Bow deer hunting season begins in Missouri

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Today, the 66th Missouri bow hunting season on deer will open. The prospects of a good fall archery season has optimism running high.

It was 66 years ago when the first archery season opened for deer hunting with 73 permits sold. It was a three-day hunt with only one county (Crawford) open. Bow hunters could only take bucks. During that first season, there were no deer taken at all.

It wasn't until four years later that the first deer was taken by an archer -- Hugh Collins shot the deer in Taney County. There were 64 permits sold that year.

Today, archers have a statewide season that runs through Jan. 15, 2013, closed only during the firearm season in November. There will be more than 100,000 archers afield this season.

Archery hunting is the passion of those for whom solitude is a treasure. The archery hunters say there is just no need for the customary hullabaloo created by the gun season, The population of deer in most sections of the state is high as is the success rate of bowhunters.

Jack Franklin, Springfield, said, "It is so different from the gun season. It's more like pure hunting. It's a real challenge. You have to understand the ways of the animals. You also have to prepare yourself and practice with your bow. Not many bow hunters just grab a bow for the first time in nearly a year and head for the woods."

Apparently, too, the rewards are great because archery hunting has grown substantially over the years. Bow hunters traditionally take more bucks than does, a departure from gun-hunting statistics. The bucks are on the move during the rut and their thoughts are on matters other than camouflaged observers in trees.

Franklin said, "A lot of bow hunters prefer the archery season to the gun season because of the safety factor. It's on your mind, sure. There's no question that it is safer and I know I feel more at ease. The gun season, especially the first weekend, definitely makes me nervous."

Archers are out there during some of the best weather of the year; there is no need to hunt in bad weather if you don't have to, unlike the short gun season.

Franklin went on to say, "I get out as often as I can for the next several months. This is the time of the cold dinners at home, but my wife understands that I won't be home until its dark on a lot of evenings. I hunt close to where I work, so I can stop for a few hours on the way home. You can't beat it."

In bow hunting, patience is a necessity, never mind a virtue. You will see a lot of deer, but that doesn't mean you will get a lot of shots. A gun hunter can try a long shot with a reasonable hope of success. It's not that way with the archery hunter. The deer must be within 30 yards and a kill shot is a necessity.

The bottom-line appeal, according to Franklin, is being out there, relaxing, unwinding, watching and getting to know nature. Some archery hunters, naturally enough, are just plain hunters, meaning they take the seasons as they come -- using the bow, then the gun and then the bow again. That aside, the rise in bow hunting for deer seems to be the most dramatic change of deer hunting habits in the Ozarks.

Bob Lewis, Springfield, is an avid archer who has taken a lot of deer over the years. He said, "There are many more deer in the Ozarks that I thought possible when I first started hunting. This year I will be after a monster buck I saw last week."

Lewis, like most serious archery deer hunters, starts getting ready for the season a month before the actual opening. He said, " When I am out hunting squirrels in late August and early this month, I find scrapes that are usually made by dominant bucks. I know they won't move out, so they will be around opening day. I carry a bottle of doe-in-heat lure with me and pour it on scrapes as often as I can, usually every week or 10 days. When it's time to hunt, I sit up in my tree stand and wait. This kind of hunting is good all day, not just the first few hours or the last two of the day, because during the rut a buck will check the scrapes at any time, so you need to be ready."

Lewis has hunted deer from Stone County to Ray County and has set a goal for the 66th anniversary of bow hunting in the state. He wants to bag that big buck he has been watching. He said, "That buck is a lot larger than any I have ever seen. I first spotted him while squirrel hunting and then again last weekend, while dove hunting. For me, nothing would be better to celebrate the 66th anniversary of bow hunting in the state than to bring home that big buck."

Considering the state holds a deer herd of around a million animals and enough turkeys to make many Thanksgiving dinners, archers have a lot to look forward to this fall in the archery deer and turkey season.

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