It's easy to be optimistic about West Virginia's upcoming 2008 deer seasons. Harvest trends are upward, for numbers of whitetails and for antler size. Last year's kill was better than the previous year's, yet not high enough to significantly dent the population. Therefore, barring an unforeseen outbreak of disease or inclement weather, hunters should fare well this autumn.

Perhaps the best way to figure out exactly how well we'll do this season is to look back at how we did last year. The bottom line is easy to decipher: Hunters in each of the four seasons -- buck, antlerless, bow and muzzleloader -- killed more deer than they did the year before.

The buck harvest rose 6 percent. The antlerless deer harvest jumped 11 percent. The bow harvest came in 7 percent higher, and the muzzleloader harvest increased by 8 percent. Overall, the total harvest of 145,937 deer represented a 6 percent gain from the 2006 total of 137,621.

Those numbers pleased Curtis Taylor, wildlife chief for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (DNR).

"The important thing we accomplished with this harvest is that we were able to decrease the deer population in some of the counties where it was overpopulated, and we were able to let the population grow in some of the counties where it was too low," Taylor said. "In addition, more and more counties seemed to settle into levels where the population is right where we want it to be."

To their everlasting credit, DNR officials did a pretty fair job of forecasting what last year's outcome would be. They predicted that harvest numbers would go up a few percent, and for the most part, they were correct. Only the buck harvest failed to live up to expectations. Assistant Wildlife Chief Paul Johansen speculated before the season that the firearms buck kill might top the 70,000 mark. It came in a bit shy at 67,213. The other three seasons' totals met or exceeded expectations, especially when one factors in the adverse effects that weather and disease undoubtedly had on hunter success.

Between August and October 2007, an outbreak of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD), or "blue tongue," spread through whitetail herds in 29 of the Mountain State's 55 counties. Thousands of deer died, and many thousands more were weakened.

Johansen called the outbreak "significant in terms of geographic distribution, because it occurred in so many counties. But because the disease tends to affect deer in isolated pockets, we aren't really sure of its impact on (overall) deer numbers."

If the EHD outbreak weren't enough, foul weather plagued the December antlerless and muzzleloader seasons. Rain and cold might not affect deer very much, but they cause hunters to stay home in droves. DNR officials believe the antlerless and muzzleloader harvests would have come in significantly higher had the weather been more accommodating.

Hunters, naturally enough, would have loved for that to have been the case. However, Chief Taylor said he was happy enough with the results.