Thursday, July 29, 2004
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Can you hear me now? I've got a deer
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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PROBLEM #1: You are deer hunting in a remote area late in the day when you kill a nice buck. You tear off the appropriate deer tag from your big game license and attatch it to the animal as the law requires.
By the time you have field dressed the buck and dragged it to your vehicle it has gotten late. When you arrive at a designated big game checking station located in a country store, you find the store closed.
The law says you must check the deer “without unnecessary delay,” so you head for a check station the next county away, not quiet sure where one is located. You use your cellphone to call home to tell your family that you will be late.
PROBLEM # 2: When you reach the second check station you discover that the big game tag you attatched to your deer is gone. It apparently was torn off when you were dragging the buck out of the woods, or maybe it blew away when the deer was transported in the back of your pickup.
Problems such as these have been common throughout the years. But the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has a new system that it believes will make checking deer and spring gobblers much simpler.
For starters, you aren’t likely to lose your big game tag because such tags for the 2004-05 season will remain in your billfold. And secondly, the cellphone that you used to tell family or friends that you’d be late can be used to check your deer or spring gobbler.
The new system will begin to become apparent when you purchase your 2004-05 big game license. You will notice that the deer, turkey and bear tags have notches that can be detached. You validate your kill by tearing off the appropriate notch. You aren’t required to put the notch or tag onto the carcass of your big game, as has been the case in the past.
Once the appropriate big game tag has been notched, you are ready to check your game. You can do this the traditional way, by taking the animal to one of the hundreds of big game stations across the state. Many of these are located in rural stores.
Or you have the option of using what the DGIF is calling its “automated harvest recording system.” You can activate it by calling 1-866 GOTGAME (866-468-4263). You will be asked a few questions under a touch-tone system, then be given a confirmation number, which you write on your big game tag.
This should save a bunch of time when checking a deer or spring gobbler. Bear, fall turkeys and elk still must be registered at a big game station so biological data can be collected for research proposes.
If you have any idea of entering your buck or spring gobbler into competition, take it to a big game station to have it validated. Virginia’s Big Game Contest requires an officials check card for all entries, and these cards are available only from a checking station.
The automated harvest recording system is scheduled to be in operation 24-hours a day, but the law requires that game must be checked “upon vehicle transport of the carcass or at the conclusion of legal hunting hours, whichever occurs first and without unnecessary delay.” In short, you can’t wait for the next day to make your call.
One question, will the new phone system divert business from the mom and pop establishments that have provided big game checking facilities through the years? Nancy Sorrells, an outdoor writer and member of the Augusta County Board of Supervisors, has wondered about this. Some rural business operators derive a large percentage of their annual income from deer hunter, she said.
Ellen Horn, who operates the Hunter’s Den in rural Craig County doesn’t think the new system will have much of an impact on her business.
“If they want a drink on the way out, they still will stop,” she said. Hunters also can be expected to continue to congregate at check stations to get the latest news, something they won’t get over a cellphone dialed to the automated checking system.
Fact is, if you go into some check stations you will find them crowded with orange-clad sportsmen, most of which haven’t seen a deer.
The DGIF 2004-05 Hunting & Trapping in Virginia guide contains two pages of information on the new checking methods. You can pick up a copy where hunting licenses are sold.
