West Virginia Outdoors Audio Playlist

Chris Lawrence opens fall turkey season with the three season segments and a correction: hunters who tagged out in the spring may still hunt fall turkey. Tournament angler Will Diffenbaugh discusses back-to-back Ohio River Challenge championship wins with his father, the Toyota Series Northern Division, the live scope debate, and a string of boat troubles. Boone County bowhunter Bill Browning describes taking a typical 10-point buck on October 3, after a third year of pursuing it. Alan McCormick then recounts harvesting a boar, a buck, and a bear within eight days of the archery opener, including the boar and bear on public reclaimed strip mine land.

Chris Lawrence opens October with two big buck stories from Lewis County. Eleven-year-old Gavin James and his father Todd describe the 11-point buck Gavin took at 24 yards on the first weekend of the season, a deer they had tracked for three years and expect to green score in the 160s. Upshur County hunter Kyler Doss recounts his 14-point typical, with double and triple brow tines, taken on his anniversary. Ashton Berdine, West Virginia state director of the Conservation Fund, then discusses the 276-acre tract added to the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in Raleigh County, open to hunting, and the 38,000-acre Aurora timberland easement that includes 15,000 acres of public access.

Chris Lawrence opens the first Saturday of bow season with three major stories. Investigative outdoor writer Stephen Ziegler of Rack Junkies details his reporting on DNR wildlife resource specialist Jeffrey Brinker, who pleaded no contest to three game law violations in Hampshire County Magistrate Court — including illegal possession of a 20-plus-inch trophy buck — but was fined just $1,119 rather than the $10,500 mandated by West Virginia's enhanced trophy replacement statute, and has faced no license suspension. Ziegler and Lawrence discuss DNR Director Brett McMillan's public response, which Ziegler calls legally inaccurate, and Ziegler previews additional pending stories including a disputed poaching case against private citizen Larry Jackson. DNR wildlife disease specialist Ethan Barton then addresses the late-season EHD outbreak centered in Mingo County, explaining why cooler temperatures represent a natural endpoint, and drawing a sharp distinction between EHD's recoverable population impacts and CWD's slow, permanent toll. DNR special projects leader Avery Echevarria closes the show with the 2026 Mast Survey — white oak above average, soft mast up 24%, hard mast down from last year's exceptional crop — projecting better deer movement and higher harvest than 2025.

Chris Lawrence broadcasts live from Stonewall Resort State Park in Lewis County for the DNR's annual National Hunting and Fishing Day celebration. DNR Director Brett McMillan and Wildlife Chief Paul Johansson join Lawrence to break down the economic weight of hunting and fishing in West Virginia — 598,000 licensed hunters and anglers generating more than $41 million in annual spending and 2.1% of the state's GDP — and explain how Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson excise taxes generate $11 to $12 million in federal conservation funding for the state each year. Newly promoted Colonel Dave Trader of the DNR Law Enforcement section discusses the swift water rescue and underwater drone technology deployed during recent flooding events, the division's canine corps, and an ongoing hiring push to reach full staffing of 126 officers. Chef Marion Holanger of Little Mountain Creek Lodge at Pipestem State Park previews the Taste of State Parks luncheon — an Appalachian-focused wild game menu featuring deer, rabbit, duck, elk, and wild boar. Mike Booth of the On the Limb Podcast closes the show, previewing the podcast's three live recordings at the event.

Chris Lawrence marks opening day of squirrel season with a full hour alongside Dave Arnold, co-founder of Class VI River Runners — which became Adventures on the Gorge — and one of the pioneers of the commercial whitewater rafting industry in West Virginia. Arnold traces the history of Gauley Season from its scrappy origins in a 1956 Safeway trailer to the congressional legislation championed by Congressman Nick Rahall that made downstream recreation an official project purpose of Summersville Dam, securing the annual fall water releases that now draw rafters from around the world. He also shares the inside story of the New River Gorge's elevation from national river to national park and preserve in 2020 — crediting Senators Capito and Manchin — and explains how the preserve designation protected hunting rights that nearly derailed the effort. The conversation also covers fishing on the Gauley's flat water below Swift, the economic boom across Fayetteville, Hinton, and surrounding communities, and Arnold's observation that the National Park designation benefited local towns more than the rafting industry itself.

Chris Lawrence opens the show with Tyler Harmon of Ravenswood, who recounts landing a new state record blue catfish — 72.75 pounds — from the Ohio River's Ravenswood Pool on a spontaneous Friday evening trip with his four-year-old son and father, kept alive overnight in a tackle shop tank before being officially weighed and released. DNR wildlife biologist Keith Krantz then joins for a wide-ranging conversation on West Virginia's squirrel season, which opens to youth hunters this weekend and to the general public the following Saturday — covering mast crop conditions, squirrel biology, the decline of squirrel hunting participation, the woodsmanship skills the sport builds in young hunters, and the debate between shotgun and rifle. Paul Redford of Chief Logan State Park Lodge closes the show previewing guided elk viewing tours at Tomlin Wildlife Management Area running weekends from September 13th through October 22nd, with morning and afternoon departures and a new elk observation tower on site.

On this episode of West Virginia Outdoors, Chris talks with Ron Bierstine on the current state of fishing in Lake Ontario (or Lake America), and Colin Carpenter from the DNR Bear Project talks about the opening day of bear hunting season.

On this episode of West Virginia Outdoors, Chris talks with Steve Rauch from the WV DNR about the upcoming hunting seasons for doves and geese, and Larry Nibert with West Virginia Experience talks about the impact of excessive rain on commercial rafting and fishing.

Chris Lawrence continues the summer's remarkable pumpkinseed sunfish story, interviewing Robert Glover of Morgantown — the third angler to break the state record in less than a month — who caught a 9.76-inch, three-quarter-pound fish at Cheat Lake using a long-rod drift technique with a nightcrawler. Lawrence notes the record has now changed hands three times before it could even make the full news cycle. The show then shifts to deer season preparation with Chris Ashley of Mineral Wells, a dedicated whitetail hunter who was awarded Buck of the Year by the West Virginia Big Bucks Facebook page for a six-and-a-half-year-old deer harvested during last year's EHD outbreak. Ashley details his year-round approach to habitat management — including clover food plots on more than 500 acres across three properties, invasive removal, and protein supplement tubs that have helped deer populations rebound dramatically in EHD-hit areas of the Mid-Ohio Valley.

Chris Lawrence opens with a tribute to DNR Commissioner and West Virginia Trappers Association legend Janet Hamrick Hodge, who passed away overnight after a private battle with advanced cancer — read her resignation letter to the commission just days earlier. The show then tells the remarkable story of West Virginia's first-ever state record pumpkinseed sunfish, set by Ken Neher of Morgantown from a public pond in Preston County after a year and a half of targeted pursuit — a record that was broken within two weeks by Sierra Adamson of Beverly, who caught hers on a nightcrawler in the Tygart River in Elkins, and has since been broken a third time at Cheat Lake. DNR furbearer biologist Holly Morris closes the show explaining the science behind the Natural Resources Commission's decision to increase the otter trapping bag limit from one to two — stopping short of three due to population modeling showing the risk of regional extirpation — and addresses how the agency handles otter nuisance complaints and accidental catches above the limit.