Two of my favorites are Little North Mountain WMA near Goshen and the Powhatan WMA in Powhatan County. I have taken more deer at Powhatan, mainly because it is close enough for a day run (a long day). When we went every year to Goshen it was a week long trip, we would primitive camp and it would be 3-6 plus wives sometimes of us going. Huge fun, not everybody bagged one every time. My dad passed at the end of 2007 and I went with a couple of friends for rifle season in the fall of '08. It was the last time for me it just was not the same without my dad.
My wife and I went up there after my mom died in 2015 at the end of August just riding around for a few days and we ended up going into the town of Goshen and talking with a young couple that had taken over the restaurant there in town and having a cup of coffee, asking them about the folks who were there before them, they did not know a lot but it was interesting to hear how things had changed.
They had the gate closed at the WMA entrance we used to use and the place was 64,000 acres, we used to drive in a mile or so and camp and then you would walk a looong way to hunt. We were not up for a hike up the side of the mountain to see the old camp site so we went to town instead.
The restaurant back in the late 90s and early 2000s would be humming during hunting season, a lot of hunters going in the National Forest (very close by) and Little North Mountain. It was interesting because the owners then had the restaurant, a deli, a gas station, and wait for it, a tanning salon in this small building. She would sell extremely good fresh baked pies every day for $8 a pie and sell the dickens out of them. Everything but the restaurant was not operating when we went back in '15. The young couple did not know the previous owners nor what it was like before, they had just heard stories. Anyway, that is how it was.
