Virginia’s Deer with Justin Folks: Answering Some Questions

By Justin Folks/DWR

Photos by Meghan Marchetti/DWR

DWR’s Deer Project Leader, Justin Folks, offered to answer questions from hunters and others in his first blog, Virginia’s Deer with Justin Folks: Deer Management is a Community Effort. Below are some of the questions and Justin’s replies. 

Q: Is DWR able to have much input with the George Washington National Forest? It seems that they have a lackadaisical approach to deer and forest management.

A: DWR involvement on National Forest lands—which are managed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture—is limited, and much more limited today than in the past. Many years ago, our agency actually employed folks who solely worked on the National Forests, completing and managing wildlife habitat projects. As time went by, these positions were phased out. Now, all work on National Forest lands is conducted by USFS employees, volunteers, and contractors. When asked, DWR biologists provide input on proposed National Forest projects, and they coordinate the implementation of various habitat projects funded with National Forest stamp dollars.

Unfortunately, and for a variety of reasons, habitat management on National Forest lands has become increasingly difficult, and it’s not because USFS staff are “lackadaisical” (competing user groups, litigation, limited staff, and budget shortfalls are a few reasons). We’re beginning to experience some similar struggles on DWR-owned properties. We do have a Memorandum of Understanding with the USFS, however, that allows us to participate on prescribed fires on each other’s lands, which has greatly increased each agency’s capacity to implement this important habitat management tool.

Q: I’m 68 years old and have lived on the same farm in Rockbridge County my whole life. I started deer hunting at about 14 years of age with some neighbors that were experienced deer hunters. In those days, it was great if we could kill one deer. We used to drive to Bath County on summer evenings to see fields full of deer. Over the years the populations of deer grew tremendously in all the counties in the Shenandoah Valley, fed by thousands of crop fields. For some reason, [DWR] has always restricted Rockbridge County more than the surrounding counties. Y’all really missed the boat on the number of doe days in muzzleloader season here. There are just as many deer per acre in Rockbridge County as there are in Augusta and Botetourt counties. Rockbridge is grouped with counties in Southwest Virginia that used to have very limited hunting. Has anyone from Richmond ever been to Rockbridge or what is the problem? 

A: For many years, our deer population index in Rockbridge had been stable in the “moderate” level (the objective for Rockbridge), but our data does reflect an increasing trend in deer abundance there in recent years. We’re instituting deer hunting regulations in Rockbridge this year to help stabilize or reduce deer herds, and these regulations will now be consistent with Augusta and Botetourt.

To touch on your question, “has anyone from Richmond ever been to Rockbridge…?”, I’m sure they have, but the folks in Richmond aren’t the ones making the deer management regulations at the local level. Since we’re on the topic, I’ll describe the process by which we make adjustments to either-sex days, or “doe days,” without going too deep into the weeds.

For each county, there’s a deer population objective, essentially based on the local human population’s tolerance of deer (i.e., if there are a lot of conflicts with deer, the objective is lower, and if there are relatively few conflicts with deer, the objective is higher). Each county is also assigned a District Biologist who helps with wildlife management issues at the county level. Each regulation cycle (which occurs in odd years), Deer Program staff meet with all District Biologists to look at all sorts of data to determine if changes are needed to meet deer population objectives. There’s been a lot of turnover in the agency in recent years in both personnel and management philosophies.

Q: I hunt a lot west of the Blue Ridge. I find it hard to fill my five tags. What bugs me is hunters east have six tags, and we pay the same.

A: Fellow WBR hunter here! Why do hunters get six tags (three bucks) in the east and five tags (two bucks) in the west? The short answer is… tradition. Historically, deer seasons and limits have been more liberal in the east and more conservative in the west, likely due to deer populations being a little slower to recover in the west. Every regulation cycle, we get a high volume of comments requesting a two-buck, a three-buck, even a one-buck bag limit statewide, or some other regional variation of buck bag limit. Numerous hunter surveys continue to show that hunters in the east prefer a three-buck bag limit and hunters in the west prefer a two-buck bag limit. There’s really no biological reason as to why the bag limits vary on either side of the Blue Ridge; it’s just an example of how constituent preference can influence deer management at times.

