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I thought this was a pretty intersting article. As a Virgnia hunter, it has been hard not to notice. Over the years, I've been seeing fewer and fewer hunters in the woods. Hunters of any kind. On weekdays, I've driven into a 5,000 acre WMA and not seen another truck or hunter all day. Even on weekends, it's gotten hard to actually see another hunter, even if I see their trucks. It's hard to complain about that. But Virginia's deer herd is booming. Some northern counties have no bag limits. Anyways...

Herds Without Hunters
By Matt Knox for Whitetail Times

In 1997, Dr. Larry Marchinton, my major professor at the University of Georgia, was preparing a keynote presentation entitled “Obstacles to Sound Deer Management” for the annual Southeast Deer Study Group Meeting (SDSGM) to be held in Charleston, South Carolina. As part of his preparation, he asked me to provide a list of what I considered to be some of the major obstacles to sound deer management at that time.

Included on my list was declining deer hunter numbers, about which I wrote, “this is critical… to effective management programs. Although many states show stable deer hunter numbers, I don’t think there is any question that overall deer hunter numbers are declining and are going to continue to decline.” The future decline in deer hunter numbers was a major point in his keynote address. In 1997, Virginia had just begun to experience a decline in licensed deer hunter numbers.

The next two decades regrettably confirmed my prediction. After decades in deer management, it was obvious that deer hunters were getting older and recruitment of new hunters was declining. When the SDSGM came to Roanoke, Virginia, in 2009, our meeting’s theme was “Herds Without Hunters: The Future of Deer Management?” In 2009, Virginia licensed deer hunter numbers had declined approximately 19 percent since the early 1990s.

For the 2013 SDSGM in Athens, Georgia, I finally analyzed the declining number of deer hunters in Virginia and gave a “Herds Without Hunters: The Future of Deer Management” presentation. By this time, Virginia licensed deer hunter numbers had declined approximately 26 percent since the early 1990s.

In 2013, when I projected Virginia’s declining number of licensed deer hunters trend into the future, my basic linear model estimated 188,000 deer hunters in 2023 (10 years) and 133,000 in 2038 (25 years). In fall 2021, with 185,400 licensed deer hunters, we were already below my 2023 prediction two years early.

In February 2020, I was contacted by Duane Diefenbach with Penn State University. He had been contacted and asked to write a chapter for an upcoming book, Harvest of Fish and Wildlife. He asked me if I was interested and if I had any ideas. I immediately said yes, and we agreed that we should look at the decline in hunter numbers in Pennsylvania and Virginia and forecast how the predicted declines might affect deer management in the future. The citation for this book chapter is located at the end of this article. Duane is a gifted biometrician and modeler, and I knew he would be able to take Virginia’s past and current hunter license data and build a model that would much more accurately predict the future declines than my simple 2013 linear model.


(Virginia licensed deer hunter numbers, 1946 to 2021 and the predicted licensed deer hunter numbers to 2040 from Diefenbach et al. (2021). Note this does not include deer hunters exempt from purchasing a deer hunting license (e.g., landowners, etc.).)

In Figure 1 (the actual black line), you will see the big game license sales data (i.e., licenses that have deer tags on them) for Virginia from 1946 through 2021. I should mention some items regarding this license data. Three details in this graph deserve comment. First, note that the number of deer hunters increased steadily through the 1950s and 1960s as the Greatest Generation came back from overseas and started families, and Virginia’s deer herd grew. Second, deer hunter numbers were stable through the 1970s and 1980s at about 300,000. Lastly, deer hunter numbers began to consistently and significantly decline during the mid to late 1990s.

From just under 300,000 licensed deer hunters in the early 1990s to approximately 185,400 in fall 2021, the Department has lost approximately 38 percent of its licensed deer hunters over the past 30 years. Converted to real numbers, this means on average we have lost about 3,800 licensed deer hunters annually over the past three decades. Only two items have temporarily stopped or reversed this declining trend over the last 30 years—economic recession(s) and Covid.

In Duane’s 2021 model, if current declines in deer hunting participation in Virginia continue, the number of Virginia licensed deer hunters, 12-90 years old, are predicted to decline by 32 percent by 2030 to approximately 118,000 licensed deer hunters and by 57 percent by 2040 to approximately 75,000 licensed deer hunters (compared to 2020; see Figure 1 (the predicted red line)).

Duane’s model also revealed inadequate hunter recruitment and hunter retention to maintain current hunter numbers across all age classes for Virginia. In Virginia, we are losing deer hunters in every single age class. In the model, recruitment of 12- to 15-year-olds in Virginia would have to more than triple to return hunter numbers to what they were in 2008.

The decline in the number of deer hunters is not unique to Virginia. Deer hunter numbers continue to decline steadily across most states within the range of white-tailed deer in the United States. Demographics of all big game hunters nationwide indicate they are older than the general U.S. population. The next five to 10 years will very likely see significant declines in deer hunter numbers in Virginia and across the nation as the baby boomers (born prior to 1964) all move into retirement.

