The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources manages the white tailed deer population in Virginia and they depend on hunters to keep the population under control. But as more and more areas become more suburban, the white-tailed deer become more and more prevalent. The deer population in Virginia currently stands at about a million. This number is up 4,000% over 1931 when the deer population was estimated to be 30,000.
Those of us who live in the ever-developing western Loudoun County see deer daily in our yards, in fields with cattle, and on our roads. You’d be hard pressed to find a resident of Western Loudoun who hasn’t been in a car accident with one. Virginia Department of Transportation receives 20,000 calls a year for roadkill, the vast majority being deer.
From Cardinalnews.org:
“The statewide record deer kill peaked at more than 250,000 in 2009. It has averaged about 200,000 over the past 10 years. The tally does not include deer killed on roads or by other means.”
More from CardinalNews:
“Over roughly the past three decades, deer populations — and hunter pressure — have shifted from public lands, such as state-owned wildlife management areas and the million-plus acres of the Jefferson and George Washington National Forests, to private lands.
From 1994 to 2014, when the DWR’s current deer management plan was implemented, the annual deer kill on public land west of the Blue Ridge range dropped from 14,000 to roughly 4,000.
Only part of that decline is likely attributable to public land deer numbers. During that same period, the number of hunters using those lands fell from more than 100,000 to just 60,000….
The primary reason is simple: Private land now has higher deer densities and better opportunities for hunter success.”
Many deer have moved into suburban and even urban areas because food is abundant and there are very few natural predators. These areas are too densely populated to hunt deer.
In the 2022-2023 deer season there were 184,968 deer killed by hunters in Virginia.
More details on methods tried to cull the number of deer in Virginia here.
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The Nov-Dec 2023 issue of the magazine published by the VA Dept of Wildlife Resources has an article about this very topic:
Where Have All the Hunters Gone?
BY MATT KNOX
The steady decline in numbers of licensed deer hunters poses significant challenges in the management strategies for white-tailed deer.
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Meanwhile, in one Northern Neck county, the local farm museum sponsored a “Predator Hunt” complete with prizes for the most fox, coyotes, or other predators killed. Hunters killed 135 fox . . . fox eat mice, voles, squirrels and other critters that eat grain crops — which are a staple of the Northern Neck agriculture. So — Farm Museum is encouraging the killing of the fox who eat the small critters who destroy standing crops and crops in silos. There’s dumb, there’s really dumb, then . . . .