Deer success rate

In light of the archery season question at this year's spring hearing I decided to break down the success rate based on licenses sold vs harvest numbers.

Numbers are for 2017-18 season

Gun deer (includes regular, youth, muzzleloader and all antlerless)

License sold 582,281

Deer killed 227,645

Kill Rate 39%

Regular Archery

License sold 152,660

Deer Killed 45,166

Kill Rate 29%

Cross bow

Licenses sold 82,660

Deer killed 47,228

Kill Rate 57%

With the current season frame work a hunter using a crossbow has a 18% higher success rate than any other form of weapon.  Almost 2x the success rate over a verticle bow.

So, big deal! shut up and hunt. Talk about beating a dead horse.

LOL!!!!!! 

Grandad, spot on...

Grandad I think you hit the nail on the head with your post, I have switched to the new technology ( crossbow ) and many of the good hunters I know whom also are land owners have also switched. These are also people that harvest deer every year during the archery season, is it possible that the numbers show higher crossbow success mainly because these successful hunters switched to the newest technology just like the recurve hunters switched to compound bows when that became the newest thing and harvest numbers went up as they now are doing. ( I hear you on the cell phone thing as it has really affected the ice fishing here on the Mississippi river, I see guys start catching then get on their phones and the all their friends show up )

I am 72, shot my first 5 deer with a recurve,shot my biggest buck with a compound all on public land!My shoulders and back are a mess and have used a cross bow for the past 12 years! I now hunt private land and the XBow allows me to still hunt!Technology is effecting all hunting and fishing!Do you want to  restrict fish locators,gps,heavy steel shot,game cameras,robo decoys! And the biggest CELL phones!Maybe we should all go back to spears and rocks,then everybody will be equal!

All this worry about deer success rate makes me laugh!! First of all I read where some want a 1 buck rule, well if you read in the DNR report there was less then 11000 hunters that registered 2 bucks last year. Do you really think that few extra bucks shot really makes a difference? Not a chance!!!        I think that after the 3 years of crossbow seasons it is obvious that deer hunting as we know it is changing and some people are afraid of change.  A lot of people are getting fed up with gun season and would rather get their deer with a crossbow. For most hunters gun season has to many idiots in the woods, the deer got the crap scared out of them and the weather many seasons is not so good. Yea if you got your own land or have a nice secluded hunting spot up north, gun season is not so bad but most people don't have that. Yes the success rate is better with the crossbow, leave this season as is and you will see the harvest with the crossbow keep going up but who cares?? Well everyone knows who cares, its a bunch of verticle bowhunters that are jealous that one of their bucks is going to get shot by a crossbow!  You can't blame a person to rather stretch his hunting out over a few months, pick his time and weather he wants to hunt, not have all the idiots in the woods and have the deer moving naturally. So if a lot of hunters want to hunt all fall with a crossbow just let them. I hunt with my verticle compound bow yet but someday I may buy a crossbow. So good luck crossbow hunters in your battle to save your season because with all the antihunters out there now we should all just try to get along!!

But almost twice as many bow licenses were sold . Plus how many hunting days are used ? When I bow hunted I was working and was lucky to go  4-5 times . Now I'm retired and expect to get out more often with the crossbow . 

Numbers can be massaged many ways .

I see what you guys are saying I forgot about patron licenses.  So let's say for the 46,805 patron license sold even though we don't know which way they hunted the archery choice breaks down the same way as the rest of the state where 65% bought a license for vertical bow and 35% went with crossbow.  This would add 30,423 to vertical bow hunters numbers vs 16381 for cross bow.

Regular licenses

182,609 killed 45166 deer

Success Rate 25%

Cross bow

93,041 killled 47228 deer

Success Rate 51%

Also curious where your harvest data came from. With an archery license there is the upgrade option to allow either vertical bows or crossbows. Is the weapon of choice specified when registering a kill? Where do Patron license archery kills get placed? Is it weapon specific? I did see in another thread the anti crossbow group put all the upgrade and Patron numbers in the crossbow category to bolster their argument. 

I did. That is  why I asked

These numbers are straight from the DNR website.  You can look up 2017 deer harvest numbers they are all broken down and separated by season.  Then elsewhere in the DNR website you can find license sales numbers.