Is poaching truly this prevalent?

[One300wsm]

There’s so much wrong with your logic here that it’s hardly worth responding to but The idea that a 25 year old study is irrelevant to poaching as a general trend make no sense. You also seem to be implying that it’s okay for poor people to poach and that it’s okay to poach in general because it’s not having an effect on the animal populations. It’s an odd perspective to put it lightly.

There’s a mountain of evidence that poaching is quite prevalent- both in the past as well as the present. Just look at how many people in this thread and others have mentioned reporting poaching violations and nothing was ever done about it. I’ve had several similar experiences. None of those violations show up in any stats, let alone all the violations that no one witnesses. I stand by my original point that poaching is more prevalent than most people realize. We’ll never know the exact numbers but it’s pretty obvious if you look around a little bit.

I have no doubt that pouching is prevalent and I’m speaking of whitetail deer as the subject, since that is what your statistics are about. I’m also speaking of eastern states that I live around and have knowledge of. Has anyone drove on I64 East or West from Va to St. Louis? How many dead deer did you encounter? I don’t encourage pouching, but if they are shooting it for the meat have at it, for trophy purposes hell no. Your statistics as I recall were does not bucks or maybe I overlooked something. In my state of Va you don’t have to pouch this day a time because the hunting season starts in September and ends in March in a lot of counties on private land. Law enforcement wants you to shoot them, you know why Insurance companies. You know why we have so many deer ? Because no one is shooting them look at the statistic below: Good luck getting young hunters involved they can’t get off the phone long enough to pull the trigger. And money has taken over the big game hunting industry out west if you’re not rich you can’t pay to play the game. It’s cheaper to pouch and take your chances, $2000 for an Elk tag is laughable . Like your every day Joe can afford it. I’m not speaking of myself I pay to play the game I’m a out of stater I pay 10 times as much to hunt federal lands as a resident. $$$$$$$ has a lot to do with pushing people to be poachers.

Shifting Demographics and Participation

• Then (2000): Virginia boasted a robust base of nearly 250,000 licensed deer hunters. The sport was largely passed down through generations, with a high proportion of hunters primarily focused on filling freezers rather than managing deer age structures.
• Now (2026): License sales have declined by about 38% to roughly 185,000 licensed deer hunters. The average hunter is older, and DWR relies heavily on programs like the Go Outdoors Virginia Mobile App and youth/apprentice weekends to recruit younger participants.