CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A top official with the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources said the decreased harvest of bucks in West Virginia for 2024 could be chalked up to several factors.
Speaking on West Virginia Outdoors, Steve Rauch, the DNR’s Assistant Chief for Game Management, indicated the two most significant of those factors were a lack of hunter participation and the impact of this past year’s EHD outbreak in several areas of the state.
“Hunter numbers are declining at varying degrees and the other thing we had was the EHD outbreak last summer in several counties and of course there are fewer deer on the landscape from those that died of the disease,” said Rauch.
But Rauch said those two factors are actually linked.
“Of course those deer died, but the other thing is the perception that some hunters have that they are not going to hunt because they think there are no deer left. That impacts participation,” he added.
Rauch said the conclusion EHD, short for epizootic hemorrhagic disease, may have claimed all of the deer in a single area is wildly misconstrued and inaccurate. He noted typically an area impacted by EHD isn’t very widespread and deer typically repopulate and area quickly after an outbreak.
But that’s only part of the participation issue, which is growing nationwide. Hunters have fewer places to hunt at all because private lands where they traditionally had permission are now locked up by leases and controlled by fewer numbers of hunters who pay to have access. Some of those leases are high dollar and out of the reach of average people.
“All the survey reasons I’ve seen as to why people aren’t hunting any more, the top two always seem to be either no time or no place to hunt,” he said.
People often take a dim view of hunting on public land due to a belief, whether it be real or perceived, the property is over hunted and over pressured for whitetails. The issue is driving more hunters out of the woods and out of the sport, which therefore leaves fewer deer killed during the buck season.
This past season was the first year the buck limit for all seasons combined had been lowered to two in West Virginia. Rauch acknowledged the new law may have had some impact, but said it had been a self imposed rule for many West Virginia hunters well before it was codified in a new regulation.
“My guess is it may have been some of that, but hunters over many years hunters have chosen on their own to pass up smaller bucks, no matter what the buck limit was. They were actively passing up smaller bucks and that’s going to play into the numbers also. The number of hunters who killed three antlered deer in the past across all seasons was very low,” said Rauch.