MN CROSSBOW NOW LEGAL FOR ALL DURING ARCHERY SEASONS

[djacker]

Now, not only can you have two pounds of pot in your house, you will not have to work as hard to kill a deer with a "bow". And this is progress? Hope no one is too doped up in the trees while you are stalking around.

Don't forget MN is the first state in the country to legalize ALL drug paraphernalia.

 

[grizzly63]

Yeah that should fix your problems

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Crack and crossbows, hate to oppress people’s opportunity.

 

[rogerthat]

What’s better than pussy ass crossbow hunting? Doing it while you’re high of course.

 

[Pucky Freak]

If I was king for a day I’d make all archery seasons stickbow only. Use your compound, crossbow, airbow, whatever during gun season if you want to

 

[Bullshot]

I don’t have a problem with using crossbows, per se, but equating them to traditional archery or compound bows is almost night and day. People switching over or crossing back and forth at least have or have gotten to experience the joy of bowhunting. New arrivals who bypass it altogether miss out on the development of MANY skills, woodsmanship, and the ethos of bowhunting in many/most cases. I have never seen more idiotic things done/said than I do with certain lazy/careless crossbow hunters. Stories of shooting from out car windows, in off limits or barely legal areas, at greater than 100 yards, never practicing, killing multiple animals with one shot, wounding, etc.

I have a crossbow. I have hunted with it exactly once, and killed a buck. It’s stupid easy which does also make it some fun, at first, but also can lead to mental and legal and ethical laziness in some cases.

 

[Bullshot]

If I was king for a day I’d make all archery seasons stickbow only. Use your compound, crossbow, airbow, whatever during gun season if you want to

I’d be ok with that. Stickbows for archery. Exposed hammer caps or flint/loose powder/no scopes for muzzleloader. Then, “Open Season” bring whatever you want thats legal.

 

[MNElkNut]

I would like to see compound bows remain legal (as they are everywhere) for archery in your new rulebook. Crossbows for older folks and disabled. Just like it was in MN.

It was good the way it was. No need to change it. Sometimes new is not better.

 

[Bowmannate2000]

40 % of the harvest in the first two weeks of the MN archery season has been from crossbow hunters.

Early season crossbow harvest

 

[mn taxidermist]

The only reason this bothers me is I turned 60 this year. They've been legal at 60 for years, now anyone can use them

 

[Creedance91]

Crack and crossbows, hate to oppress people’s opportunity.

The crossover of crack use and potential deer hunters is surprisingly huge. A real win for those guys to be able to get into the field now.

 

[Buffs35]

It always cracks me up when compound users that toss arrows 75 to 100 yards complain about crossbows. Primitive seasons should be limited to primitive weapons. All bows should be recurve, all muzzleloaders should be loose powder with no scopes.

 

[Creedance91]

It always cracks me up when compound users that toss arrows 75 to 100 yards complain about crossbows. Primitive seasons should be limited to primitive weapons. All bows should be recurve, all muzzleloaders should be loose powder with no scopes.

It does seem like most of the complaints are about, 'how does this hurt ME?' and nothing to do with the overall situation. It did remove a small barrier to entry for archery season, but I don't think people understood how easy it was to shoot a modern compound bow. Not that it is 'easy', but I think people still have it in their head that it's on par with a medieval recurve.

 

[rjthehunter]

It always cracks me up when compound users that toss arrows 75 to 100 yards complain about crossbows. Primitive seasons should be limited to primitive weapons. All bows should be recurve, all muzzleloaders should be loose powder with no scopes.

ANYONE can shoot a crossbow 100 yards accurately. I'd bet 95% of bowhunters can't shoot consistently past 60. Everyone I know won't shoot past 50 on a deer.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

It does seem like most of the complaints are about, 'how does this hurt ME?' and nothing to do with the overall situation. It did remove a small barrier to entry for archery season, but I don't think people understood how easy it was to shoot a modern compound bow. Not that it is 'easy', but I think people still have it in their head that it's on par with a medieval recurve.

My animosity towards crossbow regs has to do with the continual march towards making killing deer easier and easier because of the impact it has on the herd, which hurts the quality of experience for everyone. You're absolutely right, basic compound archery hunting is not difficult, which is why it's a joke that they have to make it even easier.

Whitetail hunting in MN is lousy compared to what it could be and everyone seems to have a scarcity mindset about it. "Either we need to make it easy as possible for Billy to kill 1 year old bucks or he's not going to kill anything and the greedy trophy hunters get all the bucks". It's shortsighted.

They could do things with the regulations that would allow for more bucks to survive and reach maturity while still killing the same # of bucks.. Manage the population with does. If you don't make it so insanely easy to kill bucks with the regulations, more bucks would survive. If more bucks survive, there are more bucks on the landscape available to shoot. Thus, hunters might not have such an easy season structure but could still have similar odds of "getting their buck" because there are more of them on the landscape.

