Virginia Considering an Earn A Buck Regulation
Tom over on Black Bear Blog has the story about Virginia considering the Earn A Buck Program in areas where the Commonwealth wants more deer killed. The proposal will require hunters to kill 2 anterless deer before they could take a second antlered deer. I’m not a big fan of the EAB program because I think there are some potential issues.
There are some hunters that care little about taking anything but a buck by requiring them to take does it could lead to wasted meat. Without a physical check of the deer harvested there is little to prevent unethical hunters from calling in does that they didn’t really kill in order to get additional buck tags.
Killing anterless deer does not necessarily mean that a significant more numbers of does will get killed. If you need a buck tag any anterless deer will do even if that anterless deer is a button buck. Not every hunter will think like that but the urgency to need to kill an anterless deer more button bucks will get killed.
Adding additional regulations to just certain parts of the state and just private land excluding public land adds to hunter confusion. At a time when hunter ranks appear to be shrinking does additional regulations make sense?
States that have used the EAB have had mixed results, now granted many require an anterless deer to be harvested prior to any buck being taken. VA will bypass this pitfall by allowing a single buck to be killed prior to requiring two anterless deer to be taken. This still could lead to a situation where a hunter has a trophy buck walk in while he has to kill an anterless deer or two before that trophy is legal. I wonder if this type of regulation will see hunters moving to other counties that don’t have the EAB program.
I’m still not sure that is the best way to encourage an increase in the doe harvested. I’d rather see an unlimited number of doe tags and an encouragement for landowners to work with wildlife biologists to better manage deer in the area.
I wish North Carolina would go to the Earn A Buck program. I just don’t think we are taking enough does out of the population.
Comment by chesson — October 8, 2007 @ 9:09 pm