“Hunters, landowners and other members of the public should feel confident that we have some of the best wildlife biologists and veterinarians in the world, including those stationed at the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study in Athens, Georgia, working collaboratively on this situation.”

More information on CWD can be found at the DNR’s Web site, www.wvdnr.gov, and the CWD Alliance Web site, www.cwd-info.org.

HOW HUNTERS CAN HELP MANAGE OUR DEER HERD
One of the best ways that hunters can help the DNR have a better quality, healthier deer herd is to kill more does in counties open to antlerless hunting. Even dedicated doe hunters like myself want to kill a trophy buck sometime in their sporting careers. However, we should never lose sight of the fact that harvesting does and antlerless whitetails (that is, doe and buck fawns) is an essential part of herd management in much of the Mountain State.

For example, a good friend of mine recently told me about his experiences in the season just past. He had avidly hunted throughout the early bow season in October, patiently waiting for a big buck to wander by his tree stand. Day after day, my buddy passed up does, well over a dozen of them in fact.

When the rut kicked in and the bow season ended and the rifle season began, my acquaintance became ever more optimistic that the broad beam of his dreams would materialize. He saw even a greater number of does and more small bucks, though none sported racks sufficient enough for my friend to consider shooting them. So, it was that the gun season ended and the December part of the bow season began.

In early December after the gun season concluded, my friend began to see fewer does and fewer small bucks as well. But he kept waiting. His patience buoyed by the hope that a big buck would come by his stand. The dream was that a buck would come looking for that one last doe. This dream, too, faded away.

When the bow season had two weeks remaining, my friend called me and moaned that the deer had vanished. Even the does, it seems, had disappeared for whatever reason. There were no big bucks around, and even the spikes and forkhorns had gone to parts unknown.

After the season ended, I talked with my friend and found that he ended the season without harvesting a single deer. Indeed, the last week of the season he never even glimpsed a whitetail, let alone had the opportunity to shoot one. His wife was unhappy with him spending so much time in the woods and bringing home nothing for the table...as well she should be.

I am not at all criticizing my friend for being a trophy hunter. That is his decision. But all of us need to consider the need -- for the sake of the herd -- to harvest antlerless deer in counties where the DNR thinks doing so is for the betterment of the habitat and the animals themselves. Hunters can be, after all, the best-suited people for helping the DNR manage West Virginia’s whitetails.