[Announcer] This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society, advancing the interests of women and the arts in Virginia and beyond.

[Announcer] Thoughtful, functional, beautiful.

Berry Home Centers can design your dream kitchen.

We focus on customer service so you can focus on what matters.

Serving Southwest Virginia for more than 50 years and now, the New River and Roanoke Valleys.

[Jay Prater] Virginia's Appalachia, rich in culture and tradition and largely misunderstood by outsiders.

The region is a bridge from the past to the present.

This series will explore local legend and lore, mixed with the science and skill you'll only find in Virginia's Appalachia.

On this episode, a look at hunting and fishing, the history of putting food on the table, and what it looks like today.

[♪♪♪♪♪] [Tom Smith] There's one.

He's after it.

[dog barking] Talk to him, bud .

[whispers] Hey, guys.

[Jay Prater] Our first stop has us venturing out at night on a coon dog hunt with the Back Creek Coon Club in Boonesville, Virginia.

Coon hunting is a long-standing tradition in the Appalachian region.

Raccoons are hunted for their meat and fur, and since they are nocturnal, the hunt takes place under cover of darkness.

The coonhounds are turned loose.

They trail and tree the raccoons without any intervention from their owners.

Once the raccoon is up the tree and the hound is stationed at the trunk, the hunters come in and handle the rest.

[♪♪♪♪♪] -Make sure the GPS collars are charged up.

So, my dogs, they've got two collars on them when they hunt.

One's got their name tag on it, so it's got my name, my number, you know, who to call, and they've got another one's the GPS tracker.

So I make sure those are all charged up, take them out wherever I'm going to drop them out at.

There's tons of different ways to hunt, and I prefer to walk out with my dogs, so make sure everything's turned on, good to go.

Get your gun, you know, get everything you need.

And I just start walking out in the woods with them, and, you know, they'll run circles around me, you know, a few hundred yards out, and if they hit a track, they'll take off on it.

I might sit and wait, see if they're going to do anything with it, if they're going to come back.

And I try to stay in the woods with them, though, I'd rather do that than sit in the truck.

And then, you know, once they've ran a track or you hear them treeing and you know they've got something good, you know, you go in there to them and see what they got, hope it's what you want, and then, you know, go from there.

I mean, that's pretty much how the hunt goes, you know.

Sometimes you make several drops if it's good weather, and they're doing their job quickly.

Sometimes it's a short night and you only do one drop.

But I mainly can hunt alone, so it's really whatever I feel like doing and however the dogs are acting that night.

-The club was started in '57, last that I know of.

Most of the older members, you know, they've passed on.

It's very important, I mean, it's something that's been going on for hundreds of years.

And I mean, a lot of people enjoy it, and it's just tradition here, and you know... -This is our Garmin, so we have this.

It's got a map card that shows us the road systems, creeks, ridges, you know, the topo of the land, and then the collars on the dog.

And we can see what the dog's doing, where it's going, if it's treed, if it's barking.

So we kind of know what the dog's doing at all times, so we're able to get them back safely once we turn them loose.

-Every dog can be different.

One dog might tree his first coon at five, six months old, and other dogs might be a year old before you get anything out of them.

Every dog's different, just like people are.

Growing up, my dad and my uncle, he's my dad's brother, they hunted probably four or five nights a week, religiously with me and my cousins.

And that was kind of where I got my start with.

And I've just been around dogs my whole life, and just always been a part of my life that I've enjoyed.

Once they hit a coon track, they'll start barking some, and it should get better and better.

And towards the end, we should hear a "locate," which is going to be like a long bawl out of these two dogs, and it'll be like a steady chuff once they're treed, just auf, auf auf, So we'll just be waiting for that to happen, and we'll start to 'em.

[♪♪♪♪♪] -[dog barking] -Pussy treed 'em.

-So we've got one there.

[dog barking] [♪♪♪♪♪] [hunters chatter] [dog barking] [Corey] Yeah, one right there and one there.

[dog barking] [rapid rifle shots] [dog howling] Got 'em.

Damn good, damn good.

Yeah, he's a Grand Nite PKC champion.

[Jay Prater] Next, we'll meet Nelson Lafon with Virginia's Department of Wildlife Resources in Roanoke for more about the history of hunting in Virginia, and how much the practice has changed over the years.

-As long as there's been humans in Virginia, that we know of, wildlife and hunting both has been really important to them.

So, for instance, in this Roanoke Valley area, we know that humans have been here roughly 10,000 years.

