Photo by Ralph Hensley.

What's sometimes bad for deer hunting can be good for deer, as West Virginia's trophy-buck hunters can attest. Poor buck harvests the last two years have significantly boosted the number of wallhanger whitetails available to the state's sportsmen. Paul Johansen, assistant wildlife chief for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (DNR), said hunters stand to reap some benefits from that phenomenon this fall.

"I think the trophy outlook this year is very good," he said. "We have good numbers of older-aged deer in the population. The 2006 buck kill wasn't all that great, and it was even worse in 2005. That indicates to me that significant numbers of bucks survived the last two seasons. Any time you put an extra year on a buck, it's going to have larger antlers. Those deer will be available to hunters during the upcoming season."

Not surprisingly, he credits the DNR's recent changes in antlerless-deer regulations for helping to increase the number of older-age deer.

"Back before we allowed many does to be killed, more than 90 percent of the harvest every year was 1 1/2-year-old bucks," he explained. "Very few bucks lived long enough to grow antlers of any size . . ."

Though age should be the primary cause of the anticipated trophy bonanza, Johansen expects other factors to contribute.

"Food was very abundant last fall," he said. "Deer went into the winter in excellent shape nutrition-wise. On top of that, we had a pretty mild winter that didn't stress the deer very much. That should contribute to good body growth and antler development."

And even though he expects only marginal benefits to accrue this year, Johansen said the DNR's creation of five wildlife management areas (WMAs) geared to the taking of older bucks should significantly boost the number of trophy bucks taken in future seasons.

In those areas -- Beech Fork Lake WMA, Bluestone Lake WMA, Burnsville Lake WMA, McClintic WMA and Coopers Rock State Forest (SF) -- bucks must have antler spreads at least as wide as their ears before they can be shot.

"Last year was the first year for four of those areas," he said. "It takes a number of years having those regulations in place before you start to see a big difference; but hunters should note a reasonable improvement in the number of nice midsized bucks as early as this fall."

Johansen's formula for trophy-hunting success got its trial by fire during the 2006 season, and it came through with flying colors. Under similar circumstances -- a poor buck harvest the previous year, a decent mast crop and a mild winter -- the number of trophies rose from 46 in 2005 to 62 last year.

Gene Thorn, the DNR's biologist who oversees the state's Big Buck Club, said he could tell that hunters were killing bigger bucks even before the first antlers were scored.

"I could tell we were going to have a pretty good year -- at least in the counties I cover -- by the pictures on the walls of game-checking stations," Thorn said. "At most of the stations, clerks take pictures of trophy bucks and the hunters who killed them. Usually, when I go to pick up tags, I see two to four pictures at each place. This year, I was seeing 15 to 20 pictures. I knew then that it was going to be a good year for trophies."

In McDowell and Wyoming counties, it couldn't have been much better. They alone accounted for 31 of the 62 bucks that qualified for Big Buck Club membership. Thorn credited the counties' bowhunting-only regulations for contributing to the number of trophy whitetails.

"The four southern counties -- McDowell, Wyoming, Logan and Mingo -- are managed specifically to produce older-aged bucks," Thorn said. "The rest of the state produced some nice bucks, too, but those counties are always the ones that dominate the count at the end of each year."

McDowell County anchored the state's trophy-producing machine last season. Its rugged mountains yielded an unprecedented 16 Big Buck Club trophies -- more than one-fourth of the statewide total.