August 21, 2011 in Outdoors

Bowhunter gets cool reception in campaign to legalize lighted arrow nocks

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Jim Sutton of Spokane displays arrows with lighted nocks, which he believes should be allowed for hunting in Washington.
(Full-size photo)

A Spokane sportsman says the state should consider his bright idea for reducing the number of deer and elk wasted by archery hunters.

“Allowing lighted nocks is a no-brainer to me,” said Jim Sutton, referring to an LED light in the fletching end of an arrow that illuminates upon release by the bowstring’s thrust.

Washington hunting regulations prohibit the use of certain modern and electronic equipment such as lighted sights and nocks for use during the special primitive weapons seasons.

“A lighted nock doesn’t give a hunter an advantage in killing a big-game animal,” Sutton said. “But it offers him 40 hours of assistance in finding the arrow – and the clues he needs to determine his next step in recovering a dead or wounded deer.

“It’s a conservation measure,” he said, noting that 45 states allow lighted nocks for bowhunting.

Sutton has discussed the proposal with state wildlife officials several times, including a detailed presentation to the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission during its March meeting in Spokane.

But Department of Fish and Wildlife officials haven’t taken the proposal seriously because none of three state archery organizations has endorsed it.

“The agency likes to have the support of organized sportsmen before moving ahead with rule changes,” said Kevin Robinette, WDFW regional wildlife manager in Spokane.

Sutton says no one should expect the Washington Traditional Bowhunters to support use lighted nocks, since the group is organized for the purpose of promoting traditional archery equipment.

But the State Archery Association and the State Bowhunters Association also balk at the proposal.

“I wish they’d support it,” Sutton said. “We’d save deer.”

Complicating the issue, the Pope and Young Club, the official keeper for bowhunting records, categorically prohibits “the use of a bow or arrow to which any electronic device is attached.”

Lacking a statistically viable study, Sutton conducted a survey of 50 bowhunters he contacted randomly at a meeting in March. He said he personally knew only two of them.

The results supported what most archers already know as their dark little secret: They wound a lot of game.

Most of the bowhunters said they had wounded and lost a deer in recent years, Sutton said. “My survey indicates there might be 2.5 percent wounding loss by archers in a season, and that’s conservative,” he said.

This information is at least supported by a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks study on elk wounding lost conducted in the late 1980s. Researchers found that of the bowhunters who hit an elk with an arrow, only about 50 percent were able to recover the animal.

Using his survey results and adjusting to nearly 25,000 licensed archers who hunt deer each year, Sutton believes allowing lighted nocks could save hundreds of deer a year in Washington, maybe more than 1,000.

“It’s not just the deer that’s wounded and lost,” he said.

“When they can’t find the deer they wounded, most of the hunters say they continue hunting through the season and 1.3 percent of them shoot another deer. In each case, that’s two dead deer when maybe there could have been only one.”

Dave Ware, WDFW state game manager, hesitated to accept Sutton’s enthusiasm for lighted nocks, Sutton said, equating them with night vision scopes, heat-vision equipment and lighted sights.

“That’s nonsense,” Sutton said. “Those are tools that give a hunter an advantage in harvesting an animal. A lighted nock is a recovery tool. There’s no advantage other than that.

“Traditional bowhunters contend you can shoot later at night with lighted nocks – as if they’re tracer rounds or something – and if you miss an animal it encourages further unethical shooting.

“I say if a guy is going to take a 50-yard shot after hours, he’s unethical, period, and it doesn’t matter what’s on his equipment.”

Sutton became adamant about promoting the legalization of lighted nocks last fall after his daughter shot and wounded a trophy whitetail buck on their property in northeast Spokane.

“We waited after she shot it, but we went in too soon and bumped the buck before it was dead,” he said.

They found the buck the next day and recovered the trophy, but the meat was spoiled.

“I recovered that deer only because it was where I could get friends and devote a lot of time to looking,” he said. “If it had been out at a hunting camp or on a weekend when we had to get home, we probably wouldn’t have found it.

“A lot of the opportunities a bowhunter gets are in the last hurrah of shooting hours.”

A lighted nock, he said, has the potential to help by:

• Helping the hunter pinpoint where the animal was hit.

• Allowing a hunter to find the arrow, whether it’s in the deer or in the field.

• Assuring the hunter can study the arrow to help determine where the animal was struck.

“A heart shot leaves very dark blood on the arrow with no smell to it,” he said. “A lung shot leaves pink frothy blood. These shots kill quickly and the animal can be approached in 35-40 minutes without it running off.”

But if a hunter sees or smells bile or offal on the arrow, the deer likely has been shot in the liver or gut and several hours will be required for it to seize up.

Landowners would welcome lighted nocks, Sutton says, and some might restore opportunities to hunt on private land where ranchers and farmers don’t want to risk dangerous lost broadheads in their fields.

“Every bowhunter has lost arrows in the field, and sometimes several in a season,” he said. “Even an arrow with neon yellow fletching can be hard to find buried in the grass. But with a lighted nock, you have a much better chance.”

