collected by Joe Miele
"The rule of thumb has long been that we should
wait 30 to 45 minutes on heart and lung hits, an hour or more on a
suspected liver hit, eight to 12 hours on paunch hits, and that we
should follow up immediately on hindquarter and other muscle hits, "to
keep the wound open and bleeding"." Glenn Helgeland - Fins
and Feathers Winter 1987.
"For a bow hunter to easily recover a wounded deer,
the blood loss must be extensive. A deer will have to lose at least
35 percent of its total blood volume for the hunter to recover it rapidly." Rob
Wegner - Deer and Deer Hunting August, 1991.
In their report An Assessment of Deer Hunting in New
Jersey (p.25) the NJ Division of Fish and Game documented the percentage
of deer that bow hunters shoot but do not eventually find:
"Langenau (1986) found that archery deer hunters
were estimated to have retrieved 43% of the deer hit by arrows..."
The state agency that promotes and supports hunting admits
that bow hunters do not find 57% of the deer that they wound. Some
of these wounded animals made their ways to roads where they are hit
by cars. Others die of infection, exsanguination or starvation if they
are no longer capable of feeding themselves
North American Hunter magazine (October, 1995) reports
the experience of a former Texas biologist who "managed" deer
on a ranch: "After shooting 100 does, the ranch actually had more
fawns than it did the year before. Because of the significant doe harvest,
the fawn survival rate increased from 25 percent (four does to rear
one fawn to weaning age) to 120 percent (1.2 fawns per doe)."
The Union County (NJ) Parks Department report titled "Deer
Management Program For Watchung Reservation" concluded that before
being hunted, female deer living in the Reservation gave birth to only
one fawn. Afterwards, the birthrate doubled or tripled.
Bowhunting is a cause of deer/car collisions.
In 2001, the Erie Insurance Company had 384 deer claims
on opening day and the first Saturday of Pennsylvania's hunting season.
The National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration reports that
most car/deer collisions happen during hunting season. A spokesman
for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection said "the
presence of hunters in the woods puts animals, including deer and bear,
on the run and often causes them to leave wooded areas." (Trenton
Times, 12/8/98) Reflectors installed on the sides of roads can scare
deer away from dangerous areas. The Strieter-Lite reflector has been
tested for years and has been proven to reduce car/deer collisions
from 60% to 100%.
