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WV’s buck season gets off to good, not great start

Charleston Gazette-Mail photo by F. Brian Ferguson Mark Jarrett of Charleston loads up the spike buck that he shot on the first day of rifle season for buck in Kanawha County. Jarrett, who has been hunting for more 40 years, shot the spike was shot near Tad, on Campbell’s Creek.
Charleston Gazette-Mail photo by F. Brian Ferguson
Mark Jarrett of Charleston loads up the spike buck that he shot on the first day of rifle season for buck in Kanawha County. Jarrett, who has been hunting for more 40 years, shot the spike was shot near Tad, on Campbell’s Creek.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Wildlife officials say West Virginia’s buck season is off to a good start.

At dawn on opening day, cold, clear, near-ideal weather conditions prevailed over most of the Mountain State, and hunters wasted no time putting deer on the ground.

George Deal of Red House opened his season in spectacular fashion. Hunting in Putnam County, Deal bagged a 10-point buck at 7:45 a.m.

“I saw three does early in the day, and I caught a glimpse of the buck chasing one of the does at about 7:15,” he said. “I didn’t have a shot at him then, but he came back about a half hour later and I got him.”

Deal said he plans to have the buck’s antlers mounted.

“For this part of the state, that’s a nice deer,” he added.

Ken Connett of Hometown also downed a buck, a heavy-bodied eight-pointer, early in the day.

“Before this buck came along, I had seen seven does. At about 7:40, this buck came walking down the point and was only 15 yards away when I shot him,” Connett said.

Brad Bell of Hurricane had to wait until 9 a.m. to kill his eight-point buck, but his morning up to then was anything but boring.

“I saw three turkeys, a small four-point buck that was with three does, and a buck with tall spike antlers,” he said. “At about 9 o’clock, I saw the eight-pointer, but he wouldn’t give me a clear shot. We played peekaboo for quite a while. I ended up getting him with a head shot. It ruined the antlers, but it left all of the meat intact.”

Tiffany Lacy of St. Albans got her buck at 9:45 a.m., and it was a memorable one — not in terms of antler size, but in significance.

 “This was my first buck,” she said. “I got a doe last year, and this year I finally got a buck, a five-pointer.”

By late morning, photos of opening-morning kills already had started to show up in social media and in shared emails. Paul Johansen, wildlife chief for the state Division of Natural Resources, said one of the photos, if legitimate, should create quite a stir.

“I saw a picture of a buck purported to have been killed early in the day on Cabin Creek, and it was a monster,” he said. “The [antler] tines were really, really tall.”

Johansen called Monday’s weather conditions “just about ideal” for deer hunting, at least throughout most of the state.

“Crisp, cold mornings are almost always good,” he said. “And a significant portion of the state had snow on the ground, which makes deer a lot easier to spot. Generally speaking, we had good hunting conditions over much of the state. About the only place where the weather wasn’t good was in the Eastern Panhandle, where they had some pretty high winds.”

Johansen said that by 4:20 p.m., hunters statewide had checked in more than 7,000 bucks and more than 1,100 does.

“Keep in mind that those are unofficial numbers,” he added. “Also, history has shown that a lot of opening-day deer get checked in after sunset, when hunters come out of the woods and head for home. The number I cited will rise significantly.”

The combined opening-day harvest last year was 27,725. Johansen said this year’s total probably wouldn’t reach that level.

“We don’t expect the buck kill to be as high this year,” he said. “The weather, which is always is a big factor, looks good. But we don’t have as many deer available to hunters as we did in 2015. Last year’s harvest included a lot of ‘surplus’ bucks that didn’t get killed during the exceptionally poor buck season of 2014. That surplus is gone now, and we expect the harvest to return to more normal levels.

“We’re going to have a good buck season, but the harvest will probably be somewhat lower.”

Reach John McCoy at [email protected], 304-348-1231, or follow @GazMailOutdoors on Twitter.

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