SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Preliminary figures indicate West Virginia deer hunters killed 66,128 bucks during the two week season which ended on Saturday.
“We had great weather, we had good food conditions, and we had some carry over from last season,” said Chris Ryan, Biologist with the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “Just a lot of great things lining up that made it one of the best seasons in a long time for West Virginia hunters.”
It was the best buck number since 2008, but not nearly a record number. Hunters in 1997 killed 102,484 bucks. One other year, 1995, the number of bucks killed also topped 100,000.
“It was not even close to the record kill and we don’t want it close to the record kill,” said Ryan. “The deer population in the early 90’s was too high and our deer management philosophy has been to bring that back in line with the biological carrying capacity of the land. Over the last decade we’ve had more liberal doe seasons to lower that population and we’ve done that. Most counties are at or near their management objective.”
The other notable factor about the 2015 season was the size of the antlers on the bucks killed.
“I’ve seen a lot of pictures of a lot of big bucks over the last two weeks,” said Ryan. “West Virginia hunters as a whole don’t kill that many yearling bucks. That’s only about 22 percent of the harvest. Normally the bucks are two and three year old bucks and last year so many had survived and got another year of age on them, meaning there were a lot of bucks in that three, four, and five year old age class which typically produces bigger antlers.”
Conditions couldn’t have been more perfect in the first week of the season. Hunters were greeted with perfect weather with lots of sunshine. It was cold enough to keep deer moving, but not so cold that it drove hunters out of the woods. Many counties also still had rutting activity, which caused bucks to drop their guard more than usual and made them more vulnerable to hunters.