Photo by BillKinney.com

"Rebecca killed a big buck on Christmas Eve," were the first words John Potter greeted me with when he arrived in first period at my Lord Botetourt High School English 10 class after the holidays had concluded. I had taught his sister, Rebecca, three years earlier and had known her then as an enthusiastic and dedicated young sportswoman.

"And I mean a big buck," John continued. "You should see it."

The buck turned out, indeed, to be worth a look. The base of the 10-pointer's horns are 4 1/2 inches around and the tines are all about 9 inches long. The buck also has a drop tine that had been severed. Interestingly, the broadbeam only weighed 130 pounds field dressed. David Hicks of Hicks Taxidermy in Vinton estimated the deer was at least 5 1/2 years old. He also rough scored the buck at 182 under the Virginia scoring system.

"It's a stud, a right impressive buck," Hicks told me.

On Christmas Eve evening, Rebecca, a resident of Troutville and a student at Radford University, was positioned on a Botetourt County ridge. Fortunately, she decided to brave the cold until sunset, and at 5:30 p.m., the buck came marching down the mountain toward a field. Her 40-yard shot rang true, and at a time of year when tagging a deer of either sex is an accomplishment, Rebecca had killed a mossyhorn that any hunter in any season would be proud to claim.

"He only ran about 30 yards until he got his horns tangled up in a sapling," Rebecca recalled.

Interestingly, earlier on Christmas Eve morning, Rebecca had glimpsed what she thought might have been the same buck. Overall, the trophy was her third deer in the past four years.

Matt Knox, deer program supervisor for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF), notes that the late muzzleloader season is a time of very light hunting pressure. Indeed, of the 220,538 whitetails killed during the 2004-05 season, only 8,386 were tagged during the late muzzleloader period. That tally is only 3.8 percent of the overall deer harvest. I asked Knox why the pressure is so low.

"I do not have a feeling for why this is so," he said. "I did not do it (the harvest figures) by day, but most of the deer kill during this season takes place during the last six days which are, in most places, either-sex hunting days -- sort of a last chance to put a deer in the freezer."

This year, the late muzzleloader season will run from Saturday, Dec. 17 to Saturday, Jan. 7, 2006. Knox stated that no changes are on tap concerning the season length or structure for this year. However, the DGIF is proposing to change the season structure "so that the late muzzleloading season will always be three weeks and a Saturday in length." As the regulation is currently written, the season is sometimes only two weeks, depending on the calendar.

WHERE TO GO
Last year, the top 10 late-season muzzleloader counties (harvest total in parentheses) were Bedford (431), Shenandoah (232), Rockingham (217), Scott (210), Wythe (192), Franklin (174), Augusta (174), Botetourt (163), Rockbridge (130) and Montgomery (127).

I have always believed that the harvest totals in the individual counties for the late muzzleloader season were equal parts a reflection of a county's deer numbers, a reflection of a dedicated percentage of deer hunters that remained "hard at it" long after their peers had given up the pastime for the year, and a reflection of the number of doe days.