2006 Game Lands Forecast

N.C.’s public lands offer places for wildlife to survive and thrive despite hunting pressure.

North Carolina, like many southern states, is experiencing changes and challenges for the future.

More people are moving to the state, and the native population is growing. In many instances, expanding human numbers cause problems for wildlife with the destruction of natural habitat. And wildlife-vs.-human conflicts certainly occur at times.But the state’s land mass remains mostly rural, which means wildlife habitat still exists. The survival of fish and game species remains a matter of protecting some of that land from development. No one wants the only contact humans have with wild creatures to be from behind zoo fences.

The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, through its game lands program, has served the state well in coordinating and maintaining land purchases for wild creatures and the sportsmen who enjoy them.

Sportsmen, lest it not be said enough, provide the majority of funding through license fees and special taxes for almost all game-lands preservation and conservation of wild creatures that live at such places.

With nearly 9 million humans living in the state and approximately 2 million participating in hunting and fishing, keeping places for those activities is important.

Each fall, North Carolina Sportsman takes a look at N.C.’s game lands and tries to offer advice from the WRC’s regional biologists about where to best enjoy hunting.

As an overview, deer and bear hunters once again should enjoy banner seasons. The WRC, along with private waterfowl groups, is doing its best to draw our share of migratory ducks and geese to the state. Small-game hunters, if the summer is an indication, should see plenty of rabbits. However, quail and grouse numbers remain low.

Currently the WRC manages 75 game lands from Manteo to Murphy, although four of those include national forests where WRC influence only extends to enforcing hunting laws.

Here is our annual preview of N.C.’s top game lands in 2006.

Eastern N.C.

Deer

Best game-land bets:
Suggs Mill Pond, Holly Shelter, Goose Creek, Lantern Acres, Van Swamp, North River, Roanoke River Game Lands, Chowan Game Land.

Most of eastern N.C. (particularly the northeastern “Peanut Belt”) has good deer habitat and plenty of whitetails, so many hunters eschew public hunting — except at areas of high human populations where access to private land may be restricted.

The top game-land for venison lovers in 2006 probably will be the Roanoke River Wetlands and Wildlife Refuge game lands along the river’s course as it flows through Bertie, Halifax, Martin and Northampton counties.

Although hunters must apply to hunt all game species at the Roanoke River game lands, permits aren’t difficult to obtain. The only permit deadline for deer is Sept. 15 for gun hunters; archery and muzzle-loader hunters may apply at any time and usually obtain permits.

Hunters should check the WRC’s “Special Hunt Opportunities in North Carolina” handbook, available from license agents, for game-lands permit-only hunts.

“Suggs Mill Pond is also a permit area, and it has good deer numbers,” said Tommy Hughes, the WRC’s supervising biologist for eastern N.C.

Other good deer public lands in the east include Holly Shelter, Goose Creek, Bladen Lakes State Forest, Lantern Acres, Van Swamp and a portion of the North River Game Land (on the Camden side).

“There also are deer at Gull Rock, if you can brave the mosquitoes,” Hughes said.

A new area open this year for the first time is the Sand Banks section, an addition to the Chowan Swamp Game Land.

“It’s an International Paper-owned area,” Hughes said. “It’s an area hunters might want to explore; it has a road access, too.”

Black Bear

Best game-land bets:
Buckridge, Croatan National Forest, Dare County Bombing Range, Gull Rock (Long Shoal Tract), Holly Shelter, Bladen Lakes State Forest.

When considering black bear hunting at eastern game lands, Hughes first mentioned the relatively new Buckridge Game Land in Tyrrell County, south of Frying Pan and Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge and west of the Alligator River.

“It’s got good numbers of bears,” he said.

Another relatively new bear game lands, the Dare Bombing Range, entered the game-lands program last year as a permit-only area and showed good potential.

“They didn’t kill a lot of bears (in 2005), but hunters saw a lot,” Hughes said. “It was a fairly conservative hunt (format) the first year, so we probably will make some adjustments in the future (more permits or hunt dates).”

Bear-dog hunting parties (10 per party, two parties per hunt) could only take five bears per group (a total of 10 bears). Still hunters (10 permits per hunt) were allowed one bear each. However, only two still hunts and two dogs hunts were offered.