Q: Why does our deer season start on the first Saturday in October? Our bordering states all start earlier. Kentucky, North Carolina, and Maryland all start at least two weeks earlier.

Starting in October helps fawn recruitment, I get that. But as a guy who tries to tag older age-class bucks, it’d sure be nice to start bow hunting in September. Instead of complaining about a rut interrupted by dog hunting, I’d rather complain about bucks being completely off of any summer pattern by the time we get a crack at them.

A: The season start date is the result of hunter preference based on past hunter surveys. We may ask that question again in future surveys to see if there’s been any change in preference.

Here in southwest Virginia, I know Christmas tree growers get permits every year where meat goes to waste and etc. What could we do about maybe doing away with late muzzleloader and making in gun season? I believe that would help tremendously with waste of the deer and crop protection along with allowing twice the time for the kids to gun-hunt since they will be out of school more for weather and holidays. Thanks for all your hard work on these efforts. It’s a dying thing and I hope to see more youth involved in the coming years.

We just added two weeks of firearms season in most counties west of the Blue Ridge, so we’ll see if that helps, first. A number of counties west of the Blue Ridge have now gone to seven-week firearms seasons (which does away with late muzzleloader). What we’ve experienced, however, is that lengthening the season hasn’t significantly increased deer kill. Most modern muzzleloaders are effectively rifles now, too, so I’m not sure if changing weapons would help a lot, either. We, as hunters, need to take more does (where needed) each year in order to meet population objectives, help alleviate agricultural damage, reduce vehicle strikes, and reduce the risk of disease transmission. Except for far southwest Virginia, most counties have deer populations above objective on private lands.

I hope to see more youth involved in coming years, too!

Q: Question as to how [DWR is] using deer data to set limits on [Wildlife Management Areas] WMAs? Is there any way you are capable of tracking WMA-specific harvest data and releasing it to the public? Do you all incorporate any sort of extrapolation or risk-based analysis to predict deer population health into future years, or is it more of a historical-based data analysis that is used? Public land hunting spreadsheet/statistics nerd here, so just curious.

A: Currently, we don’t conduct any fancy analyses when it comes to deer management on WMAs. For deer hunting regulations on WMAs, we start by following those regulations set for the county unless we feel they need to be different. In the more mountainous WMAs in the west, the land isn’t highly productive, so regulations tend to be more conservative. Currently, our harvest reporting data only tells us whether a deer was taken on state land, federal land, or “other public land.”

For most counties, we can deduce where the deer came from, but in the future, we’re considering having successful hunters indicate the specific WMA from which the deer came when they report it. This would give us much better hunter use and harvest data to help us make management decisions. We also rely on professional opinion from local WMA managers and District Biologists. One example is that the Highland WMA actually had more doe days on it than the county for a handful of years due to browsing pressure affecting the regeneration of our timber harvests there. The local manager saw the issue, discussed it with the District Biologist and Deer Program staff, and the change was made.

I’m always interested in hearing from anyone interested in Virginia’s deer, whether they’re hunters or not. If you have any questions about Virginia’s deer management strategies, please email editor@dwr.virginia.gov. I’ll post answers to some of those questions in upcoming blogs. (Other DWR queries can contact the agency here.) I can’t possibly answer every single question, but your question may be selected to be answered in a future blog.  Also, if I see common themes or common questions, it helps me to do my job better.

DWR’s Deer Project Leader, Justin Folks, is looking forward to explaining the challenges DWR is facing in deer management, what the current populations are like across the state, and what DWR’s current objectives are in a series of blogs in the Hunting Notes from the Field emails.