Last season, Virginia hunters hit another milestone in hunting history by bagging a record 253,678 whitetail deer. The previous season the record harvest was 242,792 deer. The 10-year average harvest is 212,780 deer killed.

As was the case last year, hunters did a great job taking does. The total doe harvest outpaced the antlered buck harvest, which is an important factor, biologists believe, in managing the deer herd. There were 119,524 does taken (47.3 percent of the total harvest), 111,863 antlered bucks and 22,291 button bucks taken. The increased doe harvest was to the tune of nearly 10,000 animals over the previous season. The antlered buck harvest was up slightly at just over 2,500 more bucks this year. The button buck kill was actually down slightly this year from the previous season. Not surprisingly, every region saw deer harvest numbers go up.

When examining the harvest data provided by the VDGIF (not including the late special antlerless-only seasons numbers, which were not yet available at press time), we see that bowhunters took 7 percent of the deer last season with a kill total of 17,881. Crossbow hunters claimed 4 percent or 9,597 deer and muzzleloader hunters shot 57,038 deer or 22 percent of the total harvest. Rifle hunters shot 92,210 deer or 36 percent, while shotgun hunters took 76,156 whitetails or 30 percent. Of all the weapons used for deer hunting, muzzleloader hunters harvested the lowest per­centage of does at 42.9 percent. This is very likely because most hunters are looking for a monster buck in rut to make a mistake and end up on the wall. Many a doe gets passed up during this active period of the season.

One of the goals of the VDGIF is to make use of hunters in managing the whitetail deer herd, particularly with respect to encouraging the harvest of does. In light of that, there has been a number of regulation changes made in order to increase the doe harvest over the past five years. Some have been as simple as liberalizing the take of does by use of DMAP, bonus tags or extra "doe days" in a season. In fact, as of press time, there is a proposal to increase the number of bonus tags from two to six, which will be good for a full year from the date of purchase. Most recently the VDGIF also made several counties "Earn-a-Buck" counties where hunters must take a doe in order to be permitted a second or third antlered deer. These management techniques have been effective in getting the antlerless or doe harvest up to levels that are affecting the total herd numbers.

We went to Matt Knox, Deer Project Manager, to get additional information about the deer harvest, hunter success rates and trends. Knox stated that data shows that hunters statewide are averaging a 60 percent success rate while in the field.

However, data also shows that deer numbers on national forest lands appear to have declined 40 percent within the last decade. Another trend that has come to light that we all should be concerned about is the decline in the hunting pressure because of lower hunter numbers.

When looking over the data from this past season's harvest and comparing it with the previous season, we noticed that 15 of the counties on the top 20 list the previous season are on the list again this season. The new counties that made the cut this year have often been on the top 20 list and are not a surprise. They include New Kent with a figure of 10.9 deer harvested per square mile, Westmoreland (10.7), Grayson (10), Warren (9.9) and King George (9.8). Counties that moved off our top 20 include Giles, Orange, Powhatan, Madison and Northumberland.