until Sunday afternoon. This year’s work included the installation of four new gates on open fields; picking up large rocks and tree limbs in the open fields to prevent damage of hay cutting and baling equipment; sowing seed, fertilizer and covering it with wheat straw on seven ponds to help prevent erosion; picking up litter on US Forest Service roads in the area. Some volunteers will return in January or February after the hunting season has ended to do cleanup along Richland Creek once again. Then
in late February/early March more volunteers will show up to spend part of a day planting 1000 American and Chickasaw plum trees. The trees could not be planted in September since that is not the ideal time to plant and they wouldn’t survive the winter. The purpose of the trees is to provide food and forage for wildlife and to help prevent erosion on some steep hills that are too difficult to cut for hay. For some of the students, not only was this their first time attending the volunteer day, it was their first time camping. Most of them seemed to enjoy the experience, although a couple were not as enthused with the light rain on the first evening and waking up to a pea soup fog that did not burn off until after one that afternoon. Many of the students excitedly stated that they were enjoying themselves and couldn’t wait to come back again. Others were happy to point out to the newcomers that they had helped with the work that went into the acres of fields covered in flowers, clover, and native grasses; still alive with hundreds of butterflies and bees. The ponds they had worked on in the past showed plenty of tracks and proof that the water resources were being used by a variety of wildlife. They showed where they had helped pull up hundreds of yards of old barbed wire fencing that impeded the path of the wildlife and posed a threat to the welfare of the wildlife. From the paperwork filled out - yes, even in the mountain elevations where there is no electricity and little-to-no cell phone reception, paperwork is still a necessity Arkansas Wildlife Federation determined
that the weekend volunteers totaled just over 50 people who came to help us. There was a total of 169 hours travel time over 4,719 miles total. The volunteers logged over 300 man hours worked on September 29, 2012. The volunteers also enjoyed a night of sandwiches and venison chili the first evening, followed by a cooked breakfast early the next morning. When they returned from the fields they were treated to foil packs of veggies, chicken, deer burger or elk burger cooked right on the hot coals of the campfire. That evening was a couple of different styles of soups. The following morning was another cooked breakfast of pancakes and sausage. Plenty of snacks were on hand but a lot of the students got to make smores or banana boats for the first time over the fire. AWF board member Lola Perritt was in charge of the cooking, but she had an assembly line crew working diligently with her to make it all happen. It takes a
lot of food and a couple of pick-up trucks to tote all of the food and drinks up there, not to mention the other trucks pulling trailers with the equipment for an event such as this. Some of the group divided up and went out on Saturday evening as the sun began to set. One group heard three elk bugle while another group saw three elk. Bob and Sharon Shewmake had the chance to see an elk earlier in the day as they drove up. They were able to take a couple of nice photos of the elk as well as of a deer and a hawk along the way. Later on Saturday evening, as midnight approached, a pack of coyotes could be heard howling and making their way along the hills. The full moon was slightly hidden behind thin gossamer clouds. A large ice ring circled the bright orb as it shined down on the dewcovered fields from its perch in the midnight sky while an owl hooted and a lone elk bugled in the night.
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