When North Carolina's eastern gun season begins Saturday, deer and hunters alike will face conditions that run from typical to extreme, says Evin Stanford, the deer biologist for the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission. Stanford recently took time to talk with Carolina Outdoors correspondent Alex Webb about how those conditions may affect hunting this fall.

Q: What is the size of the herd and the trend in the past few years?

A: It is about 1.25 million and, for most of the state, up. From about the early '90s up until a couple of years ago, all of our population models showed we had a relatively stable deer herd. Our harvest has really been up the last two or three years, and that has caused our models to show that in some areas of the state we have a slightly increasing deer herd. We do realize that in many of these urban-suburban areas that we have in the state, deer herds are increasing at relatively rapid rates. But, generally speaking, those areas are excluded from our population modeling because of where we happen to get our data from, and the majority of the state, of course, is some of the more rural areas.

Q: What areas have a growing herd, according to the model?

A: Probably some of the Piedmont, the areas where we have a lot of human-related development occurring. ... Outside of there, I guess the areas around the Neuse [River] watershed, which is an area that has had a lower density than many other areas, particularly on the Coastal Plain. So, it's not necessarily that the deer herd there is getting out of control, it's just that it's catching up with the other areas in the region. Most other zones don't have much of an increase in the last few years.

Q: How will the hunting be this season in the various areas of the state?

A: On the Coastal Plain, it will be a relatively typical year. Same for many portions of the central deer season [areas]. In the northwestern and western deer season areas, I wouldn't doubt if some hunters see fewer deer. I haven't heard what the mast crop is looking like in that part of the state yet. That also has a big effect on harvest in a given year.

Q: The drought has been on everybody's mind this year. How does drought affect deer in general?

A: The drought typically does not have much of an impact on deer directly. They actually get a lot of their water intake from the vegetation they eat, and as a by-product of rumination whenever they are breaking down vegetation, it actually releases water. What it does affect more than anything is that it affects habitat. It affects the quality of the forage they are consuming. It can degrade that, and it can lower the nutritional value of a lot of the vegetation that is out there. ... I get this question a lot; people just don't understand that drought doesn't affect deer.

Q: Have any cities signed on for the urban archery season?

A: Yeah, two towns have, one is Elkin, and they have pretty much applied citywide. The other one is the city of Washington, and they have only included their airport area in the hunt, and actually that's a very controlled-type situation. The airport has leased the airport grounds to an individual [who] is coordinating the hunt, and they are charging people a daily fee to hunt there.

It is archery hunting, and nobody in the history of our wildlife agency has ever accidentally shot and killed or injured anybody with a bow while they were hunting. It can be effective if it is implemented correctly, and one of the things that our agency took a lot of heat from over this season was the fact that we just pretty much made a season and then we didn't take into consideration things like proficiency testing of the hunters and requiring them to pass a bow hunter education course, limiting where they could hunt, those types of things, but from an agency perspective we actually created the opportunity by establishing the season.

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