A watched pot never boils. A highly anticipated bow season for deer seems like it takes forever to arrive.
The latter must be especially true for West Virginia’s archery hunters this year because the Mountain State season for sliver flippers doesn’t start until Oct. 18. Whew! That’s like a long way off, you know.
We always talk in deer camp about how we anticipate the West Virginia bow season throughout the year and that when it finally gets here it goes by more quickly than a blink. Read that as about half a blink this season in West Virginia.
I am a West Virginia bow hunter, but fortunately I also hunt with my bow in Maryland. By the time the Mountain State season begins, Maryland’s archers will have been in treestands for five full weeks. Bag limits control the harvest, not season lengths.
Many of my West Virginia bowhunting companions, however, hunt only in Almost Heaven. I guess I’ll have to bring some Maryland venison jerky to camp when the West Virginia season finally starts.
I wonder how many archery hunters from states such as Pennsylvania opt for a nonresident license in Maryland or some other state instead of West Virginia because of the way the seasons are set up. I’m wondering too if West Virginia’s season setters could add some bowhunting to the beginning of the hunt without disrupting the order of the hunting universe or the viability of the state’s deer herds.
The state agency uses a rule that opens the bow season on the Saturday that comes closest to Oct. 15 and, over the years, has reasoned that opening the hunt sooner would bring conflict with squirrel and grouse hunters.
That may have been true at one time when squirrel hunters’ trucks were parked in all of the pullouts along a country road. Nowadays, however, squirrel hunters are not as common as they once were. Ditto for grouse hunters.
Seems to me like an earlier opener for bow hunting — say Oct. 1 — would work in the Mountain State. It’s worth considering or even conducting a survey of hunters to see what they think about it. There will be some objections, of course, likely from those who hunt only during deer firearms season and are already disappointed that archers get first crack at the deer.
In Maryland, a number of years ago, it was the archers who got upset, coming to a meeting in Mount Savage by the busloads to protest the creation of the early muzzleloader season. The archers feared that too many bucks would be taken out of the woods before the rut, thus reducing bowhunters’ chances in that regard.
That tension has apparently calmed, however, and the two uses now blend nicely in the mountains and woodlands of Maryland.
Whenever hunting opportunity can be increased without being a threat to the particular wildlife species, it is a good thing.
West Virginia’s wildlife managers have always been aware of that.
A good example of that is the ability of hunters there to bag a fall turkey in addition to two spring birds.
I’d love to see Maryland adopt that same approach to wild turkey hunting.
Contact Outdoor Editor Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.
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