In the Public Domain

Three Sisters of the Northern Panhandle

By Rob Hilliard

HUNTING IS LIMITED DUE TO THE SIZE OF THE AREA.
You couldn’t miss the bold type. When I set out to research my next Wildlife Management Area visit to West Virginia, that was the message posted on the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources web site under the description of each of the District 1 (Northern Panhandle) WMAs in Brooke, Ohio, and Marshall counties. I was immediately taken aback by the statement, nearly offended. What a shallow perspective! What a lack of imagination! After all, it’s common knowledge that—say it with me now, guys—SIZE DOESN’T MATTER!
But let’s stay focused on hunting here. The three WMAs that I was looking at are similar in more ways than one. Each was the only WMA in its respective county. Each consists of little more than a few chunks of property surrounding lakes, a fact that gives them their names: Castleman’s Run Lake, Bear Rocks Lake, and Burches Run Lake. They all have similar topography: hillsides sloping down to the water’s edge. In addition, according to WV DNR Assistant District Game Biologist Steve Rauch, the lakes were all created in the same early 1960s time period.
And, yes, they’re all small. In fact, Castleman’s Run is the largest of the three at a minuscule 486 acres. In a way, it almost seems like they were cranked out of a photocopier with the “Reduce” button on, each exactly the same, but downsized from the original.
Well, OK, they’re not exactly the same. As I found out on a recent turkey scouting trip -- accomplished under the guise of a late-season grouse hunt -- there are some key differences between these Three Sisters of the Northern Panhandle. For starters, Castleman’s Run and Bear Rocks are about 80 percent forested cover, while Burches Run is more like 90 percent forestland. That may not seem like much, but you’ve got to start somewhere when you’re trying to tell triplets apart.
In reality, there are some noticeable differences. Because its larger size gives a little more flexibility, there is more active habitat management underway at Castleman’s Run, which is located just south of the college town of Bethany. Rauch noted that DNR has recently been working with funding provided by the Ruffed Grouse Society to develop better grouse habitat in the northeastern section of the WMA. This consists mainly of some forest edge cutting and pine plantings for thermal cover. Rauch was quick to point out, though, that this is still “early in the management process” and that it might not pay dividends until several years have elapsed. Unfortunately, the lack of birds found by my Weimaraner, Hunter, on this February hunt backed up this observation.
Nonetheless, Castleman’s doesn’t need any further habitat improvement to attract turkeys. When a small (must be something in the water around here!) flock wandered out of the woods in front of us, I forgot my disappointment over the lack of grouse and remembered the real purpose of my trip. From tracks I found on other parts of the WMA, it looks like the birds with the beards are using the site to its fullest.
My next stop was Bear Rocks Lake, which is located just a couple miles south of the sleepy National Road (US Route 40) town of Valley Grove. One advantage of the small size and proximity of the sites is that you can easily cover all three of them in one day -- although you may occasionally find, like I did, that you’ve forgotten which one you’re at. As expected, it returned similar results. There were no little birds to be found, but plenty of big birds roaming the wooded hillsides above the four ponds that the WMA contains. Bear Rocks also has a little bit more fallow field habitat and some grain and hay farming that the other sites don’t. That would account for the rabbit that we kicked out here, although it doesn’t begin to explain why I missed him.
After assuring myself that the grape-entangled woods held plenty of turkeys, as well as a healthy deer population, it was time to head off for Burches Run Lake. By this time I had seen enough of the other two sites to realize that, though small in stature, they were big on hunting opportunities. I was feeling vindicated in my earlier bristling over the size perception of the WMAs and was fully ready to make it three-for-three when I pulled into the Burches Run parking area.
The only problem was that Burches Run Lake WMA is -- how shall I say this delicately? -- small. Tiny. Diminutive, minute, Lilliputian, wee, pint-sized. Really, I
mean, it’s just not very big. It consists of just a thin band of forest around the perimeter
of the lake, and to make matters worse, what little land is available is mostly vertical. It
was like hunting in an elevator shaft.
Even Rauch was forced to concede that “99 percent of the activity there is fishing and we
focus our attention according to that.” He speculated that the only reason such a small
site was created in the first place was that there was a need identified for public fishing
access in that area. When I asked him about turkeys, he admitted that there were almost
certainly no resident flocks and that any I might find there would be just passing through.
Still, he pointed out that the marshy area along the upstream end of the lake does attract some mallards and wood ducks during the fall flight.

But I wasn’t buying it. This place was just too small to get the job done. I would just
take one quick picture and get out of here. I looked through the viewfinder, crooked my
finger to snap the shutter - Wait! What was that movement in the background? I pulled
the camera down as a herd of about a dozen deer drifted out of the woods, crossed onto
the iced-over lake, and disappeared into the marsh. Too small indeed!

So it turns out that, here in the Northern Panhandle at least, even the smallest speck on
the map is big enough to hold a few deer and some waterfowl. Sure, fishing is the main
focus at each of these sites, and the trout and catfish stocking at all three lakes takes
precedence over hunting (Bear Rocks even has a fishing pier on one of its ponds that is
dedicated from March to May to children’s and handicapped access only). But there can
be some advantages to that. For starters, Rauch indicated that there is very light hunting
pressure at all three areas after the first couple of days of each season. Also, because the
habitat is fairly uniform within each WMA, there are no real hot spots -- any part of the
site is just about as good as the next. And for deer and turkey at least, just about as good
looked pretty darn good to me.

If you do decide to make a trip to any of the three WMAs, you may want to stock up on
grub and other necessities before you go. Other than a few scattered bars, pizza shops,
and gas stations (my personal food source of choice), I didn’t see a whole lot of places to
chow down. The Chambers General Store in Bethany, just north of the Castleman’s Run
Lake WMA, is one place to grab a snack and it’s also the check station you’ll need to
visit if you manage to bag a deer or turkey. If you want more food choices or need some
last-second ammo, you’ll need to head to Wheeling or Wellsburg or one of the other
bigger towns located a few miles west along the Ohio River.

So is it true that “HUNTING IS LIMITED DUE TO THE SIZE OF THE AREA?” Well,
these WMAs are unquestionably small. And they’re similar almost to the point of being
interchangeable, with little diversity of habitat or game. But I know in the spring there
will be gobbles echoing down the hollows and rolling out across those lakes. In the fall,
herds of deer will be funneled along the same hollows into brushy openings on ridge tops.
And as ice forms along the edges of the lakes, migrating flocks of ducks and geese will
drop out of the sky onto the open water. Little or not, the game is there. In the end, the
hunting opportunities at these Three Sisters of the Northern Panhandle are limited only by your imagination.

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Editor’s note:If there is a particular public hunting site within the Ohio Valley Outdoors coverage area of eastern Ohio, northern West Virginia, and western Pennsylvania that you would like to see covered in this column, please drop us a line and let us know about it. Your suggestions are always welcome.