There is also a late Urban Archery season in those cities and towns. It runs from the second Monday in January through the end of March. If an archer needs one more doe for the freezer, these communities may just be able to oblige.

Shenandoah and Bedford counties are among all or parts of 10 counties that host antlerless deer hunting throughout the two-week regular gun season west of the Blue Ridge. Note that in all these categories, regulations are different for public land, such as the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest and the state wildlife management areas. For complete information, check out the 2007-2008 Hunting & Trapping Regulations.

Counties in blue receive the high ranking, and they consist of Frederick, Clarke, Warren, Fauquier, Warren and Rappahannock in northern Virginia and Giles, Craig and Alleghany along the West Virginia border, and Grayson along the North Carolina state line.

Across the Commonwealth, the vast majority of counties fall under the yellow color code or moderate category. These include a largely unbroken swath of counties in Western Virginia from Page, Madison and Culpepper in the north to Wise, Lee and Scott on the far western tip of the state. The yellow coded counties also include Accomack and Northampton on the Eastern Shore and most Tidewater domains, such as Westmoreland, Richmond and Lancaster in the upper part of the region and Southampton and Suffolk in the far southeast.

Only a dozen or so counties carry the green color or "low" category and obviously, these domains typically have conservative harvest regulations. Interestingly, these counties, too, are scattered statewide with Dickinson, Russell and Washington being examples in the west and Caroline and Spotsylvania being examples east of the Blue Ridge. Only one county received the white color code or very low rating: Buchanan. As has been the case for many decades, the deer population remains very low in this county along the Kentucky line.

VIRGINIA HUNTERS AS DEER MANAGERS
I told Matt Knox, deer project coordinator for the VDGIF, that fellow biologist Dave Steffen once told me that Old Dominion hunters can be and should be the best deer managers.

"Steffen is absolutely correct," Knox said. "Every time a deer hunter pulls the trigger, he or she is making a deer management decision. When a hunter shoots bucks and does not kill does, they are managing for more deer. If one buck is killed, a single deer has been removed from the deer population. If he had survived for a decade, he would have been only a single deer a decade later. One buck can breed with a number of does, so removing the majority of bucks will have little impact on the number of fawns born.

"But what about shooting a doe? If one doe is killed, a single deer has been removed from the deer population. If she had survived for a decade, she and her offspring could have contributed over 200 deer to the deer population. The lesson here is simple: Shooting bucks will not control deer populations; shooting does will.

"When a hunter shoots young, small, antlered bucks, they are managing against older, bigger deer. If you want to shoot/manage for bigger, older bucks, you have to let young, small bucks walk -- (that's) trigger management. A professional acquaintance of mine from Auburn University, Dr. Keith Causey, was giving a deer presentation years ago and showing pictures of big 4 1/2-year-old bucks and a hunter in the audience asked where all these 4 1/2-year-old deer were, and Dr. Causey said, 'You killed them three years ago'."

Knox said that hopefully the VDGIF will be putting a very similar text about the need to kill does in the regulations digest this fall. Those regulations will also be online at www.dgif.virginia.gov.

THE REASONING BEHIND THE COLOR CODES
Certainly, one of the most useful tools for helping sportsmen determine where to go when they are seeking venison for the freezer is the color-coding system for deer abundance.

"I will take credit for the relative abundance map," Knox said. "When I came here years ago, sportswriters, no offense, used to always have me produce a top 10 deer kill list. I did it, but it means absolutely nothing and is/was, in fact, misleading the average deer hunter. Just because a county kills a lot of deer does not mean it has a lot of deer. The Clarke/Pittsylvania example in the text describes this paradox."

I asked the deer project coordinator if there are some areas/counties that need to have their deer populations decreased. And if so, is progress being made toward doing so?