Holly Shelter, the huge game land (64,743 acres) in Pender County is another public area with black bears

“(The WRC) also has the Bear Garden Tract now, which is part of Holly Shelter,” Hughes said. “Hunters will have an opportunity to buy permits to hunt there.”

Croatan National Forest is another big game land (160,724 acres in Carteret, Craven and Jones counties) with bear hunting opportunities.

“It has dog hunting,” Hughes said. “It’s so big, it has two bear seasons, basically. The Carteret section has the long season; Craven and Jones are in the short season.”

Bladen Lakes State Forest, 32,363 acres near Elizabethtown in Bladen County, also has a good population of black bears. It’s a three-days-per-week game land. But the Singletary Tract southeast of Elizabethtown doesn’t allow dogs for hunting bear and deer.

“The Gull Rock proper section of that game land (31,057 acres in two sections of eastern Hyde County) is a bear sanctuary, but the Long Shoal Tract permits bear hunting,” Hughes said.

Waterfowl

Best game-land bets:
Suggs Mill Pond, Goose Creek, Futch, New River, Roanoke River Wetlands and NWR Game Land, White Oak River.

Eastern N.C. has the best public waterfowl hunting in the state, thanks primarily to game lands and federal waterfowl refuges near Pamlico Sound.

The Goose Creek GL in Beaufort and Pamlico counties features 10 waterfowl impoundments, including its most-in-demand site, Pamlico Point.

However, N.C. duck hunting always depends upon cold-weather fronts to put birds in the air. With mild weather and a lack of windy days, duck hunting can be inconsistent.

“Goose Creek is a partial-permit game land for high-pressure days,” Hughes said. “It has wigeon, teal and black ducks — lots of puddle ducks.”

Permits are needed after Nov. 1 at Pamlico Point, Campbell, Hunting and Spring creeks for opening and closing days of duck seasons, Thanksgiving, New Year’s and the Martin Luther King holiday. During other days, waterfowl hunting is allowed Tuesdays and Saturdays.

The presence of eastern refuges such as Lake Mattamuskeet, Pocosin Lake and Swan Quarter draws waterfowl to this region. When ducks, geese and swans fly off the refuge to look for food, hunters can take advantage. Some permit hunting occurs at the refuges, too, but competition for blinds is great.

Hughes said Suggs Mill Pond’s five impoundments attract a lot of ducks. The Bladen and Cumberland counties game land is a permit-only area.

“The J. Morgan Futch game land (Tyrrell County) is another good place,” Hughes said. “It has a mixture of ringnecks, teal, lots of woodies, some pintails, wigeon and a good number of tundra swans.”

Tundra swans require extra permits that must be applied for prior to waterfowl seasons. North Carolina issues 5,000 swan permits, the most of any state.

Ducks Unlimited aided the WRC in developing the 600 acres of Futch GL, but the entire tract, 8 miles south of Columbia off U.S. 64, is sectioned into 15 impoundments.

The North River Game Land (Camden and Currituck counties) has three new sub-impoundments totaling 60 acres, Hughes said.

“It’s usually got ringnecks and teal,” Hughes said. “There also are some impoundments at the Roanoke River Wetlands; it’s permit-only hunting.”

Roanoke River has four impoundments at the Conoho Farms tract.

“White Oak River (Onslow County) operates similar to Goose Creek and is a permit area,” Hughes said.

White Oak’s lone impoundment, about one-half-mile wide, is south of Stella. The WRC notes this impoundment has alligators.

Croatan National Forest has a large impoundment northwest of Catfish Lake.

“Catfish Lake is wide open (no permits needed) two days per week (Tuesdays and Saturdays), the same as Gull Rock (Hyde County),” Hughes said. “Of course, you can hunt other areas inside those game lands those days.”

Hughes said ringnecks, wood ducks and teal are prevalent at Catfish Lake and Gull Rock.

The WRC recently received a deed of easement from PCS Phosphate for the Parker Tract in Beaufort and Pamlico counties. That area, Hughes said, probably will be another good waterfowl region.

