The results from the 2017/18 big game harvest are now in. Bear hunters had a record year, deer hunters shot about as many as the previous year and the fall turkey kill was off considerably.
Bear hunters tagged a total of 2,861 animals, 17% more animals than the previous year’s record total. This number is indicative of the rapidly increasing bear population in Virginia. The animals are prospering. Jimmy Graves of Graves Mountain Lodge in Syria told me that he had seen a sow with four cubs. A pair of cubs is the norm, but often the mother bear will have triplets. Expect the bear kill to remain in the 2,000-range for the foreseeable future.
Deer hunting accounted for a harvest of 189,730 animals, up by about 8,000 over the 2016/2017 numbers, on track to keep populations stable, a goal of the Game Department for the past five years. When the biologists want more deer, they tighten the regs on taking does. When they want fewer deer, hunters can harvest more females. They have it just about right. Sunday hunting, by the way, seems to have had little effect of the overall kill.
Turkey hunters had a bad fall season, with a 24% drop compared to 2016/17 and a 31% decline for the five-year average. Available mast and weather can make a difference in the overall harvest, but I suspect that fewer turkeys killed is related to fewer hunters targeting turkeys. Fall turkey hunting is a different animal than spring gobbler hunting. Complicated season scheduling and the lack of hunters with turkey dogs are contributing factors in the decline of fall turkey numbers.