Bowhunter needs help fighting antis.

Dear Bowhunter,

I live in Howard County, Maryland, a suburban county outside of Baltimore with too many deer. For two years, Howard County has had an unlimited doe harvest for all weapons. In the September 28, 2007, issue of The View, a local newspaper, there was an article written by Jennifer C. Grill, the spokesperson for Animal Advocates of Howard County. In her article, "Deer Killing Is Not A Good Answer To Management," Ms. Grill claims that deer hunting "does not control Lyme disease, auto collisions, and overpopulation." She goes on to say that "bowhunting is inhumane and wasteful," and that "scientific studies indicate that bowhunting yields more than a 50 percent crippling rate," without ever stating what scientific study this statistic came from. Howard County will be holding meetings on this issue. Can you offer me legitimate information on the effectiveness of bowhunting as a management tool to support my arguments at these meetings?

Nathan Willett, via e-mail

Dr. Dave Samuel Responds: Your story is not unusual. Hundreds of suburban towns rely on bowhunting to control deer numbers. Private citizens who suffer garden and shrub damage, higher incidences of Lyme disease, and auto/deer collisions are happy with bowhunting programs. Animal-rights folks continue to propose chemosterilants, even though they don't work. They also continue to say that bow wounding losses are 50-80 percent, even though the largest study of its kind, done at Camp Ripley, Minnesota, showed that bow wounding loss during that study ran about 13 percent. For a complete summary of all the arguments animal-rights folks propose whenever a community wants to solve a deer problem, and for a summary of scientific literature that promotes bowhunting as a wildlife management tool, go to http://mdc.mo.gov/documents/areas/stlouis/deer_car.pdf. This website has 65 pages of facts that will help you answer bowhunting critics.