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Bill Cochran

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BILL: How coincidental that you publish your findings about this year’s big game contest one day after I just complete a similar study (see last week’s Cochran Field Reports). At a tutorial project to learn GIS for the locality where I work, I decided to examine and map where our big game entries come from each year that are placed in the contest. These results include all game (deer, bear and turkey); however, because more deer are entered than any other game I think that the results of these maps probably are skewed in favor of deer.

Further, I decided to also run these results for the 1999 contest. That is the last year that the eastern contest was held in Williamsburg prior to moving to the city of Franklin in Southampton County. What I wanted to find out was if shifting the contest to the eastern county with the most big deer would result in higher than normal entries for Southampton and if the areas closer to Williamsburg were less represented after the move.

I think what these two comparisons show is that while the move to the center of big deer country resulted in an overall increase in the number of entries, the areas closer to Williamsburg and farther north are still being equally recognized. I have often thought that if someone harvests a nice deer they are willing to drive to wherever the show is located to enter it.

I agree with you that next year’s contest winner could come from any county. All you need to do is see a list of the past winners from the last few years to see that they come from different areas of the state.

I often tell my 17-year old daughter to stay awake on her stand because at any minute the next year’s winner could poke his head around a bush. We truly are living in exciting times of deer hunting in this state. Overall, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and hunters have done a great job with the resource.