September 26, 2025 – 2:48 pm
The archery hunting season opens this weekend across all of West Virginia PHOTO: WVDNR
ROMNEY, W.Va. — A couple of key factors led West Virginia Division of Natural Resources wildlife staffers to predict the 2025 whitetail deer harvest will be down. As the archery hunting season opens this weekend statewide, the first pattern hunters will follow for deer will be food sources.
The 2025 Mast Survey produced by the DNR revealed, hard mast, which is a preferred staple of the whitetail diet, will be abundant.
“The oak did do really well, in fact all hard mast did really well overall. Combined all hard and soft mast, we’re about two percent above our long-term statewide average and about 16 percent above what we were seeing in 2024,” said Avery Korns who coordinates the annual mast survey for the agency.
The increased acorn production was dramatic. White oak was up 46 percent from 2024 and up 46 percent over the yearly average. Black oak acorns jumped up 41 percent, Scarlet oak was up 29 percent. Scrub Oak was up 100 percent and the chestnut oak acorns were elevated by 119 percent over 2024. Korns said weather probably played a key role in that jump in hard mast production.
“We had a lot of rain up until about August when it started to dry up and that helped them recover from last year’s drought,” she said.
But all of that early rain is believed to have been counter productive for soft mast species. All of the soft mast which is listed annually took a step dive from 2024.
“With all that rain, they didn’t do as well overall and then when the drought hit they started dropping their fruit a little early in August.,” she said.
The survey revealed all soft mast species had a significant drop from 2024. Apple was down 14 percent, wild black cherry dropped 63 percent. The rest of the soft mast species included in the annual survey were all negative as well including blackberry, crab apple, dogwood, grapes, greenbrier, Hawthorne, sassafras, and yellow poplar.
Conversely the hard mast species just like the oak mast soared. Beech production was up 268 percent from last year and 84 percent from the all-time average. Black walnut production jumped 161 percent from 2024 and 54 percent over the long term average. The squirrel favorite hickory nut also saw a tremendous jump from 2024 with a 76 percent improvement over last year’s crop. Those numbers will likely reflect a huge jump in squirrel numbers for next fall. A strong mast year will often provide enough nourishment for female squirrels to bare two sets of offspring in the coming year.
But the overall hunting success isn’t expected to be a big mover from last year. With so much mast on the ground, deer probably won’t have to move much and that will keep them relatively safe from hunters. Korns added the EHD outbreak in the western counties of the state will be a factor.
“For all of the deer seasons combined we expect to see a lower harvest, just because of how the oak species and all of the hard mast species produced. It’s going to be harder to find those deer because they’re not going to move as much,” she said.
Korns acknowledged the EHD could impact the harvest, but not because there are fewer deer. It’s more because hunters THINK there are NO deer.
“We know in those areas if they’ve been hit particularly hard, some of our hunters aren’t going to go out this year or they may self regulate how many deer they take. That can affect the harvest,” she said.
The overall hunting outlook in the publication anticipated a lower success rate not only for whitetails, but also for rabbits, racoons, and quail. Hunter success was predicted to be about the same as 2024 when hunting both fox squirrels and gray squirrels, wild turkey, and wild boar. The only species expected to see an increased harvest during the coming hunting season is black bear. Korns said the archery harvest may not be up, but they anticipate because of the high level of mast bears will go to the den far later and the gun season in December will feature a lot of bears still on the landscape for hunters to enjoy the pursuit.
Exposing the Big Game 