Deer season begins with bow hunters hitting the woods

Almost three years ago Dennis Lewis lay in the deep woods of Wilkinson County with broken bones poking from his legs. Losing blood quickly, he thought he was going to die.

Thousands of bow hunters fanned out across Georgia on Saturday for the opening day of deer season, and soon hunters with guns will follow. Their greatest chance of not coming home alive isn’t from an errant shot, but from falling out of a tree, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.

Lewis knows quite a lot about that, as well as how, even when it seems most impossible, good can come from bad.

Lewis, who lives in Dry Branch and is best known as being the host of a TV show about hunting called Southern Woods-N-Water, was dabbling in making bows during the 2011 deer season.

He and his wife, Angela, were in a tree stand one morning with bows and a video camera, hoping to film Lewis bringing down a big buck for the show. As he tried to climb down from the stand on a stick ladder, a buckle on the strap that held the ladder to the tree broke, and Lewis fell 20 feet to the ground.

He landed on his feet, which saved his life, but the impact shattered the bones in his legs. With the ladder down, Angela could only sit helplessly in the stand. She didn’t have a way to get back to the ground.

Lewis quickly realized that if he didn’t get help soon, he would bleed to death.

Their one stroke of luck was that even though they were in the deep woods, they had cellphone reception. Rescuers were able to find them by tracking the cellphone signal.

“There is no doubt that I would have died if I did not have that cellphone,” Lewis said.

Lewis was taken out on a helicopter. Rescuers feared that because he had lost so much blood, he wouldn’t live if he went by ambulance. He lost consciousness on the way to the hospital.

At one point, doctors told Lewis they might have to amputate his legs. But first they tried a risky procedure that involved grafting bones from a cadaver. It worked.

After almost a year a wheelchair, he eventually was able to walk again.

An important thing happened during his recovery. Master bow designer Kevin Strother heard about Lewis’ accident and wanted to help. He sent Lewis a design for a bow, and using that, Lewis has built what had been mostly a hobby into a multi-million dollar business.

His company, Obsession Bows, employs 13 people in a building behind the courthouse in Jeffersonville. The company recently was named by Outdoor Life magazine as making the best bow in the world. It has nearly 1,000 bows on back order, and Lewis said a company offered him $5 million for the business. He turned it down.

Lewis said he thinks Obsession Bows eventually could have hundreds of employees, and already he has more bow-making machinery on order.

“We are probably the fastest-growing bow company in the world right now,” he said. “We ship bows all over the world.”

ECONOMIC IMPACT HUGE FOR GEORGIA

The economic impact of deer hunting in Middle Georgia stretches far beyond Lewis’ business.

Georgia is considered one of the best, if not the best, deer hunting states in the nation. And Middle Georgia is one of the best hunting areas in the state, said Charlie Killmaster, deer program coordinator for the Georgia DNR’s Wildlife Resources Division.

Overall, deer hunting accounts for nearly $1 billion annually in retail sales in Georgia with a $1.6 billion ripple effect and 24,000 jobs, according to the DNR.

“Deer hunting is big business in Georgia, that’s for sure,” Killmaster said.

The number of hunters has tended to fluctuate. A few years ago the state was concerned that there wasn’t enough hunters to keep the deer population under control. Of particular concern was that not many young people seemed to have an interest in hunting, which didn’t bode well for the future of game management efforts.

That trend, however, seems to be turning around. In 2007 just over 2 percent of licensed hunters were 15-19 years old, but last year that number more than doubled. The same was true for age groups up to 34 years old. The 25-29 group saw the biggest jump, going from just under 4 percent of hunters in 2007 to more than 10 percent last year.

Killmaster said hunter surveys show more people are getting into hunting who are not from hunting families. It seems to be driven by the same thing behind the local food movement, which is a desire for people to get closer to their food sources.

Killmaster calls those hunters “localvores.” Also, it seems the economy is driving more people into hunting as a food source.

In 2004 the state conducted a survey of hunters, and 26 percent cited getting meat as their most important reason for hunting. In the same survey conducted last year, 51 percent said meat was their primary motivation.

