Why are designated bowhunting seasons important? Because bowhunting itself is different. We need to keep telling state fish and game departments this fact, because they continue to be bombarded by special interests who want a piece of our seasons.

Wisconsin held the first bow season back in 1934. As other states followed, they had no qualms about starting seasons early and running them for weeks, and later, months at a time. Archery hunters certainly weren’t a threat to game populations. Little has changed.

Over the years, archery success rates have increased, but only slightly. In the not too distant past, 15 years ago, about one in 10 hunters wielding a bow killed deer—yup, 10-percent. That figure has grown to a little more than 20-percent today overall, but that’s still a low percentage, considering that gun hunters in most states succeed in their shorter seasons at a rate of about 50-percent.

Why are designated bowhunting seasons important? Because archery hunters require undisturbed animals if they hope to have a chance to succeed. True, you could hunt with a bow in a gun season—many states allow it—but where hunting pressure is high, you wouldn’t have much chance to succeed.

Archery requires opportunity, the more the better, because let’s face it, not every animal is going to give you that 20- or 30-yard shot, and at a success rate of 20-percent overall, blown chances are obviously a part of this game. Opportunities come more frequently when animals are moving in natural patterns, not sent under cover by a deluge of hunters and hunting pressure. So why are state game managers trying to give archery seasons away? It seems at one time or another there are rifles, muzzleloaders, crossbows, youth gun hunts, ranching for wildlife rifle rut hunts, special early antlerless gun hunts and heaven knows what else all suggesting inroads into archery seasons; trying to crowd into those special uncluttered domains that once were bow only. I understand that this sounds elitist, perhaps it is; but this is important to the future of our fraternity. Archery hunters need to stick up for themselves, and stick together to protect the slice of the pie that is ours.

I think any pursuit that brings more hunters into the field is good. I simply happen to believe that archery seasons as they exist, need to be defended before they are cut up and watered down into general hunting seasons that don’t resemble “archery seasons” at all.

The significance of archery-only hunting was first hammered home to me in Alabama on a hunt with Mossy Oak years ago, where we hunted Enon Plantation’s 12,000-plus acres of bowhunting-only ground. Deer were plentiful and relaxed. Soon after I hunted similar ground without the bow-only protection where the few deer we saw ran to and fro like scared rabbits.

We need to speak up, to defend those seasons we have today from incursions by other “so called” special seasons. When bow seasons are condensed into exclusive seasons lasting one or two weeks, all archery hunters will be crammed into the same short time frame and the quality of hunting will deteriorate immensely. Or perhaps states will thin us out, by limiting archery licenses to “draw only”, where even residents don’t get to hunt some years. That’s happened out West, but it may move East as times change.

Without protection, wide-open archery hunting, as we know it, will be a thing of the past; our good-old past.