More acreage available for public hunting this year

May 11, 2019

This fall hunters in the greater Parkersburg area are in for some very good news. The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources has plans to open five new wildlife management areas, expand four existing WMA’s and add a 200-hundred acre tract of land to the North Bend State Park. The Conservation Fund, a Virginia-based environment nonprofit group, acquired 18,778 acres of current and former Timberland and has plans to sell these tracts to the WVDNR. This new acreage is located in Calhoun, Doddridge, Jackson, Pleasants, Ritchie, Wirt and Wood counties. The new WMA’s, all of ...

Baby fawns should be left alone

April 27, 2019

This is the time of the year when people often find baby fawns alone in the woods or in an open meadow. It is easy to think that the new-born has been abandoned by its mother. Too many fawns are often picked up and brought home by people who think they are doing a good deed. The sad part is the fact that most of them are simply being fawn-napped from their natural mothers. The West Virginia Division of Natural resources (WVDNR) personnel urge everyone to leave young wildlife alone. First of all, picking up a young fawn is illegal. It is also unsafe and all too often detrimental to ...

Big game harvest numbers now official

April 13, 2019

The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources has released the annual Big Game Bulletin for 2018. The big game harvest figures for all of West Virginia big game hunting seasons (black bear, white-tailed deer, wild boar and wild turkey) are now official. All of West Virginia hunters would do well to get one of these bulletins, study it and keep it for their own records. The total black bear harvest for 2018 was 2,606 bears. This is down from the 3,160 that was bagged in 2017 or 17.5 percent. However, this is still the 6th highest bear harvest on record. The record year was 2015 when ...

DNR proposals could bring some changes

March 23, 2019

I attended the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources Public Regulations meeting held last week at Buckhannon-Upshur High School. This year, all state sportsmen and women would do well to get one of the questionnaires, study it and fill it out. There are a total of 22 questions on this year’s questionnaire. There are more questions than I have seen in several years and certainly more questions than what there have been in an average year. If all of the new DNR proposals are approved by state anglers and hunters, there will be some changes in the hunting and fishing ...

State pistol laws have improved

February 23, 2019

In the 1920s, this state was nearly engulfed in the coal mine wars, and the Hatfield-McCoy family type feuds would often get out of control. In the early 1930s, the state legislature decided that West Virginia needed a law that would discourage pistol toting. Like a lot of things that legislature would do back then, and even now, they went highly overboard when they implemented this new law. Between the early 1930s to the early 1970s, it was extremely difficult for many of the citizens of this state to lawfully enjoy target shooting a pistol. There was no license or permit ...

Sport hunters should know their enemies

February 9, 2019

In the late 1970s, I was attending the annual West Virginia Division of Natural Resources Regulations Meeting when they were held at the old National Guard Armory. When it came time for questions from all who attended, I asked the question, “What can sport hunting do to neutralize the anti-hunting movement we are hearing about in the national news?” A few days later, a friend who was at this same meeting asked me, “Why did you ask such a silly question like that?” Well, I can understand why it could seem like a senseless question back then. For the twentieth century, the ...