​Virginia’s best public land deer hunting days are behind us.
But don’t take my word for it. Just pick up a copy of the November issue of the nationally syndicated Peterson’s Hunting Magazine and read the article on page 13 entitled, Welcome to Your Public (Waste) Land which, among other things, highlights the deplorable state of deer hunting on the Shenandoah Valley’s own George Washington National Forest.
Or run an internet search for a copy of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ (DGIF) current Deer Management Plan and scroll to the Public Land Deer Kill chart on page 36. (Available at: https://www.dgif.virginia.gov/wildlife/deer/management-plan/virginia-deer-management-plan.pdf.)
The numbers are depressing. Last year’s public land deer harvest (2014) was less than half of what it was in 1994 and over the last 20 years, the number of licensed deer hunters has declined by more than 60,000 permits.
Why?
Changing timber management practices surely play a role since public land timber harvests have plummeted and whitetail deer depend heavily on low-growing browse. But that’s just part of the story.
Again, please don’t take my word for it.
According to Virginia’s Deer Management Plan, even as deer populations began to explode on our national forests in the late 1980s, “ ... timber harvests ... still represented [just] 0.33% of the landscape,” a fact the Department points out to demonstrate that declining timber harvests alone can’t explain the decline. And on that point, the data tends to support them.
But the moment when the public land deer herd began its decline is also clearly reflected in the data and you can see it for yourself in that same chart on page 36 of the Deer Management Plan. The decline began in 1996 and despite a brief upsurge in the overall harvest between 1999 and 2001, it has continued ever since.
So what began wiping out our public land deer herd in 1995?
Sadly, we did (with a little help from the DGIF).
One Virginia game management official spelled it out in fine detail in a November 6, 2011 interview with The Richmond Times that you can read for yourself at: https://www.richmond.com/sports/article_7a1fc099-3216-55bc-bae0-d697ad3f9660.html.
“In 1989, the department sold around 3,000 [muzzleloading deer hunting] licenses. In 1990, they sold 10,000 ... When the season was expanded to two weeks in 1993, the number of muzzleloader licenses sold jumped to more than 25,000 … In 1995, the DGIF board voted to allow scopes on them. Suddenly muzzleloader licenses topped 40,000.”
As the data reflects, the very next year our public land deer herds began to disappear even as private land herds continued their steady climb, probably due to timing.
As that same game management official indicated in the Richmond Times interview, in order to increase interest (and therefore revenue) the Department scheduled the new season right in the heart of the breeding season, or the November “rut.”
To which the Richmond Times interviewer made this insightful observation: “Why Virginia is the only state whose muzzleloader season corresponds so nicely with the whitetail rut when deer are on the move fulfilling their most primal urge, is a mystery.”
However, for most game management officials there really is no mystery.
Combined with the existing rifle season, Virginia’s public land deer (living on that previously decried marginal habitat) – now endure a full month of rifle hunting under the most liberal bag limit (up to 5 deer) the state has ever seen.
So the answer to the reporter’s question is simple. Most game management agencies know better.
Because the impact is enormous. Deer are the most widely hunted big game species in Virginia and for most of us, public land is the only game in town. But now, with so few deer left on public land, fewer hunters are willing to buy a license to hunt there, which means that the DGIF funding stream is also quickly evaporating, right along with our public land deer herd.
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Left unchecked, there is absolutely no reason to believe this trend will ever change.
Doyle Ritchie
"Heaven on Earth: One Hunter Speaks Up" by Shelley Aley
“Anything you love doing makes anywhere you are a heaven on earth,” according to life-long Fulks Run resident and bow hunter Doyle Ritchie. If you ask him what his idea of heaven on earth is, he doesn't hesitate answering: “Being on the mountain in the woods with plenty of wildlife.” But Ritchie, 48, who has been an avid hunter and outdoorsman his entire life, believes his heaven on earth has been lost due to poor game management.