“It’s part of Goose Creek Game Land,” he said. “The whole tract is 2,000 acres and the wetlands total maybe 600 acres. One-third of it is freshwater marshland.”

Wood ducks should be the most-abundant species.

Small Game

Best game-land bets:
Lantern Acres, Holly Shelter, Croatan, Stones Creek, Suggs Mill Pond, Roanoke River NWR and Wetlands, North River.

Quail hunters still have a chance to enjoy a covey rise or two at a few eastern game lands.

“Lantern Acres (GL) is probably one of the better tracts to find quail,” Hughes said. “Holly Shelter and Croatan also have some quail, but hunters had better make their first shots good ones. The birds get in the thick stuff pretty quick.”

A fairly-new game land, Stones Creek (Onslow County, 3000 acres), tucked in a southern corner of the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps base, may have the most-friendly-to-hunters habitat in the east.

“It’s mostly a (former) clearcut,” Hughes said.

Acquired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Navy, it’s a former longleaf pine plantation that’s regrown in wiregrass.

“It’s kind of like the Sandhills without trees,” Hughes said. “It has a lot of early-successional habitat. (WRC crews) have heard and flushed quail. If I were a bird hunter, that’s a place I might want to explore.”

The top rabbit-hunting game lands in the east may be the Boone Tract at the Roanoke River Wetlands and NWR game lands.

“Just south of the 258 bridge in Northampton County, there’s a ton of rabbits at that place,” Hughes said. “But it takes a lot more effort to hunt because you can’t drive to it (access is by boat).”

Roanoke River, with its hardwood bottom lands, will be a good gray squirrel area. Float trips at the Neuse River Game Land (Craven County) on the Neuse or Turkey Quarter Creek should yield good bushytail hunting. North River GL also has squirrels.

Fox squirrels are found at Croatan, Suggs Mill Pond and Bladen Lakes State Forest.

“But the numbers aren’t like you see at Sandhills,” Hughes said.

Croatan and Holly Shelter game lands have “a few rabbits in some places,” he said.

Dove hunters have a variety of eastern game lands with WRC-planted fields.

“Some of the non-permit dove hunts at Bladen Lakes can be really good,” Hughes said. “We have one dove field at Holly Shelter, but it gets a lot of pressure, so hunters should try to hunt early in the season.”

Lantern Acres also features non-permit dove hunts.

Permit dove hunts are available at Suggs Mill Pond, Caswell Farms and the Roanoke River game lands.

“I think Suggs is the best,” he said. “It’s had some really good hunts.”

Central N.C.

Deer

Best game-land bets:
Jordan Lake, Butner-Falls, Uwharrie National Forest, Harris, Sandhills, Caswell, Hyco, Mayo, Shocco Creek.

Last year’s record-setting deer season provided one surprise — the biggest increases in deer kills didn’t take place in eastern N.C., which is generally accepted as the region in the state with the most whitetails.

One of the largest percentage-wise jumps in deer harvests came from the Piedmont. That was somewhat unexpected because the region has the greatest concentration of humans, spread across medium-to-large population centers including and between Raleigh and Winston-Salem.

Obviously 2005’s big Piedmont harvest proves white-tailed deer are highly-adaptive creatures and don’t mind sharing their turf with humans.

However, a quick look at the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission’s annual deer population map shows why major whitetail numbers occur in the Piedmont — good habitat. That’s not to say deer are waltzing through downtown business centers or shopping malls, but their numbers are expanding near suburbs. And since more of N.C.’s deer hunters live in suburban and rural areas, they’re closer to whitetails. So game lands within easy driving distance of major cities or towns get a lot of hunter pressure, which translates into more deer kills.

The Jordan Lake and Butner-Falls of the Neuse game lands, which rub shoulders with bedroom communities for Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, are prime examples.

“Jordan Lake Game Land once again led the state in deer harvests,” said central-region top biologist Harlan Hall of Burlington, who supervises Wildlife Districts 3, 5 and 6.

Actually, an accurate tally of Jordan Lake deer harvests is difficult to determine. This game land a few miles south of Durham extends across four counties (Durham, Chatham, Orange, Wake), and the WRC tallies harvests by county. But most of Jordan Lake GL lies within Chatham, which led the state in 2005 with 385 deer big-game tags. Shearon Harris Game Land, just south of Jordan Lake, also has most of its deer-rich territory extending into Wake County.

