SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Proposed changes to the 2017 hunting regulations will mean increased opportunities for West Virginia hunters to kill antlerless deer or bear this fall. The proposals were made during the winter quarterly Natural Resources Commission Meeting last Sunday in South Charleston.
For deer hunting, the proposed changes are largely a liberalization of the antlerless hunting in 18 counties.
“The season frameworks are very similar in terms of bag limits and the number of days available for the season,” said DNR Game Management Supervisor Gary Foster. “However, we have made several counties more liberal. We need to try and get that antlerless harvest increased a little bit to get those populations in those areas in line with where we’re wanting them to be.”
The proposal includes allowing for one antlerless deer this fall in Tucker and Webster Counties however, there would be no restriction for hunters to apply for a permit. The management plan also calls for increasing the bag limit to 3 antlerless deer with an unlimited number of permits for Barbour, Braxton, Cabell, Grant, the northern portion of Kanawha County, and Mercer Counties.
The biggest change to the antlerless season will be ten counties where the proposed bag limit will be three antlerless deer and a hunter wanting to kill a second buck in either bow or gun season would have to first kill an antlerless deer. The new counties where the designation would apply are the counties of Berkeley, Harrison, Jackson, Marion, Monroe, Pleasants, Putnam, Roane, Taylor, and Tyler.
“That was probably the biggest change,” said Foster. “If they’re going to kill a second buck, they have to kill an antlerless deer first.”
There were only two counties where the proposed antlerless season became more restrictive than 2016. The change removed the special regulation of having to kill an antlerless deer before the second buck is allowed in Wetzel County. The proposal also called for closing the antlerless season in southern Clay County.
The guidance for the management decisions comes from the DNR’s whitetail deer operational plan.
A similar plan is in place for the black bear regulations. However, the plans have vastly different adjustments from season to season because of a lower reproductive rate for bears. The proposed changes will loosen restrictions on bear hunting, particularly in counties where hunting them with hounds is not an option.
“The liberalizations we have proposed is to remove the mountain counties from the permit application for the buck firearm season. If approved, anyone can kill a bear during the buck firearm season with a bear damage stamp,” said Colin Carpenter, Bear Project Leader at the West Virginia DNR.
The proposed changes for this year also widen the opportunities for killing a black bear in western counties of West Virginia, including several counties along the Ohio River. The proposal would allow for killing a bear during the buck firearms season–with a limited permit– in the counties of Cabell, Doddridge, Harrison, Lincoln, Marion, Marshall, Mineral, and Wetzel Counties.
Carpenter noted the changes in the west were significant.
“We have lower harvest objectives in those counties because we don’t want the bear population growing as large,” he said. “Those counties are harvesting bears now, so we’re moving them into the buck firearms season.”
“We’ve added several counties west of I-79 to the buck firearms season. The idea is those counties are non-hound counties,” he said. “Using hounds in those counties is not part of the strategy, so the next step in our bear management plan for those counties is to go from a bow season to the buck firearms season.”
The liberalization in those non-hound counties includes removing the requirement of a drawn permit during the buck hunting season in Calhoun, Gilmer, and Wirt County. Those counties would be open to hunting with just a bear damage stamp during gun season.
As Carpenter mentioned, they’ve relaxed the restrictions in some of the traditional counties where hound hunting is popular and there will also be no permit required during the buck firearms season to kill bears in Barbour, Braxton, Clay, Grant, Greenbrier, Hardy, Pendleton, Pocahontas, Randolph, Tucker, Upshur, and Webster Counties.
The early seasons in various parts of the state have also proven to be popular and successful in keeping bear numbers in check. The framework of those early bear season is slightly changed. Hunters would go from and eight day season to a nine day season in Logan, McDowell, Mingo, and Wyoming Counties from September 2-10. The proposal calls for adding an early season with or without dogs September 23-29 in Mineral County west of New Creek and all of Mineral County would allow for killing a bear during the buck firearms season with a limited permit.
Carpenter said the loosening of the restrictions for bear hunting, particularly in those counties west of I-79 to the Ohio River is a compliment to the management work of the last five decades.
“It’s hard to believe looking at how far we’ve come in the last 35 to 40 years,” he said. “As we’ve started to liberalize our seasons, we’ve tried to do everything in a gradual manner to slowly bring the bear population down to where we need it because bears don’t have the reproductive rate of whitetail deer.”
New DNR Director Steve McDaniel publicly commended the bear project work of the agency in the last four to five decades, noting West Virginia is in the top 5 of black bear harvest rates in the country.
“We’re in the top five nationwide for total bear harvest,” said Carpenter. “Generally the states we compete with since we topped a harvest of 3,000 in the last few years have been Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. We’re one of the tops around.”
The proposed regulation changes will be put out for public comment and DNR staff will stage their annual March Sectional Meetings next month to answer any questions or concerns hunters or anglers would have with those regulation changes.