Photo by Billkenney.com

Biologists have counted the tags and measured the antlers. The statistics are in, and they verify what West Virginia deer hunters have suspected for months: Last year was a poor year for producing trophy whitetails.

"The number of bucks we scored was down pretty significantly," said Gene Thorn, who coordinates the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources' (DNR) annual Big Buck Contest.

Only 220 hunters had their trophies scored in 2004, down nearly 20 percent from 2003's total of 271 and down a whopping 36 percent from 2002's high-water mark of 343.

The decline in trophies didn't really surprise Thorn, because bucks as a whole seemed to be in short supply during the 2004 season. Hunters bagged just 63,873, a staggering 29 percent fewer than the five-year average of 89,568.

"When the buck harvest is down that much, you expect hunters to take fewer trophies," Thorn said. "And when you add in the mast situation, it's a foregone conclusion that racks are going to be smaller."

Two straight mast-crop failures robbed bucks of the nutrients they needed to add mass and size to their racks. "We could have predicted before the season began that antler sizes were going to drop," Thorn said. "That's exactly what happened, and it was pretty much a statewide thing."

As evidence, Thorn cited a startling statistic: Not one of the 2004 bucks scored for Big Buck Club eligibility totaled more than 180 points on either the Boone and Crockett (B&C) or Pope and Young (P&Y) clubs' scoring systems.

"That's pretty rare. Usually we get at least one or two bucks in the 180-plus class."

Last year's top trophy was a 13-point Raleigh County non-typical killed by bowhunter Michael Mills of Ghent. Its rack totaled 177 1/8 P&Y points. Only two other bucks topped the 170 mark -- Winfield resident Joe Day's gun-killed Mason County non-typical at 175 0/8, and Roger Hurley's bow-killed Mingo County non-typical at 172 4/8.

Firearm-wielding hunters suffered the biggest decline in trophy production. Only eight gun-killed bucks met the Big Buck Club minimum of 150 B&C points for typicals and 165 for non-typicals.

"That was down very significantly from previous years," Thorn said. In 2003, for example, 27 gun kills qualified for the club. The average since 1999 has been 24.

Bowhunters fared somewhat better, mainly because four southern West Virginia counties are closed to firearms hunting. Even so, archers killed just 50 bucks that met the bowhunting minimums of 125 P&Y points for typicals and 155 for non-typicals. That figure represented a 33 percent decline from the 2003 total of 76 and a 38 percent decline from the five-year average of 81.

The four southern counties -- Logan, McDowell, Mingo and Wyoming -- accounted for 42 of the 50 bow-killed trophies.

Despite the dismal statistics, Thorn believes a couple of years of good acorn production will give hunters the sort of banner trophy season they missed last year.

"There's still a significant number of bucks that have the potential to be trophy class," he said. "All they need is a little age and a little nutrition."

Thorn cited mostly anecdotal evidence to support his prediction, but considering that he makes his home in the heart of the state's best trophy-buck region, his observations carry more weight than most.

"Even though hunters weren't killing many top-scoring bucks, I heard story after story about hunters seeing bucks with very nice racks," he said. "We had a lot of bucks taken that scored just under the Big Buck Club minimums. I think that if we get a good mast crop this year, those borderline bucks will start growing trophy antlers again."