By admin 
MINNEAPOLIS – When Nick Amunrud finally climbs into a tree this fall with his compound bow, his family’s soybeans and corn will be harvested, and his field work will be done for another season.
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That will be more than a month after this weekend’s opening of Minnesota’s archery season for deer. But that’s OK. The peak of the whitetail rut won’t be until early November. Bucks will be moving then, and Amunrud’s odds for a shot will improve.
But Amunrud is among bow hunters who believe Minnesota’s archery season isn’t really an archery season anymore.
“It’s more of a crossbow season,” he said.
Amunrud, 30, lives in Redwood County, in southwest Minnesota, and is president of the group Minnesota Bowhunters Inc. He’s referring to a change in Minnesota law, finalized in May, that legalizes widespread crossbow use during the state’s archery season for deer, which extends through Dec. 31.
Crossbows during archery season were previously restricted to Minnesota hunters age 60 or older, or those with a physical disability.
Other states have made similar changes and have seen the number of crossbow hunters increase significantly. Buck harvests also can shift, with more bucks falling to crossbow hunters and relatively fewer to firearms hunters and archers who use “vertical” – meaning compound and traditional – bows.
Crossbow hunters in Wisconsin, for example, last year killed a record 71,387 whitetails (about 61% were bucks), a nearly 11% increase from the 2024 crossbow harvest. By contrast, Wisconsin hunters who used vertical bows killed 42,233 whitetails, about 61% of which were bucks.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin deer hunters last year killed 54% of the state’s total deer harvest during the state’s nine-day firearms season. That compares to 67% of all Wisconsin whitetails felled during the firearms season in 2013, the year before the state expanded crossbow hunting.
Similarly, in Ohio, where crossbow use was expanded beginning in the 1982-1983 season, nearly 70% of the archery kill now falls to crossbow hunters.
Crossbow use was expanded in Minnesota on a trial basis in 2023. An estimated 43% of the state’s archery kill that year was by crossbow, a mark that rose to 50% last year. Total Minnesota archery license sales (crossbow and vertical bow) last year was a record 111,471.
Amunrud, who testified unsuccessfully in the Legislature against the liberalized use of crossbows, is among bow hunters who argue that some crossbows are accurate out to 125 yards, and that crossbow users can become proficient in a day or two of practice. Compare that, they said, to archers who shoot vertical bows and who require regular practice to maintain accuracy out to 30 yards (though longer shots are sometimes taken).
Amunrud also argues Minnesota deer hunters who use crossbows should have a shorter season than vertical bow hunters. Crossbow hunting later in autumn, perhaps overlapping with firearms hunting, might be a good compromise. He also supports establishment of an early primitive hunting season to promote traditional-style archery.
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“Minnesota isn’t lacking opportunities to hunt, but it is lacking quality hunting opportunities, especially on public land,” he said. “Expansion of crossbow use will only make that worse.”
But opponents to crossbow expansion found no support among legislators.
“Everyone beats around the bush about what’s going on here,” Amunrud said. “This is not an archery season that Minnesota has anymore. It’s a general deer season. When you have increasing numbers of hunters using weapons that are accurate to 100 yards or more, you might as well call it what it is. Why not airbows? They’re legal for deer in some states. Or shotguns? They have about the same accuracy and range.”
Frustrated as Minnesota’s compound and traditional bow hunters are, their fight to maintain at least some of the state’s whitetail hunting traditions is worthwhile. Otherwise, these important parts of Minnesota’s sporting heritage will fade away, and with them, perhaps, some of the state’s nearly 500,000 deer hunters.
Take deer and deer hunting in the northeast.
Before white settlement, very few whitetails inhabited that part of Minnesota. But as the region’s forests were cut, deer proliferated. With them came the establishment of thousands of camps, the annual pilgrimage to which became part of Minnesota’s culture.
In the decades since, the northeast’s forests have matured, wolf numbers have increased, moose have become a DNR management priority, timber cutting policies have changed and human development has expanded.
For these and other reasons, the northeast’s deer are fewer. And many of the region’s deer camps are being sold or abandoned.
Consider also Camp Ripley.
Not that many years ago, compound and traditional bow hunters from throughout the United States vied for permits to hunt for a few days at the 53,000-acre military training center in Morrison County. The chance to at least see a big Camp Ripley buck was the draw.
But the outpost’s deer management policies changed, and Ripley is no longer a special place for trophy bucks. Or for bow hunters.
The DNR and its maddening acquiescence to industries that manufacture the latest game-killing or fish-catching – witness forward-facing sonar – technologies are wrong.
So are legislators.
Some seasons, and places, in Minnesota should be reserved for bow hunters who shoot arrows with their own strength.
It’s the oldest tradition Minnesota has.
Ask the Chippewa.
Or the Dakota.
“If asked to sketch a mental picture of the typical archer, I would be hard put,” the great bow hunter Fred Bear once said. “There is nothing they seem to enjoy more than telling tall tales around a campfire or talking about archery to others. It would be difficult to find a more interesting group of people.”
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This story was originally published September 23, 2026 at 2:41 AM.