Pulaski County, Virginia

The county is defined by alternating ridges and valleys carved by the New River and its tributaries. Elevations climb from roughly 1,800 feet on valley floors to over 3,500 feet on major ridges including Draper Mountain and Big Walker Mountain along the western edge. Forest cover dominates — primarily chestnut oak, red oak, and hickory on ridge flanks and upper slopes, with bottomland hardwoods (sycamore, silver maple, box elder) lining the river corridor. Claytor Lake, a 4,500-acre reservoir on the New River, sits in the central county and creates productive shoreline edge habitat. Valley floors carry hay fields, pasture, and scattered corn plots that pull deer out of timber during morning and evening feeding periods.

Pressure is moderate overall but concentrated at access points. NF tracts see a predictable surge during the general firearms opener, drawing hunters from New River Valley towns (Pulaski, Dublin, Radford) and from the Virginia Tech community in adjacent Montgomery County. Valley private farms under hunting club leases can be competitive, with most desirable parcels claimed well before October. The more remote ridge country inside the National Forest — requiring off-trail hiking of a mile or more — holds significantly lower pressure throughout the season and is the best option for public land hunters seeking undisturbed deer.

Pulaski County is in Virginia's Western deer management zone. General firearms season runs from the first Saturday of November through the first Saturday of January; archery season opens in early October and runs through the firearms season close (with the early archery period before the firearms opener being the most productive for private land bow hunters). An early muzzleloader season, typically two weeks in mid-October, also applies. Hunters are allowed two bucks per license year. Virginia DWR's western zone antler restriction program generally requires that at least one of a hunter's two buck tags be used on a buck with a minimum of three antler points on one side — verify the exact current standard with DWR before the season, as rules are subject to annual revision. The Western zone runs more conservative antlerless harvest allowances than Central or Coastal zones, reflecting lower baseline deer density in mountain terrain; antlerless deer may be taken during open seasons with a valid deer combination license.

Wild turkey are arguably Pulaski County's strongest game species — the oak-ridge and field-edge mix supports robust flocks, and spring gobbler hunting on both NF and private land is consistently productive. Black bear are present throughout the NF ridge country; the county falls within Virginia's western bear zone and DWR runs a November bear season. Ruffed grouse persist in the higher-elevation NF areas, though populations are substantially thinner than they were two or three decades ago and grouse should not be a primary draw. Eastern gray squirrel hunting is excellent in the mature oak-hickory stands, particularly in good mast years. Claytor Lake and the New River corridor support wood ducks, mallards, and migrating diving ducks, making the county a secondary but functional waterfowl destination for hunters who can access the water.

The ridge-to-valley topography creates well-defined deer travel funnels where hunters who scout the transition zones between National Forest timber and valley agriculture — especially saddles and benches on the upper third of major ridges — can intercept deer moving between bedding and feeding areas during the rut. Claytor Lake's wooded shorelines are a consistently underutilized hunting zone: deer regularly work the lake's timber edges during November, and relatively few hunters think to target this terrain specifically.