It is worth looking back at the states of Georgia’s experience of including crossbows in their archery season. The data that came to light from the extensive study on how crossbows effected Georgia’s hunters has been found to have been duplicated in many ways in other states that has since also made crossbows part of their archery season. The state of Georgia made crossbows legal in their archery season back in the 2002-’03 deer season. Georgia was one of the first states to make crossbows legal during the archery season of the 15 plus states that also made crossbow Georgia’s Senior Wildlife Biologist Nick Nicholson saw an opportunity to look at the new crossbow hunter population. His goal was to learn about the make-up of the new Georgia crossbow hunters.

The information that follows is a list of the highlights of Nick Nicholson’s choosing. Many states that followed Georgia in making crossbows legal also found their crossbow hunters to have many of the same factors in common.

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Crossbow Hunting Talking Points

Nick Nicholson – Senior Wildlife Biologist

v Prior to the 2002-’03 season crossbows were legal only for use with a handicap permit.

v Hunter Harvest Surveys broke out type archery equipment used only through 2003-’06 deer seasons.

v Detailed analysis of the effects on deer harvest by legalizing the use of crossbows was conducted during 2003-‘04 hunter harvest survey.

v Results of ’03-’04 analysis:

o   13.5% of crossbow hunters had used crossbow previously under handicap permit

o   55.4% of crossbow hunters were already archers

o   9,300 additional archers from previous survey

o   6,900 crossbow hunters indicated they were new to archery

o   Older archers (50+ years old) were significantly (p = .001) more likely to use crossbows than archers < 50 years old.

o   While new crossbow archery hunters accounted for 4,550 additional deer harvested, this total likely did not significantly add to the statewide deer

harvest, falling within the 95% confidence interval of + 7,818  deer.

o   Crossbow hunter success is almost identical to compound bow hunter success (0.49 and 0.51 deer/hunter, respectively).

v Appears that liberalizing the use of crossbows caused a novelty surge in total number of

archery hunters that slowly dissipated over the subsequent 3 years.

v Archery hunting in Georgia, using all types of approved archery equipment (recurve,

compound and crossbows), continues to be a popular choice among deer hunters  

with about 30% using archery equipment at least once during a season.

v More than 91,000 resident and non-resident archery deer hunters in 2008-‘09 deer season.

v Crossbow hunting may be a tool to achieve hunter retention of older archery hunters.

v Crossbow hunting may be an important tool in the management and control of urban

deer.

v The use of crossbows did not increase the number of deer hunting related accidents.  The year prior to liberalization there were 3 non-fatal hunting accidents during archery season, all related to climbing tree stands.  In years 1, 2 and 3 of crossbow use, total number of archery related accidents were 3, 3, and 0, respectively.  All incidents related to climbing tree stands.

Georgia’s DNR 2009-’10 deer hunting summary shows there were 108K hunters that used either crossbows or vertical archery equipment.  When using Nick Nicholson’s Georgia hunter numbers from the 2002-’03 study there were  98K hunters in this category.