stevoja

Just wondering if any of you out there hunt urban bow seasons. I live in Winnipeg Canada and in our part of the city they are currently debating the issue. We have had 64 motor vehical accidents with deer so far this year. As I am writing this, I am looking out my window and looking at 2 does with 3 little ones in tow. Each year when a buck is hanging in my garage I will have a buck or two sniffing the door to my garage (a very large 5x5 the last 2 years). Questions: Do urban bow seasons work to control the deer population and what have hunters in your areas done to forward the issue to reality?

kevin1

They haven't been a stunning success here , most of the bow hunters were only interested in tagging another buck(we have a one buck rule) rather than simply performing the service of reducing the surplus deer . There was also an embarassing number of cheaters who poached bucks just outside the zones and then checked them in as "urban kills" . If our DNR had made it doe only I believe the bow hunters wouldn't have shown up at all .

UDZs are a good idea in principle , but unless they also make them "earn-a-buck" tags I don't think that they'll ever be effective . Frankly , since our DNR says that we have far too many deer , especially does , in many parts of the state it wouldn't hurt my feelings if they made it "doe only" until the problem was alleviated .

rybohunter

From what I've seen/experienced, hunter access is a huge problem. Everyone complains about the deer, but they still don't let people hunt thier land. Andsince you can't force people to let someone hunt thier land you will always have a deer problem. Another problem to a smaller degree is people not shooting does, cause they are waiting on that big buck. I think a lot more of the seasons should be doe only in urban areas to force people to shoot does.

YooperMike

I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in a city of about 14,000 people and deer are a huge problem within the city limits. My city tossed around the bowhunting issue, but they decided to go with trained marksman to shoot the deer and reduce the populations. There is a noticeable drop in the population at first, but then after a couple of months, there are just as many deer. Kind of like bailing water out of a boat with a hole in it, it just keeps coming. But, I will definetely agree that there are some big bucks to be had in these urban settings. I have seen some monster at our house, but as rybohunter said, the access is a huge problem, and just geting the city to allow the limited hunting is a major hurdle.

alwyshntn

We are allowed to bowhunt in the city limits of a couple of close citys/counties here in central MO. It is definitely not easy to gain access into someones backyard to kill those precious deer but it can be done with some careful planning...Some of the urban hunting I have around is some of my better hunting grounds and in some cases only consists of a 5 acre patch of woods surrounded by $300,000 homes. I have killed some nice bucks out of these spots.This deer in the pic was killed out of a small woodlot in the city limits. The same night on the other side of the same woodlot my younger brother connected on a nice 8pt.

chazspot

They have one in northern Virginia, but the DNR there still hired a team of sharp shooters to come thin the herd. But, like the other guy said, this is a temporary solution. We here in Maryland have the same problem with people shooting only bucks. I just don't get it why hunters feel that a spike horn is any different than a fat, juicy doe. Yes, there are big bucks in suburbia, MD. Here in MD, we don't have a suburbia plan in place per se, but we do have very liberal bag limits for does.

The buck ego dilemma coupled with the fact that you cannot access a lot of these other suburban areas due to tree huggers is the problem. I just tried to get access to this place where I know monsters live but was turned down because the neighbors "have a problem with animals getting shot." This area is one of the richest per capita in the nation. Most homes go for 1.5 million and up to 5 million $$. Too bad, deer will keep getting smacked by the cars and the trophies go unhunted.