Photo courtesy of NDA
The National Deer Association recently announced Botetourt’s Jon Cooper as its 2024 NDA Deer Manager of the Year Award winner, an award presented to a person or persons who demonstrate outstanding commitment to sound management of deer habitat and populations.
Cooper is on the board of the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources and a director for the Appalachian Habitat Association. He actively manages his family’s 10,000-acre contiguous tract of land in the mountains of north Botetourt County with one guiding principle: habitat.
“I’m deeply honored and very humbled,” Cooper said in a recent interview. “I totally didn’t expect the award at all… I’ve managed land out of the love and the joy and the fulfillment that it brings and not any hardware that it brings.”
The NDA shared on its website that since the 1980s, Cooper and his family have worked tirelessly developing a plan and implementing management strategies that have truly transformed the land. Despite the poor soil, rocky landscapes, and older forests, Cooper began improving the land for deer and turkey by managing 100-acre blocks at a time. Through prescribed fire, forest stand improvement, invasive species control and food plots, each block provides everything a deer would need throughout the year including different timber stands and multiple vegetation types for fawning cover, forage and bedding cover.
“It’s an incredible honor for us to be recognized for this award. Awards certainly aren’t why you improve land. You improve land for the resource, to pass it on to the next generation and leave it better than when you found it,” Cooper recently shared with the NDA. “Thank you to my Uncle Jerry who gave me the freedom to strive to increase the property’s carrying capacity and to my brother Matt for his help, support and showing me what a true woodsman is. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the NRCS’s Andy Rosenberger for helping to equip us in many ways to manage land.”
Cooper then added, “Thank you especially to Dr. Craig Harper, Kip Adams, Matt Ross, Ben Westfall and the whole NDA organization for prioritizing deer management, collecting an unbelievable amount of data and equipping landowners and managers with the knowledge and practical ways we can manage our landscape in order to promote and improve the resource we all love.”
According to the NDA, numerous NDA members expressed an interest in taking their knowledge to the next level, becoming advanced deer managers and hunters. NDA responded by creating its certification programs, including personal instruction (through the Deer Steward program) and property certification (through NDA’s Land Certification program). In 2024, Cooper was involved in the field portion of the NDA’s Deer Steward 2 course in northern Botetourt and his hard work and commitment provided model examples for the attendees.
“(We had) 30 people in that class,” Cooper said. “I believe there were eight different states represented that came and took the class and passed it for their certification. It wasn’t me really hosting or teaching the class, but we’ve done a lot of work on our property for both deer and turkey.
“They were coming to see some of the enhancements as well as teaching on some of the different areas that could be improved better and also just to help those land managers and land owners better manage their property. It was a humbling experience just to host that Steward Level 2 course and it was a good time.”
The Deer Steward course in broken down into three separate courses (1-3) with the first course being available exclusively online. The second course (Deer Steward 2), hosted by Cooper last year, teaches students how to apply the principles learned in Level 1 through hands-on and field experience. The third and final course (Deer Steward 3) must be earned through an individual’s long-term service to NDA, and/or wild deer. To learn more about these courses, visit https://deerassociation.com/steward.
~ Fincastle Herald staff report