Chatham game-land hunters downed 385 deer during 2005, and Wake hunters tagged 312 whitetails to rank the counties first and second in the state.

Uwharrie National Forest, spread across 50,189 acres in Davidson, Montgomery and Randolph counties, is also another top white-tail area, Hall said.

With its rolling hardwood forests, Uwharrie contains excellent habitat along the Pee Dee River drainage. The largest tract of several dozen areas of this national forest is south and east of Badin Lake.

The Butner-Falls of the Neuse game land, north of Durham and west of Raleigh, is nestled between the eastern Piedmont’s two most-heavily-populated-by-humans cities. With surrounding farms and agricultural crops, along with pine forests and hardwood ridges, Butner-Falls offers excellent deer habitat.

Shocco Creek also has good deer numbers.

“(The WRC) added another several thousand (6,332) acres to the Shocco Creek Game Land, and it’s got plenty of deer,” Hall said.

Shocco Creek, which quadrupled in size during 2006, contains sections in Franklin and Warren counties. Several of the new sections in Warren County border the creek north, east and west of Centerville and are split by N.C. 58. One section east of Centerville at the Halifax County line borders N.C. 43.

Caswell Game Land in Caswell County grew by 500 acres (to 17,198 acres) in 2006. Well known for its wild turkeys, this 10-section game land is marked by steep hardwood ridges and open fields, especially near paved roads that cut through the game land. Most dirt roads leading into Caswell GL’s interior are gated and locked.

Because deer are so plentiful throughout Caswell County at private land, this game land is under-utilized by white-tail hunters.

The Roanoke River Wetlands and National Wildlife Refuge, at 30,499 acres, although totally a permit-only region, has terrific deer habitat at either side of the river as it flows through Bertie, Halifax, Martin and Northampton counties.

“We added some land near Pollocks Ferry (in 2006),” Hall said. “We obtained the land through Clean Water Management and Natural Heritage Trust Fund money, but this is the first time it’s been (classified as) a game land.”

That new region is roughly between U.S. 258 and N.C. 561 and borders the Roanoke River’s south bank in Halifax County. Through its center runs the aptly-named (but gated) Wild Turkey Road.

“Roanoke River is loaded with deer and turkeys,” Hall said. “It’s open by permit for deer and wild turkeys for archery and muzzle-loader seasons. (The Pollocks Ferry section) is open for hunting this year.”

Anyone who wants to to apply for permit hunts at game lands, including Roanoke River, should obtain the WRC’s Special Hunt Opportunities handbook that spells out where permit hunts are conducted and how to apply for permits. Visit a license agent to apply. Most permits applications are $5 and non-refundable. Application for a tundra swan permit costs $10, but hunters also must have a valid N.C. hunting license.

Waterfowl

Best game-land bets: Butner-Falls, Jordan Lake, Shearon Harris, Shocco Creek, Chatham, Lee, Alcoa, Hyco, Mayo, Sandhills.

Piedmont waterfowl hunters are lucky — and unlucky — to have Jordan Lake and Butner-Falls game lands.

The lakes at the center of these two game lands comprise the bulk of a total 81,000 acres and feature WRC-created and managed waterfowl impoundments. No other piedmont game lands offer greater numbers of waterfowl — during winters when birds are active. However, so many duck hunters want to put out decoys and work their dogs that unless one arrives at a boat ramp by 4 a.m. during a permitted waterfowl days, finding a good spot to hunt can be difficult.

WRC special permits to hunt waterfowl at the two lakes aren’t required — except at Butner-Falls upper-lake posted impoundments after Nov. 1. Hunting days are staggered, too, with Jordan Lake waterfowl hunting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day and opening and closing days of waterfowl seasons. At Butner-Falls, waterfowl hunting is allowed Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, Christmas, New Year’s Day and opening days of waterfowl seasons. Hunting at Butner-Falls also must end at 1 p.m.

