
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 29, 1993                   TAG: 9303290436
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SUPPORT STONG FOR ADDITIONAL DOE DAYS

The past two years, if you saw a doe during the early muzzleloading season you had to hold your fire. Bucks only have been legal.

There's a good chance that won't be the case this fall. Nearly 80 percent of the members of the Virginia Deer Hunters Association responding to a club survey said they favored either-sex hunting.

That idea is expected to be given serious consideration by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries when it meets in Richmond on Thursday and Friday to propose game regulations for the next two year.

Either-sex hunting during the muzzle-loading season gets support from Matt Knox, the deer project leader for the department.

"I just don't think we need a bucks-only season. It sends the wrong message, that's my point."

More than 60 percent of the survey participants said they would like to see the muzzleloading season lengthened. Just over half requested an increase in the bowhunting season.

Knox said he expects the department to spend more time refining regulations than doing major surgery on them.

"When you make a change, you must ask, `What is our objective? What are we trying to accomplish?' If there is not a reason, we aren't going to do it.

"I think there is the perception of the Farm Bureau and the media that we have too many deer. But the health of the deer appears to be good. In Bedford County, there is no question that it is good. The dressed weight of yearlings is over 100 pounds per animal. That is an indication to a deer biologist of a very, very healthy deer herd."

This may not be the case everywhere, especially in Shenandoah Valley counties like Rockingham, Shenandoah and Page, where hunters believe that deer on national forest land are being over hunted.

Game officials are expected to reorganize the deer-tag system, to make it easier for a hunter to understand when and where he can use the tags on his license, said Knox.

"Right now, department people can't even explain it to department people."

Support for adding an additional week to the two-week western deer season appears to be light as the regulation meeting approaches.

by CNB