In the Diefenbach book chapter, we surveyed 37 states and four Canadian provinces that comprise the majority of the white-tailed deer’s range in North America. In the previous 10-year period, 79 percent of the states or provinces surveyed had demonstrated a decline in hunter numbers, averaging a 9 percent decline. Only 15 percent had shown an increase and 5 percent were stable.

So what is happening to deer hunter numbers? It is an oversimplification but, in the past, deer hunting has been an activity of almost entirely white males often from or associated with a rural background. As noted in the book chapter, U.S. deer hunter demographics (> 90 percent male, 97 percent white, 55 percent rural) have changed little over the past 30 years despite more people living in urban environments and an increasing non-white population. The fact is that Virginia and the United States are becoming more culturally diverse and less rural by the day; and this trend is predicted to continue and accelerate in the future.

Rural Virginia is slowly but steadily disappearing. There has been an excellent series of recent articles describing this trend in several of the state’s larger newspapers over the last decade or so. Many or most areas of rural Virginia are already seeing and/or predicted to see continued significant declines in their human population over the next several decades. This rural exodus will have a profound effect on Virginia politically, economically, and socially, and from a deer hunting and a deer management perspective.

There is one bright area in looking at Virginia’s deer hunting demographics. There has been a significant increase in female participation rates over time. This is the reason hunting stores are selling fluorescent pink camouflage (now legal in Virginia) as well as pink guns. I expect this trend will continue and hopefully accelerate in the future.

In my opinion, the decline in deer hunters represents the biggest statewide deer management issue in Virginia. The decline in deer hunter license sales will have a significant negative effect on the Department’s ability to finance wildlife conservation programs benefiting many wildlife species. Over eight in 10 hunters in Virginia hunt deer, and hunting license sales provide more than a third of wildlife agency funding on average. This deer hunter license revenue is used to fund many other wildlife conservation programs, including nongame species, education and outreach, administration, and law enforcement.

Lastly, the continued decline in deer hunter numbers will over time have a negative effect on the Department’s ability to manage deer population levels through recreational deer hunting across much of the Commonwealth. I think that we may have already reached this point in some of the more urban/suburban areas in Virginia.

https://dwr.virginia.gov/blog/herds-without-hunters/

There's lots of reasons why but ultimately I think it's technology for the younger generation and lack of access for the older (like me)

Regardless I don't see the trend changing. We need to do everything we can to encourage youngsters to get into the sport or it may be gone before we all are.

Lack of access is killing it off here. You either inherit land, have very deep pockets for a lease, or are SOL around here these days. I'm lucky a friend/shirttail cousin of mine has some land or my deer hunting days would have ended years ago.

This is speaking of licensed deer hunters
There still is quite a few around here , but they don’t buy license
Fir some a 100.00 to hunt is hard to come by .
For many others they wouldn’t bother with a license if they were free
These are the [bleep] sleeping all day and up all night roaming around all over peoples property and state land spotting and shooting the hell out of them
A good many shoot and if the deer don’t drop right there , they ride off
Some don’t care and are joy killers
Poaching is alive and well in Va
I know of several nice bucks taken by POS that had absolutely no buisness pulling a trigger
Another thing that has contributed to it is Covid , so many of these non working scum sucked up big checks from uncle sugar , more money than most of these bums could turn in several years and they bought thermal scopes , I mean WTH ?
No sweat off their ass , this has helped a lot on night hunting
No light being shined around
Yeah , I don’t like the MFers
Guy accross the road from me brought a 788 243 with thermal on it to me to hock for 800.00
I told him it wasn’t worth 300 to me
Don’t like the MFer and ain’t helping him out
It was a ATN , charger and the works
Have no use for it anyway and didn’t know the history behind the rifle
Kenneth

Pretty much the same here in Nebraska.

Agree with the sentiments above.

Access is huge. Whether you agree with hound hunting for deer or not, it's a tradition in eastern VA. Some of the hound hunters are respectful. However, many of the clubs are slob hunters who purposefully run their dogs across private property. I've seen seen them shoot from the roads, and kill anything their dogs chase out, whether it's an illegal antlerless deer, or a legal buck. They drive their trucks onto private property without landowner consent, because VA law allows that. It is infuriating to land owner and many land owners have simply shut down any prospect of even a single hunter, like me, accessing their land.

The good part is VA has quite a bit of public land that, aside from deer hunting during the general firearms season, is basically unused.

I can remember a time when it looked like a train going thru mountains before daylight on national forest.That’s dwindled down to a scarce few

It may be true for whitetail hunters in eastern and middle American states but western states are seeing unprecedented numbers of hunters each year.

It’s the “in” thing with 25-40 year old dudes to do CrossFit, “eat clean”, grow a beard, spend a fortune on gear and clothes and “go deep” in the backcountry. Post it all on social media talking about the great protein elk provide. Sure be nice if they’d go back east to hunt whitetail deer instead and I could get back to drawing a muley tag every other year instead of every 4th year.

