Pennsylvania’s statewide archery season opens on Oct. 3 and runs to Nov. 20 and then again from Dec. 26 to Jan. 24. In some WMUs to the south of us, the archery season started on Sept. 19.

Needless to say, there will likely be a pretty good number of hunters heading out, but that wasn’t always the case. Pennsylvania had its first archery season in 1951, and only 5,542 people purchased a license at a cost of $2.00, and it was for bucks only. Those who hunted in that first season reported killing only 33 bucks.

I started archery hunting for deer in the ‘60s when I was still in high school. Back then our archery equipment consisted of a fairly lengthy recurve bow. A “tree stand” consisted of a couple of boards stretched between a couple of sturdy tree limbs and hopefully enough limbs to grab while climbing into the stand.

I hunted for several years before I killed my first buck with that recurve, and my tree stand was nothing more than a good-sized tree limb 10 feet up the tree. Oh, how archery hunting has changed since those early days.

Archery hunting slowly grew in Pennsylvania, and in 1957 does were allowed to be taken by bowhunters; the reported archery harvest that year exceeded 1 percent of the total harvest. Archery hunting has grown annually, and today Pennsylvania is one of the leading states for the number of archers and for the number of deer taken.

In our last archery season, Pennsylvania had well over 300,000 licensed archery hunters, and those bowhunters harvested an estimated 118,110 deer, which was about 34 percent of the total deer harvest.

So, what has caused this big swell in bow hunting popularity?

There are a number of things that no doubt made archery hunting more popular, and the bow itself is high on that list. I remember going from the long recurve, which was hard to draw and hold, to the much more comfortable compound bow, which was much easier to draw and could be held in the shooting position much longer. While those changes in bows made a big difference, I suspect the introduction of the crossbow has had an even bigger impact.

Once cocked and loaded, it can be fired with the touch of the trigger just like a rifle, and now they are even equipped with scopes just like our rifles. They shoot fast and with a pretty flat trajectory, and even beginners can be pretty accurate.

What’s nice too is that the older bowhunters who had difficulty drawing their compounds and holding them can now operate the crossbow much like a rifle.

Well, if the advancements in the bows themselves were not enough, we have also seen big changes in what we now use for tree stands.

We now have prebuilt metal tree stands that can easily be taken to our favorite location and put up quickly with little effort. We also have portable stands that are easy and lightweight and can be used to climb a branchless tree to the desired height; I have taken several deer with such a climbing stand.

While bows and tree stands are probably two of the biggest advancements, they are also other things that have made archery hunting easier and more enjoyable.

I don’t have room to get into details, but improved arrow construction, an increase in the use of a variety of scents, and improved camouflage hunting clothing are other factors that have made archery hunting much more popular these days.

Well, it’s time to head out and put some of those great advancements in archery equipment to use.