“Twenty years ago, I could count 50 or more deer out on the national forest in a day,” explains Ritchie. How many deer does he count now?
“Anymore, there just aren't many deer,” he explains, shaking his head.
As we drive logging roads one late afternoon looking for deer in the national forest in western Rockingham County, he points to nearly obliterated trails coming down from the sides of the mountain where the deer used to cross the road. Few, if any, deer have used the trails.
There is plenty of bear and coyote sign. A six-hour hike in the Dry River area in mid-summer turns up a dozen or so places where we find bear and coyote tracks and evidence in the droppings that these predators are feeding on fawns, in addition to berries.
Virginia game management knows there is a problem. According to a recent North Fork Journal article (“Hunting with Hounds: A ‘Way of Life,’” Aug. 27-Sept. 2, 2008), local hunter Carroll Dickenson “made many trips to Virginia Game Commission meetings in Richmond to lobby for a reduced hunting season” in western Rockingham County. His efforts paid off. This summer, as hunting licenses went on sale, it was apparent that Virginia’s Department of Game and Inland Fisheries heeded Mr. Dickenson’s concerns that over-hunting and predators on the national forest have taken the numbers of deer too low. Deer populations in Rockingham County have fallen to the extent that national forest and Department-owned lands, along with private lands west of Routes 613 and 731, are now limited to only two either-sex deer hunting days, November 22 and 29, during rifle season.
Ritchie knew the deer herds have been critically low; therefore, he has not taken more than two deer each hunting season for the last several years, and he does not shoot does.
Although he’s glad the state is limiting deer hunting in western Rockingham County this season, Ritchie believes that restrictions should be placed on hunting in the national forest in all of the western counties of the northern mountains. “There should be no doe days on the national forest,” he says. “In some cases there should be a three-point-on-one-side restriction for bucks, and in some areas a four-point restriction should be added.”
Ritchie hunts in the national forests in several Virginia counties. “Buffalo Gap, Lexington, and other national forest areas are seeing declines,” he points out. “This needs to be studied.”
“The problem is clear,” he explains. “When you sit in the woods today, you don't see any deer that are mature enough to hunt. We need to let the deer grow up.” He despairs over the way some hunters will shoot the spike and button bucks, male deer that are a year or less old, reasoning that if they don’t kill them, the next guy will. “Hunters need to show restraint and not shoot does and yearlings,” Ritchie says.
Some game managers tell hunters they believe the deer have left the national forest in favor of farmlands. On the Blue Ridge Parkway, where deer are not hunted, the trails cut deep grooves in the steep banks lining the roads, and we count a dozen or more deer along the road within a mile or two. This protected area, although it is nearly identical to the mountains in the national forests of western Rockingham County, supports hundreds of deer. During meetings with hunters, game biologists have told hunters that the mountains of Rockingham County wouldn’t support this many deer, even if we had them. Ritchie, who grew up seeing hundreds of deer thriving in the mountains of Rockingham County, believes these biologists are wrong.
What Ritchie would like to see are game management biologists in the forests walking the trails and reading the sign left by wildlife. He is concerned about the rising number of predators in the national forest, including coyotes and bears. Indeed, recent wildlife studies indicate that both coyotes and bears feed on fawns and can do a great deal of harm to deer herds.
“If good management is going on, and our game biologists are doing their jobs, we should see mature deer,” Ritchie explains. “Good management means more quality deer, and it’s the quality deer that bring in the hunters and more revenue for game management.
Ritchie believes that Virginia hunters should speak up. “Those I know who hunt the national forest go for weeks without seeing a deer. Some are giving up hunting because there just isn't anything to hunt.”
One experienced hunter he knows who has taken several quality bucks over the years says he only saw three deer last year while hunting in the national forest in Amherst County. This was during muzzleloading and the first two weeks of rifle season. “He shot a spike buck because he knew he wouldn't see anything else,” Ritchie explains. The hunter’s brother said he only saw five deer on the same mountain during that same three-week period.
Why don’t Ritchie and other hunters just go elsewhere?
