Minnesota's 2025 Archery Deer Harvest Was 50.2% Crossbow; Kentucky Reported 46.3%

For Minnesota's 2025 season, deer registrations showed 14,939 crossbow kills versus 14,838 vertical-bow kills. That put the crossbow portion of the bow harvest at 50.2%. Figures from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) put that portion at 43.8% for 2023, followed by 48.2% for 2024. Kentucky recorded a 37.1% crossbow share for 2019; its range has stayed at 45.1% to 46.3% beginning in 2021. Minnesota's two-year DNR review found similar characteristics among deer taken with either weapon and no evidence of an effect on the herd. That review and a pair of earlier military-land studies measured hunting success and wounding, without measuring the herd itself.

Hunters in Minnesota must register each deer they harvest within 48 hours. After a 2023 law opened crossbow use to all archery hunters, the registration form began asking them to identify their bow type. A Jan. 8, 2026 snapshot of the DNR's individual-deer feed contained 186,333 registrations. Those broke out as 146,341 taken with firearms, 14,939 with crossbows, 14,838 with vertical bows, and 10,215 with muzzleloaders. Adding the bow categories produces what this article calls bow deer: 29,777 animals, representing 16.0% of all registrations.

Crossbows accounted for 50.2% of that nearly equal split, finishing ahead by 101 deer. License categories show different proportions. Standard archery licenses had a 52.4% crossbow share (9,199 of 17,572), compared with 47.0% across bonus antlerless, disease-management, and other permits (5,740 of 12,205).

In its legislative review, the DNR reports crossbow portions of 43.8% for 2023 and 48.2% for 2024. Those were the first seasons with the bow-type question. The agency figures describe regular-season harvests; our calculation includes all bow registrations present in the feed. Definitions therefore largely overlap but differ slightly across the three shares. Crossbow access has also become permanent. According to a House account of the Minnesota law, legislation passed in 2026 deleted the scheduled expiration of June 30, 2026, with that change taking effect May 6, 2026.

The Kentucky harvest application places archery kills and crossbow kills in distinct columns. Across all 27 seasons spanning 1999 to 2025, adding its four weapon categories reproduces the statewide count. Crossbow kills therefore fall outside its archery column. Within the combined bow categories, crossbows accounted for 4.0% for 2004, followed by 8.4% for 2010, 16.4% for 2015, and 20.6% for 2018. The portion then reached 37.1% for 2019, 42.3% for 2020, and 45.1% for 2021. By 2025, it stood at 46.3%. The rule revision in 2019 is covered in our Kentucky paper.

The archery category reached its Kentucky high of 23,322 deer during 2015. By 2025, that count had dropped to 16,664, a decline of 28.5%. Meanwhile, crossbow kills grew from 4,565 deer to 14,363. Together, the categories increased from 27,887 deer to 31,027, a gain of 11.3%. Crossbows added 9,798 deer, exceeding the vertical-bow decline of 6,658.

According to the DNR review, crossbow shares elsewhere stopped climbing four to six years following changes in access rules. Kentucky reached a steady share within two seasons after its 2019 jump. Its upward trend, however, dates back to 2004. That longer history leaves Minnesota's eventual stopping point unanswered.

Minnesota's monthly crossbow portions of bow registrations were 45.7% for September, 50.3% for October, 49.5% for November, and 55.4% for December. Dividing the season into seven-day periods beginning with opening day, Sept. 13, puts the opening three periods between 44.1% and 47.2%. Later periods showed 57.0%, 59.0%, and 57.6%, corresponding to start dates of Nov. 29, Dec. 6, and Dec. 13. Ahead of the statewide firearm opener, Nov. 8, the crossbow portion was 49.1% (10,135 of 20,640 bow registrations). From that date forward, it reached 52.6% (4,804 of 9,137).

The agency reported a similar seasonal shift for 2023 and 2024. In its account, vertical bows accounted for more deer during the season's opening half, followed by a gradual crossbow lead. The report says heavier late-season use "may reflect their greater effective range and ease of use when targeting deer that have survived the gun season." This particular feed does not allow that explanation to be tested. Hunters afield during December could also differ from the group hunting during September. Only 14.0% of the full season's bow registrations came in December, which limits the number of deer behind the late shift.

