ENJOYING THE OUTDOORS: BOWHUNTING CAN GET THE JOB DONE

Bowhunting appears to be an efficient means of deer management -- more efficient than may have been earlier thought, according to the results of a study.

While hunting deer with bow and arrow is clearly seen as a greater challenge than firearms hunting, one charge of critics -- particularly among anti-hunting groups -- has been that a high percentage of deer shot by archery hunters are only wounded, left to die and, thus, wasted. An extensive, three-year investigation of bowhunts in Minnesota shows that not to be the case.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources conducted a detailed study of bowhunting results at the 53,000-acre Camp Ripley military reservation near Brainerd, Minn. It involved the interviews of more than 6,000 bowhunters, extensive ground searches and infrared video surveys, the latter to determine the number of deer killed by bowhunters and left unretrieved in the field.

The findings were that 87 percent of deer hit by bowhunters' arrows were recovered.

The maximum wounding loss rate, consequently, was seen to be 13 percent. That 13 percent, however, included both deer that were struck but recovered as well as those that may have died. Therefore, the actual loss may have been notably less than even 13 percent.

An interesting discovery in the study accounts for some instances in which deer might have been considered lost, but in fact were not. A number of whitetails were arrowed, but not recovered by the hunters that shot them. What really happened, however, is that they were subsequently killed and retrieved by other hunters.

"It was when successful hunters were being interviewed at the same time that their deer were being registered at the check station that we discovered some of those deer had also been hit by a hunter other than the person registering the deer," said Wendy Krueger, a MDNR biologist who did her master's degree thesis on the study.

"This was perhaps the most significant discovery of the Camp Ripley study because it means that other studies which did not account for deer hit by more than one hunter would have reported inflated wounding rates."

Krueger said an average of 45 percent of the deer that would have been categorized as wounded and unretrieved were arrowed again and recovered by other hunters.

"The Camp Ripley study shows that bowhunting wounding rates are substantially lower than previously claimed," said Jay McAninch, the MDNR deer biologist who directed the study.

Claims by anti-hunting groups have speculated that bowhunting wounding rates are as high as 50 percent -- one deer hit and unretrieved for every deer hit and recovered.

McAninch said more research is needed to see if the Camp Ripley findings compare closely to bowhunting results in statewide archery seasons, but he noted, "What the study did clearly establish is that most Camp Ripley bowhunters demonstrated a great deal of skill, patience and concern about making quick, clean kills."

~Steve Vantreese is outdoors editor of the Paducah (Ky.) Sun