It's hard to discern what those harvest numbers truly mean. Whatever it is, It's hard to believe it can be linked to any kind of optimistic overview of the current deer situation in the mountain state.

Where I hunted in Hardy county, there seemed to be a decline in quantity and quality of bucks. I let a couple of scrags walk but overall there were only a couple of bucks taken on our 300 acres (they were all 3, scrubs). Most of us that hunt that property try to practice control on shooting small bucks but some still have that good ol'attitude (any buck is better than no buck). Generally speaking, this season has been somewhat disappointing as far as word of mouth reports I've gotten from many I know and my own observations. I did see a nice buck or two where I hunted in Jefferson Co. during archery season and am gonna hunt the last 2 days of muzzleloader.

Back to the harvest numbers.I believe many hunters in WV don't practice QDM (i'm not complaining(i'll save that for another post) just stating my opinion), therefore I would be willing to say that even though the buck harvest numbers have went way, waydown overall in the last 5 years the quality has not significantly improved either. so then, what does that say. nothing good to me. I agree that more strict limits should be imposed for bucks and I also believe antler restrictions would be great. Perhaps we are reaping the seeds of the outlandish bag limits of recent years. hopefully it will turn around. we killed two coyotes the first day. and although there were some beautiful days during rifle season-the overall weather was poor I thought --wind was a b_tch.