Trends I see closer to home that are likely contributing factors. Nobody wants to just shoot deer, they want to feed, pattern, name, and geek out on photos of a specific buck. This takes space, space that nobody else is hunting or stomping around in, hence leasing places to lock them up. This is also a solo pursuit, gone are the days of two dozen guys making drives and slinging lead at whatever runs by. People moving in to escape whatever schithole city ad to this as well as crowding on WMAs. Hunting is a country thing you do when you move to the country. I used to hunt an archery only WMA my uncle managed when he was still working. Bow hunting wasn’t the in thing like it is now in whitetail country and I never ran into anyone else. The biologist who took over when my uncle retired said this year on the bow opener it looked like a parking lot at a sporting event there were so many pickups. I have no interest in trying to compete with that, I’m sure others feel the same way. I’d imagine many go a few times and say F this and give it up.

Everyone with a spot wants to “manage” deer, hoping to grow a monster. I can tell you from recent experience that this is not a good approach to keep a young kid interested. A good friend recently invited me to bring my son out to shoot a buck, we learned when we got there that a buck meant a particular buck. We ended up seeing him with no shot opportunity and that’s fine for me, it is hard to explain to an eight year old itching to shoot his first buck that the one horn forkie right in front of us is off limits because we’re after a different buck. We still had a great evening but it’s tough to keep a kid interested in shooting a deer when you can’t let him shoot a deer, I’m sure it’s much the same for anyone just starting out.

I’m sure there’s lots of factors. I’m just going to keep hunting and taking my son and wife, about all I can or am willing to do.

Don't send those guys east. But you can come east. Find some public land, there's a lot of it, and you may be the only hunter on thousands of acres that day.

We have some WMAs near population areas that can get crowded on weekends during the general firearms season. But hunt on a Tuesday, and you'll have the place to yourself.

Last year during our muzzleloading season, I never saw another hunter even on a weekend.

I lease exclusive trespassing rights on a farm close to home, otherwise I have to drive at least 90 miles to hunt on family property. The farmer is happy to get a check from me every year because he knows that I'll respect the property and I'll help him with some chores. Since we're both getting older, the chores that we do together have gotten a little less strenuous over time, but we still cut, split, and stack 3 or 4 cords of firewood every year.

As a landowner, I spend more time dealing with trespassers than I'd like. The sawzall gets a workout cutting up those cheap Chinese ladder stands that are so popular.

I don't know about local hunter numbers myself. It seems to me that locally, there are more hunters than ever...but I'm not looking at data numbers so I could very well be wrong.

I will note a short coming on my part related to herds without hunters... Deer numbers in the two states I hunt are very high, much, much higher than when I was growing up. One state has a limit of 12 does and the other has a limit of 1 per day over a 3.5 month season. I've been a very poor steward of taking does the last several years. I used to try and take 2 does for every buck I killed. I need to go back to that practice. Does around me have essentially become a herd without a hunter and I need to force myself to take more of them.

10Glocks,
Thanks for posting. Several good follow-up comments as well. In addition to the other comments I will add just general loss of habitat. Think about all the development that has occurred in any state since about 1985. How many acres have been lost to development of housing, factories, etc. Or No Hunting allowed due to liability and abuse by sloppy hunters. I do agree with comments above that the millennials and younger generations have little interest in hunting due to their attitude of immediate gratification. Not too many interested in putting in the effort and put up with hardships to get deer.

Very good point there, too. A couple of smaller plots I used to hunt got sold off, and the new owners promptly chopped down half the trees on them to build houses.

The upside to all this is that I am finding fewer vienna sausage cans in the woods.

I used to hunt a private property in a county near where I live, one of the very few counties near me where could use a rfile from the ground. The lady that owned the property died and the buyers are anti-hunting and won't let anyone hunt there anymore. So all of my hunting since then has been on public land.

The lack of access could be used as a tool to discourage hunting in general, I believe that is happening up here at this time and moving forward, it doesn't look good for resident hunters, but it looks good if you have deep pockets and don't mind paying an outfitter, pretty much just as you say here.

Hard to compete with that NFL. Watchin guys just like you and me havin fun throwing that ball around. Now that’s America!

I got my self start exclusively on public/Nat Forrest lands, something that SWVA is blessed to with to the tune of 100's of thousands of acres of.
Those 1st few years I connected only on the few antlerless days.

To this day I've not killed a buck on public land.

After 3-4 years of only having access to public lands for hunting I knew what I needed, my own property.

Now that our son rarely hunts our property[FYI-he still hunts 100+ days annually], the herd is going to have to be thinned.
I offer my small parcel to parents that I know with kids but rarely get taken up on the offer.

One big issue here is there is very little publicly huntable land, around 2% of the state, and a big slice of that is in Shawnee National Forest. The rest is littlle bits and pieces scattered across the state.

I make decent money, and had planned on buying my own little parcel after I had paid the house off. Decent money isn't what it used to be, though.🙄 Land prices went up around 10x in the interim, so I got priced right the hell out of that plan.

Depends on where you live. I think we have more hunters here than places for them to hunt. Now, that's mostly because there is a huge Mennonite/Amish population here, and they look at deer as free meat. It's true that it's become more difficult to find a place to hunt, especially if you don't own land or can't afford a lease, but we're still overrun with people wanting to hunt here and they aren't too particular where they hunt either.

Access.

North East Ohio. If you don't own property or lease you're limited to A few public areas.

-Jake