Urban Bowhunting is Community Service

Nothing about this whitetail adventure seemed normal. It was late March, and the weather was suited more for chasing turkeys than deer. Even more strange, my ambush location was within sight of several homes, a road and municipal buildings.

Yep, you guessed it, I was on an urban bowhunt.

As commonplace as these types of hunts are these days, you don’t need to be that gray in the beard to remember a time when urban bowhunts were unheard of.

Dan Schmidt Shot this white-tailed doe last spring while hunting in a City of Waupaca, Wis., urban hunt aimed to reduce deer densities within the city’s limits. (photo by Lon Sherman)

I once wrote an article for Deer & Deer Hunting Magazine back in those early days when the Archery Trade Association was first formulating recommendations for urban bowhunts. Back then, the common line heard from the general public was similar to this comment from a Little Rock, Ark., resident who opposed a newly proposed urban hunt:

“I don’t want the culpability of some child being injured or killed by a stray arrow.”

Trying to infuse common sense into someone that misinformed must have seemed impossible two decades ago. In hindsight, it really wasn’t.

After more than 15 years of  work by many state groups and national organizations, many areas of Urban America have embraced these urban bowhunting and, most cases, they are winning. Chronic wasting disease has amped up efforts to reduce deer herds practically everywhere, and it does seem that whitetails are still considered hoofed rats in the eyes of many suburbanites.

We have turned the corner,  however, in the fact that municipalities are much more inclined to implement events, programs and even “city bowhunts.” That’s because nonhunters have finally realized that hunting is and probably always will be the best option for urban deer management.

One of the most organized and influential lobbying groups is, in fact, the Archery Trade Association. Thanks to the ATA’s Bowhunting Preservation Alliance, five objectives were drafted to help whitetail bowhunting remain relevant in the public eye. They are:

1. Retain and grow the number of bowhunters in North America.

2. Increase bowhunting opportunities.

3. Increase public awareness about bowhunting.

4. Lower barriers to bowhunting.

5. Unite bowhunters and bowhunting organizations.

From the broader perspective, urban bowhunting includes traditional, compound and crossbow, and the bottom line is to turn the benefits of bowhunting — increased recreation, commerce and herd management — into positives for any locale or community that helps broaden bowhunting’s reach.

Today, thanks to educational efforts like the ATA’s Explore Bowhunting program, the National Bowhunter Education Foundation’s Bowhunter Ed Online, and the National Archery in Schools Program, our ranks are much better organized for future success. From an education standpoint alone, the Explore Bowhunting program has reached 353,733 students in more than 2,000 programs in 23 states since its launch in 2011. Those efforts have surely helped with how bowhunting is perceived in those communities and, in turn, opened up doors to urban bowhunting opportunities.

The aforementioned urban hunt I participated in occurred in early Spring 2018 in the city limits of Waupaca, Wis. Yes, it seemed a bit odd to be hunting within the confines of a city, but those weird feelings evaporated when four very alert does showed up just at dusk. I didn’t hesitate to pick out the biggest nanny in the bunch, send an arrow on its way and collect some prime venison.

Community service never felt so good.

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