Archery stores would benefit from legalizing lighted knocks. “They’d sell a bunch of them right away,” he said. “Probably 95 percent of the archers I queried at the Big Horn Show said they’d buy them.”

Jim Shockey, the Outdoor Channel’s globetrotting hunter, was surprised after speaking to Sutton last spring before the outfitter presented a program for a sportsman’s club banquet.

Sutton asked him his opinion of lighted nocks.

“They’re not legal here?” Shockey said. “What’s your problem?”

Sutton shakes his head at the argument that lighted nocks erode the primitive nature of bowhunting that allows archers to have more liberal seasons.

“Compound bows are not primitive,” he said.

State Fish and Wildlife officials shouldn’t wait for organized bowhunting clubs to formally vote on allowing lighted nocks for hunting, Sutton said.

“The statewide groups represent only about 8 percent of the bowhunters in Washington, yet my survey and my contacts with archers indicate that 95 percent of them would like to see lighted nocks legal.”

Six comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  nutz4utwo on August 21 at 9:46 a.m.

  Add one of those plastic glow sticks on the end and you will have light with no electricity. Problem solved.

• 

  wheels270 on August 21 at 9:02 p.m.

  I thought primitive hunting was about slinging rocks at your prey.
  Guess I have been holed up in my cave for way too long. It seems to me that hunting in general is about (as far as the STATE is concerned), is about managing wildlife numbers. Yet in light of the states actions over the past few years it seems like it’s more about money and creating more revenue for a state that can’t handle the money it has. Bottom line, the state doesn’t care about putting food on your table and resolving issues about crop damage and safety on our roads as much as it does about controlling your actions and putting dollars in their pockets. I hope the state doesn’t send their killer goat after me for saying that.

• 

  meyerlansky on August 22 at 7:52 a.m.

  Not being a hunter, this seems like a reasonable request. However, I am not a hunter, so what do I know?

• 

  Wizard_Of_Oz on August 22 at 7:57 a.m.

  We should arm the animals so its a fair fight. Like in crocodile dundee.

• 

  LongbowJarhead on August 23 at 10:11 a.m.

  I hunt with archery equipment and I know just how difficult it is to harvest big game animals with the limitations these tools have. It’s always a shame to loose an animal you have shot and my heart goes out to his daughter for loosing that amazing buck but I have to ask would more modern stuff really have solved her problem? As a society we tend to be lazy we look for the easiest way. We want more, faster, better. We don’t want to invest the time in learning the skills our Grandfathers had. Sometimes less “stuff” is more. I oppose lighted nocks, not because all the archery organizations in WA do but because it’s a slippery slope down technology lane. What’s next a laser pointer in the tip of the arrow (it’s in the works, trust me) or God forbid shooting animals via remote control over the internet (as happened it Texas). We need to learn basic woodcraft like tracking, route finding, field dressing, fire building and maybe most importantly when not to shoot. We owe it to the animals we peruse.

• 

  Sharpstyk on August 24 at 11:53 a.m.

  Whatever the projectile, be it an arrow or a bullet, proper shot selection (distance to the target, the target’s body angle relative to path of the projectile, the behavior of the target) and proper follow-up on a shot are essential; and it’s education and discipline that are too often missing.

  Arrows that are brightly painted and have brightly colored fletching show up very well under good shooting conditions. But the most popular modern arrows are black (how stupid is that?!). However, the same light-gathering fibers that are used in modern compound sights are also in some fletching vanes and arrow crest wraps so that those black arrows can be made to be more easily seen by those who choose to shoot ultra-fast modern compounds.

  So the electronic nock is not only unnecessary (unlit arrows in the hands of skilled persons have been effective for tens of thousands of years) but it might also encourage undisciplined or undereducated people to take risky shots that they would not otherwise take. And at worst they would serve as an aid to knowingly taking illegal shots; shots outside of legal hunting hours.

  Archery hunting seasons were initially created when it was a close-range, proven effective, endeavor. It was hard work so technological advances came along to make it easier. Now those advances have folks complaining that their equipment shoots too far and too fast for them to see their arrows. But riflemen can’t see or find their bullets and they aren’t complaining.

  A good leashed dog that has been trained to follow a blood trail is the only fair way to address any concerns about possible wounding losses. By fair I mean that long distance weapons shooters, too, might occasionally benefit from allowing a tightly controlled canine to be brought into the field when a person’s skills aren’t good enough to follow a trail. Dozens of states allow the practice for finding wounded big game. Houndsmen in our state were tossed under the bus about fifteen years ago when a voter’s initiative took away part of their lifestyle. Perhaps some of them would benefit by the state allowing trailing dogs. That would be a win-win scenario.

  Finally, the 1995 Camp Riley Study on Bow Wounding Loss, conducted under tightly controlled conditions, written by Wendy Krueger of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is available through the National Bowhunter Education Foundation. It is a factual study with documented results, not a sloppy opinion poll contrived to substantiate a biased claim. The study concluded that number of deer lost to bowhunting is not biologically significant (because it is no where near what Mr. Sutton claims).