It's too late the news is already out, check this out from West Virginia.

August 24, 2008
'Trophy buck areas' begin growth phase
By John McCoy
Staff writer- The Charleston Gazette


West Virginia's attempt to grow more trophy deer on selected public hunting areas should begin to bear fruit this year.

So says Paul Johansen, assistant wildlife chief for the state Division of Natural Resources. "It probably will take another year or two for hunters to enjoy the full effect of the regulations we put into place, but I'm certain we'll see more trophy bucks come out of those areas during the upcoming hunting season," he said.

DNR officials imposed special antler-width regulations in 2006 for four popular Mountain State hunting areas - Burnsville Lake in Braxton County, Bluestone Lake in Summers County, Beech Fork Lake in Wayne County, and Coopers Rock State Forest in Monongalia and Preston counties. Similar regulations had been put into effect earlier at the McClintic Wildlife Management Area in Mason County.

Under the regulations, bucks with antler spreads less than 14 inches - roughly the spread of the animal's outstretched ears - are off-limits. DNR Director Frank Jezioro had earlier challenged agency biologists to manage a handful of public areas specifically for trophy buck hunting, and the antler-size restriction was the route the biologists chose to take.

"Antler development depends on three factors: genetics, nutrition and age," Johansen explained. "There's not a lot we can do about the first two, but restricting hunters to a certain antler size or larger significantly increases the number of older-aged deer in a given population."

Under ordinary deer-hunting regulations, any buck with antlers more than 4 inches in length becomes fair game. Studies have shown that up to 80 percent of the bucks killed under ordinary regulations are just 11/2 years of age - too young to grow the trophy racks hunters value so much.

As recently as 1999, hunters at the McClintic WMA killed mostly smaller bucks. But in 2000, DNR officials imposed a 14-inch antler-width restriction to see what effect it might have on the deer herd.

"The first year, we had a definite decline in the number of hunters," Johansen recalled. "Hunters aren't dumb. They fully understand that when we put those regulations into effect, it would take a couple of years to grow the sort of deer they were after. They knew that most of the bucks on the area wouldn't be legal that first year, so they stayed away."

Their interest returned the next year, when people began seeing bucks with much larger antlers.

"As soon as people started seeing bucks with nice racks, interest picked back up. McClintic has been a very popular hunting spot ever since," Johansen said.

He expects a few trophy bucks to show up at Burnsville, Bluestone, Beech Fork and Coopers Rock this fall, and more in succeeding years.

"A significant number of 1 1/2-year-old bucks that weren't killed last fall will roll into this year's population as 2 1/2-year-olds," he said. "Those that don't have at least 14-inch spreads will roll over into the following year, and so forth. We'll see the number of legal bucks increase. If the scenario remains the same, the numbers of qualifying bucks and harvest will go up, and the number of hunters will go up, too."

Johansen believes that each of the five trophy-buck areas will develop what he calls a "clientele" of hunters.

"These will be people who are interested in a special kind of deer hunting," he explained. "They're willing to pass up a chance to kill smaller bucks in exchange for a chance at seeing and killing a real trophy."

Even if the five areas become as popular as DNR officials anticipate, chances are slim that antler-size restrictions will become widespread.

"We recognize that those restrictions aren't for everybody, and we don't want to impose them everywhere in the state," Johansen said. "But part of our charge is to provide a variety of hunting experiences, and providing trophy deer hunting is definitely in line with that strategy."