Thursday, October 12, 2006
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: A quest for more deer in the Shenandoah Valley
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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Last deer season, Myron Reedy and Randy Mongold booked a hunting trip in Kentucky because they had little confidence that their home territory of western Rockingham County, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, would produce a mature buck.
“We were sitting there saying, ‘Why in the world do we have to drive all the way to Kentucky to have a chance at a whitetail deer when we have all these nice agricultural lands and big mountains here,’ ” Mongold said.
Rockingham County has had a reputation of being big buck country, but many hunters are saying that’s no longer the case on national forest land, which covers about 30 percent of the county.
They get no argument from Al Bourgeois, a Department of Game and Inland Fisheries wildlife biologist. “The deer are lower on national forest in that part of the world,” he said.
Mongold and Reedy have been perplexed about the disappearance of deer.
“We have seen a drastic decline in number and quality of the deer herd on the national forest and some private lands here in the valley,” said Reedy.
“When we were kids we would hunt and you’d see 20 or 30 deer a day,” said Mongold. “Now you are lucky to see two in two weeks. The trails aren’t there. The deer aren’t there. You aren’t seeing any sign of dee r-- no manure, no horning.”
In May, following five months of meetings and discussions, Mongold and Moody formed the Shenandoah Valley Sportsman’s Alliance LLC with the goal of bringing back the good old days of hunting. Reedy heads the organization. He says its purpose is to provide quality hunting experiences for youngsters and to promulgate the long-standing tradition of deer hunting for families in their valley.
Support has come from the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors. In a resolution, the board told the DGIF and national forest officials that it wants to enhance the quality and quantity of deer on the national forest while keeping them in proper balance on farms and around communities.
The Alliance has circulated information that shows a 26 percent decline in Rockingham County’s deer kill from 2000 to 2005 and a 38-percent decline on national forest land during the same time period. Only 656 deer were reported killed last season on national forest land.
The organizers admit that it is going against the grain to talk about establishing more deer when in many sections of the state the goal is to reduce overabundant herds.
“There are people who look at us like we are crazy,” Mongold said.
Why have the deer declined on the national forest?
That’s something that the Alliance is working with the DGIF and other organizations to determine, Mongold said. Right now there are two primary considerations:
1. Liberal hunting regulations designed to control the herd on private land have resulted in overkill on national forest property where the animals are less abundant.
2. A reduction in timber harvest on the national forest has meant poorer quality deer habitat and a reduction in the herd.
Again, Biologist Bourgeois is in agreement.
“The deer aren’t staying on private land,” he said. “They are living on the national forest and coming down on private land.”
This is a challenge for many counties in the western section of the state where there are large areas of national forest land. Micromanaging herds is difficult because deer don’t recognize boundaries. When they walk off national forest property they are hit by more liberal regulations. When they move back to the national forest, the habitat has less to offer them.
Environmental interests have drastically lessened timber harvest and other habitat restoration efforts on the forest, the kind that stimulates understory growth needed to establish food and cover for deer, grouse, woodcock, golden-winged warblers and other wildlife.
Bourgeois throws in a couple other factors.
“Personally, I feel that we have had a couple of mast failures leading up to this, and that probably didn’t help. Then you throw a little bit of coyote predation on top of that and there are a lot of factors working.”
Mongold believes the trend can be reversed. Bourgeois is less confident.
“Let’s not kid ourselves, we are not going to reverse them totally unless the national forest has a big change of heart and creates the habitat,” he said.
To that effort, Bourgeois and other DGIF officials have been involved in the review process of the George Washington National Forest management plan, asking for the creation of more early succession forest. A number of sportsmen are backing that effort, including members of the Alliance, but it is not the hot-button issue that it should be among deer, turkey, grouse and woodcock hunters.
The Alliance is soliciting members and donations to cover its expenses. You can e-mail them.
