Thursday, November 12, 2009
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Connecting the dots to locate Virginia's best trophy deer hunting
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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Sean Huffam killed this 19-point buck in Rockbridge County. It ranks in the all-time top-10.
Where is the top spot in Virginia to take a trophy deer?
Is it on a national forest ridge remote enough to grow a buck with antlers so large they make a whacking noise on the underbrush when it charges past you?
Or is it on a private farm that you are most likely to find a wall-hanging buck, flashing his white tail around the corner of a weathered barn?
In reality, either place could produce a buck of a lifetime. Virginia has become trophy whitetail country from the mountains to the sea.
But there are some spots with greater potential for producing big deer than others.
To pinpoint them, I took the approximately 100 top-scoring deer in the state’s 2009 Big Game Contest and noted what county they were killed in. I came up with a top 10 list of counties.
Here are the rankings, along with some rationale as to why they enjoyed multiple-trophy kills. In some instances I got help from wildlife biologists and hunting buddies:
1. SURRY
This county produced an amazing 11 trophies in the big game show, or about 10 percent of the top 100 total. It is a decidedly rural county, bordering the tidal James River southwest of Jamestown, with fertile farms and forests that provide food and habitat for deer. Much of the terrain is leased to hunt clubs that practice quality deer management, giving the bucks an opportunity to grow big antlers.
2. SOUTHAMPTON
To the south of Surry County (watch, a trend is about to develop) this county accounted for eight trophies during the 2009 contest and has had four overall contest winners through the years. It is a county of fertile soil that grows abundant agriculture crops, such as peanuts, soybeans and corn, along with natural crops of acorns. There are dense pines and meandering streams and swamps that provide ideal cover for bucks to mature. Hunt clubs rule the roost, many practicing quality deer management.
3. ISLE OF WIGHT
Everything needed to grow big bucks has been available in this county for at least 50 years. It borders Surry and Southampton, and accounted for seven of the top 100 deer in the 2009 contest. It jumped onto the scene as a trophy producer way back during the 1962-63 season when Peter Crocker Jr. of Windsor killed a 27-point buck during a hound hunt. That trophy ranked No. 1 in the record book for years. With a score of 271-15/16, it now is a solid third place in the all-time records. Deer in the county obviously have good antler-growing genetics, along with the kind of food and protection afforded bucks in Surry and Southampton.
4, 5 and 6 tie. AMHERST, BEDFORD, ROANOKE
These three counties tied with five trophy deer apiece in the 2009 rankings. They border each other and can be viewed as a unit. This is farm and forest country that provides deer ample food and cover, but some biologists believe that genetics play a significant role here. During the state’s deer restoration efforts the counties may have benefited from deer imported from northern states that on the average produce bigger racks.
7. SUSSEX
This county is part of the Surry-Southampton-Isle of Wight complex; thus, much of what is said about them as trophy producers can be applied to Sussex. It produced four trophies in the 2009 top 100 count. What you have in this grouping is Virginia’s best producer of big bucks. No little factor: there are more than 50 DMAP cooperators in this region managing 265,000 acres of land for quality deer. Many are hunt clubs that pose restrictions on killing young bucks.
8. FLOYD
Floyd’s four trophies were the same as the count in Sussex, but I gave Sussex the edge because it is located in Virginia’s big deer triangle. As for Floyd, it is part of the Amherst-Bedford-Roanoke complex, the second most productive trophy deer region in Virginia. It shares many of the same characteristics.
9 and 10 tie ROCKBRIDGE, BOTETOURT
Both of these side-by-side counties produced three top 100 trophies last season. One of the Rockbridge bucks was a 19-pointer that was first overall in the contest. It was killed deep in the national forest by Sean Huffman of Buena Vista and scored 252-6/16, placing it in the all-time top-10. The two counties contain large tracts of national forest land, where bucks have an opportunity to mature and farmland where food is plentiful. Without too much of a stretch, Rockbridge and Botetourt could be considered part of the Amherst-Bedford-Roanoke trophy deer factory.
