Colleen Foehrenbacher: Urban bowhunting offers unique opportunity with potential for problem-solving required

Every time I load the truck and drive the 55 minutes to bowhunt urban deer in Rochester, Minn., I’m filled with giddy excitement and an equal pit in my stomach from nerves.

The excitement comes from the almost-guarantee that I’ll have multiple deer encounters during my hunt, with the potential for something really exciting to walk past. The nerves come from the immense pressure to make a good shot, given that I hunt small, neighborhood properties.

My No. 1 goal as a hunter is always to make an ethical kill shot. That pressure is amplified immensely when I’m literally hunting in people’s back and front yards.

There is nothing worse than putting a less-than-ideal shot on a deer, having it cross multiple property boundaries, and then having it die on someone else’s land, especially when that person isn’t eager about hunting. Luckily, my experiences with urban bowhunting have been far more positive than negative.

My urban bowhunting experiences started five years ago, thanks to a half-dozen landowners who have given my husband and me permission to hunt over the years. Most of those permissions stem from him doing tree work on their properties and gaining permission after the landowners expressed anger about the damage deer were doing to their landscaping.

Given the overabundance of deer in the area, most landowners are eager to give us permission and, frankly, for us to take as many deer as possible.

Like most cities that allow bowhunting inside city limits, Rochester has a list of rules and requirements. You have to complete the Minnesota bowhunting education course, pass a shooting proficiency test with a local bow shop, have written permission from the landowner (and sometimes neighboring landowners), and, under most circumstances, hunt from an elevated position.

Hunting deer in an urban environment is a truly unique experience. The sights and sounds are completely different from the places I typically hunt in rural areas where I strive to be as far away from other humans as possible. I routinely see and hear people doing yard work, enjoying the outdoors with their families, or walking their dogs.

At first, I felt anxious and frustrated by all the noise and activity, thinking it would disrupt deer movement. But it quickly became apparent that urban deer are accustomed to it.

Mowing the lawn, trimming landscaping and adding to the compost pile is a dinner bell of sorts for deer. I’ve watched deer come to a freshly mowed yard within minutes of the mower being turned off.

Last year, a landowner let us know that a pair of bucks were regularly visiting some fruit trees between 3 and 4 p.m. each day. When I set out to hunt them the following week, they did exactly that; at 3:55 they literally ran out of the thick cover to a fruit tree where I ultimately ended up harvesting one of them. That hunt was particularly memorable because my husband joined me, saddling in the same tree as me to watch and film the hunt.

I’ve also pulled up to properties to hunt only to find multiple deer standing in the driveways, barely paying attention to me as I gathered my gear. They are so accustomed to people moving about that it barely disrupts them. And if they get spooked and run off, they almost inevitably move back into the area fairly quickly if it’s where they want to be.

One interesting thing my husband and I have noticed is that urban deer seem to be weirded out by camouflage. They seem more confused and on edge when they see a pattern that disrupts your outline than they do when you’re wearing more normal clothing. That has led us to sometimes opt for solid-color clothing rather than the camouflage patterns I always chose when rural bowhunting.

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An additional urban bowhunting opportunity that some cities offer is a city-organized hunt in local parks. In 2024, I participated in the City of Rochester’s urban hunt after being selected to hunt Bear Creek Park. This hunt came with some additional requirements, including attending a mandatory pre-hunt meeting and demonstrating shooting proficiency through an additional test at the local archery club. It also made for a unique hunting experience.

At the time, the park was overrun with buckthorn, making it an ideal bedding area for deer but almost impossible to hunt in many spots because of the sheer thickness of the vegetation. There was also a large encampment of unhoused people, which made finding a decent spot to set up challenging and a bit stressful. The hunting proved to be excellent, though, and that year I harvested a beautiful, mature doe.

The final challenge we’ve encountered is that sometimes retrieving a deer from an urban property involves extra problem-solving, grit, and knocking on doors. Last year was particularly memorable for Tony’s archery buck, harvested off a property in north Rochester.

Tony made an excellent double-lung shot, but it was slightly high, and the buck traveled for a few hundred yards through a creek bottom, crossing multiple property boundaries.

Once we located the large-bodied buck, we quickly realized there was no way we were going to get it out the way we had tracked it. So instead, we drove around to a different neighborhood and secured permission to retrieve the deer by a shorter, although much steeper, path, while the renters laughed and cheered us on as we pushed the deer in a cart, up the steep hill.

Ultimately, urban bowhunting has become an experience I look forward to every fall. It’s a great way for us to have some quick successes and fill the freezer, especially in September and early October.

But the meat is really only one part of why I enjoy it. There is something incredibly rewarding about helping a landowner deal with an overabundance of deer while also getting the opportunity to hunt in a place most hunters don’t access. It has forced me to become a better hunter, be more careful with my shots, and think creatively when things don’t go as planned.

And perhaps most rewarding of all is sharing the experience, stories, and venison with the landowners who generously opened their properties to us.

Urban bowhunting may not have the solitude I usually seek when I’m in the woods, but it has given me a completely different kind of hunting experience, and one I’ve come to really appreciate.