Government never ceases to amaze me. The concept of living within a budget is often lost on governments because of the apparently limitless wealth supplied by us taxpayers. And common sense is a foreign term for some governments bent on trying to regulate human behavior or fix something that really isn’t broken.
In 2013 (for the 2014 season), the Wisconsin state legislature decided to legalize crossbows for all hunters, not just the physically handicapped or elderly. With an ever-swelling deer herd in many counties and a continually shrinking number of hunters, providing more opportunities for hunters seemed to make sense. Why not legalize a hunting tool that’s still a 50-yard weapon at best?
While a few complained that deer hunting with a crossbow would be too easy or would somehow ruin the sport (the same argument was used against the compound bow in the early 1970s), many hunters embraced the crossbow. The biggest advantage over a vertical bow is that the crossbow is cocked and ready to shoot, requiring no game-spooking arm movements other than the click of a safety and careful squeeze of a trigger. But the crossbow’s short “bolt,” or arrow, loses velocity rapidly compared to the longer and often heavier shaft of a vertical bow, thus limiting its penetration and lethal range. A few high-end crossbows, namely the Ravin, have extended the range of a shot to perhaps 100 yards, but any centerfire rifle could easily top that. And not every hunter wants to spend $2,000 on a crossbow.
Wisconsin archery hunters have embraced the crossbow. Crossbow hunters took 51 percent of the total “bow” kill (vertical and crossbow) in 2017 and 54 percent last season. Total deer hunting licenses fell 2.5 percent last season to about 804,000. Because Conservation Patron licenses include crossbow and vertical bow privileges, it’s somewhat hard to get a precise total on the two categories.
Enter Greg Kazmierski, a Natural Resources Board member who also runs an archery shop. Last year, Kazmierski seemed determined to shorten the crossbow season, claiming crossbow hunters were killing too many bucks (although crossbow hunters in fact killed just 1 percent more bucks than vertical bow hunters) and were somehow threatening the entire deer hunting tradition.
When you sell a hunter a vertical bow, that person needs an arrow rest, a front sight, a peep sight, a quiver, arrows, a shooting release, a stabilizer, an arm guard and a dozen other gadgets and doohickeys that contribute to accuracy and consistency. When you sell a hunter a crossbow, he needs a rope cocker or crank to cock the 150- to 200-pound pull of the string and a few arrows (bolts). Almost all crossbows come with a scope, and many come with a rope cocker and a few arrows. Crossbows tend not to go out of style and keep performing with minimal expense, year after year. Vertical bows of just 10 years ago don’t perform like today’s compound bows, so those hunters often buy a new bow every few years. The bottom line: there’s more money to be made with vertical bows, compared to crossbows. Kazmierski and all other archery dealers know this, and it’s sad when someone in a position of authority allows his own personal gain to influence his views of natural resources.
The Department of Natural Resources then proceeded to research the issue and provided overwhelming data proving Kazmierski’s fears were unfounded. But the crossbow hornet’s nest was kicked again at January’s NRB meeting when board chairman Fred Prehn suggested there might be a “scope statement” or first step in an administrative rule change coming to alter the crossbow season.
This unleashed the wrath of the crossbow-hunting public, which apparently bent the collective ears of the board and DNR staff until Prehn backed off at last month’s meeting, saying there would be no scope statement.
In summary, the DNR’s told us that Shawano County, Waupaca County and most Farmland Zone counties have too many deer. These deer are preventing the natural reforestation of the woods by overbrowsing the vegetation. There are fewer hunters every year to control the deer, but now that we have legalized crossbows, the old, the young, and everyone in-between are choosing a crossbow when they can’t or don’t want to pull a conventional bow. And they are doing well in thinning the herd of both bucks and does.
So now that everything’s heading in the right direction, let’s mess with success and upset a large segment of deer hunters that are helping us to manage the deer herd.
Did I leave anything out? Is it any wonder that some people throw up their hands and vow not to hunt deer because they are angry when the state seems to ignore their wishes?
Maybe we need to replace a NRB board member or two.