21ST CENTURY BOWHUNTING.

The future of bowhunting appears to be bright - just different.

As we pulled up to the gate an armed, uniformed woman slid open the bulletproof glass window and asked for our identification. She then handed each of us an ID tag and informed us to follow the vehicle in front of us. The gate went up and we pulled forward, proceeding along a road that wound past multi-million dollar homes. Eventually, we came to a cul-de-sac, where we parked, and my "guide" led me past an indoor-outdoor riding stable and up a short path into the woods. About 200 yards from the truck he stopped and pointed to a portable treestand, then to an automatic corn feeder 15 yards away. After a few brief tips on where the deer would come from, and at what time, he was gone.

My short stint on stand that evening was uneventful, but when my ride failed to show up on time, I suspected something was up. My hunting partner, Don Meyer, had arrowed a small buck, and he and the caretaker, Bummer, had to trail it through several backyards. After they picked me up, the three of us helped another hunter recover his deer. Although I failed to tag a deer, that hunt in New Jersey last October was an enlightening and successful trip. It had laid the groundwork for a return in January, and it gave me a glimpse into the possible future of bowhunting.

Like it or not, sport hunting is in for some major changes in the next few decades. Hunter numbers are declining, open land is disappearing at an alarming rate, and people's attitudes toward hunting are changing. The good news is that bowhunters probably stand to gain more than any other hunting group, provided we are willing to adapt.

Metro areas across the country are taking a bite out of hunting, and particularly firearms seasons, largely because of physical changes like sprawl and cultural changes like a more urbanized society. The typical progression is the removal of hunting altogether, followed by a sudden realization that, left unchecked, deer quickly evolve from a curiosity to a nuisance to a major threat to human health and safety. By then, human encroachment and attitudes have made it unsafe or impractical to bring back gun hunters. So landowners and wildlife managers look elsewhere. Translocation and immunocontraception have proven largely ineffective and very costly.

That leaves bowhunting.

The process usually begins with public outcry, followed by limited or controlled hunts. Residents and wildlife managers ultimately realize that bowhunters can be an effective tool to manage deer, but only when given adequate leeway. Thus, seasons become longer, bag limits more liberal.

Hailing from New England, I have seen much of this transition firsthand. As a young biologist, I worked on several controlled hunts in eastern Massachusetts in the mid to late 1980s. They began in typical fashion under highly controlled conditions accompanied by plenty of protest. But long after the animal-rights people had hung up their signs and moved on to more fertile grounds like bombing animal research centers, the hunts continued and opportunities increased. In 1999, Massachusetts added two weeks to the beginning of its regular bow season in eastern wildlife management districts and in 2000, the state eliminated the annual bag limit on antlerless deer.

New Jersey, which has some of the highest concentrations of both deer and humans in the U.S., provides a similar example. In many parts, fall bow season runs a full month, followed by a month-long permit bow season. A brief interlude of shotgun and muzzleloader seasons is then followed by a 30-day January bow season. During the bow seasons, baiting is allowed and there is no bag limit on antlerless deer, Perhaps most prophetic are recent polls in the Garden State that show a dramatic increase in acceptance toward hunting among the nonhunting public.

Even the owners and managers of private nature centers and preserves are looking to bowhunters to solve their problems. The Chippewa Nature Center in Michigan conducted a controlled hunt after 7 years of deer damage problems. The Carey Arboretum in New York has a long-standing and successful controlled hunt program. In 1990, Connecticut established a controlled hunt at the Bluff Point Coastal Reserve.

Communities and small towns are also opting for controlled bowhunts as a solution to deer problems. In 1992 two bowhunts were held in Hennepin Parks, Minnesota, a suburban community of Minneapolis. The Illinois Power Company began controlled bowhunts on urban parcels in 1991. Residents of Long Island, New Hampshire, worked with the state wildlife agency to establish a controlled hunt there.

One of the more well-documented studies involves controlled hunts in southwestern Connecticut -- suburbs of New York City. A study in the Groton Long Point community began with a systematic, door-to-door survey of residents. Most respondents (75 percent) believed there were too many deer in the community. A whopping 83 percent believed the deer population should be reduced, and hunting was the method preferred by a majority (55 percent) of respondents. In 1996, a controlled archery hunt reduced the herd by nearly 50 percent. Researchers also noted, "No hunting accidents occurred and no conflicts between hunters and residents were reported."

Even in my home Estate of Maine, where traditions die hard, the long-standing one-deer-a-year bag limit was supplanted with a provisional expanded archery season in 1997. The impetus, again, came from a burgeoning deer herd. In some parts of the state, deer populations were at or above the biological and, more importantly, social carrying capacity of the land. The number of car/deer collisions and the incidence of crop and property damage complaints increased significantly.

Aggravating the problem was an increase in housing sprawl. Over the last decade, Maine's human population has remained relatively stable, but it has shifted from urban centers into the country. A recent AP news story noted that this is the case in many eastern states like New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia. Along with this has come an increase in posting, and ordinances against the discharge of firearms, effectively providing more protection for deer.

In Maine, bowhunters and wildlife agencies sat down together and worked out a two-year proposal. The result was an expanded archery season, limited to a narrow zone along the southern coast. In addition to the regular one-deer limit in other seasons, bowhunters could take one deer of either sex within the expanded zone.

Things went so well that, in 1999, the legislature permanently established the expanded season, extended it to run through mid-December, added more areas to the zone, and increased the bag limit to two deer. Archers can now hunt the expanded zone for nearly 3 1/2 months and potentially take three deer.

