OVERTIME OUTDOORS: Deer hunters don’t have far to go to cure buck fever

Published 6:00 am Sunday, August 12, 2018

T

he Atchafalaya Delta Wildlife Management Area is known, and rightly so, for its great waterfowl hunting, particularly at the Wax Lake Outlet.

A state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries biologist reminds me every year about this time that some of the best bowhunting for deer each season is on the Atchafalaya Delta WMA. The deer hunting seasons there are archery-only.

I’ve seen photos of the bucks shot down there by proud bowhunters, like the one my good friend Bill McCarty of Morgan City harvested several years ago while hunting on the Atchafalaya Delta WMA. McCarty, an all-around outdoorsman who can catch bass, sac-a-lait and bream with the best of them in and around the Spillway, makes it a point to hunt the area each season.

So do many bowhunters from the Teche Area. It’s a prime destination, which may seem a bit strange because, after all, it falls under the Coastal and Nongame Resources Division of the LDWF. Deer hunting is prohibited on the Wax Lake Delta, where so many ducks meet their maker, and is restricted to adult archery hunting and annual youth lottery gun hunts each season on the Main Delta.

The five-year average for deer harvested there is 152, Lance Campbell, the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Coastal and Nongame Resources Division’s coastal operations program manager. said recently in a report. He expects a similar harvest in 2018-19.

Every wonder why the area gives up quality and quantity each deer hunting season? 

Campbell, a 23-year LDWF veteran who earned a bachelor’s degree from McNeese State University and master’s degree from LSU, has a ready answer. The 137,000-acre plus WMA have higher elevations thanks to “spoil islands” from material dredged from the Atchafalaya River.

So right there in the marsh, on an ever-growing delta, deer hunters have an upland and semi-upland environment.

“It’s really unique,” Campbell has said.

The deer herd loves it. The fertile soil grows plenty of browse and many of the deer are big-bodied with immense racks.

For example, last season, several notable characteristics for deer harvested on the Atchafalaya Delta WMA were;

• Nine deer had at least one main antler beam length of 15 inches or more.

• Five deer had at least one antler base circumference of 4-plus inches.

• More than 10 deer were 8- to 10-pointers.

If those numbers don’t knock your socks off, perhaps these particular deer stats from last season might:

• 170-pound, 10-point buck with a 16 1/2-inch inside spread.

• 160-pound, 8-point buck with a 15-inch inside spread.

• 150-pound, 8-point buck with a 14-inch inside spread.

• 150-pound, 8-point buck with a 12 3/4-inch inside spread.

• 135-pound, 10-point buck with a 15 3/4-inch inside spread.

No wonder people get a severe case of  buck fever when they talk about or hear about the Atchafalaya Delta WMA. And it’s almost in our back yard.

DON SHOOPMAN is outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.