ikillsdeer

ok, according to the document, if you misjudged a 30 yard distance by 2.5 yards you would completely miss the deer??????? when was this written, 1940?most of theese so called facts are probably true, about 30 years ago! not with modern compound bows

Sylvan

O.K. gentelmen, if you will read a little more carefuly I said nothing about total numbers. The "portion of" or percentage or "rate" is what I've been talking about. In other words out of equal numbers of deer shot and hit with each weapon there will be more lost with a bows than with guns. That unfortunately is the truth, and I'll not pretend it's not.

Now if we are going to use anecdotal evidence. I've been hunting with both for over 40 years too and without question my personal experience is consistent with published data. Actually though for me, not only as a percentage but even in raw numbers I have lost more deer with bow over the years than with the gun. Of all the guys I know that deer hunt. To the man, every one that bow hunts also gun hunts and their experience is the same as mine. It's pretty rare to hit and lose a deer with gun. That's not the case with the bow. Now I don't mean to say it's common place but certainly it happens more often.

It seems to me that there's just a lot more to go wrong with bow. It's a cruder instrument. How many deer are wounded and lost by responsible hunters taking a responsible shots within effective bow range only to wind up with a wounded animal because of the "jumping the string" thing alone? I don't think a deer has ever jumped a bullet.

Now somebody illuded to the idea that bow hunters take more responsible shots than gun hunters. Well like I said before, everbody I know who bow hunts gun hunts too and I'll bet that's pretty true throughout the country. IMO, being responsible has nothing to do with the weapon your using but rather has to do with the hunters personal ethics. I can't believe anybody suddenly gets more responsible just because they have a bow in their hand.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue about this anymore. We're all on the same side. If some of you want to pretend that a hunter is just as likely to wound a deer gun hunting as he is bow hunting then fine. Stick your head in the sand. All I'm saying is I don't think that helps our cause. The truth has a way of coming out and if we are perceived as trying to hide it then that only makes matters much worse. If we loose our credibility then I fear we will eventually loose it all. I think that as long aswe do everything we can to be responsible and try our best to minimize the suffering of the animals we hunt with any weapon people would be willing to acceptthe inevitable fact that some animals will be wounded and lost. I think they can accept that it's more likely in archery too. I don't think they will accept that we are collectively trying to hide some dark secret and if general public decides that's the case then bow hunting is over.

PABuck_HNTR

[quote][Stick your head in the sand. All I'm saying is I don't think that helps our cause. The truth has a way of coming out and if we are perceived as trying to hide it then that only makes matters much worse. If we loose our credibility then I fear we will eventually loose it all. I think that as long aswe do everything we can to be responsible and try our best to minimize the suffering of the animals we hunt with any weapon people would be willing to acceptthe inevitable fact that some animals will be wounded and lost. I think they can accept that it's more likely in archery too./quote]


After rewording your post I will agree with you Sylvan, but the bottom line is that we as Hunters and So-Called Hunters are our own worst enemy. Most are complacent, we sit back and watch as we are attcked by anti hunters, anti gunners and in the case of this post anti archery people. We post bloody pics and at the same time apologize they look bad, we post articles telling about how we lost one yesterday, we post pics with some bad A$$ look on our face (no smiles) with our trophies. We give all the ammunition the antis need, and we don't ever fight back.

deertale

I am glad to see there are thinkers out there, that is why I continue to use this forum and respect your opinions.

We must stand up to the anti's together by looking at our selves. Helping a new hunter to learn ethics and skills. When we deal with anti's we must not call names, or swear but treat them respect. Calmly providing scientific information to support our cause. We must show them how much we care about our prey. Hunters have feelings too you know.

Wounding deer is inevitable. Coyotes and wolves wound deer, prehistoric humans wound deer. We must do what we can to make quick clean kills




FYI---Arrow Pod Definition:http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4463953.html

Arthur P

On my way to grandma's house for Thanksgiving, I counted 8 dead deer that had been hit by vehicles on the road. On my way to a huntdown by Mason, TX a few years ago, there was a dead deer along the roadway every mile or two. Who knows how many others were injured and got into the woods before dying.

From the article "Worst 10 states for auto-deer collisions" on CNNMoney.com:

Another article attributed that estimate to the National Institute on Highway Safety. Other sources estimate that an equal number of deer/auto collisions occur but are not reported.We're looking at 3 million deer being killed in the U.S. every year by trucks and automobiles.