There was like, Totera Indians, which were the kind of ancestors of the Monacans that are nearby.

So for them, of course, like Native Americans across the country, they would have used animals for all kind of things, for, obviously, food's obvious.

Hides are pretty obvious, but other things that might not be obvious, like the tendons and ligaments were used for cordage, bolstering, tying things, you know, that sort of thing.

Feathers, of course, would have been used for ornaments or on arrows to make them shoot more accurately and that kind of thing.

And also, when the early colonists came, they continued to use wildlife for the same things.

So the Native Americans and the European settlers were both what we call utilitarian.

They used the animals a lot.

Now, they had different attitudes towards animals at times, for sure.

And so, the European settlers tended to be more exploitive, I guess you would say, or more competitive with animals.

They saw them as more competitive to their lifestyle, and you know, maybe even to the point of more commercial, which I can mention a little bit more in a minute.

But as far as animals themselves, all the records we have is that, you know, wildlife would have been very abundant.

In addition to, like I mentioned, subsistence farming or subsistence living, which meant living off the land, a lot of folks saw wildlife as competitors to whatever they're trying to grow.

I mean, that is one thing we see similar today, right?

Farmers trying to grow crops or residents trying to grow gardens.

You still have problems with deer, bear, groundhogs.

So they were competitors then, but then we didn't have the regulations and laws.

People tended to take care of their own problems, and they really reduced numbers anywhere around human settlements.

There was also commercial trade in wild meat, so in particular, deer and bear, but even turkeys as well, were used, again, in the parts of the country where they had not been overexploited and they were abundant.

They would be killed, even shipped on rail cars to New York City, Philadelphia, whatever.

And the meat was used, you know, basically commercially.

So, with subsistence farming, the hide trade, commercialization, and habitat change over time, those species that used to be very abundant really declined.

And, in fact, some other animals I've not mentioned, like bison, elk, were here in some areas in quite abundance, and they would have also been involved in those sorts of trades, and were extirpated in the 1800s.

Wolves, mountain lions, would have been here.

They were extirpated in the 1800s as well.

And so, what has happened is, if you just take deer hunters, for example, we don't have numbers early on because people didn't have to buy a license until the early 1900s because they weren't even classified as a game species.

Once they were classified as a game species, and people started buying licenses, both as a way to regulate, and as a way to fund the agency and conservation, so as people had to buy licenses, we've been able to track those through time.

So what we've seen is the purchase of hunting licenses for deer has increased up until about the 1980s.

The 1990s until present has been a slow, well, not slow, depending how you look at it, has been a very steady decline.

In fact, since about 1990, we've lost over 20 percent of our deer hunters.

Yeah, there are a lot of misconceptions about hunting.

And again, not just in Southwest Virginia, but I would say the ones I'm going to tell you are probably ones you would see everywhere .

One is that hunting is dangerous.

Another is, and I'll explain each of these a little bit.

So hunting is dangerous, you know, hunting endangers animals, you know, our animal population.

That hunting is cruel, and that hunters are somehow, like backward or unrefined.

So the hunting as being dangerous, certainly the weapons we use are powerful, and they have the ability to be very dangerous, right?

They do kill.

They kill animals that are tougher than we are as humans.

So we got to be sure about that, and we got to be sure how we use them.

If you look at the statistics of hunting, it's actually very safe.

And as compared to other sports, it's actually got some of the fewest injuries and fatalities of almost anything we do out there.

And again, another reason is because people do it responsibly.

The most common injuries to hunters are really self-inflicted, and a lot of them actually deal with tree stand accidents, so not even weapons.

So actual injury or fatality to a bystander or to a hunting companion is really relatively rare.

The other one about it being endangering animals, that would have been true, you know, 150 years ago, but that was before regulations occurred.

And so, hunting is highly regulated.

I mean, it's within certain seasons, and all those seasons have a biological reason.

And we don't hunt endangered species, you know.

If you look at most of the species in Virginia, they're not know hunted, you know.

Animal populations have increased in the face of hunting.

So in spite of hunting, we've got populations that have increased incredibly.

So, as far as it being cruel, nobody can deny that hunting causes some pain and suffering, certainly when the animals have been shot or whatever.

But, as we know, pain is part of animals living.

There is always going to be suffering to survive.

And among the different ways that an animal could die, you know, hunting is not as painful.

And in fact, that's one of the reasons we emphasize making a clean shot, making an ethical shot, and those kind of things.

As far as hunters being, you know, kind of backward or unrefined, I think that's one of the images it has, and it's one of the things we try to get past.

