By Cory Boothe
Coryboothe@hotmail.com
Hunters in West Virginia are currently experiencing an excellent season so far in 2015. Make no mistake, this is largely because of the very low harvest of 2014. Gun season 2014 opened up with winds of over fifty m.p.h. and a forest with a blanket of acorns. Deer didn't need to move all fall and the harvest plummeted.
Fast forward to this season and we have a herd where many of the bucks are a year older. Many one and a half year old, four and six points lived another year and now carry eight or more points. In one year of a lower harvest, we have transformed our herd into something much better. Their is a noticeable increase in better bucks in the herd.This upcoming season could be the best in recent history for the hunters of West Virginia.
Now is an excellent time to take it upon yourself to let smaller bucks go. Please don't shoot the four point because you feel as if you don't that your neighbor will do so. It is a fact that if you kill that four point it is has a ZERO percent chance of living to the next hunting season. If you pass on it, the opportunity is still there.
If you have never killed a buck and that four point makes you happy, by all means enjoy the harvest. However, don't be the adult that has hunted for twenty years with a collection of dusty antlers in the garage that has to kill the four point so the neighbor cannot do so.
If you truly love deer meat, a tasty adult doe provides as much meat as a yearling buck. Let that young buck grow while filling the freezer with meat from antlerless deer. If more hunters do this, all of a sudden everyone has more opportunities at larger buck deer. The rut will be more visible with more fighting, chasing, rubs, and even scrapes. It will help create a better buck to doe ratio and everyone will benefit. No longer will the hunter feel the need to kill a yearling buck because that is all they expect to see. They will have a reasonable chance at seeing bucks of varying ages and sizes.
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