Arkansas’s Triple Trophy Award rewards elite hunters for diverse hunting skills

LITTLE ROCK — With the 2024-25 Arkansas deer hunting season in the rearview mirror, many hunters have only memories. A few of Arkansas’s most dedicated hunters have until April 10 to submit their application for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s Triple Trophy Award.

Hunters who qualify for the Triple Trophy Award must, within a single annual deer season, take at least one deer by each of the following hunting methods: modern firearm, muzzleloading firearm and archery/crossbow tackle. Qualifying hunters receive a patch and a certificate suitable for framing.

Deer harvested with straight-walled rifles count toward the hunter’s modern gun harvest number for consideration toward a Triple Trophy Award. Only guns loaded through the muzzle are considered for the muzzleloading firearm portion of the award. 

The expansion of Arkansas’s Alternative Firearms Deer Season to include straight-walled rifles was intended to help hunters who may have been intimidated by the intricacies of muzzleloaders and archery equipment enjoy more days in the deer stand. The AGFC’s deer team, however, still wants to recognize those hunters who spent the extra effort working up powder-and-projectile combinations and challenging themselves with true muzzleloaders.

“We have many hunters who have really worked hard over the years to achieve this goal, and we do want to protect the integrity of their accomplishments,” AGFC Deer Management Assistance Program Coordinator Jeremy Brown said.

Arkansas’s statewide deer herd was estimated at a paltry 500 animals during a survey in the 1930s. Unregulated market hunting and subsistence hunting nearly extirpated deer in the state. The AGFC introduced deer from other states and relocated deer to game refuges, where they were protected and allowed to grow without disturbance. Harvest of female deer was strictly prohibited to enable the deer herds to expand.

The Triple Trophy Program was created in 1984 to help shift the mindset to encourage some harvest of does to help balance the deer herd, increasing the health of bucks as well as does in the population. Because hunters could only legally harvest two bucks, a third checked deer would have to be a doe, helping ease out of the purely protective mindset.

Visit www.agfc.com/tripletrophy to learn more and apply.

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