Catawba's William Rose downed this Craig County buck with a bow during the 2005 regular gun season. Rose believes so strongly that bowhunters can be successful that he hunts exclusively with a bow all season. Photo by Bruce Ingram.

One of the most telling statistics concerning bowhunting in Virginia is the fact that among us archers, only about 30 percent of us are successful at arrowing a whitetail in any given year. Obviously that means that 70 percent or so of us fail to do so every year.

Amazingly, at least to me, the vast majority of magazine articles on bowhunting for deer detail how to kill big bucks when most of us can't consistently kill a deer of either sex in any given year.

To learn why we Virginia bowhunters struggle so mightily to arrow a whitetail, I contacted Dave Steffen, forest game research biologist for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF). To learn how to be a more successful bowhunter, I contacted Catawba's William Rose, who annually averages killing five to nine deer with his compound.

The initial statistic that Steffen shared with me was that during the 2004-05 season (the last one for which data was available at press time), the average Virginia bowhunter spent 16 days afield to kill a deer. And for archers, the precise success rate data showed that just 30.2 percent of the state's bowhunters actually killed a deer. To contrast, the average muzzleloader-toting individual endured 10 days afield before he smoked a whitetail, while someone afield during the regular gun season killed a whitetail on average every 7 1/2 days.

The bowhunting statistic especially hit home because I go bowhunting every evening after work in October and early November, unless the weather is very bad. Sometimes, I continue bowhunting when the early muzzleloader season begins, although eventually I always give in to the temptation of hunting with a scoped in-line. This past fall, for example, I went bowhunting 27 times and killed just two whitetails -- yet I was very pleased with my season.

Steffen offers a ready -- and simple -- explanation for the low success rate of Commonwealth archers.

"Oh, yeah, bowhunting is hard," said Steffen, a dedicated bowman himself. "Those statistics merely reinforce what many veteran archers already know concerning the difficulty of what they are doing. One of the reasons for this difficulty is that most people, myself included, have to be within 25 yards of a deer to kill it.

"Look, I practice out to 35 to 40 yards, but I don't shoot at that distance. I just don't feel comfortable doing so. Plus, I have seen too many deer jump the string at that distance."

Steffen also relates that he feels that many bowhunters misestimate the yardage when the animal is more than 20 to 25 yards away. And another reason that we Virginians miss is that any little twig between our quarry and us can cause an arrow to go awry.

The biologist also encourages state archers to participate in the VDGIF's annual bowhunters' survey. I have done so for a number of years and enjoy recording information on such topics as the number of does, bucks, turkeys and other game and non-game animals observed. For more information on how to participate, contact Mike Fies at P.O. Box 996, Verona, VA 24482, (540) 248-9360.