Arkansas’s alternative firearms deer hunting season opens Oct. 18

LITTLE ROCK — Many Natural State deer hunters will head to the woods for the first time on Saturday with a new shooting iron in their hands for the state’s alternative firearms season. Introduced last deer hunting season, the alternative firearms season expands muzzleloading season to include a few new options for hunters to carry.

In addition to muzzleloaders, hunters participating in the alternative firearms hunt will be able to use non-semi-automatic rifles that fire straight-wall centerfire cartridges.

Specifically, these are the options available to hunters this alternative firearms deer hunting season:

• Muzzleloading rifles with a barrel 18 inches or longer and of .40 caliber or larger;

• Muzzleloading handguns with barrels 9 inches or longer and at least .45 caliber if they shoot conical bullets 200 grains or heavier, or .530 caliber if shooting round balls;

• Large bore air rifles at least .40 caliber that shoot a single, expandable slug, produce at least 400 feet/pounds of energy at the muzzle and are charged from an external tank; and

• Non-semiautomatic centerfire firearms (including non-semiautomatic handguns with barrels 4 inches or longer) that fire a straight-walled metallic cartridge .30 caliber or larger.

No shotguns are allowed during the alternative firearms season, nor are automatic or semi-automatic rifles.

During the hunt’s opening year there was some confusion about the legality of drop-in conversions to limit the functionality of AR-platform rifles. To clarify, simple drop-ins that prevent cycling or tweaks to the firearm to render the semi-automatic function inoperable are not enough to be legal. Conversion kits must replace the entire upper portion of the firearm with an obvious bolt action visible from a distance to be used during the alternative firearms season.

Both shotguns and semi-automatic rifles are legal to use during modern gun seasons, so owners of these firearms can still enjoy them during a portion of the deer hunting year, but for alternative firearms season, they must still stay in the gun safe. The season still opens new opportunities and is by no means a restriction on previous years. It’s apparent that many hunters have enjoyed this expansion.

Arkansas deer hunting records showed a substantial increase in harvest during the alternative firearms season last year with 21,665 deer checked. Muzzleloaders accounted for 11,284 of those deer, which was in line with the previous year’s total of 11,992 deer checked. The alternative firearms harvest appeared to nearly match that muzzleloader component with 10,356 deer taken by straight-wall cartridge. Twenty-five deer taken with big-bore air rifles rounded out the total alternative firearms harvest last year.

The increase in alternative firearms harvest was followed by a decrease in the opening weekend harvest of modern gun season, with nearly 9,000 fewer deer checked than the opening weekend of modern gun season in 2023. When the final numbers were tallied at the end of the year, the 2024-25 season showed a slight increase from the year before, with 200,285 deer checked, well within the typical range of the season’s harvest totals during the last decade.

Visit www.agfc.com/hunting/deer for a complete list of season dates and deer-specific regulations or download your copy of the 2024-25 Arkansas Hunting Guidebook at www.agfc.com/guidebooks.

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