Kansas Archery Deer Hunting

Kansas bow deer hunting begins October first running through the end of December after the early muzzleloader season and overlapping the firearms season. Kansas archery deer season includes peak rut and before the firearms season.

Not all of Kansas and not all of the Kansas archery deer units where we have lease land are well suited for the bow deer hunter. While all Mid-America Hunting Association members may bow hunt where they chose, we will provide recommendations based on our boots on the ground experience where the better bow huntable habitat and better Kansas trophy production has demonstrated itself.

Each archery hunter should come prepared to hunt from multiple stands and leases allowing for wind change. Each bow hunter will have more land to hunt than time and can adjust as late as the day before the hunt where to hunt.

In general terms it is common for the bow deer hunter to scout more lease land each year than any other. Most cover 2,000 acres between spring turkey hunts, deer scouting and fall deer hunts. While the bow deer hunter does scout the most of all deer hunters the bow hunter actually hunts the fewest farms. It is common for the bow deer hunter to concentrate his efforts on two primary spots and have typically not more than two alternate deer leases as back up.

The bow deer hunter has further distinct characteristics as he is the one most likely to change hunting reservations and second waits for the last read on the weather forecast and usually waits a day or three before his hunt to make a reservation.

Traveling bow deer hunters typically scout during spring turkey season and hand deer stands just before their deer hunt or during the deer hunt. The traveling deer hunter will hunt hard with about an eve split between those that hunt one week per season and those that make two, one week trips during the entire season covering one or in most cases two states.

Many perceive the local deer hunter as spending or at least having more available time to scout an deer hunt. Local deer hunters on average spend 4 days per month in the field and a longer weekend during preferred portions of the rut. While the non-resident more likely takes a dedicated vacation week to deer hunt the local hunter has local distractions of family, house and other activities that make it more difficult to dedicate an entire week singularly to deer hunting. The local deer hunter further hunts two or more states per year at a much higher percentage as compared to the traveling deer hunter.

The bow deer hunter state tag manipulation amongst Kansas, Missouri and Iowa is typically along peak rut considerations. Both Kansas and Iowa have overlapping bow seasons with Iowa somewhat broken by their multiple modern and muzzleloader deer seasons. Kansas archery deer season is contiguous except for the 12 day modern rifle season. The key consideration is that both Iowa and Kansas bow season is during peak rut. Missouri peak rut is modern rifle season.

While many archery deer hunter would like to hunt both Iowa and Kansas doing so would stretch any one deer hunter's ability to be in two locations during the same peak rut weeks a difficult proposition. The common response is to manipulate both the Iowa and Kansas deer tag draw systems to successfully draw an archery deer tag in one or the other, but not both in any one year. The focus of scouting and hunting would be to either Kansas or Iowa dependent on draw outcome and Missouri (OTC tags) hunted only after a successful Iowa or Kansas harvest as the Missouri tag can be purchased during the season.

In spite of the best efforts and the chance of luck it will come to pass that the dedicated deer hunter will successfully draw a deer tag for both Iowa and Kansas in one season. That hunter is left to manage that as best as he can. The next year after any such occurrence that same deer hunter should not expect any deer tag in Kansas or Iowa and simply concentrate on deer hunting in Missouri.

Those that do bow hunt Missouri deer once will most likely be motivated to return for planned subsequent hunts and often do so not just as a backfill for not drawing a Kansas or Iowa deer tag but hunt Missouri due to its deer population and point restriction zone.

In spite of all the possible manipulation of tag draws and selecting where to deer hunt, Kansas will always remain at the top of the list. The primary reason for this is the lack of year round human residents allowing plenty of area for deer to grow. Kansas seems bound to this glide path as rural Kansas continues to lose residents to the larger cities and outside of the state itself. The last couple census reports show that Kansas' overall population has declined and as it does so the opportunity for less hunter pressure on deer continues.

Kansas state Department of Wildlife and Parks recognizes this declining resident population with its shift of making more non-resident tags available as measured against total tags issued. The 50% of all available tags now being made available to non-residents has had a secondary effect of increased trophy hunting where small bucks are passed on. The Department of Wildlife and Parks sees the non-resident hunter as backfill for the declining population of resident hunters as a measure to reduce deer herd numbers is a wrong assessment. Those that travel to Kansas to deer hunt do not do so to harvest a small rack. With the Kansas trophy deer being relatively easy to see and very difficult to tag leaves must motivation for return trophy hunts.

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