ELKINS, W.Va. — More than 200,000 hunters will be off from work or school for the next few days and in the woods pursuing a big buck. The 2024 buck season opens November 25th and runs for two weeks ending on December 8th.
Weather is a major factor in hunter success every year. Brett Skelley, who leads the DNR’s Deer Project, explained on a recent edition of West Virginia Outdoors there are several factors to consider when calculating a possible forecast for the season’s harvest.
“There’s a few things, mast conditions, weather, and really we’re expecting a very similar harvest to what we had last year across the state,” he explained.
The mast conditions this year were mixed depending on what part of the state you’re hunting. Where the white oak acorns are abundant deer are unlikely to be moving very much. But, Skelley added there may not be as much of that white oak to old bucks in place for the full two weeks of the season.
“Pretty good white oak and chestnut oak mast, but depending on how much of that is left in the next week hunters may want to be targeting red oak, black or scarlet oak. Overall though, a similar harvest is expected to what we had last year,” Skelley said.
The weather plays a factor because it has an impact on hunter participation. A heavy snowfall or an extremely heavy rain on the opening day tends to create uncomfortable conditions which will drive many hunters out of the woods early and increase the chances a buck will survive.
During years of poor mast conditions the advantage lies with hunters as bucks need to travel further to find a meal.
“Yeah, there will be an increased movement rate and encountering more hunters,” said Skelley.
There are fewer hunters in the state than there were just 20 years ago. That also can impact the harvest, but the impact from lower overall hunter numbers is something noticed more gradually over time.
This is the first season in which hunters are limited in West Virginia to a limit of two bucks over the course of all of the hunting seasons. Hunters who killed two bucks with a bow are done for the year. Those who killed one buck with a bow can still kill one during rifle season, but that will be the end of bucks for the year. The idea was to lower the overall buck harvest in a season. DNR officials aren’t sure it will have much impact on that numbers since very few hunters actually killed a third buck when it was allowed.
There is also no requirement this year to bring a deer to a data collection point. Normally during the first three days, data collection stations are established for deer killed in the first three days in certain counties and hunters would be required to kill any whitetail killed to those areas. However, Skelley said they are taking a year off from that data collection in 2024.