The DNR is adding ten thousand additional acres of public hunting lands in West Virginia.
The agency will soon dedicated the Elk Creek Wildlife Management Area in Logan and Mingo County. The land is just over six thousand acres lying along the Mingo-Logan County border. The land borders the Guyandotte River between Gilbert and Man.
"This is going to be a real asset to the hunting, especially down in there where people like to hunt for a good quality buck,” said DNR Director Frank Jezioro on West Virginia Outdoors.
The tract includes a large amount of quality timber and is largely void of trash dumps or other problems that typically mar the landscape. The DNR is in the process of marking the boundaries and creating access roads onto the property. The land comes through a lease agreement with the Heartwood Forest Land Fund II out of Roanoke, Virginia.
Additionally the DNR has picked up 4,000 additional acres in the New River Gorge through a cooperative agreement with the Nature Conservancy. The land is contiguous to the Beury Mountain Wildlife Management Area and will be added as part of that WMA.
"It was a situation where the DNR couldn’t afford the cost of the land all at one time,” Jezioro said. "But the Nature Conservancy stepped in and bought the land and has agreed to sell it to the DNR and we can make the payments over three years."
Jezioro heralded the purchase as adding more public hunting land in the state.
"Everybody that’s involved in this knows how important this is to get additional land to hunt and fish on or someday there won’t be any hunting and fishing," said Jezioro. "I don’t want this to evolve into what they have in Europe where only the rich can hunt and fish."