Friday, September 03, 2010
An early archery start
A few bowhunters will be out starting Saturday, opening day for Virginia's urban archery season.
Associated Press
Mark Taylor is outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times.
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For most Virginia bowhunters, four more weeks of waiting loom.
Each day they'll mark an X on their calendar until the early archery season opens Oct. 2.
But for a few deer hunters, hunting season starts sooner.
Thirty localities across Virginia, including many in Western Virginia, offer an urban archery season, which starts Saturday.
The urban archery term isn't entirely accurate. Bowhunters are hardly targeting whitetails from hiding spots atop skyscrapers and apartment complexes.
Rather, the season is applicable in woodsy enclaves in cities and suburban areas where hunters are hoped to help control booming deer populations.
In place since 2002, the urban archery program has produced mixed results.
While bowhunters are killing good numbers of whitetails in some areas, such as Lynchburg and in Northern Virginia, urban archery is making hardly a dent in many places.
The urban archery season results in about 300 deer kills annually, said Nelson Lafon, the wildlife biologist who oversees the program for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
The number doesn't take into account deer killed in designated urban areas during other open seasons, or those killed by archers on special deer depopulation permits.
Nonetheless, the total is still a tiny percentage of the annual deer kill in Virginia, where hunters have been killing in the neighborhood of 250,000 whitetails annually the past couple of seasons.
Lafon believes urban archery is helping with deer control, and he thinks it has more potential.
"From looking at places like Staunton and Lynchburg, there is evidence that archery can make a difference," said Lafon, who noted that there have been no urban archery safety incidents since the program started.
There appear to be several reasons that urban archery has been slow to take in some areas.
"Every year the number one question I get is, 'Where can I hunt?'" said Lafon, who said that nine new localities have opted in to the urban archery program over the past two years. "I can't tell them."
Hunters usually must find their own hunting spots, a proposition that can entail knocking on a lot of doors. While some hunters are used to that, the setting can be intimidating.
"It's not like in the country when you can go over and ask Farmer Joe for permission," Lafon said. "It might be Mrs. Smith who drives a Lexus and came from the city."
Lafon said he wishes the game department had a program in place to connect landowners with deer trouble with willing hunters. But managing such a program can be a daunting, time-consuming affair.
Just ask Eric Huppert.
Huppert started Suburban Whitetail Management of Northern Virginia Inc. in 1997 as a way to find hunting areas, to help out landowners in the deer-ravaged area, and to project a positive image of hunters.
"It's like a second full-time job," said Huppert, a boat engine mechanic.
Huppert's non-profit group has about 100 members, who pay annual dues of $75 to be connected with about 350 participating landowners.
All of the group's hunters must apply, and must pass qualification standards, including an archery proficiency test.
Huppert said the group used to seek out willing landowner participants, but got out of that game. Now, he just waits for landowners to come to him asking for help.
He considers a hunter's work schedule and location when pairing the hunter with landowners.
In the early days, Huppert said, assignments were based on a lottery. But that missed a point.
"When you associate a landowner with a hunter, they develop a rapport," said Huppert, whose hunters kill about 350 deer annually, during urban archery and regular archery seasons. "You don't want to mess that up."
The difficulty connecting archery hunters with landowners isn't the only challenge for localities that are hoping early archery seasons can help with deer control.
Many hunters like the activity for the solitude and wild experience they get, something that is inherently absent in most suburban and urban hunting situations.
Also, weather conditions in September can be warmer than many hunters prefer.
Finally, because the priority with urban archery is population control, hunters are allowed to kill only antlerless deer. Some hunters aren't willing to put forth the effort if they aren't allowed to shoot a trophy buck that happens by.
"We tell people from the get-go that this isn't a bowhunting club," Huppert said. "It's a job.
"Getting these guys out there in the summer heat is not easy."
Many of the hunters who participate do so out of a sense of civic duty, Huppert said. They know they are helping out.
And the early-season investment can pay dividends.
Many areas that offer urban archery seasons also are open to bowhunting during the regular deer seasons. Several localities even changed their rules to allow general season bowhunting after first offering urban archery.
So hunters who help with population control in September may be rewarded for their efforts with an eventual chance to kill a trophy buck later in the fall.
