| The 2011 mast crop in West Virginia isn't nearly as robust as that of 2010, but DNR officials say it's certainly not as bad as 2009.
"The oak mast is down quite a bit, almost down to the 2009 level, but not quite," said Randy Tucker one of the authors of the annual mast survey at DNR.
"We did have a couple of species like beech and walnut that did fare quite well."
The report indicates soft mast was fairly abundant in some areas, with the exception of wild cherry.
"I've gotten very few reports of cherry hitting at all," Tucker said.
"Grapes did quite well. It seems like just about everywhere our cooperators went to look at the mast, grapes hit fairly abundantly."
The mast year of 2010 was the best in the history of producing the survey.
The result of the robust 2010 season will be more deer in West Virginia for 2011.
Tucker expects the deer harvest to increase in 2011. The DNR projects the wild turkey harvest will probably stay about the same because of changes in hunting regulations.
The bear harvest is expected to be down from 2010 after hunters killed a record number of bear.
During the 2009-10 winter, the deer population was thinned because of starvation.
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