Of course, even thoughthe animal rights folks don't hunt, they DO drive cars. So, while they dote on inflatedor fabricated statistics to flame hunting, it's easy for them to overlook these REAL statistics.
Bunch of #@&! hypocrites.

vc1111

Sylvan, I think we both needed to clarify whether we were discussing total numbers or per capita. You were apparently not talking about total numbers and I was.

I still disagree with your anecdotal ideas but I respect your opinion. My experience has been very different.

I don't think that disagreement constitutes hiding one's head in the sand. I would still ike to have at least a way of getting to the same resources you cited. I'd like to read more about this to see for myself.

As you said, we're on the same side of this.

Dwaefking

Please read about the results regarding bowhunting effectiveness in Denmark. It clearly shows that bowhunting is an effective and adequate tool for managing wildlife populations.

http://www.bagjakt.org/study_eng.htm

It also shows why profficiency test is a good thing + why there should be allowed everywhere to use a trained bloodtrailing dog.



Best Regards!

Janez

Dwaefking

I cant find Danish data (in English) on the web. The main results are: 289 roe deer were shot at (289 arrows released), 274 roe deer were harvested, wounding rate was 5,2%. Mandatory proficiency skill test, mandatory theoretical test, each place where an animal was shot was checked with a bloodtrailing dog. In a case of a clean miss the arrow was counted as "wounding" so "the true" actual Wounding pecentage
is even lower.
87, 6 % of deer shot with a bow and arrow was down in less than 50 m from the where they stood when they were shot.

Janez

Sylvan

VC,

Go to the public library and find the book Deer & Deer Hunting by Robert Wegner. In it you will find a chapter titled "Crippling Losses and the Future of American Deer Hunting". It starts on page 237. In that chapter you will find detailed studies regarding this subject. In it a study by Purdue Univeristy states that archers wounding rate is 50% higher than gun hunters and that bow hunters actually wound proportionatly more buck than gun hunters.They suspect the reason for this is that the "buck are bolder" during the archery season and the archers wind up with more opportunities to harvest buck than the gun hunters do.Again now we are talking percentages, not notal numbers. I highly recomend you get the book. Hopeit helps.

I might add that my own experience is not opinion as you indicated. I have indeed lost more deer with a bow than I have with a gun both as a percentage and in total numbers. That's not my opinion it's my direct experience. With regard to my friends of course I can only tell you what they have told me and that is that they have also lost morewith bow than with gun.

Take care!

Arthur P

I don't want to get in the middle of this pi$$ing match but I think I can say we ALL agree that even one wounded and lost animal is too many. So if it's greater than 0/0, the wound/loss ratio is way too high. But we will never do any good just railing back and forth at each other over statistics. What we, as a group, MUST do is identify the causes. Without knowing WHY the animals are lost, it's impossible to effectively take corrective action.

If I thought making potential licensees make a proficiency test would eliminate the problem, I'd be all for it. It won't. The test would be conducted at some arbitrary maximum distance. It would be beyond the ethical shooting distance for some hunters. Theyhave never and would never shoot an animal that far. Even though they'd hunted successfully for years and maybe never lost a single animal, theywould be improperly excluded because they couldn't pass some bureaucrat's test. (Bureaucratscan also trump up a test so bad that NOBODY can pass it. Keep that in mind, brothers.)

Others would never limit themselves to that distance, whether they can shoot well beyond that distance or not. Some jerks would take a hero shot at an animal a hundred yards away, just hoping to get it. No, proficiency tests aren't the answer. It's ethics that need to be scrutinized.

There is simply no way to test for ethics, and poor ethics is the number one reason for lost animals, IMO. Education might help, but ethics is what comes from the heart, not from the mind. It's what kind of person you are, not how much knowledge you can regurgitate on demand. Frankly, I'm sorry to say I think we have far too many of the wrong kind of people in bowhunting these days.

Yep, I'm an elitist. I'm one who expects all bowhunters to be elitists. Due to the difficulty of hunting with bow and arrow, we SHOULD have the highest ethical standards of all hunters. We SHOULD be the most dedicated and hardest working of all hunters. But, we've got a whole buttload of folks who are too lazy (ie. "don't have enough time") to get off their dead rear ends and work to improve their shooting and woodsmanship skills during the offseason. And they take their lousy skills to the woods and have the poor ethics to actually dump the string on an animal.

But it's their 'right' to go hunting. Yes, it's their RIGHT, but along with that right comes a whole mess of responsibilities. If they don't want to fulfill those responsibilities, then they have no business partaking of that right. In my not-so-humble opinion, we bowhunters would be far better off if those folks would sell their outdoors gearand take up golf.