Patrick Durkin: Bowhunters’ ‘tools of choice’ don’t matter to deer

Wisconsin’s bowhunters registered 103,904 deer during 2024’s four-month arrow-flinging season, the fourth highest archery kill in modern times and the fifth in which they’ve killed over 100,000 whitetails.

That success – driven mostly by folks shooting crossbows and compound bows, along with a smattering of “stick-bow” traditionalists toting recurves and longbows – ended a three-year slide in bow-kills from 2021 through 2023. In 2020, when participation increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, bowhunters killed a second-best 113,567 whitetails, the first time since 2007 that the kill exceeded 100,000 deer.

The state’s previous 100,000-plus bow seasons were: 2004, with 103,572 deer; 2006, with 113,918; and 2007, with a record 116,010 deer.

But even though the 2020 and 2024 bow kills nearly duplicate the 2004 and 2006 totals, their buck/antlerless compositions are near-opposites.

Antlerless kills dominated the 2004, 2006, and 2007 seasons, which were 66.5% antlerless (does and fawns) and 33.5% bucks. Back then, the Department of Natural Resources could impose earn-a-buck rules, forcing hunters to register a doe or fawn before shooting a buck.

But when lawmakers outlawed earn-a-buck in 2011, they basically outlawed deer management in Wisconsin. Today we simply have recreational hunting. We mostly go afield, shoot what we want, bring it home and let society fret about the health and herd size of white-tailed deer, and their impacts on crops, forest habitats, and motorists.

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Wisconsin’s 2020 bow-kill consisted of 57% bucks, and 43% does and fawns. When the 2024 bowhunting kill was tallied, the gap widened to 61.6% bucks and 38.4% does and fawns. Such lopsided ratios neither control deer numbers, nor slow the spread of chronic wasting disease.

And don’t forget that buck fawns make up roughly 25% of antlerless kills. Therefore, when counting buck fawns as males in bowhunting’s 2014 through 2024 harvests, males made up 69% of the bow-kill and females 31%.

But let’s not quibble. Let’s stick to official DNR totals.

Trivia question: In which year did Wisconsin’s bowhunters first kill more bucks than antlerless deer? Answer: 1987, with 21,278 bucks and 21,253 antlerless deer. And from 1987 through 1998, bowhunters killed more bucks than antlerless deer 10 out of the 12 seasons. If not for earn-a-buck’s birth in 1996, it would have been 11 of 12 seasons.

Bowhunting’s hard swing toward bucks, however, didn’t start immediately after our state-sponsored execution of earn-a-buck in 2011. Wisconsin’s buck kill was 50.2% of bow season’s harvest in 2010, 49.3% in 2011, 48.8% in 2012 and 47.4% in 2013.

The buck-focused surge came in 2014 when Wisconsin finally allowed all people – not just the handicapped or elderly (65 and older) – to use crossbows during archery season. The 2014 buck kill jumped to 56.5% of the harvest for those shooting bows and 58.6% for crossbow shooters.

In other words, whether they held and fired their preferred bow vertically or horizontally, all bowhunters shot bucks at similar rates in 2014. Further, after varying by only 3 percentage points that year, the rates then merged:

• 2014 season: Of the 81,701 harvest, 46,201 (56.55%) were bucks. The bow kill (54,810) was 55.52% bucks, and the crossbow kill (26,891) was 58.64% bucks;

• 2015 season: Of the 87,098 kill, 51,823 (59.5%) were bucks. The bow kill (53,004) was 58.92% bucks, and crossbow kill (34,094) was 60.4% bucks.

• 2016 season: Of the 88,048 kill, 51,734 (58.76%) were bucks. The bow kill (48,272) was 58.36% bucks, the crossbow (39,776) 59.24% bucks.

• 2017 season: Of the 92,394 kill, 53,214 (57.59%) were bucks. The bow kill (45,166) was 57% bucks, and the crossbow kill (47,228) was 58% bucks.

• 2018 season: Of the 87,629 kill, 47,632 (54.36%) were bucks. The bow kill (40,405) was 53.65% bucks, and crossbow kill (47,224) 54.96% bucks.

• 2019 season: Of the 92,714 kill, 54,063 (58.3%) were bucks. The bow kill (41,532) was 58.35% bucks; the crossbow kill (51,182) was 58.3% bucks.

• 2020 season: Of the 113,567 kill, 64,681 (56.95%) were bucks. The bow kill (47,836) was 56.72% bucks, and crossbow kill (65,731) was 57.12% bucks.

• 2021 season: Of the 99,141 kill, 60,751 (61.3%) were bucks. The bow kill (39,733) was 61.2% bucks, and the crossbow kill (59,408) was 61.3% bucks.

• 2022 season: Of the 97,000 total, 56,000 (58%) were bucks. The bow harvest (37,476) was 57% bucks (21,361), and the crossbow harvest (59,524) was 58.2% bucks (34,639).

• 2023 season: Of the 90,355 kill, 54,803 (60.65%) were bucks. The bow total (36,193) was 59.8% bucks (21,636), and the crossbow harvest (54,162) was 61.2% bucks (33,167).

• 2024 season: Of the 103,904 kill, 63,983 (61.6%) were bucks. The bow harvest (39,349) was 61.7% bucks (24,273), and the crossbow harvest (64,555) was 61.5% bucks (39,710).

And for those who consider compounds and stick bows to be archery’s only divine combinations of string and limbs, let’s examine the 15% jump in Wisconsin’s arrow-flinging kill from 2023 to 2024. The bow kill increased by 3,156 deer (8.7%), while crossbow kills jumped by 10,393 (19.2%).

But while the crossbow buck kill rose 19.7% in 2024, the crossbow antlerless kill (24,845), rose similarly, 18.3%, which was 38.5% of the crossbow harvest. Meanwhile, the bow buck kill rose by 2,637 (12.2%) in 2024, and the bow antlerless kill (15,076) rose only 3.6%, making up 38.3% of the bow harvest.

To summarize, when it’s time for Wisconsin bowhunters to launch an arrow, their tool of choice matters little to individual deer, a statistician’s data, or the herd’s size and health.

Contact Patrick Durkin at patrickdurkin56@gmail.com.