The author with an antlerless deer that he killed last Oct. 10 in Botetourt County. Photo courtesy of Bruce Ingram.

On the first Monday of Virginia's bow season last October, I drove to a nearby Botetourt County farm where I had killed a doe the season before. The doe had entered a pasture to feed, where I had been waiting for her to appear. Relying on the memories of that successful trip, I had returned to the same stand site with the hope of tagging another doe.

But as we all know, and as I definitely should know, the previous year's deer patterns often mean little for the current one, and I spent a lonely evening in my tree stand, never glimpsing a whitetail of either sex. On the drive home, I berated myself for such a foolish decision concerning a stand site.

It was dark as I was pulling into my family's garage, and I saw a doe standing at the top of a hollow that begins behind the garage and my son's basketball goal. The doe was contentedly munching on red oak acorns, as the hollow contained a number of oaks that had produced a copious supply of nuts. Indeed, in an autumn where many oak groves across the Old Dominion had failed to yield any mast at all, my home hollow was the exception to the norm.

When I came into the house and saw my wife, Elaine, I blurted out my lack of success and told her that my next bowhunting expedition would be directly behind our house and in the hollow. And I confidently spouted that I would need her help on that day with dragging a whitetail out of the hollow. Unfavorable weather prevented me from going after work on Tuesday, but on Wednesday, I quickly drove home, changed into my camo, and slunk into a tree stand just 50 yards behind the house.

Twenty minutes after I had settled into the hang-on, a 4-pointer ambled into the hollow and started munching on acorns at a distance of just 15 yards. Soon afterward, a 2-pointer joined him and in a few minutes more, an antlerless deer, bigger than either of the 1 1/2-year-old bucks, made it a trio. Whenever possible, I prefer not to kill 1 1/2-year-old bucks, so I patiently waited for the two young males to leave the side of the recent arrival. When the antlerless deer presented a broadside standing shot, I drew back my compound and sent a carbon arrow into its boiler room.

The deer bolted and no more than two or three seconds later, I heard that most wonderful sound to a bowhunter -- a deer crashing to the forest floor. While field dressing the whitetail, I cut out its heart (which I consider a real delicacy) and then walked the few yards to our house to hail Elaine. And as my spouse had promised, she toted my gear as I hauled the whitetail out of the hollow.

Stories about bowhunters arrowing trophy Virginia whitetails are wonderful for folks like me to write, and hopefully for folks like you to read, but it's important to emphasize that the Old Dominion's bowhunting brigade plays a vital role in helping the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) manage the state's deer herd. In addition, a major aspect of that management is for state archers to harvest antlerless deer, especially in many areas of the Commonwealth.