Mark Taylor

Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.

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Virginia has been managing white-tailed deer for more than a century, but the state didn't create a formal Deer Management Plan until 1999.

Now that the initial plan has run its course, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is back with a sequel to help shape how the state will try to balance the needs and desires of hunters and the general public when it comes to Virginia's most ubiquitous big game animal.

While falling short of making specific recommendations for regulations, the plan offers a framework for setting policies through 2015.

"We see it more as a vision document, or guidance document," said biologist Nelson Lafon, who headed the project. "Most people want to talk about the details, and to change season structure, before they look at the reasons to do things.

"We figure out what point B is. The public tells us how to get there."

The 71-page document outlines specific goals and objectives intended to help strike a balance between recreation such as hunting and wildlife viewing, reducing damage issues, including habitat degradation, deer/vehicle accidents, and personal property damage and controlling diseases.

Deer/human conflicts are becoming a steadily increasing challenge for wildlife managers in Virginia as the state's populations of both people and whitetails grow.

Adding to the challenge is that the number of deer hunters is gradually declining, so a smaller number of hunters are having to shoulder an increasing responsibility in the deer management scheme.

The game department developed the plan with the assistance of a 17-member citizens stakeholder committee. Among others, the group included hunters, members of the state's agriculture community, a representative from the National Audubon Society and an official from the Virginia Department of Transportation.

Alvin Estep, president of the Western Virginia Deer Hunters Association, said he was impressed by the group's performance.

"The plan isn't exactly what I'd like to see," he conceded. "But the people on that committee were from all walks of life.

"If I got everything I wanted, the other people probably wouldn't have been too happy."

Compromise was necessary, Estep said.

"To get a group like that together and have them agree on anything, you've accomplished something," said Estep, a 48-year-old shop foreman at a bus garage. "The plan is probably about as good as it could be."

And it's not yet finished.

The department is asking for comments from the public on the draft.

"We've already gotten about 50 comments," said Dave Steffen, the biologist who oversees the agency's forest game animal programs.

The comment period runs through June 16.

Steffen and his staff hope to present the final version of the draft to the agency's board of directors in August.

While the 1999 plan sought to stabilize the deer population pretty much statewide, this plan takes a more aggressive approach.

Population objectives call for reducing the deer herd on private land in more than 30 counties.

The plan calls for stabilizing the herd on public land in all but Buchanan and Dickenson counties, where it should be increased.

That's part of the plan that doesn't thrill Estep.

Along with his 21-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter, he hunts primarily on U.S. Forest Service land in Rockingham County. He doesn't see many deer so he wishes the population could be increased, which he believes might help keep younger hunters interested.

"I'm happy just watching the chipmunks," he said. "But when you go out and sit all day and don't see a deer, it's hard to keep their interest."

Poor habitat, due in part to limited logging and generally poor, infertile soil, is a limiting factor on national forest lands. In some cases, even though the populations are low, what deer remain could be overly taxing the maturing forest's limited early successional plant growth, the forage needed by browsing whitetails.

Elsewhere, the deer population is far from reaching the habitat's biological carrying capacity. But that is not the index biologists use to estimate ideal populations. The important index is cultural carrying capacity, which takes into account habitat, hunting and other recreational demands, and damage issues.

That capacity has been met or exceeded across most of the state, which is why the plan is geared to reducing the population in so many areas, while keeping it stable elsewhere.

The new version works some flexibility into the population objectives, allowing for area-specific changes every two years. The previous plan locked in the recommendations for the duration.

Because population objectives were identified in 2005, recent changes to Virginia's deer regulations took those recommendations into account. Those new limits -- in many cases, further liberalization of either-sex hunting days -- will be in effect this coming hunting season.

A wild card in the equation is the potential impact of diseases on the herd. Chronic wasting disease has been found just a few miles from Virginia's border. Swift reaction to the discovery of the disease in Virginia will help the state deal with that potentially devastating blow if and when it occurs.