Jordan Lake has seven “green-tree” impoundments at the upper end of the lake near Chapel Hill (permits not required) while Butner-Falls has diked impoundments that are planted during summer and flooded before waterfowl seasons. Dove hunting is permitted at Butner-Falls impoundments before they’re flooded, but hunters must use steel shot.

“Shearon Harris also has good duck hunting,” Hall said, “mostly at the upper end where there’s a lot of aquatic vegetation.”

Some hunters apparently don’t understand they can’t build permanent blinds at game lands. The WRC removes blinds when they discover them.

“We have torn down some tremendous blinds at Harris,” Hall said, “some of them six-seaters.”

Hall said Harris GL, which allows waterfowling Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Christmas and New Year’s Days and the Martin Luther King holiday during applicable seasons, is “wrapped up” with ringneck ducks.

The next-best piedmont duck-hunting game lands — Chatham and Lee — are near Shearon Harris and Jordan Lake. Although the Chatham GL extends south from the Harris dam and below N.C. 42, the waterfowl section parallels the north shore of the Cape Fear River that drains Jordan Lake. The Lee GL extends from a smaller portion of the Cape Fear River on the south shore. These game lands are accessible by boat from the Buckhorn WRC boat ramp where N.C. 42 crosses the river.

A small waterfowl impoundment at the Caswell GL has received so much pressure it will be a permit-only hunting area this year after Nov. 1, Hall said.

The Alcoa Game Land at the Yadkin River’s High Rock and Badin lakes also offers some limited waterfowl opportunities, Hall said.

Farther south, where the Yadkin River becomes the Pee Dee, the Pee Dee River Game Lands offers duck hunting at posted areas of Lakes Tillery and Blewett Falls shorelines and at a stretch of the river west of U.S. 1 and the Diggs community in Richmond County.

Progress Energy’s two Person County lakes, Mayo and Hyco, also offer some public-lands waterfowl hunting.

“Shocco Creek Game Land (in Franklin and Warren counties) has one great big beaver pond (15 acres),” Hall said. “That’s a good spot for wood ducks and some mallards.”

The Sandhills Game Land has a few beaver ponds scattered across its 61,225 acres.

“You can kill a few wood ducks, but it’s spotty — hit-or-miss (depending upon cold weather to push ducks south),” Hall said.

Small Game

Best game-land bets: Uwharrie, Butner-Falls, Jordan Lake, Caswell, Sandhills.

Hall said the Uwharrie National Forest is a good-to-great area for small-game hunting, particularly doves and squirrels.

“The two main dove fields at Uwharrie are at the Thornburg property in the Burkhead (Wilderness) area and El Dorado, near the old management area off N.C. 109,” Hall said.

Uwharrie has seven total dove fields.

Butner-Falls has nine dove fields, while Jordan Lake has six. Caswell GL has six and the Sandhills has 10 dove fields. The Vance Game Land at Kerr Lake’s Nutbush Peninsula has one dove field. To obtain directions to WRC dove fields, go to the search function at www.ncwildlife.org and type in “dove fields.”

WRC dove fields feature a mixture of buckwheat, corn, millet, milo, rye, sorghum, sun flowers and wheat. However, not all game lands have every crop.

“(Uwharrie has) a lot of squirrel woods,” Hall said. “Hunters should have no problem finding squirrels.”

Rabbit hunting, Hall said, probably would be spotty, but recent timber sales and cutovers have created some good ground cover and forage for rabbits, as well as bobwhite quail.

“There’s some quail at Uwharrie,” he said.

Two piedmont game lands — Caswell and Sandhills —have Cooperative Upland habitat Restoration and Enhancement (CURE) areas. Quail and woodcock hunting is prohibited at CURE sections of game lands.

“CURE areas are marked on trees that are double-posted (with game lands and CURE signs),” Hall said. “There’s 5,000 acres of CURE at Caswell and also at the Sandhills.”

Still, quail hunting can be decent at the Sandhills GL because of its traditionally good small-game habitat and the WRC’s management. With intensive timber thinning and controlled burns by the WRC, it has areas of “early successional” (new) habitat for ground animals.

“We’ve done a lot of thinning of timber and burns,” Hall said. “That’s what you have to do to create habitat for small game. It suppresses hardwoods and, of course, we have food plots.

