Friday, March 02, 2007
Snapshot of the seasons
Kill numbers were again high for Virginia's deer-hunting season.
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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The Wild Life blog
Deer hunters know that trophy bucks rarely offer second chances.
So when Adrian Wynn saw a big boy approaching on Nov. 13, he didn't want to blow it again.
"I thought it was the big eight-pointer I missed during bow season," said Wynn, who purposely didn't look too closely at the antlers to help calm his nerves. "I didn't study him."
With the buck at 120 yards, Wynn aimed his muzzleloader and fired.
The buck dropped.
It wasn't the eight-pointer.
The buck's rack carried 15 points, and unofficially scored 172 points in the Boone and Crockett system to win the big buck contest at the Greater Virginia Sports and Outdoor Show.
In addition to the trophy, Wynn killed two does, and his son killed two does and a button buck.
Many other hunters had banner years during what was one of the most productive falls ever for Virginia deer hunters.
Whitetail deer
When Matt Knox crunched the numbers from the 2006-07 deer season, he ended up with a mix of bad and good news.
"We're not getting to where we want to be," said Knox, who manages the deer program for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "The good news is we're not really losing ground."
Knox would like to see Virginia's deer kill at 200,000 annually, or even lower. The recently adopted revised deer management plan formalizes that philosophy.
Yet the kill remains higher, coming in at 223,198 this past season -- the second-best total ever.
If the agency were fully meeting its objective of stabilizing or reducing the population in most counties, the number would be lower.
Knox and his staff found some comfort in the deer tally in several counties where deer populations are far too high. Females accounted for over 50 percent of the kill in a couple of those counties, but it took a radical regulation to make that happen. In Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William counties, the firearms season was extended through January, but hunters were allowed to kill antlerless deer only.
The deer kill on public land was poor, which has become the norm.
Wild turkey
The 4,143 turkeys reported killed by hunters this past fall is a record low for the modern era, and not even a quarter of the record established in 1990.
Gary Norman, the biologist who manages the turkey program for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said a number of factors are likely contributing to the steady decline in the fall kill, a pattern seen in many neighboring states.
Poor reproduction success in recent springs has stifled growth of the state's turkey population. Also, the mast crop was good this autumn, and that can make hunting more difficult because birds can be scattered.
But the primary factor may be hunter pressure. In 1993, Virginia had an estimated 103,000 fall turkey hunters. That number now sits about 63,000.
Contributing to the difficulty of fully explaining the decline is the disparity between the number of turkeys checked in and the number the state's hunters may actually be killing.
Results of hunter surveys indicate that the actual kill may be twice what's reported, with many hunters neglecting to check in their birds.
Black bear
A strong black bear population and increased hunting opportunities helped contribute to a record bear kill in 2006.
Mild early-winter weather and abundant mast also played a part, as bears didn't den as early so were available to hunters later into the season.
