Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 9, 1993 TAG: 9302090011
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
EVEN AFTER RECORD KILL, DEBATE ABOUT DEER CONTINUES
The deer season is over, the bucks have shed their antlers, the fawns are on the way. Now comes the great debate: Do we have too many deer?That might not rank in importance with the $310 billion budget deficit, but it's no little matter if you're a hunter interested in pursuing a wall-hanging buck or if you are a farmer who shares in what the Virginia Farm Bureau says is $20 million annually in crop damage.
Monday evening, hunters by the hundreds were gathered in two camps to discuss deer and deer hunting. In Forest, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries was hearing from sportsmen on how regulations for the coming hunting season should be set. In Salem, the National Rifle Association had a trio of deer experts on stage telling sportsmen how to take advantage of what has become the golden era of deer hunting.
You couldn't have picked a better spot for the game department meeting than Bedford County. The first modern deer season there was in 1962; thirty deer were killed. The figure jumped to 658 in 1975. In 1985, it had grown to 2,197. The past season, it was 6,826 - the top county in the state.
Other counties have been on much the same fast track. The past season, Virginia's deer kill eased above the 200,000 mark for the first time. It's even more dramatic in neighboring West Virginia, where the annual deer kill has leaped from 6,559 in 1950 to 204,201 in 1992.
Biologists in both states say the ecosystem probably could support more deer without major problems for the deer.
"Even now, we don't have nearly as high a deer density as some states," said Bob Duncan, chief of the wildlife division for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "But there is a cultural carrying capacity. What will the people tolerate? The cultural carrying capacity is fast being met."
West Virginia officials call it the "economic" or "societal" carrying capacity. This is the point that deer become an economic liability, when they turn orchards into nubbins, when they end up in the grill of automobiles, when you have to hide your houseplants if you live on the edge of town.
Right now, the control is increased hunting opportunities. Virginia and West Virginia have liberalized their hunting regulations, Virginia faster and wiser than West Virginia. In Bedford on Monday, there was talk of an unlimited bag limit for some counties. You'd be able to kill all the deer you want, and if your freezer wouldn't hold them you could get help distributing venison to the needy.
So the big challenge of deer biologists, who may have done their job too well, is not to let the resource degrade into nuisance status. Already, there are people who believe Bambi has gone bad, turning into a tick-carrying, crop-gnawing, car-crashing menace.
"I don't want the deer to become a nuisance animal," Duncan said.
To prevent that, he's going to have to get support for liberal regulations from hunters. Hunters tend to be more conservative than anyone, because there are plenty who can remember the early 1960s when counties like Bedford didn't have enough deer for a season.
Then, too, the hunting experts, the ones at the NRA seminars, the ones who put out the magazines, are going to have to stress more than "How to bag the trophy buck." They must tell hunters that the best way to bag a buck is to kill some does along the way.