ORIGINAL: quiksilver
See, I don't buy the population explosionargument one bit.
The only areas that will be overpopulated will be the areas with limited access (city suburbs and POSTED land). These are areas thatALREADY allow gun season, and are STILL overpopulated. It's not a question of weapon efficacy - the problem is land access and low hunter presence. Hunters just can't kill what they can't access.
If the population densities do get too high, you'll see more MV collisions and more willingness to welcome bowhunters into areas where the deer are actually becoming a major problem.
There are already tons of bow-only areas throughout the US and Canada, and none of them have any overpopulation problems that didn't predate the bow-only designation.
I can say with 100% confidence that my area has enough bowhunters to drive deer into extinction. While eliminating gun season would help get the deer densities back into their normal limits, it would certainly not put us at risk of being overrun by starving deer.
So what's the moral of this story? Are we saying that bow-only zones should only be implemented in areas of the country that are thick with bowhunters, so as to ensure that the deer populations don't explode?
Again, the entire state of Iowa is in the midst of recovering from overpopulation and that is with gun seasons. The DNR has for severalseasons now threatened that if we do not continue to harvest more does they will restrict ourbuck tags.I assure you, that outside your world,many places would experience a tremendous overpopulation that would drastically reduce the number of trophy quality animals. Ask ANY wild game biologist. PERIOD.