By BEN GARRETT
TnHunting.Com Publisher

After several days of unseasonably warm temperatures that often saw the mercury push 70 degrees in the middle of the afternoon and seemed to hamper deer movement, temperatures are expected to drop closer to normal for this time of year — nighttime lows in the lower 30s and daytime highs in the upper 40s — tonight and into tomorrow, and last throughout the weekend. That's good hunting weather.

The problem is that if you hunt in Unit B, you aren't hunting this weekend. You aren't hunting because there isn't a hunting season open on your end of the state. While the rest of the Volunteer State has toted their rifles to the woods all week and will continue toting them throughout the upcoming weekend, taking advantage of the last days of the rut's peak, those who hunt East Tennessee will be sitting this one out.

And when gun season closes Sunday, muzzleloader seeason will immediately open on Monday in Units A and L, giving hunters with time off during the week opportunities to chase deer for another week. Unit B will be sitting that one out, too, as East Tennessee's muzzleloader season doesn't open until December 8, and then closes almost as soon as it opens on December 10.

If you don't see the sense behind the extra hunting days in Middle and West Tennessee, you aren't alone. A large and varying segment of the hunting population — from wildlife biologists not affiliated with TWRA to NWTF chapter presidents to scores of hunters from Unit B — are starting to ask a simple question: "Why?"

Why indeed.

Hunters in the 37 counties that make up Unit B have long felt that their unit has been the proverbial unwanted stepchild of TWRA. This unit, conspiracy theorists in the hunting community complain, is ignored while special attention is paid by TWRA to Units A and L.

That logic probably wouldn't hold up when put to the test, but with things like unreasonable season legnth disparities in the hunting regulations, it's going to be hard to convice Unit B hunters that their argument is null and void.

TWRA's logic, apparently, is that there are fewer deer in most Unit B counties than there are in most Unit A and Unit L counties, and keeping the hunting seasons shorter prevents more deer from being killed in areas that do not need more deer killed.

Theoretically, the logic is sound. But like that redheaded stepchild theory, when put to the test of facts, it is hard to see the legitimacy of the argument.

Harvest numbers provided annually by the agency seem to suggest that most hunters hang up their guns after the Thanksgiving weekend (which, as it turns out, is about the same time that the season legnth disparities begin; From the opener of archery season in September through the opener of gun season in November, hunting days are equal among the three units. From Thanksgiving weekend through the end of the second gun segment in January, however, deer hunters in Units A and L have 16 more days in the woods than hunters in Unit B, including two full weekends).

Take, for example, last year's harvest results. In TWRA's Region IV, which includes most of the counties falling within Unit B, only 178 deer were harvested across the entire region on the Saturday of the muzzleloader season's second segment. Compare that to the Saturday of the first segment, when 844 deer were harvested across the region. And only 151 deer were killed across the region on the second Saturday of the second gun segment, and 105 on the third Saturday. Compare that to the second Saturda of the gun season's first segment, when 621 deer were killed across the region.

The same decline holds true across the state, as the daily harvest in 2005 had dropped from around 5,000 per day in the second weekend of the gun season's first segment to around 2,000 per day in the second weekend of the second segment.

In other words: There aren't many deer being killed late in the season; a few more days probably aren't going to make too much of a difference.

But then there are several things about the deer seasons on the eastern-most end of the state that do not make much sense, which is surprising since, overall, TWRA does a great job of managing Tennessee's wildlife and hunting seasons.

For example, the muzzleloader season, which has three antlerless days built in to help Unit B hunters take more does. Rare is the hunter who would disagree with the assessment that the deer herd across the state, and especially in East Tennessee, has a buck-to-doe ratio that has spiraled out-of-control, hurting the health of the herd and the overall quality of hunting. To combat this (and to reduce the herd in areas of the state where deer have become a nuisance), TWRA is allowing many more does to be harvested by hunters. In Unit L, for example, hunters can kill three does per day every day that a season is open. In Unit A, up to four does can be harvested during the muzzleloader season, and both quota and nonquota antlerless hunts abound.

But in good ol' Unit B, hunters are allowed a grant total of three does. And that's only if they partake in the vastly under-utilized archery season. The great majority of hunters that do not take a bow to the woods are allowed just one doe, and only then if they decide to pass up the opportunity for a buck with a muzzleloader, because Unit B's muzzleloader season has a limit of only one deer. That deer may be antlerless, but only during the first three days of the season. How many hunters are going to choose to end their season by shooting a doe on opening day? Not many. Would it be too much to ask for a bag limit of one doe and one buck during the muzzleloader season?

Unit B's few-and-far between antlerless quota hunts seem to make about as much sense as the muzzleloader bag limit. For example, a quota hunt for does has been added to Fentress County, where 100 doe tags are issued for December 16-18. Yet, neighboring Scott County to the east does not have a quota antlerless hunt, despite the fact that the deer herd there is estimated by TWRA to be twice the size of Fentress County's herd (10,000 in Scott County; 4,500 in Fentress County).

Perhaps TWRA does have the best interests of Unit B's deer herd at heart. Suffice it to say that their deer biologists know more about herd management than the group of local yokels gathered around the coffee pot at the local fill-er-up on the way to the woods on a Saturday morning will ever know. And those who are in favor of shorter seasons in Unit B would say that we should look at other states, many of which have significantly shorter deere seasons than even Unit B, and be happy to have what we have. But Unit B hunters look at their $130 license fee, and the $130 license fee that Units A and L hunters pay, and compare that with the lower bag limits and shorter seasons here, and they become hard to convince. And who can blame them?

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