Deer Kill Graph Since 1947
There is an elephant in the room.
For the recently completed 2016/17 hunting season, Virginia’s deer hunters tagged a total of 180,121 deer. That total represents a 16% decrease from the previous year’s harvest of 209.197.
Game Department officials said that a good mast crop and diseases in previous years were responsible for the rather dramatic drop. But conditions were near ideal throughout last fall, lots of hunters were out and about, and almost to a man, they reported fewer deer.
Still hunters may not have been as exposed to deer if the herds were deeper in the woods with ample mast, but to hound hunters, it doesn’t make that much difference. If the deer are there, the dogs will get them running and it didn’t happen last year.
Why?
Many hunter feel that predators – coyotes and even bears – are responsible.
There are now more bears than ever in modern times and bears can be devastating on deer populations when does are dropping fawns. With their acute senses of smell, bears prey readily on newborn fawns. So do coyotes.
Strange, but game biologists never admit that coyotes are harming deer populations. Maybe because there is little anyone can do. Coyotes are cunning and difficult to kill. And if you kill a few, more move in to take their places.
Yet, deer hunting in Virginia brings millions of dollars into the state. The economies in western counties are already suffering as hunters abandon former deer hot spots to the west and either stay home or try elsewhere.
Until you admit there is a problem, it’s hard to correct it.
I believe we have a predator problem in Virginia and it’s not going to go away.
Bear/Turkeys: A total of 2,428 bears were harvested in Virginia during the 2016–17 bear hunting seasons, a 3% increase over the 2015-16 harvest and just a few bears more than the highest harvest recorded in Virginia (2014; 2423 bears). A total of 3,120 wild turkeys were harvested in Virginia during the 2016-17-fall turkey hunting season.
