Hunters’ biggest season is here

SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — More than 300,000 hunters will be in the woods to open the 2013 buck hunting season in West Virginia. The two week period is by far the most popular hunting season in West Virginia.

“There’s not doubt about it, it’s the season everybody looks forward to,” said Paul Johansen Assistant Chief for Game Management for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

DNR biologists forecast the number of bucks killed over the next two weeks will be at or slightly higher than the 2012 season.

“We’re estimating the buck kill will be fairly close to where it was last year,” he said. “We’ll probably take 55,000 to 60,000 bucks assuming weather conditions are reasonably good.”

The conditions for this season are bolstered by a lack of any abundance of oak mast. Oaks didn’t bare well for the fall, so hunters will likely find deer moving more than usual and exposing themselves more readily than normal.

“The mast conditions are pretty spotty and that may be reflected in behavior of our deer,” Johansen said. “Deer are going to be a little more visible using open fields instead of back on the oak ridges. There just simply is not that much oak mast out there.”

When whitetails cannot find adequate acorns they supplement their diet grazing on grass or farm crops. The venture into an open field will often leave them in the crosshairs of hunters.

However, bucks aren’t the only game hunters will be able to kill. In most of West Virginia counties hunters are entitled to take an doe or a buck provided they have the proper Class N antlerless hunting stamp. A two week concurrent season for does or bucks will also be going on. State wildlife officials made adjustments to the bag limits in hopes of reducing the deer population in areas where their abundance has extended beyond what food sources can support.

Hunters in 29 West Virginia counties or parts of counties will even be able to harvest a bear.  Bear numbers have likewise increased beyond management objectives in these places and biologists hope hunters will thin their numbers slightly.  Some of those counties for bear have limited permits for 2013 and those have already been issued by lottery drawing.

Although the season for deer hasn’t changed drastically, there are new regulations to make it more attractive for hunters.  Hunters can now kill two deer per day in a county without checking one in before the second is killed, so long as one of those is a doe.

Johansen said it’s hard to say what fuels the interest in the traditional buck season which always starts the Monday before Thanksgiving.

“It’s just part of being in West Virginia and the tradition that we have here for hunting and deer hunting in particular,” Johansen said. “It’s just an exciting time of year.”





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