Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting ATTN VA DEER HUNTERS!

The same type of sales happen/happened with the deer feed at Gander Mountain stores, big sign posted in the store with the VA state bans on feeding deer, and the pile of feed corn bags holding the base of the sign.

While I would agree that the scent use and the feeding will continue, I think the penalty levied in getting caught will stop some.

I doubt it. By and large, VA deer hunters trust VDGIF because they've done a damned good job for decades managing the deer herd in the state, and by and large VA deer hunters want NO chance at CWD taken. With synthetic scents on the market, there are options.

Hunting over bait is the #1 "deer hunting" tactic around here. #2 is road hunting which I figure will rate plumb off the charts with this baiting ban.

vdgif has done nothing but screw up our deer herd in the mountains of va. they have allowed hunters to take so many does that our deer populations have dropped way off.you guys that think they have done a good job must live in or near the cities or in eastern va.cities are full of deer ,eastern va. where i hunt is just starting to see some drop in the deer herd. to many coyotes and a fast growing bear population(bear population will really grow with the new bear tag we much buy this year),and bad mass crops have thinned the deer herd to where there are hardly any hunters on the national forest these days.

Another main reason for the low number of hunters in the NF is the no ATV/UTV's allowed restriction. There may be some areas they're allowed I don't know. But not the parts I hunt. In fact if you go back far enough on the access road your allowed in only on foot. Also as far as I've been able to determine you cannot quarter a deer to get it out.

If you check your deer by phone or online (new this year in WV), there should be no reason that you can't quarter it for convenience in recovery, as long as all parts bear a tag with the ID number you get when you check it. The carcass is just like one checked the old way in that it must bear the check tag until butchered.

I just verified this with the LE officer in District 2.

The banning of ATVs on public areas is a blessing, even for an old fat man. The last thing we need is a bunch of lazy asses zooming in and out of the woods all day while serious people are trying to hunt. Disabled people can get a waiver.

+1
It's been legal for quite a few yrs now to quarter and pack a deer in WV. VA says no as of the yr before last anyway.

Another +1
"The banning of ATVs on public areas is a blessing, even for an old fat man. The last thing we need is a bunch of lazy asses zooming in and out of the woods all day while serious people are trying to hunt. Disabled people can get a waiver."

When I can't cut it anymore it'll be there for those who are willing to work to get to it. Doesn't seem too many out there like that anymore though.

I hunt St. Mary's, Ramsey's Draft, Three Ridges, the Priest, Mt. Pleasant, and a lot of the surrounding areas. I couldn't disagree more; deer numbers there have never been huge. A total mast crop failure fall before last combined with outbreaks of blue tongue and EHD over the past two to three years (area dependent) did more to the deer populations than anything else and VDGIF had nothing to do with those (nor did bears, coyotes, doe tags, or anything else).

if you hunt ramsey's draft and you don't think bear population has anything to do with the lack of deer in that area then you must have been asleep in the stand for the past 10 years. the vdgif closed roads at the bottom of shenandoah mountain just to make a huge wilderness area to dump problem bear from the base of the shenandoah national park where i live. if you hunted highland 20years ago you would know that there were very few bears ever killed in western augusta and highland counties until they started dumping all those bears. then came the coyotes . the vdgif had a camera on a bear den a few years back and one bear drug 26 fawns to the den that spring.there have been very few deer found to have disease in that area according to my many friends in side the vdgif. this bear tags thing comes from one thing,the bear hunters not wanting the average deer hunter to be able to kill a bear when they see one. its total greed by the bha . one of my friends in the vdgif is actually the man from our region that helps make the game laws . he has been fighting to stop this tag for 3-4 yeasr now. the bear hunters have to much pull in the whole state.

I've hunted that area twice in the last several years. Used to hunt it a lot back in the 80s when I lived there. Don't know about the causes but I saw the least amount of deer and deer sign (almost non-existent) and more bears than in the past.

Bear numbers are up; no doubt about that. Two years ago, we had a total mast crop failure. No hickory nuts, beech nuts, acorns, nothing, so EVERYTHING moved around more and ate whatever it could find. Last year was a decent mast year. This year is shaping up to be epic.

Over the last three seasons, a lot of those areas have had very severe outbreaks of blue tongue and EHD, with estimates ranging from 20 to 40% mortality throughout the deer herds, and some areas quite likely higher than that.

Where'd you hunt, if you don't mind the inquiry?

PM sent. I'd like to keep up on how the mast crop turns out and how many deer y'all see in the mtns. I've been wanting to come back and next year could be the year if things work out.

I'll gladly relay all the info I can. You've done the same, and more, for me and others looking for info on elk.

This year has been the wettest summer I can remember and the vegetation is taking FULL advantage of it. I think this fall and next, and perhaps the one following (depending upon the flowering season for the mast trees next spring), may be truly incredible. That, of course, is both a blessing and a curse.

Yep, I can remember one year hunting up there, the acorns were so big and thick it was like walking on marbles. We'd jump lots of deer walking on the trails in the dark, and then not see any once the sun came up. They didn't have to move at all to feed.

Yep. That's the curse of it. I know those years well. They are even worse if it's been relatively wet and there are pocket waters or small creeks with water; they just bed in the laurel thickets and hardly move at all.

At least you can hunt on Sundays.

Only private land, for now. Yeah, it's still f'ked up.

If so, the deer hunters need to get organized and fight back. There's gotta be more Bambi killers than Yogi slayers. In the mean time, pony up the $20 and kill some bears.

Our tag in WV is $10, and I buy one every year in case I see a bear, and in case I really want to shoot 'em.

Piss in the scrape yourself . works just as well as deer urine

I have been going down to hunt WV deer for years. The area I hunt is public land, and the deer population there is way down compared to when I started hunting there. It may be a good thing. I hunt up by that CWD area.
The low deer population is the result of the hunters themselves. Constant whining about wanting bigger racks. I live in PA and KNOW first hand what happens when you try for bigger deer. The first thing done is make war on does. You drop the deer populations and the coyotes clean out the turkeys. More food-more bears move in. We see them walking around down town. I remember bounties on owls and foxes. It just made healthier foxes. It just seems that most people cannot learn the lesson. You cannot control nature without something going haywire.


Front page of my newspaper last week. I see them around my house all the time. This is a stones throw from the County Courthouse.