“That is a huge increase,” Killmaster said.

Statistics would seem to indicate it’s a tough way to put food on the table, but those figures are a little misleading. Last year gun hunters on average went to the woods about 14 times to kill one deer. About 45 percent of gun hunters didn’t get a deer at all. For bow hunters, it was even more difficult, with an average of 22 days in the woods per deer killed, and 0.6 deer killed per hunter over the season.

Killmaster said the reason for the numbers is that hunters are increasingly taking passes on chances to kill deer. Whether they are hunting mostly for meat or not, they tend to be waiting on the big trophy buck and let the younger ones live to grow another year.

In 2003, there were 263,552 licensed hunters in Georgia, including out-of-state hunters. In 2013, after some up and down years in between, that number was at 325,474.

The deer population in Georgia is estimated to be at least 1 million. During the last deer season hunters took 453,952 deer, with 64 percent of them being does, or female deer. The total number was the largest over the past 10 years.

GETTING STARTED

For anyone who wants to get started hunting, the state has courses for beginners that include information ranging from safety to finding a place to hunt.

Honing in on that ideal hunting spot might be the biggest challenge a hunter faces. The lucky ones have friends with large tracts of land. Public hunting land, such as the Oaky Woods Wildlife Management Area, can be good options but are open only on certain dates.

Many will pay someone to lease the rights to hunt on their property. John Trussell, an avid hunter and outdoors writer in Houston County, said in Middle Georgia the going lease rate is $10 to $15 an acre for large tracts. Most hunters can’t afford that on their own, so they form hunting clubs.

Trussell said he thinks the availability of hunting land is fairly good in the area, especially with most of Oaky Woods being saved from development, an effort he led.

“That’s where I grew up hunting, and now we’ve got that preserved,” he said.

At the archery range at Flat Creek Public Fishing Area last week, three young men said they think it’s a bit too challenging to find a place to hunt.

Joey Glasscock, 25, his brother Jake, 21, and Chase Woods, 19, all from Perry, were getting ready to hit the woods Saturday. They were firing away at the range’s various animal-shaped targets and were steadily hitting center mass from as far away as 40 yards.

They are part of a small hunting club that’s leasing a new tract this year, so they weren’t sure what to expect as they prepared for the start of the season.

Jake Glasscock said they grew up hunting and know many people their age who hunt.

But they said the availability of hunting land could be better, and many people seem reluctant to lease to young hunters.

“They think we are just going to come in and trash the place,” he said.

STATE EXPERT SAYS HUNTING IS SAFE

One misconception, Killmaster said, is that hunting is dangerous. Between guns, climbing trees and the potential for getting lost in the woods, the activity does appear fraught with peril.

However, he said the state typically has a couple of fatal accidents each deer season of about 300,000 hunters going into the woods.

“It’s extremely safe,” he said. “It’s one of the safest sports out there.”

More than half of hunting fatalities are from people falling out of trees, Killmaster said. He said hunters always should use extreme caution when getting in and out of a deer stand. Most important, he said, is always using a safety harness when climbing into a stand.

Lewis will add one more: Don’t skimp on equipment.

He blamed his accident on a faulty buckle made in China. He planned on being in the woods with everyone else Saturday, and he might have even climbed in a tree, but it would have been with top-of-the-line equipment.

“No one should climb up a tree without being secured, period,” he said. “And no one should be climbing up and down a tree in something made from China.”

He said his trauma surgeon told him he had treated many people injured in deer stand accidents.

While bow hunting has become more popular in recent years, the real impact of deer season won’t be seen until gun season starts Oct. 18. It runs through Jan. 15.

But Lewis and other bow hunters like getting a little primal when they go to the woods. Bow hunters generally have to get a lot closer to their game to make a kill.

“It’s a challenge,” he said. “The challenge of getting up close and personal with the game.”

To contact writer Wayne Crenshaw, call 256-9725.

This story was originally published September 13, 2014 at 8:49 PM with the headline "Deer season begins with bow hunters hitting the woods."