Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 6 · column 3 of 9 · from the scan, no model involved
deer remains high, how high is anyone’s guess.
Contrary to popular belief, the deer is not new to Virginia, though at no other time in history has the whitetail population of what is now Virginia been so high. State game managers place the statewide population at approximately 500,000 animals, and it is still growing. From this healthy herd hunters take 80,000 to 90,000 deer annually, but the non-hunting kill is probably equally as large. Thousands of deer are lost to disease, highway traffic, poachers and other causes.
The complete reports on the 1983-84 hunting season were not available at press time, but during the 1982-83 season hunters took 1,628 deer in Fauquier County, 1,213 in Rappahannock, 1,496 in Loudoun, 468 in Clarke County and 56 in Fairfax.
The current harvests are an indication of how rapidly the deer herds are growing in the Northern Piedmont.
In 1972, for example, the hunter bag was only 566 in Fauquier County, 297 in Rappahannock, 410 in Loudoun, 87 in Clarke County and 17 in Fairfax. In most of , these counties the harvest has almost quadrupled over the past decade.
“The herds are getting near the carrying capacity of the available range in some of the northern counties,” said Jack V. Gwynn, research biologist for the Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries, “and we are trying to control them.” The Commission is charged with regulating hunting and managing Virginia’s wildlife resources.
Anterless hunting is the usual tool for controling deer populations, but before we get into deer management let’s go back and pick up the history of the deer in Virginia.
Long before 1607 the whitetail deer, Odeocoileits Virgmanus, venison was a staple in the diet of the Indians, and the early settlers soon recognized its value in their own survival. In addition to food the deer furnished buckskin for clothing and antlers for tools.
Those early Americans made full use of the animal, and leaving one to waste was just as disturbing as was that button buck Mae Hickman found near Marshall early in 1984.
» Pioneer Americans hunted all year, however, and they" knew no hunting
87.5%