I must have missed some of the other good for hunting proposed deer rule changes that will be discussed this meeting etc!!!! For example the youth hunts crossbows etc. I support those and thank the would be great rule changes. Focus on both positive and negative!
Yes, the youth being abe to take either sex (which was not really in this one) and their bonus deer too is a good one. Actually it is
great!Crossbows? Not so good.
In my opinion, the IDNR Fish and Wildlife have went way over board with the shortening and moving of the firearm and muzzleloader seasons on what some other states have said
“may” work, nothing positive, just
“may” work .
The IDNR Fish and Wildlife folks have pulled out all stops so I have to ask why they went only a partial way with the crossbow inclusion? Full inclusion was a
huge request of Indiana hunters that gave NRC input last year. More requests were made for full crossbow inclusion than anything else. Bar none.
The online survey showed considerable interest in full inclusion .
42% supported or strongly supported full inclusion of xbows, 26% were neutral, and 32% opposed or strongly opposed.
The IDNR considered all kinds of out of state data for the changing the firearm and muzzleloader seasons, but when it came to allowing the Indiana deer hunters another archery choice for all of the archery season that ended. The IDNR is very good at gathering data so I am quite sure that they are aware of all the good crossbow data out there. We live right next door to Ohio and I’m pretty sure they have talked to Dr. Michael Tonkovich about this subject.
The object here is to kill more deer, so does crossbows help in the deer harvest" There is no doubt about it.
Last year, for the first time, Michigan allowed crossbow participation in the archery season. Participation in the archery season was up 7 percent. This is after many years of a serious decline. The archery harvest went up 10.5 percent statewide.
It went up an amazing 19 percent in the southern Lower Peninsula where the herd is the biggest. Isn’t that what we are after? More dead deer in heavily populated areas?
See – detnews.com/article/20100624/SPORTS07/6240390/1435/sports07/Michigan-likely-to-put-crossbow-on-equal-footing-with-bowhunting-for-deer#ixzz0ruWXsmN9Also last year the state of Pennsylvania started allowing their deer hunters the choice of using a crossbow in the archery season.
In Pennsylvania –
The 2009-10 hunting seasons marked the first time crossbows were legal in statewide archery deer seasons for all hunters. In those 19 WMUs outside of the three urban areas,
the archery harvest increased 13 percent. The proportion of the archery harvest taken by crossbows in the 19 WMUs increased from 15 percent to 30 percent. Crossbows have been legal in urban WMUs of 2B, 5C, and 5D since 2004.
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/game-commission-releases-2009-10-deer-harvest-estimates-88846977.htmlWhy make all these other big time changes and totally exclude crossbows in deer reduction formula? Why?
Maybe Mike Tonkovich, Ohio’s deer biologist said it best when he said:
"We're expanding seasons, increasing bags to ridiculous levels, we're hunting backyards, we're offering incentives and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on processing subsidies to try and encourage the harvest of additional deer," Tonkovich told an audience at the Archery Trades Association meetings in December.
"We're removing every regulation hurdle, every logjam possible to try and encourage hunter participation. About the only thing left is to harvest the deer for the hunter.
And yet at the very same regulation meeting, we are resisting giving hunters a choice (of crossbows) out of fear that we'll upset our traditional archers."A couple of the present crossbow proposals will do very little, if anything in recruiting hunters, retaining older hunters and helping in the herd management.
“64 and older”? That is way too old of a limit. Data from states that keep age records show that bowhunters (if they do drop out) do so at a much earlier age. 50 to 55 would have been a lot more of a benefit in retaining older hunters. If they dropped out at 50 to 55 we are not going to get them back in at age 64.
“Crossbow is the firearm season”? Very few, if any crossbowers will hunt during that time period. The recent IDNR online survey showed that only 5% of the bowhunters hunted with their bows during the firearm season. Why would we think that crossbowers would be any different? Consider also that these bowhunters already own a bow. An Indiana deer hunter is not going to hang up his 200 yard firearm and purchase a 40 yard crossbow to hunt the firearm seasons. It just won’t happen. There will be no gain in hunters or deer killed by sticking crossbows in the firearm season.
Put them in the archery season where they belong and the state will reap the benefits of hunter recruitment, hunter retention, increased deer harvest and revenues to the IDNR and archery shops, restaurants, gasoline stations, motels, etc, etc, etc. Not to mention sales taxes and PR funds.
BTW - The same people that objected tremendously to a full inclusion are now readying to approach the legislature to get a crossbow license with one thng in mind - keep the crossbows out of the early archery season where they rightfully belong.
IF this is truly a five year "trial" then crossbows for full inclusion wont be considered for that length of time. The anti-crossbowers are stalling it out hoping to get something out of the legisalature to stop crossbows permanently.
This was proably our best and final chance to give Indiana hunters another choice in archery hunting gear.
According to the IDNR we have deer to kill, so why are we worried abotu what hunting tool that we kill it with? It just does not make sense to me that we are having a total disruption of our deer hunting seasons and they are leaving out another avenue to kill more deer.