A Chat, Over the Fence, with John Odenkirk
by Mary-Sherman Willis
John Odenkirk was driving back home to Rappahannock from his office at the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources in Fredericksburg when I caught up with him. A thirty-year veteran at the department, John is an expert in fisheries management (see his research on the feared—and delicious—invasive species, the northern snakehead). Raised in Fairfax, he grew up fishing on the Thornton River with his father on weekends.
But since he came back to northern Virginia from grad school at Tennessee Tech, deer hunting has been his passion. “I love to be outside,” he said. “I’m sort of an impatient person. My mother and my wife can never figure out how I can stay in my tree stand all day. But while I’m doing that, I’m seeing things…squirrels and rabbits and birds. I’m thinking about whatever it is I want to think about. It’s the solitude that I really enjoy.”
The general hunting season ends soon, on January 2. I asked John what he noticed this year, as a hunter and field biologist, in Fauquier and Rappahannock . Hunters, in Rappahannock, report lots of “ancient” does, five or 6 years old, he said. “That tells me … we are hunting a fairly unexploited population” close to the Park.
“You still have plenty of deer in Fauquier,” he said, “but the numbers are much more in the context of sustainability and the carrying capacity of the land. We used to have a tree stand in Fauquier 20 years ago and you could spend a half-day and see a hundred deer. It’s fun if you’re a hunter, but it’s not sustainable.”
This rebalancing is the result of years of wildlife management abetted by carefully regulated hunting and reporting from hunters. “We’re dealing with Quality Deer Management, QDM, in which we analyze deer, try to harvest does, pass up smaller bucks, get the herd sex ratio desirable to prevent fawns getting born late.”
“And you’re also creating the potential for trophy bucks. Most hunters actually seek trophy bucks,” he said, adding that he shot a “monster buck”unexpectedly last year not far from his home near Battle Run.“He was about six-and-a-half years old.”
“So you’ve got two [goals]. It’s the well-being of the herd and increasing trophy bucks. It’s kind of the same philosophy as managing a herd of cattle,” he adds, meaning that human intervention is at work to improve the herd.
Such a clinical approach to wildlife management is not all that Odenkirk is about. For all his love of the hunt and his rationale for shooting deer, “I don’t enjoy pulling the trigger and seeing the animal die. But hopefully I make that very quick.
“And always thank the animal when I get to it,” he explains. “It’s a little spiritual thing. I appreciate what that animal’s given me. I hope I can do it justice in the way I treat it and how I share that bounty with my friends and family.”
We encourage you to watch Lucas Zutt’s informative video interview of John OdenKirk, entitled The Causes and Effects of Hunting