Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting What's Killing Virginia's Deer

Virginia's deer management makes me sick! I will say that there is no shortage of deer in this state only quality bucks...................Hb

Hold your cards folks .. BINGO has been hollered.... Spot on !!

John

Man, I just love the Virginia wilderness....

Always looks beautiful there...

It is very pretty.....................Hb

During the 2006 and 2007 seasons...

I saw many dead deer in the area between Leesburg and Mount Weather. All of which had suffered a copper injection of 225 grains from my 35 Whelen.

i hunt augusta,rockinham,nelson,albemarle,amhurst,highland,bath,and prince george county. i live 1 mile from the shenandoah national park and there are no where near the numbers of deer in augusta along the mtn as there was before the heavy snows we had a few years back. the vdgif claims that as many as 53% of out deer starved to death in that bad winter. that along with the rapid increase of bear along in most mtn areas of the state have thinned them out even more. coyotes are killing plenty also. the deer have learned over the years that there is more food year round in the flat lands.

on the west side of the state i think we need to allow hunters to take 2 bear a season.vdgif has told me that the bear population is growing 10% every 3 yrs. deer are over populated in some areas and nearly gone in others,its a very hard thing to regulate statewide.

in my area we have lots of big tracks of land that have been leased to hunters that are only after trophy deer and bear.this is not helping control the bear population at all. they need to start killing every legal bear they see for a few years to help increase deer populations. most don't believe the bear are killing many deer,but the vdgif is now saying more fawns are being killed by bear then coyotes.

in highland and bath there are low numbers of deer in most places. there are also lots of land owners feeding deer and bear year round. vdgif has been steadily putting a stop to the illeagal feeding during hunting season to get more deer back on national forest land. i think it should be illegal to feed them period.until they make it against the lw and stores like walmart keep selling feed of all kinds ,it will never stop.

I hunt in Shenandoah, Warren, and Loudoun counties. The deer numbers are definetly lower than before the big snow we had a few years ago. More bear and coyotes for sure. That is interesting about the bear being a bigger killer than the coyote. I think there are less people out in the woods too. I hope it is better this year.

i get my info directly from the vdgif office near me. i'm good friends with the wildlife manager and the game biologist. numbers of hunters have really fallin on national forest lands near me. most roads i hunt in highland county used to packed with campers during rifle season . i'm talking hundreds of campers .in those areas now you may see 10-15 campers.with such low deer numbers they just stopped coming.

bingo!

I lived in Va. for years covered hutting areas from Greenbay to Amhurst in the Blue ridge Mts. and I never went out w/o seeing deer, I think If the population is fact declining it may be because Farms are declining, no one traps any more,or has the ambition to get out and hunt Fox or coyote. an other thing is that every body and their brother has deer dogs a lot of witch run deer year round (there needs to be a little stricter laws on that issue) Ya know? "DEER can run themselves to death/DOGS cant" Plus I have gotten a couple of deer that were peppered w/00buck shot and found a few dead in the woods w/ Buck shot wounds from people taking running shots when the dogs kick em up or trying to shoot from too far away.Also every one can legally take six deer a season right off the top.I love having doe days but maybe they should (Don't shoot me for saying)do away with the either sex tags for a while.

And they could cut down to 1 buck tag and do away with all these firearms season during the rut, maybe we would see some quality bucks in a few years instead of these 2 1/2 year old 110" scrubs...............Hb

Yes I agree w/ that. Also It would be ok w/ me if there was a late bow season witch would cut down on the deer drives by a few days.

I just read in the va deer forecast:

850k to 1mm deer herd

Although western 3rd of the state had seen a dramatic drop in deer harvest, especially in Jefferson and George Washington national forest. That's me

Just an update.

There are so many deer in NOVA (read FFX and Loudon counties) it has become dangerous to drive the remote areas this time of year. I live in FFx but have never hunted VA. I know there are managed hunts to cull deer, but they simply cannot make a dent in the herd. I think the earlier suggestion of releasing wolves in NOVA would be a great help....well maybe not, but it's interesting to think about!

NO wolves please! From what I read in other forums on here, we don't need/want them.

Jack - I was kidding. I do think the management in NOVA of the deer herd is completely lackluster...they simply cannot control it and something needs to be done to responsibly manage the overcrowding.

Southern Mongomery Co has no shortage of deer, I promise you that!!

no one cares, pencil jockey

Some may, pencil dick.

When thousands of acres of hardwood ridges are slash cut and inedible trash grows back, what do you expect the deer to do other than migrate to the towns and cornfields and interstates. They are not in the western National Forests of VA like they once were. I remember hunting the same areas I do now and seeing 20-30 deer a week without really trying. Now, ten years later, I'm lucky to see 5 in a week hunting twice as hard, but see 20+ in the mornings along the interstate on my way to work. A few years back the rubs, scrapes, and trails dried up and what deer were left went nocturnal. Years of bad practice have come to this low population along with natural phenomenons. The winter kill, predation from multiple species, too many bucks killed due to scoped muzzleloaders during the peak of the rut, excessive limits, poaching, lack of checking in deer, lack of habitat to thrive, too many doe days, hemmoraigic disease. The area I hunt has almost no doe days now where it had about 8 in the BP and rifle seasons and the herd numbers are coming up slowly, but bear and coyote sitings are also on the rise in these areas. Unfortunatly, they didn't do this a few years sooner and the numbers dropped quickly.

I'd like to see the phone check in done away with and more antler restrictions and earn a buck programs. The buck to doe ratio is way off. If you had to take a doe before getting your buck tag, the "brown is down" mentality on doe days would be gone and more targeted deer would be harvested. A lot of bucks get shot on those anything goes days. Unbred does don't help the population and they don't increase buck numbers. When you have one immature buck trying to find and breed 15 does, some will be missed. You have 5 mature bucks doing it and you'll get the job done. Open up the rules on private land as much as they want, that's what is overpopulated. While I use a scoped inline, I think they should be unscoped by law. Mine is as accurate as a centerfire and gives too much advantage during the peak rut times. They also need to quit screwing with other species like wolves and elk and manage what belongs here.