Over the course of your entire bowhunting lifetime - what is your success rate of tagging at least one archery buck?

For example, I've been a licensed bowhunter since I was 15, and I've tagged at least onearchery buck every year but one.So, that's 15 seasons and 13 "successful" seasons.

13/15 = 87%

IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO HAVE MORE THAN 100%

And tell us what it is (personally) that explains why you have (or haven't) been as successful as some of the other guys.

Don't be embarrassed if your success rate seems low - the average success rate for a Pennsylvania bowhunter to tag a whitetail buck is just about 10%. We had 270,000 bowhunters afield with anestimated 27,000 bucks taken.

As another benchmark, our HNI contest had 490 entrants, with 130 bucks entered. That's a 26% success rate, on average.
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My personal success rate probably a lot higher than average - and that's admittedlymostly attributable to shooting dink after dink after dink in my teenage years. I was happier than a pig in mud with a 4" spiker. LOL

EDIT: I voted wrong. There were 2 years that I got skunked in archery season.

10/21 = 47%

I would say my number is low, because for most of my hunting life in MN, you were only allowed 1 deer, so if you got one with a bow, you were not allowed to gun hunt. Therefore, I waited for theBIG boys with a bow. I even passed on some big ones early in the season, just because I didn't want my season to be over too soon.

3/5=60%

Just starting out compared to what's been posted so far. I expect my percentagemay fall off over the next couple years due to the fact that I now have a better understanding what caliber of deer there are on the property and what I'll hold out for.

I have killed 20 deer with my bow over 17 seasons 10 bucks, 3 buttons, and 7 does. ?%

12/20 or 60%. That dates back to my hunting at age 8. Let's just say I did not exactly hunt hard back in those days

Success rates don't mean too much to me though. Many guys will pass up more bucks in a year than I see. Sure wouldn't make them a bad hunterbecause they didn't have the one they wanted to fill their tag with come around.

The question isn't how many, Vabowman - it's how many years you've been successful. For example, a guy could hunt for 9 seasons and get skunked every year, then go out in year ten and shoot 7 bucks.

Sure, he's gotten 7 bucks in 10 years, but his annual "success rate" will be 10 percent (not 70), because he was only "successful" in one year outof ten.

Holy crap Jim - I couldn't even pull a bow back at age 8!

I have been hunting 8 seasons 14 bucks 1 doe... thats well over 100%

Dear god. I knew this was a bad idea.


This really isn't a complicated concept.

I've only ever killed one buck per year. Mine is pretty low @ 37%.

16 years hunting, and 6 bucks. I attribute that to the first 5 years hunting in Vermont only (5ish deer per square mile, still managed to kill some does). From age 16 to19 I was shooting anything that walked and was legal. From 20 to 27 y/o (this past season) I've taken 2 bucks, not for a lack of opportunity but because I tried to start getting selective. Every year in this time period I've passed at least 10 shot opportunities on legal deer that I just didn't want to shoot.

I have had atleast one deer every year though...