ABarOfSoap

I am able to deer hunt year round, (in the off season antlerless deer only) due to there being a HUGE over population of deer in my area, all meat is donated to the homeless, and you can shoot unlimited antlerless deer only with the bow,year round thanks to the nuisance law.

FLboy77

Nope Ive never heard of that. I would hunt hogs if I had the land.
They are WAAAYYYYY more overpopulated than deer are here.

Jim_IV

Where do you live.............never heard a rule like that

BowHuntingFool

Even if I could I don't know that I would. I like to hunt other critters as well and during the fall I spend a lot of time chasing the whitetails so I like to build up to the opening day, to me there's nothing like opening day, gun or bow. Even though Gun has a bit more tradition to the opening day "hype" I still love the Bow opener, mosquitos and all!

I'm curious as to where you hunt as well??

8pt~Bowhunter

X2

GR8atta2d

Come on Bar we see ya lurking where is this place that you speak of.....?

FLboy77

x3

SwampCollie

I live in VA, and have also had crop damage tags in SC.

I wouldn't say its year round hunting..... and heck I wouldn't call deer culling/crop damage really even hunting. It all depends on the methods you use. We used bows during daylight hours, bows a night, rifles during the day and rifles with spotlights at night. But there are different levels of crop damage tags.... kill permits are a last resort.

The way the program works is you MUST MUST MUST, go through you states natural resources department. They will send out a biologist and often too a game warden to assess the deer herd density and amount of crop damage a farmer is facing at the hands of deer overpopulation. There are steps that the game department will make you take first before just issuing you carte blanche to way-lay deer. It is really a last resort, when the land is way beyond carrying capacity.

Virginia istrying hard to eliminate the out of season kill permits by taking positive steps to aid landowners/farmers with more liberal antlerless bag limits during the season. There are currently two management practices being used, DMAP (Deer Management Assitance Program) which allows huntclubs and landowners to take does at any time during the regular hunting seasons, and also has other requirements to increase communitcation and information flow between hunters and the game department (its too complicated for me to explain here, but it works). The other program is DCAP(Damage Control Assistance Program), it is similar to DMAP, but is focused more on alleviating crop damage by allowing landowners/leasees and their guests a more liberal bag limit on antlerless deer. These programs are proactive, and encourage hunting rather than just shooting deer in June with a spotlight at night... which is really a last resort.

Deer management in VA is done on a county by county basis. There are certain places now where the deer season JUST closed last week. Urban archery areas, which are in the incorporated city limits of certain cities towns. Season runs from Sept 1 through March 15th.