“The Sandhills (food plots) are warm-season grasses.”

Hall said at Caswell and the Sandhills, WRC crews have created small clearcuts and replanted areas to create more small-game habitat.

“We do spring call counts and fall covey counts,” he said. “We’ve been seeing an upswing in birds.

“There’s more (quail) at Sandhills than Caswell. But some of the locals know where to find birds at Caswell. I’ve talked with guys who hunt at areas that have been thinned or cut over, and they said they’re finding birds.”

At the Sandhills GL, hunters have to be aware that 8,000 acres of the field-trail area are off limits along with the CURE section, but that leaves 47,000 acres open to hunting.

“Rabbit hunting is decent at the Sandhills, too,” Hall said.

The Sandhills contain an extra feature — fox squirrels — as well as gray squirrels.

“Jordan Lake also has good (gray) squirrel hunting,” Hall said. “There’s a lot of nice hardwood bottoms and grown-up clearcuts. There’s opportunities for rabbits, too.”

At Butner-Falls, fields planted with warm-season grasses attract many rabbits and rabbit hunters each year.

“Of course, there’s the (one week January) winter turkey season at two Caswell Game Land and the game lands in Person County (Mayo and Hyco),” Hall noted. “But hunters have to get a permit.”

Western N.C.

Deer

Best game-land bets:
Nantahala, Pisgah, Needmore, South Mountain, Buffalo Creek, Green River, Needmore, Cold Mountain.

Deer hunting in the western counties is an anomaly because some of the state’s top bucks come from the northwestern counties while seeing a deer at a southwestern county is a cause for celebration.

Whitetails, as do most game species, thrive or suffer depending upon habitat. The foothills counties northwest of Winston-Salem bordering southwest Virginia have good habitat — rolling hills, agricultural land, river and creek bottoms and hardwood slopes. Some large state parks also offer deer sanctuaries as does the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But southwest of Asheville many regions have poor habitat and few deer.

A majority of the big national forests (Pisgah and Nantahala) don’t support high deer numbers (or small game) because the major management group, the National Forest Service, is restricted in timber thinning and controlled burns that restore ground cover and provide natural foods.

“The Green River Game land (Polk County), South Mountains Game Land (Burke, Cleveland, McDowell and Rutherford counties) and Thurmond-Chatham Game Land (Alleghany, Wilkes counties) probably have the best deer hunting,” said Joffrey Brooks, a long-time Waynesville WRC biologist. “They are lands (the WRC) owns.

“The Dupont State Forest (Henderson, Transylvania counties) also is pretty good (for deer) but it’s a permit-only area. And the Needmore Game Land (Macon, Swain counties) is fairly good along with some pockets at Pisgah.”

Brooks said the overall deer population at western national forests is on a “downward trend, in some areas because of a lack of active management.

“There’s no timber management, plus there’s a lack of scarlet oaks (that produce acorns for deer to eat). Oaks are a product of (forest) disturbance, and there’s not a lot of that happening.”

He pointed out the NFS hands are tied because environmental groups often sue when timber harvests are considered.

A new game land, Sandy Mush in Buncombe County north of Asheville, opened this year for hunting.

“It’s 2600 acres and is mostly open farm land,” Brooks said. “It has good deer and wild turkey populations. But (the WRC) also is going to try to manage it for small game.”

Sandy Mush habitat is mostly rolling hills.

“Part of it borders the French Broad River,” Brooks said. “We’re just now starting to work on it. It’s got a lot of fescue pasture land. One of the reason we bought it was to get the cows out of the streams. It’s even got some quail, which is pretty rare for up here.”

Mitchell River GL (Surry County) also has good numbers of deer as does Cold Mountain GL (Macon, Swain counties).

Mitchell River (Surry County) and Buffalo Cove (Caldwell, Wilkes counties) are two-year-old additions to the game-lands program and also contain decent deer numbers.

Black Bear Boar

Best game-land bets: Nantahala, Pisgah, South Mountains, Green River, Needmore.

Nantahala and Pisgah national forests total more than 1 million acres and are home to many black bears.

