Nearly 100,000 archery hunters are expected to go afield with a bow in their hands beginning Saturday when Minnesota's archery deer season opens.
Last year, about 99,000 hunters, including 1,500 nonresidents, hunted the archery deer season -- a sign of how bow hunting has blossomed in recent years.
"We've grown both archery and muzzle-loader hunters," said Lou Cornicelli, Department of Natural Resources big game program leader.
The DNR can't track that growth, because until last year, officials couldn't break out archery hunters from muzzle-loader and regular firearms deer hunters. But they know there are likely more archery hunters than ever. Many have chosen to use a bow to extend their deer hunting season. The archery season opens Sept. 19, while the regular firearms season doesn't open until Nov. 7.
Many hunt both with a bow and later a gun, Cornicelli said, adding: "Archery hunters tend to cross over. Of the 87,000 or so resident archery hunters, only about 20,000 to 22,000 are strictly archery hunters. The rest will hunt with a gun later."
There's no question hunting deer with a bow is more challenging. Archery hunters had an 18.5 percent success rate last year, compared to a 35 percent success rate for firearms hunters.
Archers accounted for about 10 percent of the harvest. And archers kill a higher percentage of antlerless deer than firearms hunters. Thirty-two percent of the 22,632 deer taken by archery hunters were bucks last year, compared to 47 percent of the 183,793 deer killed by firearms hunters.
Cornicelli expects the archery harvest to be down this year because there are fewer antlerless permits available.
