Are Bowhunters Really Better at Deer Hunting than Rifle Hunters?

After the gun season, I’d head out to see if they had left any deer for us bowhunters. I don’t know if I had a single year where I didn’t find at least a couple of dead deer that were never recovered. That only solidified my feelings.

Eventually, I started to randomly rifle hunt deer. One of the first years that I did, I killed a buck 45 minutes into the morning that I had failed to get into bow range during the previous six weeks of the bow season. It felt like a weird victory, but again, it made me realize how easy gun hunting was when compared to archery hunting.

To this day, my stance has softened some on whether there is a big skill divide between the two factions. I do still believe bowhunters generally have to be more skilled, but that comes with a lot of caveats.

Proximity To Deer

There’s a saying that you’ll often hear bowhunters spout that goes something like, ‘Where a rifle hunt ends, is where a bowhunt begins.’ This is mostly applicable to a spot-and-stalk hunt, but the sentiment works for whitetails as well.

It’s pretty easy to understand that being able to kill a deer at 200 yards provides a huge advantage over needing them in say, the sub-40-yard range. Distance removes much of their advantages, and when you erode their ability to easily see, smell, or hear you, you have a huge edge on them.

To break this down academically, consider that the two types of hunters could sit in the same spot, and their weapon’s range would produce a 5x difference. The rifle hunter can kill in five times (or more) the area a bowhunter could kill in. It’s no secret that extended range equals more opportunity, and in this case, rifle hunting is a hell of a lot easier than bowhunting.

There is also the reality that time equals opportunity, and that’s where the whole thing starts to level off.

Days Afield

In most states, bowhunters will get anywhere from a month to two months before the gun season opens up. Across the board, gun seasons are shorter than archery seasons. While states have started implementing early antlerless seasons, youth seasons, and other opportunities for multi-weapon hunters, it’s pretty safe to say bowhunters have a hell of a lot more time to work with than their gun-toting brethren.

In this way, bowhunting is much easier than gun hunting. If the weather sucks, you can wait out a cold front or calmer days. If you have to go to your kid’s soccer tournament, it’s no biggie because you can hunt next weekend. Rifle hunters have to go when they can, and their window is often small. When it comes to time in the field, bowhunters have it much easier. But easy is relative, and in hunting, the difficulty level is pinned to the prevalence of pressure out there.

Dealing With Crowds

This is where things get a little wonky. I believe hunting pressure overshadows every other variable you might encounter as far as how it influences whitetails. This is obvious in the deer hunting trends that center on creating a whitetail oasis, leaving it alone until the perfect time, and then slipping in to kill a buck that has gotten too comfortable.

Weather, available food, predation, and whatever else affects deer, but not like human hunting pressure. The number of gun hunters versus bowhunters in most states, according to license sales, is generally about four to six times as many. It doesn’t take a whole lot of mental horsepower to realize that it would be better to hunt around fewer people.

In that way, gun hunters have to be better, but there is a catch there. Gun hunters can mobilize and work together to get deer moving, and they often do. Driving deer is an option for bowhunters, but it’s not a very good one. That’s a tactic suited for a little more firepower.

To further muddy the waters here, it’s necessary to point out that individual hunting scenarios matter a lot. The bowhunter who is relegated to public land might have less competition state-wide, but on a specific piece of public land, it’ll be a different story. A rifle hunter might have 120 acres to himself, and while there are more people out and about everywhere else, his hunting will be relatively pressure-free. It’s hard to give an overall advantage here, because pressure varies so much.

And the Winner is…

Bowhunters used to need a higher deer IQ to be successful. With the advent of top-notch clothing, box blinds, the popularity of food plots and baiting, and the ever-increasing demand to lock up land, that has leveled off quite a bit.

There are probably more serious bowhunters than serious rifle hunters, but making that case would be tough given the participation differences, and it doesn’t really matter. The best hunters out there are students of the game, regardless of weapon choice.

Maybe this is old-fashioned, but a dedication to woodsmanship matters, a lot. This is something that only comes from one source—experience. You can’t buy it. You can’t really learn it from watching how-to content on YouTube. It’s the secret to leveling up your whitetail game, and it comes in the general form of learning deer and the environment in which you hunt them. Weapon choice will influence your style in different ways, but without that foundational level of understanding, you need a lot of luck.

There is no clear winner. Good hunters are just good hunters, regardless of whether they aim with cross-hairs or a sight pin.

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For more whitetail hunting info, check out these articles: 3 Blood Trailing Mistakes That Could Cost You A Buck, How Much Does Broadhead Choice Really Matter for Whitetail Hunters?, and Why You’re Not Successful Hunting Public Land.