Letting everyone use crossbows is wrong move for bow hunting

Four months after all Minnesota archers could legally deploy crossbows to kill deer, they certainly have.

Fred Bear must be tossing and turning in his grave.

Bear, who died in 1988, was modern bow hunting's architect-in-chief. He began carving his own longbows and arrows in the late 1920s, and in 1933 he started Bear Products Co., forerunner to the modern-day Bear Archery Co.

Bear didn't hunt deer with a bow until he was 29 years old. Other archers in his home state of Michigan also got a late start. Archery hunting for deer wasn't legalized there until 1937, when fewer than 200 bowmen went afield in two counties. Other states soon initiated their own seasons.

Bear lived long enough to see the popularization of compound bows. But he never hunted with one, preferring instead to hunt with 65-pound recurve bows — drawing them back and aiming by instinct, before letting an arrow fly, all of it in one smooth motion.

In his lifetime, Bear killed all manner of big game, relishing the challenge of pursuing deer and elk, as well as dangerous game, including grizzly and polar bears. In the process he developed a keen respect for these animals and for all of nature, while honing a strong conservation ethic.

That America, and Americans, have grown more distant from nature and more addicted to convenience in the 100 years or so since Bear carved his first bow seems generally agreed upon, and Minnesota's regression into the nether world of trigger-activated crossbows is further evidence.

Until this fall, only the elderly and people with disabilities in Minnesota could use these killing machines to pursue deer. That changed when, last spring, cloaked in the fog of backroom dealings and without public hearings, legislators legalized crossbows for use by all bow hunters.

The result was predictable. Crossbows and ease of use have brought new people to bow hunting: 107,270 Minnesota archery licenses were sold through Monday, up from 101,555 for all of last year.

And while the whitetail kill by archery is about the same as last year, of the 21,600 "archery"-felled deer so far this year (the season ends Dec. 31), fully 9,290, or 43%, were taken by crossbows.

Striking as it is, this harvest percentage can only be considered an estimate, because the Department of Natural Resources in its licensing of archery hunters doesn't distinguish between hunters using compound, recurve or other "vertical" bows — which require skill and practice to hit a target — from crossbows, which for accuracy require little more than a sizable enough bank account to make their purchase.

Wisconsin, by contrast, sells two distinct archery licenses, one for crossbows and one for more traditional bows. A 2013 law change in the Badger State made crossbows legal for all hunters, rather than only the disabled and elderly. A mere four years later, for the first time in Wisconsin history, crossbow users killed more deer than archers using traditional-style bows.

In the years since, the vertical bow vs. crossbow deer harvest gap in Wisconsin has continued to swell. This fall, 20,983 whitetails have fallen to traditional bow hunters, while 32,297 have been taken by crossbows.

Which paints a not-very-pretty picture of where Minnesota is headed.

Crossbows have their place, and their use by elderly and disabled hunters is appropriate. But their widespread deployment — with little practice, some can be discharged accurately at targets 100 yards distant — discourages the development of the very skills that make bow hunting for deer something more than an exercise in venison gathering.

Perhaps no archer in history killed more game than Fred Bear. To do so he usually had to stalk animals to within 20 to 25 yards, or closer, and shoot without the benefit of sights or the power with which modern compound bows can loose arrows, often at 300 feet per second or more.

Yet Bear knew that killing is the easiest and least satisfying part of hunting — hunting as he knew it, anyway.

"I hunt because I love the entire process," he said, "the preparations, the excitement and sustained suspense of trying to match my woods lore against the finely honed instincts of these creatures. On most days spent in the woods, I come home with an honestly earned feeling that something good has taken place. It makes no difference whether or not I got anything: it has to do with how the day was spent."

The newly minted Minnesota "bow" hunter, crossbow in hand, might ask, "Where's the harm, anyway?" The DNR sells a few more licenses, archery shops cash in on the crossbow craze, and the same number of deer, more or less, end up on butchers' slabs.

But the question never was, and shouldn't be, about the number of hunting licenses sold or the size of the whitetail harvest.

The question instead should be about us; what we've been and what we're becoming. And whether, and how, we learn to value the natural world and our place in it, rather than merely exploit it.

Bow hunting, properly undertaken, can play a role.

"When bow hunting," Bear said, "you look at things more closely. You're more aware. You know the limited range of the bow is only 40 yards or so. You must try to out-wait that approaching deer. Careful not to make the slightest movement or sound, hoping that your scent won't suddenly waft his way. That's when you'll know for sure and appreciate deeply what bow hunting is all about."