Besides the national forest and other public lands, the only other place to hunt is on private property.
“Not many farmers and orchard owners allow hunting on their land,” Ritchie explains. “Some of them rely on Virginia’s DCAP program, which gives them kill permits to slaughter the deer in large numbers during the summer when they cause crop damage.” DCAP stands for Virginia’s Damage Control Assistance Program.
This troubles Ritchie, in part, because hunters pay $76 for a license to hunt up to five deer in an area while farmers and orchard owners don't pay for the kill permit, yet they can kill as many deer as they need to curb crop damage.
Ritchie would like to see the state game officials better manage the kill permits, allowing them only when owners have first permitted hunting on their property during hunting season, instead of in the summer when the does are raising their fawns. He would also like to see the kill permit “hunts” better supervised.
“Supervised hunts on farms and orchards would be wonderful for youth hunters, who may become discouraged with hunting in the national forest, where they won’t see many deer, especially big bucks,” says Ritchie. These hunts, held during hunting season, would help thin down overpopulated herds that cause crop damage during the growing season.
“I know of some property owners who have had kill permits to shoot up to 20 deer, sometimes more,” says Ritchie. The permits require that the property owner shoot antlerless deer, which includes the does and their fawns.
“No true hunter wants to shoot deer during fawning season,” Ritchie says. That just isn't hunting.”
To Ritchie, allowing kill permits to kill does in areas where Virginia is trying to protect and grow the deer herds does not make sense. “Would a farmer get rid of his heifers to try and raise a herd of cattle?” he asks. “No, because if he did he would have no calves. If you shoot out the does you've got no deer.”
From the deer we don't see in the national forest during several visits, it would appear that what Ritchie says is true.
He does understand that when deer herds are not thinned, they grow rapidly and can become unmanageable, even dangerous, especially in populated areas. Hunters help balance the numbers, keeping both deer and habitat healthy.
Yet too much hunting can hurt, Ritchie insists.
Matt Knox, Virginia’s deer project coordinator, encourages shooting does, to bring down the number of deer. Quoted in a recent Harrisonburg Daily New Record story (“Farmer’s Four Legged Foes Prove Formidable,” 7 Aug. 2008, B6), Knox said, “If you kill a buck, that’s just one deer. But if you kill a doe, that’s 100 to 200 deer over the next decade.”
Ritchie believes we are seeing the effects of Knox’s “bad management” in our empty national forest, where little deer sign indicates just how well the state’s liberal hunting licenses and kill permits are working. Liberal hunting licenses that require hunters to take antlerless deer, in effect, end up hurting hunting by taking the number of deer too low. When there are fewer mature deer to hunt, hunters give up hunting, something the state already knows and is concerned about. Without hunters, deer management becomes a huge problem.
“No one likes to sit for days and days without seeing quality game,” says Ritchie. With fewer hunters, he points out, Virginia collects less revenue to manage wildlife. Less revenue creates a reduction in quality wildlife management.
Currently, Virginia ranks lowest out of all 50 states in funding for game management, according to a report by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. The Strategic Planning Report states that Virginia’s rank “of 50 out of 50 states in expenditures for natural resources has not improved” in recent years.
The management issue that concerns Ritchie the most is Virginia’s policy on taking antlerless deer. “Game officials are always encouraging hunters to take antlerless deer, especially does,” he explains, “even in areas where the deer are becoming scarce.”
Before the hunting restrictions were put into place in western Rockingham County, hunters could take five deer, but three of them had to be antlerless. The only antlerless deer besides does during hunting season are female fawns and “button bucks,” male deer that are little more than babies. “Ask yourself how big they will be come hunting season, if they survive the predators,” says Ritchie. “The life expectancy of these babies is just around six months, and they'll only weigh 35-to-40 pounds.” He looks disgusted, and his voice turns bitter. “That’s only about 10 pounds of meat dressed out.”
