One possibility. No document to support this that I know of, but April was early in the campaign season. After Jenkins Ferry in late April that year with the Union Army lheld up in their strongholds of Little Rock and Pine Bluff a lot of area which was formally under unionist control became available for the recruiters and those officers sent to round up those men of the brigade who where on "French Leave" and "Furlough" during the winter months.

Just what that number of "recruits" may have been is conjecture since we don't have muster rolls of that period. But also at that time the Confederate army was down to enlisting the "seed crop" of the southern manhood.