12/12/2025
A very good read. Earn a buck and electronic check ins have done nothing but save the state money, hurt local businesses that were check in stations, and created false data. Firm believer in making VA a one buck state and classify does a nuisance like coyotes. How many deer vs. coyotes do you see driving down the road? And you can hunt coyotes year round, day or night, no tags needed.
Jeff Williams
Virginia’s “Ghost Doe” Cancer…and a solution?
Look at the attached map. Do you see it? Yeah, all those little red triangles – The Earn a Buck (EAB) counties. EAB was introduced to Virginia in the Fall of 2008. Bedford County was one of the pioneering counties. Since the Fall of 2008, more and more counties have been infected with the EAB program. Now, thirty-six of Virginia’s ninety-five counties are under the EAB program - thirty-five percent of Virginia’s land area. Four counties fell victim to EAB this year – Chesterfield, Craig, Giles, and Spotsylvania. Which counties are next? Oh, and two-thirds of the EAB counties now have the early and late antlerless-only fi****ms season. EAB as it is, alone, is not working. Would the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (VDWR) publish a yearly report showing the accumulation of EAB counties beginning with the Fall of 2008? Don’t hold your breath.
Hold up, though. I’d like to clarify that this is not a campaign to smear, belittle, or shame the VDWR. I’d like to commend the VDWR for legitimately attempting to monitor and control Virginia’s deer herd with the tools, resources, and money that our lawmakers have allocated. I am hopeful that the VDWR will be granted the tools, resources, and money necessary to cure the “ghost doe” cancer, soon. We’ll talk about those “tools” later.
For those unfamiliar with the EAB concept and the “Ghost Doe”, EAB was implemented in Virginia as a deer hunting regulation that requires hunters to fill at least one antlerless tag (a doe or a button buck) before filling another buck tag. It achieves two things. First, it increases the antlerless harvest total. Second, it saves the lives of some bucks, as hunters must pass antlered deer if they haven’t taken an antlerless deer. But are most hunters passing antlered deer? Enter, the “Ghost Doe”.
A “Ghost Doe” is a reported antlerless deer that doesn’t exist. An antlerless deer that is intentionally checked/reported so that a hunter can continue to harvest more antlered deer. The “Ghost Doe” cancer is a concept that has significantly skewed Virginia’s deer harvest data over the past seventeen years!
The VDWR supposedly questioned hunters from a certain county on if they had checked a “ghost doe”. More than seventy percent admitted to the practice. The report on that survey has yet to be seen. Very “ghost like”, huh? How many non-existent antlerless deer (highly likely to be far more female does than button bucks) have been added to Virginia’s deer harvest data since the introduction of EAB in the Fall of 2008? We have the ability and tools to correct this issue. Shouldn’t we at least try to account for those deer before implementing extended fi****ms seasons for antlerless-only harvesting?
Several visionary outdoorsmen would like to propose a rough to semi-formal idea on how to eliminate/kill the “Ghost Doe” checking problem with the EAB program in Virginia. The GoOutdoorsVa app has us halfway there! The app has been developed into a great tool that has streamlined and modernized deer harvest accounting. The app software needs to include the following revisions/additions to the current checking procedure.
1. At least two full-body pictures must be taken of the harvest using the app. Preferably, a looking down view with the harvest laying on each side.
- Pictures from the hunter’s camera roll / library shall be prohibited.
* This eliminates sharing of harvest photos.
2. The app software shall attach the hunter’s customer ID number or QR code to the pictures (either directly to the image and/or to the EXIF data) that were taken with the app.
- Artificial Intelligence and/or something like facial recognition technology would be applied to each harvest photo as a means of identification / “a fingerprint”
* This eliminates a nearby hunter also checking the same deer at the same time (a double-checked harvest).
3. Refining the above would include taking additional pictures to show the number of antler points, rack measurements (through the use of scaling or an actual measuring tape), button buck k***s, and the projectile wounds.
And, as a bonus…
4. Possibly revitalizing the check stations as an added convenience to the GoOutdoorsVa app.
The tournament kayak fishing world is using similar technology with TourneyX (www.tourneyx.com)to log in catches with time, date, and GPS coordinates, along with pictures. TourneyX is also using artificial intelligence to determine if a submitted catch has been previously submitted by looking at the fish’s scales and distinguishing features. Shouldn’t the VDWR be able to apply this concept to deer harvest reporting? Or are they being handicapped due to lack of money and resources from Virginia’s state legislators?
Virginia’s hunters can’t complain about the tags that are on their licenses if they are providing accurate data to their wildlife biologists. The results of the above revisions to the GoOutdoorsVa app would refine the annual deer harvest data. More real and precise harvest numbers/data would be in the hands of our wildlife biologists. Thus, enabling our wildlife biologists to have the tools to more accurately monitor and control the health and population of Virginia’s deer herd. VDWR and Virginia’s hunters, I would encourage you to contact our lawmakers to push for the money and tools to make the above changes to the GoOutdoorsVa app harvest reporting!
