Virginia hunters experienced a successful 2025-26 deer hunting season, with the state’s latest harvest report showing impressive numbers across all categories.
Hunters throughout Virginia reported taking 227,302 deer during the 2025-2026 hunting seasons, which included early September antlerless seasons for both firearms and urban archery. This total represents roughly a 10% jump from the previous year’s count of 205,759 deer over the same period, and exceeds the 10-year average of 198,666 by 14%.
The season’s harvest breakdown showed 108,163 antlered bucks, 14,631 button bucks, 973 shed bucks, and 103,535 does, which made up 45.5% of the total. Archery hunters accounted for 32,730 deer, muzzleloader hunters took 51,472, and firearms hunters harvested 143,100. An additional 2,636 deer were reported during Youth and Apprentice Weekend.
In areas where hunting deer with dogs remains legal, canines assisted in taking half of all deer killed during firearms season and represented 35% of the annual harvest in those counties. Late antlerless seasons contributed approximately 2,000 additional antlerless deer to the overall total.
Among the 177,541 deer licenses sold statewide, 99,351 license holders reported successful harvests, creating a 56% success rate. Officials note this percentage may actually be higher since some license holders may have focused exclusively on turkey hunting.
Several hunting regulation changes implemented for the past season, particularly in firearms season west of the Blue Ridge, aimed to expand hunting opportunities and boost doe harvest to achieve population management goals. These modifications appear to have succeeded, with buck harvest increasing 8% while doe harvest jumped 22% in affected areas.
Interestingly, daily deer harvest rates exceeded the previous year’s pace from archery season’s opening day forward, despite abundant acorn crops across much of the state. Typically, plentiful mast crops reduce deer movement and harvest numbers since deer don’t need to travel far for food.
The state attempted to gather new data about buck antler spread to estimate yearling buck percentages, but technical problems prevented complete data collection. This information will be available in future reports once hunters update their GoOutdoors applications.
Statistics show most successful hunters take relatively few deer, with nearly three-quarters of successful licensed hunters harvesting two or fewer deer. The majority take only one deer, while just 1.4% reach the maximum limit of six deer. Only about 2% of successful hunters exceed annual bag limits through bonus, DMAP, DPOP, and DCAP tags.
Data tracking bucks with eight or more antler points suggests an improving age structure and increased hunter selectivity over time. The state began maintaining antler point records in 2004 with electronic reporting options and switched to full electronic reporting in 2021.
Successful hunters averaged 2.09 deer each in 2025, slightly higher than most other whitetail states where the average stays just under two deer per hunter. These calculations don’t include license-exempt hunters due to lack of unique identification numbers.