“To me,” he continues, “that’s not hunting—that’s making hell of my heaven on earth. No wonder we're losing hunters.”
This year, Ritchie hoped that Virginia was getting serious about addressing the problem of declining deer herds on the national forest, but his hopes were dashed when it was announced that an additional week of early muzzloading season had been added.
“You can add all the special seasons you want,” says Ritchie, “but it won’t bring more deer.”
“I believe Virginia’s deer management, under the direction of Matt Knox, is creating a buffet-mentality in its hunters,” says Ritchie. “Look at some of the other states. They don't have a buffet. They know how to manage deer, especially in Ohio, where hunters still kill Boon-and-Crockett bucks.”
“Go ahead and restrict hunters, even bow hunters like me, from taking does on the national forest,” Ritchie suggests. He notes how many states have one deer/non-resident, two deer/resident licenses, “instead of the buffet we have in Virginia.” In addition, he believes that deer taken with bonus tags in Virginia need to come from privately owned land, not the national forest. He also believes that, just as hunting regulations restrict the taking of fish and bears under a certain size, so should hunters be restricted from taking immature deer.
“Ever wonder why states started allowing hunters to call in deer they have taken, instead of physically checking them in like other game, including bears?” he asks. “Think about it. Some of the hunters would be too ashamed to check in the fawns they kill. With the call-in they can say they killed a buck, instead of a button buck.”
Some hunters don’t seem to be ashamed of openly being “game hogs,” according to Ritchie. One hunter he saw last season came in to a check-in center carrying a deer weighing about 35 pounds. “Some of the deer the game hogs take are so young they still have spots,” says Ritchie. Another hunter he knows claims he likes shooting “milksuckers,” fawns that are still nursing the doe. “He just likes to kill,” according to Ritchie. “To him, if it’s brown, it goes down.” Ritchie doesn't think he is much of a hunter.
“Between the game hogs and the lack of game management in Virginia, it’s no wonder there are no deer to hunt out on the national forest,” says Ritchie.
Ritchie believes game management needs to know what the hunters are taking, and that won't happen as long as call-in check-ins are allowed. He also believes any check-in should indicate exactly what the hunters took: gender, size, age, and so forth. “If our game managers were carefully studying a full report of what hunters are taking, they could better manage the herds, and we would begin seeing restrictions and eventually quality deer in the national forest, as well as on the private lands,” Ritchie says.
Ritchie invites Matt Knox to come to Fulks Run, so he can take him into the national forest to see just how bad the situation is. “I want the head of our deer management in Virginia to come, and not those under him,” says Ritchie. “He needs to see what is going on.”
“I don’t want more deer just so I can hunt them,” Ritchie explains. “I want to watch deer in the forest, both now and in the future. I want there to be deer for my grandchildren to watch, and their grandchildren.” When he was younger, he didn’t realize that the enjoyment he felt watching wildlife in the mountains could come to an end. But, he now realizes, it can. Unless he sees some real changes in deer management soon, he doesn't hold much hope that his grandchildren will be watching deer, let alone hunting them, in Virginia.
While he can tell stories about the way it used to be in his heaven on earth, when he could count 50 or more deer on the national forest, Ritchie hopes that those days aren’t gone forever. He feels it is critical for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries to address the now-silent woods. But he believes it’s going to take more hunters like him to speak up, and not just “bellyache and bawl” at the local stores where they drink coffee, eat sandwiches, and complain about not seeing deer. They need to talk to their local game officials and call the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. He'd also like to see all citizens who love and appreciate wildlife do the same. This needs to happen, Ritchie fears, or game management may never get serious about bringing deer back on the national forest.
Sitting on the ridge above his boyhood hunting grounds, life-long Fulks Run resident Doyle Ritchie considers what the future of hunting in Virginia will be without deer in the national forests of Virginia. “I don’t want more deer just so I can hunt them,” Ritchie explains. “I want to watch deer in the forest, both now and in the future. I want there to be deer for my grandchildren to watch, and their grandchildren.”