ESPN Hunting

"Please don't waste our time"

Like shooting fish in a barrel. That's how some rural hunters view metro deer hunting. One guy even told a hunter he'd simply put up a birdfeeder to attract big bucks.

"It doesn't work that way," suburban bowhunter Jay Maxwell said.

During 2007, the Bethlehem, Ga., native took a metro, or urban buck, not far from Atlanta. The 22-pointer is expected to be the new Georgia non-typical bow record.

Hunters like Maxwell said there's a lot of misinformation out there about urban and suburban deer hunting. They're glad to get this story out, and they hope the buck stops here.

Myth No. 1: It's easy hunting

"What I hear the most from non-urban guys, is that the hunting is easier here," said Jason Klump, who lives just west of St. Louis, Mo. "That's not the case. We get big bucks because we get to spend more time in the woods. Some days, we don't see any deer at all."

Klump consistently nails big bucks near his home on parcels of just 10 or 15 acres. He knocks on a lot of doors, and about nine out of 10 times he gets a firm "No." Once, one of the landowners who denied his request actually followed him, interested to see where he would eventually get permission to hunt.

"The person drove along a nearby road, honking their horn all day," Klump said.

Another time, someone figured out where Klump and his friends hunted, and dumped roofing nails in the gravel where they park.

If he wanted to, Klump could leave the hassles behind and drive down to a family farm in prime rural whitetail country, an hour and 20 minutes south.

But the people problems in St. Louis County have been worth it: Klump recently took a 125-inch whitetail across the street from his house. The neighbor is a veterinarian who has a garden occasionally raided by suburban deer.

"At first I was a little reluctant to ask him if I could hunt there, because he was a vet," said Klump, a district manager for a pharmaceutical company. But the vet didn't mind having a few of those deer "put to sleep," and Klump started watching the land more closely.

The beauty of the situation is that Klump could slide on across the street after work when there was still light, which put him in the woods almost every day for a good stretch right into the rut.

Nearby, Klump's brother took a buck in the 150s during the 2007 season. In 2006, Klump and his friends took deer as big as 184 inches.

Still, these suburban hunters have to pay attention to details — like permission slips — that rural hunters don't have to worry about.

"Get permission to hunt in writing," Klump said. That will put a quick resolution to inevitable disputes about trespassing.

There's also the fact that these bucks have to drop almost on the spot. The property lines are just too close for them to trot off with an arrow stuck in their sides. If the deer doesn't drop on the parcel you're hunting on, you'd better get the permission from that other owner as well. If you can't get all the surrounding landowners' permission beforehand, make it a good shot, or don't take it at all, he warns

Klump swears by Grim Reaper Razor Tip expandable broadheads to make sure the buck stops there. Other tips? Dress scent-free, shoot from a tree stand, and aggressively rattle and call.

Myth No. 2: These deer are tame

Marlene Odahlen-Hinz, a school teacher from Oakdale, Minn., has been hunting suburban deer in neighborhoods and city parks in the St. Paul area for more than 10 years.

All that tree-stand sitting has given her time to watch, pattern and think about these suburban deer — and how they're different than the rural deer she hunts on a family farm west of the city lights.

"Some people think it's a slam dunk to go into these parks and take a deer — it's not by a long shot," Odahlen-Hinz said. "It's true that a metro deer will tolerate more human presence than a rural deer would. But the minute you step off the paved path, these deer get just as suspicious and cautious as the rural deer."

Odahlen-Hinz is a member of the Metro Bowhunters Resource Base, a group of accomplished archers who are assigned tight-parcel hunts at city parks or near residential areas to control burgeoning deer populations.

Most of the time, they are hunting does, which is the most effective way to reduce future populations. Hunters can take bucks, but they first must take a doe. By the time they get a doe, the deer in the area are on guard, and any big buck probably is long gone.

"That's what's really tough thing about elimination projects," said the hunter. "You have a limited time to scout and hunt. The more you move, they more nervous they get."

