SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A vote on a proposal to lower the state’s buck limit has been pulled from the agenda of Sunday’s Natural Resources Commission meeting.
West Virginia Division of Natural Resources Director Steve McDaniel said he made the decision after receiving an overwhelming number of public comments about the proposal.
“We’ve decided to extend the public comment period for an additional 30 days. We feel everybody should be given the opportunity to state their opinion on something as important as lowering the buck limit,” McDaniel said Thursday.
Due to current restrictions because of the Covid 19 pandemic, Sunday’s meeting is limited to no more than 25 people in the room. The public will have to watch the meeting on the DNR’s Facebook page or on the Department of Commerce’s YouTube Channel. Normally the public comment is a big portion of any Natural Resources Commission meeting. According to McDaniel they receive typically around 35 comments, but this week when the deadline to comment was extended he received more than 600.
“We have 250,000 hunters across the state and from surrounding states. We had no idea we’d get this kind of response. We don’t want to shut off people from voicing their opinion,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel said the Governor’s office also favored extending the public comment period another 30 days and will place the vote on lowering the buck limit from three to two on the agenda for the next Natural Resources Commission meeting which will be August 4th.
Still on the agenda Sunday is a presentation by Southwick Associates about a survey of West Virginia sportsmen which explored restructuring the state’s hunting and fishing license system.
“The Southwick Study is somewhat related to the buck limit which has been under consideration for a while, but the Southwick Study is actually much broader than that. It was an effort to look at a complete restructure of our license system in a conceptual kind of way,” said Paul Johansen, Wildlife Section Chief for the West Virginia DNR.
Johansen stressed there are no proposals to increase the cost of license or fees, but they are looking at ways to potentially repackage license offerings to sportsmen to increase revenue and make the process more convenient for sportsmen.
Also up for approval on the agenda Sunday are this fall’s big game bag limit and season date recommendations from the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources staff. Commissioners are also due to review small game regulations, changes in fish regulations, and a new set of amphibian regulations which won’t be given final approval until the August meeting.
“The second quarterly meeting focuses primarily on our big game regulations for this fall. It will include all deer, bear, wild turkey, and wild boar regulations,” Johansen said.
The meeting gets started at 1 p.m Sunday.