That said, i understand some people value the opportunity to go hunting with as little obligation to become proficient with a weapon or prepare as possible above actually seeing or killing deer or there being any resemblance of a balanced herd. I will not say they are wrong and i'm right, we just value things differently.

 

[steveshuntn1]

My animosity towards crossbow regs has to do with the continual march towards making killing deer easier and easier because of the impact it has on the herd, which hurts the quality of experience for everyone. You're absolutely right, basic compound archery hunting is not difficult, which is why it's a joke that they have to make it even easier.

Whitetail hunting in MN is lousy compared to what it could be and everyone seems to have a scarcity mindset about it. "Either we need to make it easy as possible for Billy to kill 1 year old bucks or he's not going to kill anything and the greedy trophy hunters get all the bucks". It's shortsighted.

They could do things with the regulations that would allow for more bucks to survive and reach maturity while still killing the same # of bucks.. Manage the population with does. If you don't make it so insanely easy to kill bucks with the regulations, more bucks would survive. If more bucks survive, there are more bucks on the landscape available to shoot. Thus, hunters might not have such an easy season structure but could still have similar odds of "getting their buck" because there are more of them on the landscape.

That said, i understand some people value the opportunity to go hunting with as little obligation to become proficient with a weapon or prepare as possible above actually seeing or killing deer or there being any resemblance of a balanced herd. I will not say they are wrong and i'm right, we just value things differently.

Just tossing this out there because I don’t care what people hunt with, but why stop at crossbows. There are so many different ways that deer hunting has gotten easier in the last decade or two. It’s more about farming deer and letting them get to be six years old or maximum antler potential and then harvesting the buck. We have trail cameras, gps mapping, drones, expanding 2” broadheads so you can make a bad shot still deadly (silly side note: when I first started bow hunting I had little pods filled with poison on my arrows behind the broadhead. Dad got the poison from the local pharmacy!) we have lightweight tree stands, lightweight portable steps, binoculars with built in rangefinders. I mean when you start talking about taking away or not giving someone the upper hand in hunting when do you stop dialing back the clock?

 

[Bowhuntrben]

I don't have a problem with allowing crossbows. In my part of the state, you are now allowed to hunt for basically the entire rut with a gun, including the peak, and shoot essentially as many deer as you want. Add to that, you can hunt some late season dates with a gun when the deer are vulnerable. At least in my particular location, I don't see it making a big difference when compared to the other factors.

I also have to say that there are very few instances that I've personally encountered that having a crossbow would've made any difference for me.

I do believe that it can benefit older folks and younger folks more than those in between, and I think that's a good thing.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Just tossing this out there because I don’t care what people hunt with, but why stop at crossbows. There are so many different ways that deer hunting has gotten easier in the last decade or two. It’s more about farming deer and letting them get to be six years old or maximum antler potential and then harvesting the buck. We have trail cameras, gps mapping, drones, expanding 2” broadheads so you can make a bad shot still deadly (silly side note: when I first started bow hunting I had little pods filled with poison on my arrows behind the broadhead. Dad got the poison from the local pharmacy!) we have lightweight tree stands, lightweight portable steps, binoculars with built in rangefinders. I mean when you start taking about taking or not giving someone the upper hand in hunting when do you stop dialing back the clock?

All of the stuff you point out has an impact but most of it has never been illegal in the first place.

The clock hardly ever gets dialed back! That's exactly why we shouldn't be eliminating the few restrictions we have left.

 

[Wind Gypsy]

Making it as easy as possible to kill deer in the name of opportunity will backfire. When state regs reduce the quality of hunting so low that decent hunting is only available to exclusive managed lands, expect there to be a larger market for exclusive managed lands. The high fences arent far behind.

 

[Northwoods]

Making it as easy as possible to kill deer in the name of opportunity will backfire. When state regs reduce the quality of hunting so low that decent hunting is only available to exclusive managed lands, expect there to be a larger market for exclusive managed lands. The high fences arent far behind.

I’m not sure what the deer strategy for the state of Minnesota is. I should really get involved somehow. In recent years I’ve seen the deer heard mid Gunflint trail and the end of the Gunflint trail completely disappear. 70 years ago those areas were wilderness deer hunts that people dream about. Currently the once flourishing deer population along the north shore of Superior has been reduced to a few yard deer. Yesterday while doing some duck and grouse hunting close to the Canadian border I was pondering how a hundred years ago people would hunt this exact area with the chance of shooting a moose, caribou, or deer. So far moose are the lone survivors of those 3 species in the northern half of Cook county. There is no desire to manage the predators or the forest. Soon the state will be spending millions of dollars trying to figure out why there has been a drastic decline in the wolf population in Cook and Lake counties.