But in recent years, a few Metro Bowhunters bucked that trend.

Odahlen-Hinz's good friend and fellow Metro Bowhunter, Deb Luzinski, dropped what's considered to be Minnesota's second largest non-typical bow buck — a 24-pointer — in a county park. It netted 222 2/8 inches.

The following week, Odahlen-Hinz hunted an area a few miles away with homes 300 yards to her right, railroad tracks to her left and a freeway nearby.

At dawn, she was putting up her tree stand when a big buck and a doe walked by. She thought that it would have been the shot of the day, so she kicked herself for not being there earlier. After she got settled 30-feet up, a buck appeared about 200 yards away. She grunted, and realized the freeway noise was so loud the deer couldn't hear her.

"I gave a few really loud grunts, and he came down one of two trails I was covering," she said. "I gave a grunt noise to stop him at 20 yards, and took a broadside shot. He ran 60 yards and fell down."

The 22-point buck taped out at 205 inches.

"It was incredible," Odahlen-Hinz said. "I'd never seen anything that big in the woods."

This year, she also took a doe on a hunt, and was then allowed to take a buck. In December she took a respectable 10-point, 140-class deer.

"I know we talked a lot about bucks," Odahlen-Hinz said. "But I want to be clear that in the 10 years I've been a part of Metro Bowhunters Resource Base, I've only taken two bucks. All the rest were antlerless."

Odahlen-Hinz said "herd maintenance" is the group's focus, and that's why she's out there. "It just happened that twice I was fortunate to be able to connect the dots perfectly."

By "connecting the dots," Odahlen-Hinz means that she followed all the rules. She first harvested a doe on the property and weeks later fooled a buck before she had to fold up the tree stand and go home at the end of the prescribed six-day hunt.

In these Metro Bowhunter hunts, a hunter is assigned a location — like a park or green space — and then gets three specific days in October and three days in November.

Before all that, all Metro Bowhunters apply, pay a fee, sign a commitment sheet, agree to only fair-chase hunts, take and pass bowhunter education course, and each year pass a proficiency test.

Once you are assigned a hunt, you then pour over maps from the city or county, download aerial photos, terraserver.com maps and topos. Hunters look for bottlenecks and pinch points, just as if they were hunting elk in Wyoming.

Tame deer? Hardly, Odhalen-Hinz said. But worth the effort, by a long shot.

Myth No. 3: All you need is a good bird-feeder

You've probably seen photos of bucks up on their hocks, slurping seed from a backyard birdfeeders. Well, don't go out to Wal-Mart looking for an Audubon-approved cardinal cottage to lure a big buck into range.

"It doesn't work that way," bowhunter Jay Maxwell said.

The up-and-comer took an amazing 227 gross-scoring, 22-point buck in Fulton County, an archery-only suburban area near Atlanta.

Instead of trying to find an easy way to a big buck, Maxwell scouts every day for woods behind houses in rapidly developing North Georgia.

One day this past November, his legwork paid off.

A friend called Maxwell at work to say he saw deer on property Maxwell had permission to hunt. Maxwell hadn't been tipped off that a huge buck was in the area. He just knew that the parcel had rubs and scrapes all over, and held the promise of a dandy.

Maxwell dropped everything — including work — and suited up for a grueling 45-minute stalk on a rutting buck on a parcel less than three acres!

When he got to the spot about an hour later, he found that a buck had "lost his mind" over a doe. The monarch was chasing off several other bucks as the doe eventually bedded down right in the middle of the three-acre plot, an area not much bigger than the Georgia Bulldogs' football field.

Maxwell's slow, ground-hugging stalk finally brought him to within 45 yards of the buck.

"It was not a gimme shot by any means," Maxwell told ESPNOutdoors.com. "It took me a lot of patience, time and watching every twig I stepped on."

The experienced hunter drew his Hoyt bow, set at 86 pounds, and let his arrow fly. It hit its mark, and luckily the buck fell nearby.