If you look at, in reality, hunters are really very skilled.

They're very educated, they care a lot about what they do.

And it's not just about their craft.

I mean, they have a lot of woodcraft, a lot of skills about how much time it takes to learn what they do, but also just learning about the animal, understanding where it fits in the ecology.

And hunters generally tend themselves to be very conservation minded.

A lot of them care a lot about the big picture.

They don't care about just what they hunt or what they kill.

If you think about it from a public service or societal service perspective, due to the lack of those large predators like wolves and mountain lions that used to control the deer population, without them, hunters have had to kind of step in and be that role.

So they provide a public service.

Hunting is probably one of the most hands-on ways to engage with animals, with nature, and you're also being responsible for getting your own food and you're getting an organically free-ranging source of food.

And so, when you kind of put it all together, you think about it, hunters are localvores.

They're conservation stewards, they provide a service to society.

And you put all that together, and actually, they're pretty modern and sophisticated, when you think about all those put together.

I mean, that's what a lot of people are aspiring to do anyway, is to live more responsibly, think bigger than themselves, and think about how they're affecting their environment.

So they do a lot of those things.

[Jay Prater] Off to Wytheville, Virginia to talk turkey with Tom Smith, retired wildlife conservationist.

He also has a few fish tales from the lakes, ponds, and rivers of Virginia's Appalachia.

[Tom Smith] Here we are turkey hunting in Carroll County, Virginia, on a farm.

And I've got a diaphragm call here that I use to talk to the hens and the gobblers.

There's a couple different calls that they make.

I'm going to make a call that it's kind of a yelping call that gets them excited to try to get a gobbler to gobble.

[rapid clucking] I didn't hear anything.

So he's not close, or he's not talking.

I want to do a call, a soft call that I make if they're like within 100, 150 yards that they can pinpoint and come to me with.

[clucking] Sometimes they sneak in quiet, don't, don't let you know they're coming.

So they could just show up at any time.

That's not as exciting, but it still is, it's heart pounding.

When you do see a big old dark object coming with a big red head, it's the biggest thrill in the woods.

[clucking noises] [whispers] I see another one.

There's three.

There's three coming.

Here's, here's another one.

Right there, right there.

They're together.

I'm telling you, this is awesome.

[clucking noises] ...understand is that animal is actually a bird.

It's a huge bird.

It's the biggest bird we have.

You know, 20-some-pound bird coming walking, looking for a hen, looking, looking for love.

And it's kind of funny because there's probably about ten to one gobbler-- hens to gobblers.

And the hens right now are all laying eggs.

They've got their nest made, so they do a little routine.

They'll roost all night up in a tree, fly down, do their thing, and she'll go lay an egg.

After they get about 15 or 18 eggs laid, they'll sit on them and they'll sit for, I think it's like 28 days before they hatch.

So the end of next month, like third week of next month or middle of next month, they'll start... they'll start hatching.

[clucking noises] [♪♪♪♪♪] Get a range on him.

[clucking noises] [whispers] Thirty-one yards.

Okay.

Here goes.

[click of a crossbow] [clucking] I think I shot right underneath him.

This is the blind where we were sitting, and the turkeys came up over there, and I shot at a gobbler.

I had a couple of limbs possibly in the way, and we're going to see if we made contact.

[♪♪♪♪♪] See, my fletching came off when I hit some of the briars here, and there lays my arrow.

[♪♪♪♪♪] Arrow's come apart.

There's part of the fletch, part of my nock... busted my shaft.

It's a miss.

I did not hit.

But I ruined my arrow, broke the back of it off.

Oh, well, that happens.

Better a clean miss than a wounded animal.

But anyway, that happens.

It was good.

[♪♪♪♪♪] Well, we're in Wythe County, Virginia.

We're on the creek of Cripple Creek on a private farm, friends of mine, and we're fishing for trout, Rainbow, Brook trout and maybe a Brown or two, if we can find them.

There might also be a couple of Smallmouth bass and maybe some Redeye, we call them, or rock bass.

I'm using a-- first I'm going to try to use a little spinner I've got to see if I can entice them with that.

Oh, there's one.

He's after it.

[♪♪♪♪♪] There's one, two.

That's big.

[♪♪♪♪♪] Yeah, I've been fishing for trout probably ever since I was eight years old.

I started in Carroll County, where I grew up on Crooked Creek and used to use worms, night crawlers.

And then, as you get older and you get more experience, you go to spinners and different flies and stuff like that.

But it beats sitting on the couch.

