Ridge Runner

In wv you buy your liscense, and pay extra for tags, no bear tag needed but you must purchase a bear damage stamp, the funds from bear damage stamps go into a fund to re-imberse farmers for losses of livestick from bear kills. in va west of the blue ridge you get 3 tags with your liscense, a doe, an either sex, and a buck, last year I hunted va you could by additional doe tags but 2 bucks was the limit.
RR

flags

Just the fat by itself tastes like crap but it renders down to some of the best lard you can get anywhere.

"I'm not sure I could enjoy getting so many tags so easily. I like the challenge of getting the tag, but especially trying to get a mature buck on millions of acre's of public land. I get bored easily when something is too easy."

You can make the hunting in VA as easy or as hard as you want. Nothing stops people from hunting public land. There are millions of acres of that too in the Natl Forests etc... But the point of the damage tags isn't sport, it is preventing crop damage. Besides, for the most part the Southern states have a lot more deer than any other area of the country. Winterkill isn't a problem and they grow crops pretty much year round. Things are done differently down here than in my native CO.

By the time a serious deer hunter in the South turns 25 years old he/she will probably have racked up at least 30 or 40 deer. How long would it take the average hunter in CO or WY to get that many? I know I grew up in CO and I didn't fill every deer tag I held during those short seasons. In VA you can hunt deer from late Sept until the end of Feb.

royak

I didn't need to purchase a tag as I am a senior and receive the tag with my free license but you must buy a tag if you have to buy license I bought it for years and got to use it at 65 I got it free and got my bear.

royak

No scale but the taxidermist who also checked it in said around 250

royak

I didn't keep the fat everyone here said cut it off throw it away. My wife put some of the steaks in boiling water to get the blood out and the fried it in butter it was some of the best steaks I have ever eaten.

Ridge Runner

fat once rendered into grease is also very good to condition leather, my mother has kept all the fat off every bear I have killed (11), she also says the grease makes the best pie crusts.
RR

Muley Hunter

That's what I meant by being too easy. You know what it's like getting a mature muley buck in the high country here. Especially, if you don't use a scope.

Ridge Runner

only reason its too easy is because of the population density, if we can ever get the heard back to the carrying capacity of the land you will be lucky to see a buck during season, but when you do he will be worth it. If you choose it can be diffacult to aquire your deer, in 1996, I shot a 4.5 yo 9 point on the va side of great north mountain in shenadoah county, I shot the buck on a day when the weather wasn't fit to let a digging iron set outside, 16 degrees, wind howling 20 mph, snowing. shot the buck at 9:20 AM, state law at the time required the deer to be taken to a game checking station before skinning, I was 1.6 miles from my truck, at 4:30 PM I loaded the deer, and by 5:00 was finaly limbered up eough I could depress the clutch pedal on my truck, never had an easy moment that day. This is rugged NF land with very low deer density, no atv's allowed so if you don't have a packhorse you drag them or carry them, I've done both, when I was younger.
we never had a doe season here for 17 years, when they started them back up in 1974, the landowners at the time (farmers who were up in years) wouldn't shoot them and wouldn't let others either, so we ended up with about 80 per square mile in the early 90's our area has the carrying capacity of 18-21 psm we have them down to around 30 psm in this area, still plenty of deer.
bear populations are up 25X from what they were in 1978 when I started hunting them, they are now starting to increase the limits and seasons to thin them down.
RR

Muley Hunter

RR.........I'm not downplaying your hunts. They're all good, and difficult in their own way. There is a difference between hunting whitetails and mule deer though. Whitetails love the timber. Muley's love altitude, and the mature ones will be above timberline looking down on you. Very difficult to get close to.

Just as a comparison. Virginia's highest mountain is 5700ft. Take a look at where mule deer hang out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_o...ts_of_Colorado

Wilcam47

the bear I shot tasted good and the fat tastes excellent! I made homemade tortillas with some of the fat and man they are the best.