Experienced measurer Lawrence Wood of the nearby Burnt Pine Plantation put a tape to the rack for the unofficial score. It was by far the biggest Lawrence had ever added up.

"I was in awe," he said. But he's not surprised that Maxwell was able to tag a state record-sized buck in such tight quarters.

"He'll call them, talk them in, and make an excellent shot," Wood said. "If Jay shoots at it, it's dead."

The suburban buck is expected to smash the state's long-standing record: a 184-inch buck taken in rural Jones County.

All this without a birdfeeder in sight.

Myth No. 4: Only city slickers need apply

Towns, cities and counties across the U.S. and Canada offer various urban deer hunts, or are considering them for the future.

Heck, even Anchorage, Alaska, has held urban moose hunts.

So, cowboy, you still think your Big Sky Country is too sparsely populated for an urban hunt? You haven't been to Colstrip, pardner.

This coal mining town in eastern Montana has only about 2,000 residents. But it was one of the first in the state to turn to hunters to control the exploding deer population. The State Legislature allowed the Montana Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks to work with individual cities and come up with new hunting rules to reduce herd size.

First, the plan allowed archery hunting within city limits. The next year, the FWP Commission approved a separate archery-only damage hunt, according to Brett French, outdoor writer with the Billings Gazette.

Sounds like the state and city are going to be keeping Colstrip-area hunters busy for the foreseeable future.

All over North America, hunters could expect this issue to come up at their city halls. That's because white-tailed deer populations continue to rise; Deer-vehicle collisions are hovering at about 1 million a year in the U.S., according to some reports; and still those cervids continue to invade gardens from Washington, D.C. to Spokane, Wash.

Here's just a few of the municipalities in the business of asking bowhunters to thin their herds:
•  Alamosa, Colo.
•  Des Moines, Iowa
•  Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio
•  Duluth, Minn.
•  Fort Smith, Ark.
•  Louisville, Ky.
•  Kansas City, Mo.
•  New York City
•  Roanoke, Va.
•  St. Louis, Mo.
•  Warsaw, Ind.
•  Washington, D.C.
To get in on the action and help your community, locate an organization in your area, like Marlene Odahlen-Hinz's group, the Metro Bowhunters Resource Base in Minnesota. These folks already have the methods and contacts in place.

For example, all state laws must be followed, as well as all group rules. Details covered would probably include the height of your tree stand, maximum shooting distance, hauling all entrails from the field, covering the carcass when transporting as well as strict hunt times, dates and locations. Most groups also will have you take a proficiency test with the bow you'd use.

You'll have to play by their rules. It's not for everyone, but metro deer hunts offer North American deer hunters additional opportunities for more tags, more quality hunts and, once in a while, a shot at a true trophy.

City/regional web sites

Here's a list of metro deer-hunting links:
arkansasbowhunters.org
unitedbowhuntersofkentucky.org
ubbc.ca (United Bowhunters of British Columbia)
bowsite.com/ubc (United Bowhunters of Connecticut)
www.iowabowhunters.org
lonestarbowhunter.com
mainebowhunters.org
michiganbowhunters.com
metrowildlife.org (Michigan metro parks)
mucc.org (Michigan United Conservation Clubs)
stricktlybowhunting.com/mbrb/index.htm (Metro Bowhunters Resource Base, Minn.)
mnbowhunters.org (Minnesota Bowhunters, Inc.)
mississippibowhunter.com
bowsite.com/ubm/ (United Bowhunters of Missouri)
ubnj.org (United Bowhunters of New Jersey)
newyorkbowhunters.com
ncbowhunter.com
swmnv.com (Suburban Wildlife Management of North Virginia)
angelfire.com/pa2swmgp (Whitetail Management Associates North, Pittsburg, Penn.)
www.whitetailsolutionsllc.com (WhiteTail Solutions LLC, Oxford, Conn.)