By Bruce Ingram

It was the last 15 minutes of the last day of not only Virginia's late muzzleloader season, but also of the deer season as a whole. And I was not happy last Jan. 3.

I was afield in Botetourt County, overlooking a food plot. I was hoping that a whitetail would meander into the plot to feed. This was logical, as the hard mast crop had failed in western Virginia, and the few acorns that had fallen to the ground had long since been consumed.

The major reason for my misery was that I had been hunting every day that week and had not seen a deer. I had managed to strike out in Franklin County on both a hilly wood lot and a food plot, at four different Botetourt County farms and wood lots, at a Craig County mountain, and in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest. I had even gone muzzleloader hunting in West Virginia in mid-December, and the results were all the same - no deer seen.

So when a deer did enter the Botetourt County food plot at 5:15, I felt a rush of adrenaline. The whitetail had emerged from a thicket to the left of the plot about 100 yards from me, took a few quick steps, and then disappeared into a copse to the right of the plot. All in all, the deer was visible for about three seconds.

And that brief sighting was the most memorable moment of my 2003-2004 late muzzleloader season. To further highlight my wretched season, when I returned to my vehicle in the dark, a small herd of deer was milling about.

Despite my abject failure this past year, I truly do relish the Old Dominion's late muzzleloader season. None of the other deer seasons challenge me as much as this one, and perhaps at no other time is the hunting pressure so low, and the winter woods so beautiful and inviting.

Photo by Ron Sinfelt

Those preliminary kill totals show that Bedford County led the way during the late smokepole season with a tally of 695, which was 19 percent of the muzzleloader harvest and 8 percent of the total kill. Other counties in the top 10 (with total late muzzleloader kill, percentage of muzzleloader harvest, and percentage of overall deer kill, respectively) are as follows: Shenandoah (537, 30 percent, 9 percent), Rockingham (495, 29 percent, 8 percent), Rockbridge (455, 44 percent, 13 percent), Scott (427, 51 percent, 11 percent), Giles (406, 35 percent, 11 percent), Wythe (371, 39 percent, 13 percent), Amherst (369, 29 percent, 11 percent) Highland (369, 39 percent, 10 percent) and Augusta (335, 28 percent, 7 percent).

Several aspects of these figures stand out.

First, Bedford remains one of the premier places to hunt deer in the Commonwealth, regardless of the season.

Second, Rockbridge and Wythe counties not only offer quality hunting, but they also have some hardcore deer enthusiasts, as the 13 percent figure indicates. If 13 percent of a county's deer harvest occurs during the late smokepole season, that means some very serious sportsmen must be afield then.

Third, smokepole hunting is apparently quite popular in Scott County if 51 percent of the deer there are taken by that method.