That still left archers looking for a place to hunt, and managers looking for a way to get them on private land. The bowhunters and state agencies went back to the table and developed the Bowhunters and Landowners Information Program (BLIP). Modeled after a similar program in Pennsylvania, BLIP provided for an advanced bowhunter education course stressing landowner relations, ethics, responsibility, and conservation. Anyone who passes the course is placed on a list, which is kept by the state. Then, when landowners complain about crop or property damage, they are given the names of advanced BLIP hunters.

Similar programs exist elsewhere. Cities like Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh; Boston; Portland, Maine; and Milwaukee are waiving laws against firing projectiles for citizen archers. Deer hunt referenda passed in several communities in the Cleveland-Akron area of Ohio. In Minneapolis/St. Paul, authorities keep a registry of bowhunters ready to serve when local governments call, and in Cincinnati, a group calling themselves the Merrie Men perform a similar service.

Ohio's Urban Deer Zones also provide another great example of how a state wildlife agency has addressed the growing problem. In 1994, the Division of Wildlife established urban deer zones in and around Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown, Toledo, Dayton, and Cincinnati to concentrate hunting pressure in problem areas. Hunters may buy up to four urban deer permits in addition to their regular deer permit, and they can take a limit of five antlerless-only deer in these areas.

Long seasons and liberal bag limits aren't the only benefits of this growing trend. Many areas open to controlled or limited hunting are surrounded by areas dosed to any form of hunting. These sanctuaries afford bucks a chance to grow old, and a nearly unlimited food supply keeps them healthy. Naturally, some of these deer wander onto huntable land. The result is that some phenomenal bucks are being dragged out of backyard honey holes.

According to New York State Big Buck Club records, Suffolk and Westchester Counties are among the top trophy-producing counties in the state, despite the fact that most of the land is private and residential. The two-month archery season, which overlaps the rut, provides ample opportunity to intercept one of the region's wallhangers. Similarly, records from the Northeast Big Buck Club show a dramatic increase in the number of trophy bucks coming from Connecticut, Rhode Island, and eastern Massachusetts. Last year the largest bow kill in New England came from the most populated region of New Hampshire.

Perhaps the best news of all is that wildlife agencies are on our side. In 1999, The Wildlife Society a national organization of professional wildlife biologists, published The Role of Bowhunting in Wildlife Management. Its authors state: "The urgency for this review grew out of the increase in bowhunting participation during the past 3 decades; its use as a population management tool, particularly for ungulates in urban and suburban settings; and more frequent challenges to the use of this tool by animal welfare and animal-rights groups." The review points out that lower harvest and participation rates "have led many state agencies to view bowhunting primarily as a recreational opportunity with minimal resource impacts." However, the authors go on to say, "Bowhunting is proving to be an especially useful management tool in areas such as parks, arboretums, and urban areas, where firearms discharge is prohibited." They cite several examples including Howland Island, New York; metropolitan Milwaukee; Princeton Township, New Jersey; and southwestern Connecticut. In the conclusion, they note: "The ability for archery harvests to control white-tailed deer population growth in urban settings is well established in the literature, and based on these successes, expanding use of bowhunting as a population control tool should be encouraged."

Regarding the future of bowhunting, Maine deer biologist Gerry Lavigne observed, "The bowhunter of the future will be a very different individual, a biologist's tool, willing to hunt under nontraditional conditions, often under the watchful eyes of the general public and in close proximity to development." Provided we are willing to accept these conditions, the role and importance of bowhunting will only increase, along with the opportunities.

I returned to New Jersey for a late-season hunt last January. Deep snows had buried much of the available food and the deer were hungry. My first evening was spent 100 yards away from a corn feeder (legal in New Jersey) in my host's backyard. A network of trails in the deep snow radiated out from the feeder like spokes on a wheel, and I picked a heavy trail that offered the best wind advantage. Although none came by me, I watched a dozen deer parade up to the feeder at dusk. The following evening I moved my stand to another trail and was rewarded with a healthy, 90-pound doe.

The third afternoon, I hung my stand in a small patch of woods behind a stable and horse paddocks. The owner told me deer were coming every afternoon to a place where he had dumped several Christmas trees. I watched deer most of the afternoon, filtering along the backyard edges of a subdivision on the hill above me. When the sun finally disappeared over the rooftops, the deer started down. It took me several minutes to pick out the largest doe in the group, then wait for the perfect shot angle. At the shot, the doe ran a short distance and crumpled. As I climbed down from my stand, the fading daylight was replaced with streetlights and spotlights from the surrounding houses, making recovery and field dressing an easy chore.

Bob Humphrey is a certified wildlife biologist, a registered Maine guide, an editor, writer -- and urban bowhunter.

GUIDE TO URBAN BOWHUNTING

The National Bowhunter Education Foundation has produced a Guide to Urban Bowhunting, a document filled with facts and figures to help officials and concerned citizens make wise decisions about wildlife management and the role bowhunting can play in it. It identifies the many problems associated with too many deer, including: spread of disease to humans, property damage, ecological damage, and accidents. It also provides an objective evaluation of alternatives like translocation and birth control, fencing, repellents, and sharpshooters, and it shows why bowhunting is the safest and most effective management tool. publication is invaluable for hunters and wildlife agencies working with citizens to establish bowhunts in urban or suburban settings. Copies of the Guide to Urban Bowhunting are available from: NBEF, 1011/2 N. Front St., Townsend, MT 59644 [phone]; [e-mail].