The current DNR feed for 2026 contains registrations only from the ongoing season. Archery hunting in 2026 began on Sept. 19. During the opening six days, crossbows accounted for 46.1% of 2,895 bow registrations. The comparable opening six days for 2025 had a 47.9% crossbow portion among 1,262 bow registrations; that season began Sept. 13. The shares are similar, with just six days represented.

Sex and age breakdowns show much the same harvest composition for either bow type. Among crossbow kills, adult males represented 45.4%; the corresponding vertical-bow figure was 46.1%. Adult female shares were 42.8% for crossbows versus 43.9% for vertical bows. Juvenile harvests leaned more toward crossbows. Juvenile males made up 6.7% of the crossbow total, compared with a 5.5% vertical-bow share. Those figures resemble the DNR's male-fawn proportions: 7.0% versus 5.9% for 2023, followed by 6.7% versus 5.4% for 2024. Still, the feed's juvenile classification could differ from the agency's fawn classification.

License breakdowns show wider differences. Crossbows accounted for 83.0% under the feed's youth deer archery license carrying no fee. Based on that label, we infer it corresponds to the free license required for hunters ages 10 to 12 in the agency's deer questions and answers. Geographic shares also varied. Area 980 recorded 19.3% (171 deer), while area 259 recorded 71.7% (106 deer), the endpoints among 67 areas recording 100 or more bow deer.

Minnesota's agency assessment examined hunting seasons in 2023 and 2024. The summary states, "We found no evidence that the statute changes made to expand crossbow use during archery season have impacted deer or turkey populations thus far." Relative to the average for the preceding two years, deer harvest during archery season decreased 2% in 2023 and increased 16% in 2024. The DNR says the 2024 increase probably has a connection to mild winters and a later opening of firearm season. To measure an effect directly, it says, researchers would need "a study that tracked individual deer before and after the change" or population surveys conducted at a scale Minnesota has not used.

Survey figures in the table come from the agency's mail questionnaire for 2024. Vertical-bow users reported spending 16.4 days hunting, compared with 13.4 days reported by crossbow users. The groups' differing effort could explain part of any gap in success, though the survey cannot determine how much. The agency also points out that surveyed archery hunters reported 28% success, exceeding the registration-based calculation of 22%. Wounding reports could be incomplete as well. The Maryland study recorded 162 unrecovered animals among 908 deer struck. The study found no difference between compound bows and crossbows in the proportion of struck deer that went unrecovered. Across the pooled data, hunters whose previous harvest exceeded 20 deer had a lower wounding rate. The Oklahoma study found average success of 22.8% during crossbow hunts versus 6.9% during hunts allowing only recurves and longbows. Male deer did not differ in body mass, antler characteristics, or age.

Our Minnesota dataset comes from a single DNR feed download made Jan. 8, 2026. Each season, the agency replaces that feed. When checked on Sept. 29, 2026, it contained registrations from 2026 alone. The retained 2025 dataset is therefore our saved copy, a situation discussed in our perishable-record paper. Weapon labels reflect hunters' registration answers. Neither firearm nor muzzleloader licenses have bow kills listed in the feed; all records tied to firearm licenses identify the weapon as Firearm. Agency rules allow firearm-license holders to hunt with crossbows during firearm season. These records cannot establish whether hunters did so or how any resulting kills were classified, leaving that use outside this analysis. Both states tally harvested deer instead of individual hunters. The shares characterize the people registering deer but provide no measure of hunting success or deer population size and establish no causal explanation.

Our view is that a bow type's harvest portion describes the hunters registering deer and the timing of those kills. It offers little guidance about which bow will perform better for a particular hunter. Choose according to how regularly you expect to practice before the opener. Maryland's pooled results associated a lower wounding rate with a previous harvest exceeding 20 deer, without establishing that experience produced the difference. Minnesota's comparison of 4% versus 7% comes from self-reporting groups whose members selected their own weapons. Because the earlier studies both examined military properties, their findings should be treated as checks of those locations. Managers working under antlerless quotas should retain each season's weapon data before Minnesota replaces the feed.