MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The recently published preliminary report by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources shows hunters harvested 36,796 whitetail bucks in the traditional rifle season, a 17% decline from 2018. This adds to a concerning and significant 39% decline since 2015.
According to Gary Foster, assistant chief of game management, something leading to the decline was high-mast conditions, mostly affecting southwestern counties. The top 10 counties for harvest numbers, in order of most to least kills, were: Greenbrier (1,511), Preston (1,407), Randolph (1,382), Ritchie (1,244), Hampshire (1,239), Braxton (1,152), Upshur (1,146), Hardy (1,020), Monroe (1,000), and Pendleton (990).
Elevation and therefore cooler temperatures may play a part in this, as segments of Hampshire and Preston and all of Randolph and Greenbrier counties have higher elevations than the rest of the top counties. It roughly ranges between 1,200-4,500 feet in said counties compared to elevations of 600-1,800 feet in the western part of the state.
Further, Monongalia County hunters harvested 558 bucks this year, a 25% drop from last year and a 45% drop from 2015. Although Preston ranked as the second-highest harvested county, numbers show a 12% decline from 2018 — exactly 200 less deer killed as of now. Overall, there has been a steady 27% decline since 2017 in Preston. District 1, in total, has seen 39% drop in buck kills since 2015 — a statistic that could possibly mean bucks are being overhunted depending on what the final 2019 report shows.
It should be noted that Greenbrier County saw a 2% (30 kill) increase from last year’s 1,481 buck gun harvest. The only other top counties that saw an increase were Ritchie (16%) and Braxton (13%).
Mast certainly plays a part in this, but another possible factor noted by Foster was the season opened “later and further from the peak of [the] rut.”
Peak rut in West Virginia tends to be mid-November, and in the last four years the seasons have opened just on the heels of it. The 2015 season ran from Nov. 23 to Dec. 5, while 2016 (Nov. 21-Dec. 3), 2017 (Nov. 20 -Dec. 2.) and 2018 (Nov. 19-Dec. 1) all opened around the same time. This year’s Nov. 25 open probably did have an effect, but other issues permeate the sport that could have likely played an equal role.
Full deer season numbers will be released in January 2020, and hopefully it will show a trend change of hunters taking more doe over bucks. That’s something that would make these numbers look better.
TWEET @andrewspellman_
