This Saturday, Oct. 14, marks the opening of the special early archery season for deer in the Southern Zone. The season runs until the day prior to the regular (firearms) season opener of November 18, or for 35 days. Bowhunters can also take advantage of the special nine-day late primitive season that runs December 11-19, giving them a total of 44 days in which to hunt. That's one heck of a deal for $35, which is what the total cost of a basic hunting license plus the archery license is, or less than a dollar a day.
New York archery hunting participation has increased dramatically since the first special bow season, held a half century ago, but it is now in decline. Why? Hunters as a group are aging. A study by Cornell showed that the peak year for younger deer hunters, age 26-35, occurred in 1989. By 1997 that trend had reversed as the hunters aged and fewer young hunters entered the pool. There was a pronounced spike in the percentage of hunters age 36-55. Due to normal aging effects, older hunters tend to hunt less and, also, see their ability to partake in more demanding activities – which bowhunting is – become increasing more limited.
Another factor is fewer non-rural residents are hunting. In 1987 the percentage of deer hunters living in rural areas was 42 percent, but by 1997 that figure had jumped to 67 percent. While this had many implications, the primary ones were the steadily shrinking access to hunting land and the decline of quality employment opportunities in rural upstate areas. That trend has only gotten worse. I won't bore you with all the figures and details, but deer hunting in New York is going through a major change, one that will soon require some fancy footwork and probably some rather drastic changes by the Department of Environmental Conservation.
While the success rates of bowhunters have increased, thanks in part to technology, bowhunting by itself is but a small part of effectively managing the state's renewable deer population. For all its advances, bowhunting just can't compete with the effectiveness of firearms hunting when it comes to harvesting a sufficient number of deer to keep the herd under control. However, in the past decades of high deer populations, firearms hunting, if unchecked, could result in too many deer being harvested. So the DEC controlled that by issuing adequate numbers of permits to take an extra antlerless deer. It also installed a special late muzzleloader season in which either antlered or antlerless deer could be taken. Sounds okay so far, right? But a recent fly in the ointment is beginning to taint this scheme and make it less effective. Remember, earlier we mentioned shrinking access to hunting land and the overall aging of hunters in general. Those two factors are beginning to cause deer management problems that are increasingly proving that longer seasons and permits can't reverse the trend. Statistics and studies have shown that, regardless of the season length, today's older hunters tend to spend about the same amount of time actively hunting deer. Fewer lands to hunt on means more hunters concentrated there and more deer taken from increasingly smaller areas. Meanwhile, areas not being adequately hunted see the deer densities and related problems increasing. So issuing more permits to lower the deer population is increasingly less effective.
Of all the various tools and special seasons to harvest deer in the state, it would seem that bowhunting is the lone one that might – I stress "might" – have the most potential for keeping the deer population somewhat under control. Arrows are a short-range projectile. Shooting one makes virtually no noise. And bowhunters tend to hunt from stationary stands rather than walking. However, there just aren't enough dedicated bowhunters today to harvest an adequate number of deer each year to keep the herd numbers on these problematic lands from increasing. And as license sales indicate, the number of bowhunters – and hunters in general – is in decline.
Historically, each time the state offered a new hunting opportunity, license sales and participation jumped. This has been true of legalizing compound bows, handguns, muzzleloaders and, in increasingly more shotgun areas, rifles. However, as land access for rifle, handgun and muzzleloader hunters continues to shrink, the initial positive effects are generally short-lived. And a decline in bowhunter numbers certainly won't help offset the simple truth that DEC is progressively losing its most important deer management tool – hunters.
What is the answer? To date, all experiments and studies involving deer contraceptives as a possible solution have shown that it is both extremely expensive and ineffective. Paid sharpshooters, killing deer over spotlighted bait at night, is also expensive and unsavory to many. Like it or not, we need to implement something that will, at least for a while, resurrect interest and participation by more hunters – especially those who are drifting away from the activity because of age and lack of places they can hunt.
One of the benefits of my thirty-something years as an outdoor writer and editor is I've had the opportunity to see a wide array of deer management techniques that have been used in other states and provinces. Some of these worked very well, others did not. Right now, New York's is approaching the "did not" category. I've given this a considerable amount of thought, as well as picking the brains of deer management people all over the country whom I admire and trust, and a partial solution has surfaced. New York State needs to install a trial crossbow season, and soon.
Now, before every hardcore bowhunter (of which I'm one) in the state starts boiling, let me explain why I believe this to be a valid consideration.
In every state where crossbows were made legal for deer hunting, three things occurred. First was that it increased license sales as well as producing more hunters. These were generally not new hunters, but rather hunters who were increasingly hunting less and less, mainly due to age, decreases in free time, poor health, or in some cases, women and youths who weren't strong enough to pull a traditional vertical bow. Next was that the increase in crossbow use allowed for more hunters to hunt land where firearms were either impractical or not allowed – in other words, the areas were the bulk of the deer overpopulation was occurring. Lastly, it had no negative impact on the success rates of traditional bowhunters, something that some bowhunting organizations conveniently overlook when opposing crossbow use.
Whether New York ever legalizes crossbows, or, for that matter, adopts some new deer management techniques or approaches remains to be seen. But the time is rapidly approaching when those that have been effective for so long will largely be ready for the scrap pile.