It was more thunk than zing, but I immediately knew the crossbow string had whacked my thumb when I released my first bolt during sighting in last month.
So I began looking around to see where the tip of my thumb might have flown. Then I looked down and realized my thumb was intact but rapidly turning purple, sort of looking like an opponent’s face after a bout with Mike Tyson back in his prime.
What really pissed me off was a minute earlier, Jeff Lampe had warned me to keep my thumb down when shooting and I still managed to do the opposite and whack my thumb.
But in general, bowhunting in Illinois is thumbs up.
How’s that for a segue?
On a serious note, it appears that bowhunters in Illinois have leveled off in their use of crossbows since they were legalized for general use in 2017. From accounting for 30.2 percent of the bow harvest in 2017, crossbows steadily increased until accounting for 53.4 percent of bow harvest in 2022. Then it held at 53.4 for the 2023-24 season.
I fall in that group of hunters who took up bowhunting when the general use of crossbows was opened up in 2017. My reasons were pretty simple and I suspect similar to many others: I do not have the time to focus on using a compound bow, but I value the opportunity that crossbows allow for somebody like me to deer hunt during times other than the seven days of the two parts of the traditional firearm deer season. Or the three days of muzzleloader season (my next expansion of my deer hunting) or seven days of the late-winter antlerless/CWD seasons.
A crossbow at the ready in the tree stand.
Dale Bowman
Bowhunting in Illinois in general is open from Oct. 1 to the third weekend of January In 2023-24, bow season for deer was 106 days. Bowhunting is also open during the rut, which is broadly late October into early November.
I respect that serious bowhunters feel slighted that people like me can encroach on their sport. Lampe, former editor/publisher of Heartland Outdoors for whom I did a monthly column, said that Tim Walmsley, a serious advocate for deer hunters and particularly bowhunters, convinced one of his sons to switch to a compound bow to be serious about the sport. I get that.
I just caught up on the fine print in the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ “Summary of 2023-2024 Illinois Deer Seasons,” which was released online only days before the usual start of bow season on Oct. 1. The official word is, “Continued challenges with the harvest reporting system made it exceedingly difficult for our staff to compile the report.” To translate, there are issues with the vendor for the reporting system.
Total harvest for all seasons was 160,313 deer. The peak overall harvest was 201,209 in 2006. I’m not sure what to make of total permits issued dropping to 542,703 from 547,736 in 2022-23. Bow harvest was 71,226, second only to the record of 75,106 in 2020, the Covid year. Firearm harvest was 76,494, well off the record 123,792 in 2005.
The interesting point in 2020 was that bow harvest nearly matched the firearm harvest of 77,160. I thought the day was coming when bow harvest would surpass that of firearm, but that day has not come as bow harvest has been fairly level the last five years.
The breakdown in the 2023-24 season for bow harvest by bow type was 53.4 percent by crossbow, 45.5 compound and 1.1 traditional bows. That’s been fairly standard for a couple years.
Crossbows have an interesting parallel now with firearm deer hunting. The 2023-24 season was the first full firearm season where specific single-shot centerfire rifles were allowed for deer hunting. The general boundaries for those single-shot rifles are “a bottleneck centerfire cartridge of .30 caliber or larger with a case length not exceeding one and two-fifths inches, OR a straight-walled centerfire cartridge of .30 caliber or larger.”
Rifles accounted for 20.53 percent of the firearm harvest. I suspect that percentage will increase at least for the first few years, especially since the lightness and less recoil of most rifles make it easier for young people to use.
Between times of sighting in the crossbow, Lampe four-wheeled us around to look at and check deer stands, trail cams, food plots and the woods.
Bottom line about deer hunting for most, whether using a rifle, shotgun, compound bow, crossbow, pistol or traditional bow, is savoring the time prepping for the hunt and sitting in the stand or blind, settling into the natural flow.