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The United Bowhunter, MBH Release, The
Hunter Educator Magazines
Bowhunters Rally to Help Solve Urban Deer Problems”
Dennis R. Ballard---573-696-3202
Bowhunters Rally to Help
Solve Urban Deer Problems
The Missouri Bowhunting Council has set in
motion plans to organize and train experienced bowhunters to help
reduce urban deer numbers. Professionally trained, safe and ethical
bowhunters, a product of the effort, have been shown to be a
socially acceptable and fiscally responsible method of reducing
in-town deer in other states.
Residents of suburban areas around Missouri’s
big cities have complained to the Missouri Department of
Conservation about landscape and garden damage by deer, increased
car/deer accidents and the threat of disease transmission by deer.
Firearm use is generally prohibited in the suburbs, however, so more
and more suburbanites have been willing to consider bowhunting as a
viable option for controlling deer. The Council hopes to provide
expert bowmen to those landowners wanting fewer deer and to increase
access to additional properties harboring deer by offering
landowners who are new to the use of hunting methods, well-trained
urban bowhunting specialists, without cost.
Following several meetings with conservation
officials, the Missouri Bowhunting Council has begun to assemble
urban deer teams in Missouri’s four urban deer hunting zones located
in and around St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield and Columbia.
Each team will work with conservation officials to target
neighborhoods that are over populated with deer.
The urban deer teams, consisting of veteran
bowhunters, will confer in June to begin developing a new program to
train urban bowhunting specialists who will partner with individual
landowners to reduce deer numbers on their properties.
Current bowhunting regulations allow bowhunting
for deer throughout the state. Some municipalities, however, ban
the use of “projectile firing devices”, including bows and arrows,
and thus prevent any control of burgeoning deer numbers. The
Council will work with these municipalities towards liberalizing
shooting device restrictions and towards allowing trained urban
bowhunting specialists to remove deer from problem areas.
Safety is the primary concern of the Council
and, therefore, each bowhunter certified by the Council’s training
course would have been thoroughly educated in proper suburban
shooting techniques. Additional skills, specific to hunting urban
areas will be mastered, as well, in tree stand use, the use of
stealth, shot placement and proper deer removal.
Deer taken by urban bowhunting specialists will
be fully utilized by either the hunter, the landowner and/or the
Share the Harvest program.
The Missouri Bowhunting Council will initiate
pilot programs for urban deer removal by bowhunting specialists in
some urban zones beginning with the 2006 archery deer season.
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