Last year Tar Heel hunters bagged 590 bruins in the western counties. Although bears exist at private lands and often raid urban areas in search of food, bear hunting is best done at game lands, where 55 percent of WNC bruins were taken by hunters during 2005.

Brooks said hunting near bear sanctuaries at those regions is a good idea.

“The areas around the Mount Mitchell sanctuary always produce a lot of bears,” he said.

McDowell, Madison, Mitchell and Yancey counties north of Asheville (with the Mount Mitchell sanctuary almost centered geographically in the Pisgah Forest) produce the most combined game-lands bear kills in the west.

But Graham County’s Nantahala National Forest led the region last year with 79 tagged bears out of 86 total kills in that county.

“We get quite a few bear hunters from Tennessee in Graham, Heywood and parts of Swain County,” Brooks said.

South Mountains and the Needmore Game Land also have a few bears, along with Cold Mountain, which is next to the Shining Rock Wilderness Area.

“They get hunted pretty good, most of it by dog hunters, I’d say 95 percent of the time,” Brooks said. “We have a few bear killed by bow hunters as part of archery season for deer overlaps bear season.”

Brooks said bear hunters also bring their hounds to the “whole Santeetlah (Lake) area.”

The WRC is hoping to get more hunters interested in wild (feral) hogs. These wild hogs destroy rare plants found in the western national forests and root up habitat.

History reveals in 1909 the Whiting Manufacturing Company of England imported 14 European wild hogs, purportedly from the Ural Mountains in Russia. A 600-acre, wooden-fence impound at Hooper’s Bald in Graham County’s Snowbird Mountains was supposed to contain the animals, but they began escaping almost as soon as they were released.

Since then, these “Russian” boars have interbred with native pigs that once were domesticated but also escaped into the wild. These “boars” have populated nearly every corner of western game lands.

“They’re mostly in the far western counties, Graham, Cherokee and Swain and some in Macon,” Brooks said. “They started out on private land, but they started causing problems, particularly in Macon County. We get a lot of complaints from the Cowee area.

“If you like to hog hunt and can find the right land-owner, you can get permission to hunt pretty easily.”

Sizes of mountain wild pigs don’t tend to be as large as their eastern N.C. cousins, but some can reach impressive weights.

“A 300- or 400-pound pig is a big one,” Brooks said, “but I have heard of one that weighed 500 pounds.”

Small Game

Best game-land bets:
Sandy Mush, Needmore, South Mountains, Dupont State Forest, Green River, Shining Rock Wilderness, Cold Mountain.

Small-game hunting choices in the mountains depend upon the type of quarry hunters pursue.

Brooks said Needmore GL and Sandy Mush probably have the best selection of small game, from squirrels to rabbits to a few quail.

Grouse traditionally are the main gamebirds pursued by WNC hunters, but Brooks said a lot of habitat remains unsuitable for ruffs because the majority of forested public land is in Forest Service hands.

“Grouse aren’t doing well at Forest Service land,” he said. “There’s just few quality areas. (NFS) has done a little more burning in recent years, but their timber program is way down.”

Still, he said parts of the national forests have decent grouse habitats at areas where clearcuts were made 20 years ago or less.

“Buffalo Cove (Wilkes and Caldwell counties) may be pretty good for grouse along with Green River Game Land,” Brooks said. “Thurmond-Chatham also has a few grouse.”

Perhaps the best area for grouse is at Dupont State Forest, but hunters must apply for a permit.

“Needmore and Sandy Mush both have pretty good numbers of rabbits,” Brooks said. “Squirrels, depending on mast crops, should be at most game lands.”

Waterfowl

Best game-land bets:
Needmore, Green River.

Duck hunting is spotty at western N.C. public lands.

“Some places at the Needmore Game Land could have some good jump shooting for wood ducks,” Brooks said. “The lower end of the Little Tennessee river runs through Needmore, and some hunters do float trips there. It’s the same for the French Broad (River).

The WRC manages no impoundments in the west, but Brooks said the agency is trying to acquire part of the John’s River in District 8 in Burke and McDowell counties.

“It’s swampy low land,” he said. “It’s not listed as game lands this year, but I believe we’ll establish some impoundments there in the future.”