Than why are archery success rates still so crappy? Why do the majority of bow hunters still come home empty handed?
Because most people are too lazy to look at statistics in detail, making these points spurious.
Tease out the data and you find far more complicated patters.
For instance:
What species are you talking about? Elk well on the one hand you have a ton of first timers who literally are trying to have their first animal be an archery elk... but then again archery hunters get to hunt the rut and call in elk, so the distance limitation is diminished because you can stalk to rifle range and then get the animal to come to you. If you look at success rates, and it varies, archery hunters have better rates than rifle hunters. See CO 3rd season versus archery season.
If we are being completely honest, you can't really compare success rates because there are very very few apples to apples hunts with lots of data points.
Archery seasons tend to occur in different conditions than rifle seasons, hunts with pick your weapon don't tend to track success by method, and hunts like sheep and goat tend to have really small sample size; the guy hunting a dall sheep with a bow might have killed 7 with a rifle and is not only bow hunting but also holding out for a special one and more than happy to go home empty handed, and with limited number of animals taken a hand full of those hunters and blow up stats.
Therefore.
"Why are archery success rates still so crappy" - I don't think you can factually support this claim in aggregate, maybe for specific hunts.
"Why do the majority of bow hunters still come home empty handed" - So do the majority of rifle hunters, so this question is irrelevant.
N * S = H
N= number of hunters
S= success rate
H= harvest
Bio's determine the desired harvest rate, let's say 1 goat from a mountain range.
If they allow gloves off hunting, say you can use helicopters, 365 day season, and rifle then success is 100% so;
1*1=1
If you put in lots of restrictions, weapon, season timing, difficulty of access (distance, land ownership, terrain) then rates may diminish so 10% perhaps.
10 * .1 = 1
So 10 people get to hunt instead of just 1.
The entire point of any method of take argument is if you improve the success rate then opportunity decreases. It's just math; think about whether you want a tag in your pocket or a bigger chance of going home empty handed and then write your emails to DNR departments accordingly.
