Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 20, 1995 TAG: 9508210090
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The outdoor magazines fan the flames. The cover of the August issue of Outdoor Life pictures four bucks swimming a lake or river, their bone-colored antlers held high.
The Sports Afield cover shows the skull and antlers of a beamy buck and touts a story titled, ``Are you ready for opening day?''
Opening day? That's Oct.7 if you are a bowhunter; Nov.6 if you hunt with a muzzleloader; and Nov.20 for hunters bearing modern firearms.
``That close?'' you ask.
Maybe deer season really never ends. If there isn't hunting, there is scouting, tree-stand building, shooting practice or a trophy show. And always there is dreaming - of seeing the flash of a buck in the woods, of raising your gun or drawing your bow, of listening to the heavy beat of your heart, of reading your name in the record book. There is far more to it than meat, even for the people who believe wildlife preservation means cutting up a deer and putting it into a freezer.
August is the month of anticipation, a time when bucks begin to move into the fields, their antlers in velvet and still growing, their thoughts not yet on does or being hunted. More than any other time of the year, they are willing to let you watch their parade.
``In the past two weeks, I've probably had calls from a half-dozen to a dozen people who say, `You aren't going to believe the bucks that we are seeing,''' said Matt Knox, the deer research biologist for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. ``The deer are beginning to creep out into the edge of the fields late in the evening, and they are getting to the point now that their antlers are about 70 percent grown.''
Scouting deer is a good bit like scouting a football team, you size up what is out there. For deer hunters, the competition looks particularly enticing this season. There was a good mast crop last year, and a mild winter followed by a summer moist enough to stimulate herbaceous plants, all positive factors in body weights and antler development.
Don't forget, Knox said, the deer population has been brought into better balance with its habitat during the past two or three years, and that also means higher-quality animals.
``If anything, the herd is stable or slightly reduced, which makes conditions better, too,'' he said.
It can be tough for the average deer hunter to equate fewer deer with better sport, but that's what Knox has been preaching with success. About the only thing that can spoil this golden era of deer hunting is too much of a good thing.
There has been some concern that we will run out of hunters before we run out of deer, but that didn't appear to be a threat last week at the Virginia Outdoor Sportsman Show in Richmond. Its sponsor, the decade-old Virginia Deer Hunters Association, has 15,000 members and publishes a slick magazine, called Whitetail Times, that reached 52 pages this month.
Hundreds of hunters parked their pickups and four-wheel drives in the August heat to view everything from camouflage to guns to scopes to tree stands to four-wheel drives to pruners with blaze orange handles that can be used to trim the brush from your shooting position. And deer heads - there were 228 in competition.
Charles Nichols of Roanoke won first place in three of the bowhunting categories for bucks killed last season. Nichols is featured in the current issue of North American Whitetail. He has had so much success in the highly competitive world of trophy hunting that someone called the editor of the magazine and claimed Nichols is a poacher. An investigation by the magazine failed to turn up any misdeeds.
As for NIchols, he is concentrating on the new season.
``I am scouting every time I get the chance,'' he said. ``I have seen seven bucks in an alfalfa field. I've seen one with an awesome-looking rack. It is going to be an excellent year.''
by CNB