The Game Commission or Department of Wildlife Resources have stocked muskie, muskellunge to the larger streams, rivers, and I feel like they've depleted a lot of the resource, the redeye, and the Smallmouth bass.

And also, the walleye has taken its toll on some of our bass fisheries.

But luckily, they don't come up into these streams, or they would eat every trout.

Got him.

Little guy!

[♪♪♪♪♪] He done swallowed that thing.

[♪♪♪♪♪] Ooh, one hit the surface right there.

[♪♪♪♪♪] Oh, yes.

You have to go to, at Walmart or, there's a good place they have, they have the regulations printed out and you can just pick them up.

Or you can go online to Department of Wildlife Resources, and go under Fishing, and there's regulations.

Each...

There are regulations for certain species, and regulations for certain streams and rivers, about size of whatever you want to keep.

Some of them have slot limits, meaning you can only keep certain size fish.

And it's all about reproduction.

If you don't succeed, you try and try again.

[Jay Prater] Our final destination today is Buchanan County to reconnect with Nelson Lafon and learn how Virginia's elk population is bouncing back after being overhunted nearly 200 years ago.

-The elk story is interesting because it was a native species to Virginia, and it was found across a lot of the state.

It wasn't just in the mountains.

It probably had its highest populations, I would guess, in the western part of the state, maybe the Shenandoah Valley.

They were killed out in the 1850s.

The last elk, wild elk in Virginia, actually was killed up in Clark County, so near Winchester.

And then after that, it was not until the 19-teens that we saw elk again.

And they were then brought in from out west, like around Yellowstone.

Several eastern states did this.

Virginia actually got them to like 15 counties at that time.

We had elk introduced as far away as Virginia Beach back then.

Now, all of those were unsuccessful, except for two pockets.

One was in Bedford County, near Peaks of Otter, and one was in Bland County, the Bland Giles border.

And those two little populations subsisted until 1970.

It's interesting, both elk, the last elk died out in 1970 in both of those spots.

So, what happened next was, in Virginia, we were impacted by Kentucky's decision to introduce elk in the late 1990s, early 2000s.

They introduced about 1,500 elk.

And those elk came from out west again, where there still are plentiful elk.

And naturally, our border counties like Wise, Dickenson, Buchanan, Lee County, started getting elk that dispersed over from Kentucky's restoration effort.

Initially, we were a little hesitant, as an agency, because we weren't sure.

We worried about CWD, Chronic Wasting Disease being brought.

Fortunately, that was not an issue.

There's been enough tested in both states now to know that was not an issue.

Cattlemen were also concerned that they would bring diseases to cattle, and maybe impact their hay operations and things, understandably.

So, around the 2000s, like 2009, 2010, there had been enough public pressure that was like, hey, Virginia, let's get on board with this elk restoration thing, too.

So, that was when our agency set aside the Elk Management Zone, which is those three counties of Buchanan, Dickenson, and Wise, and said, hey, we're not going to shoot elk in this area.

You can still shoot elk out of that area, just like a deer.

So basically, since elk is a deer species, if it was anywhere outside of those three counties, and it still is, you can shoot an elk.

In those three counties, they were then protected.

So, in like 2012 to '14, we actually went to Kentucky and sped up the restoration by bringing 75 elk and releasing them in Buchanan County.

So that's the only county we've actually actively introduced elk into.

Now, they have grown in that area, and also, they've grown in, say, Wise County and Dickenson from, again, elk that had come here from Kentucky.

So they've, we call it passive restoration when we just let them come in, and active restoration when we bring them in.

Both from active and passive restoration, there's several hundred elk down there now And, in fact, they were plentiful enough that two years ago, so 2022, actually, last year, 2023, we had our first elk hunt, and that was actually just a bull elk because you can kill bull elk without affecting the population.

But also, elk down there are looked at just as much from a wildlife viewing benefit as they are a hunting benefit.

So even though the goal was to have a hunt, the other benefit was just having these big native species back on the landscape.

And there's an Elk Cam on our website that shows elk.

If you go there during, like, September, you can actually hear them bugle as well as see the herds of elk out in those open lands.

So, yeah, it's been a real success, and it's been one of the most popular things we've done.

[loud elk bugle] [♪♪♪♪♪] [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society, advancing the interests of women and the arts in Virginia and beyond.

[Announcer] Thoughtful, functional, beautiful.

Berry Home Centers can design your dream kitchen.

We focus on customer service so you can focus on what matters.

Serving Southwest Virginia for more than 50 years and now, the New River and Roanoke Valleys.