Crossbow Deer Kills Helped Wisconsin Set Third Highest Arrow Harvest

   As Wisconsin bowhunters return to the woods Sept. 12 for the season opener, let’s review the 2025 hunts, which toppled 113,620 whitetails, the state’s third highest archery kill on record.

   Crossbow hunters registered a record 71,387 (63%) of those deer, a 10.6% increase from 64,555 deer in 2024. The previous crossbow record was 65,731 in 2020. The 2025 harvest was also the first time crossbow hunters killed over 70,000 deer since “horizontal” bows were legalized for all bowhunters in 2014. Until then, only hunters 65 and older or medically incapable of drawing a regular bow could use crossbows.

   Crossbow hunters also arrowed a record 43,241 bucks in 2025, or 60.6% of the crossbow total. However, that ranks fifth in bowhunting annals behind 45,988 bucks killed in 2012; 45,562 in 1999; 45,498 in 2003; and 44,443 in 2011 with regular bows.

   Speaking of which, compounds and other “vertical” bows accounted for 42,233 deer in 2025, the first time that harvest exceeded 40,000 since 2020. Bucks made up 25,858 (61.2%) of the kill, the highest since 27,136 bucks were taken in 2020.

   We now pause to define some volatile terms most nonhunters overlooked in previous paragraphs. Many “regular bowhunters” — 95% of whom use compound bows that let the archer hold only 15% of its draw weight — don’t consider crossbows to be archery gear. They also insist crossbow hunters aren’t “real bowhunters.”

Most Wisconsin bowhunters in the early 1950s were still using longbows, which might explain why the 1952-54 bow-kill totaled 1,224 deer, or 1.7% of the 72,025 combined gun/archery harvest those three years. — Wisconsin Historical Society photo

   Most of these folks, of course, weren’t around in the late 1960s and early 1970s when “traditional bowhunters” — folks shooting standard longbows and recurve bows — greeted compound bows with similar disdain. In fact, many “trad bow” enthusiasts still insist real bowhunters don’t shoot compounds or crossbows, but they especially hate crossbows.

   Sigh.

   Either way, few of us were bowhunting from 1952 to 1954 when commercially manufactured recurves hit the market. Most bowhunters in that era still used longbows, and many built their own. Maybe that’s why the combined bow-kill for 1952-1954 was 1,224 deer, and contributed only 1.7% of Wisconsin’s 72,025 combined archery/firearms harvest those years. For comparison, state motorists killed 1,883 deer with their cars in 1953-54 alone.

   For what it’s worth, I killed my first deer with a recurve bow in 1973, but I’ve hunted with cable-and-cam equipped bows since buying a 50-pound Allen compound in July 1974. I thought it was magical when the Allen’s little wheels rolled over, reducing the 50-pound draw weight by 20% to 40 pounds while I aimed my pin-sight. That magic helped me ignore any mope who ridiculed my “darn-near gun” during archery season.

   My current compound bow is far more advanced. It’s set for a 57-pound draw weight, but its cables and cams reduce it by 75% so I hold only 15 pounds while aiming. Still, I switch to my crossbow during December, even though I can’t shoot it offhand much better at 25 yards than I do my compound bow.

   Either way, such distinctions are trivial nuance to nonhunters. They don’t care what we call ourselves, our gear or our hunting seasons when shooting arrows at deer. But they understand this: Whether we buy a crossbow, compound, recurve or longbow, we pay the same 11% federal excise tax because the IRS considers all of them archery gear.

   It’s safe to assume deer don’t care, either.

   Yes, crossbow hunters set records a year ago, but Wisconsin recorded its biggest archery harvest — 116,010 in 2007 — seven years before crossbows gained legal hunting status. It helped, of course, that Wisconsin still had a deer-management program 20 years ago, which allowed Department of Natural Resources biologists to better focus hunting pressure when and where it was needed.

   Bucks made up only 33% (38,011) of the 2007 archery kill because the DNR imposed earn-a-buck regulations in 53 of the state’s 135 deer-management units that year. In contrast, arrow-killed bucks (69,099) made up 61% of the 2025 archery harvest, whether we shot them with 20-inch crossbow arrows (60.6%) or 29-inch compound-bow arrows (61.2%).

   In fact, ever since crossbows joined the hunt 12 years ago, bowhunters have targeted bucks at nearly identical rates whether they shot vertical or horizontal bows.

   No one, though, should think Wisconsin bowhunters were “managing” deer numbers by arrowing 44,521 antlerless deer in 2025. Roughly 25% of that antlerless kill was buck fawns — aka “nubbin” or button bucks — so last year’s arrow kill was roughly 80,230 bucks and 33,390 does. At those rates, deer herds keep increasing.

   Neither should anyone claim crossbows are making up for declining sales of gun-hunting licenses, which fell 10.2% (62,554) the past decade, tumbling from 613,165 in 2015 to 550,611 in 2025. For perspective, Wisconsin sold more gun licenses in 1974 (556,815), the year I graduated high school.

   Yes, the combined crossbow/compound-bow harvest made up over 30% of Wisconsin’s overall deer kill six of the past seven years. And yes, archery’s contribution to annual harvests averaged only 18% at the turn of the century. But that increasing average is more about fewer gun-hunters and stagnant gun-harvests, which varied little the past 12 seasons, fluctuating from 196,135 to 225,861 deer kills.

   In fact, Wisconsin’s fossilized nine-day firearms season contributed a record low 53.9% of the state’s overall 2025 deer harvest. For comparison, the nine-day season contributed 67% of the total deer kill in 2013, and over 80% of the harvest for 22 of 25 seasons from 1974 through 1998. Further, from 1966 through 1974, the nine-day hunt contributed over 90% of the total harvest.

   Therefore, no matter your views on recurves, longbows, compounds or crossbows, keep this in mind: Arrows won’t affect the size, health or age structure of our deer herd unless we return to science-based deer-management plans that send more broadheads into female deer.