According to biologists, deer require three things in order to grow bragging-sized antlers -- good genes, an abundance of food and the ability to live to a ripe old age. Most West Virginia whitetails have good genes and get plenty to eat. They don't, however, get to live very long.

DNR statistics show that just 30 percent of all Mountain State bucks survive to 1 1/2 years. Only 14 percent live 3 1/2 years, the age at which most bucks begin to produce trophy-class racks.

Jezioro would like to establish sizable chunks of public land where bucks could reach maturity without being hunted. "Ideally, I'd like to see us set up at least one area in each of our management districts," he said.

Three such areas already exist -- the four bow-only counties, the McClintic WMA in Mason County, where a deer's antlers must be wider than its ears before it is legal to shoot; and the Wilson Cove Deer Study Area in Hardy County, where hunters are restricted to muzzleloading firearms.

In all those places, hunters enjoy better-than-average opportunities to kill trophy bucks. "Our efforts to grow older-aged deer have been highly successful in those areas," said Paul Johansen, the DNR's assistant wildlife chief. "We've seen significant changes in age structure and antler development."

Biologists haven't yet decided which special regulations to use on the trophy-buck areas Jezioro has asked them to create. Johansen said, however, that the key would be to reduce hunting pressure on bucks until they're big enough to satisfy hunters' ideas of what a trophy buck should be.

"We have to avoid the 'high-grading' of bucks," he said. "Whether we do that with a firearms restriction, an antler-spread regulation or by limiting the number of hunters on the area is still open to question."

Before they decide on regulations, Johansen and the biologists on his game-management staff must first identify which public tracts could best house the trophy-buck areas.

"We don't want to put an entire WMA under special regulations, because that would prevent people from hunting who are only interested in going out and harvesting a deer," Johansen explained. "So we'll probably need to look at large areas, probably 10,000 acres or more, that could be divided up into trophy and non-trophy zones."

By those standards, DNR officials' choices are limited. Only 11 state-owned WMAs, four state forests and 13 national forest tracts offer that sort of acreage. Johansen said his staff is "well on the way to making the preliminary cuts" in the list of potential candidates.

"The next thing we'll need to do is gather biological data on those areas -- antler beam diameters, average spreads, etc. -- so we'll have a baseline that tells us whether we're making progress," he said.

After DNR administrators decide which regulations to impose, they plan to take the proposals to the public for input and approval. "We'll most likely roll out our ideas at the (DNR) sectional meetings in March," Johansen said. "If all goes well, we might even give folks a glimpse of the proposals at the West Virginia Hunting and Fishing Show in January."

Director Jezioro said that any ultimate decisions would be up to sportsmen themselves. "We want public feedback on this," he said. "It has to have strong public sentiment in its favor. We won't do it if the public doesn't want it."

If hunters approve the initiative, Jezioro said the sporting public would need to "exercise some patience in allowing the resource to develop."

"Folks need to understand that we'll probably have to kill a bunch of does and do considerable habitat-improvement work to create an environment where trophy bucks can develop," he said. "That might include cutting some trees to create clearings where deer can feed. Whatever we propose, though, we want it to be based on the best science available and be subject to the public's wishes."