Four regional bowfishing representatives used an hour of testimony this week to move the eight-member Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Commission to spike a proposal to regulate the activity with daily bag limits and outlawing shoot-and-release.
The decision puts the discussion of any bowfi shing limits on hold for at least a year, until the department’s next round of regulation proposals, according to Ken Cunningham, Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation Fisheries Division Chief.
“It is tabled until we can come up with more information to help commissioners make a decision,” he said. “We are putting our heads together on what that will look like.”
State biologists proposed the new rules, saying that continued unlimited take in the face of the growing popularity of bowfishing could be unsustainable in some water bodies. The proposals follow a national trend of states recognizing the ecological value of the fish–often considered trash fish or bottom feeders.
The department offered as evidence public surveys of archers that showed a 10-fish daily aggregate-species bag limit would not curb interest for most people. Shoot-and-release, allowed in only a few states, was the subject of a state study that showed nearly all fish shot with an arrow die after they are released.
Commissioner James Barwick said a rules sub-committee discussed the bowfishing proposals at length and considered options with exceptions for tournaments or a higher daily bag limit but, in the end, felt they needed more information.
Commissioner Jess Kane said that, while he is uncomfortable with the idea that “an unlimited amount of these fish can be taken and dumped in a ditch and there’s nothing we can do about it,” he, too, could benefit from more information, given what he heard in Monday’s discussion.
Bowfishers, some of whom helped collect fish for the mortality study, claimed the department’s peer-reviewed and published shootand- release mortality study was flawed because of poor fish handling and bias due to a perceived anti-bowfishing sentiment in the fisheries division. The bowfishers said a 10-fish limit would decimate economically important guiding and tournaments in rural areas.
Public comment on the rules was open for over 30 days starting in November. Commissioners said online comments mostly favored the rule changes, but much of it came from out of state. The comment period ended with a public meeting in Oklahoma City the first week of December.
Commissioners allowed four bowfishing representatives to speak at Monday’s meeting: Pete Gregoire, national president of the Bowfi shing Association of America from Kansas; Steven Whitney, a bowfishing guide and BAA state representative from Missouri; Dennison, Texas bowfishing guide Stephen Banaszak, and Youth World Bowfishing Championship founder Randy Woodward of Coweta.
The commission gave each five minutes to start, but the four filled the hour with follow- up questions from commissioners. The longest of the presentations was nearly 20 minutes.
Woodward later said bowfishers have a long history of helping agencies with research efforts and want to see healthy populations of non-native fishes like gar and buffalo. They simply do not believe bowfishing has harmed those populations, even with increases in the past decade. Woodward said what he has seen on the water in 40 years of observation shows him the opposite.
“We are only about 1 percent of anglers out there,” he said. Even if some bowfishers occasionally have “a night of a lifetime” and kill dozens or hundreds, “we don’t take but a minute number of the fish out there,” he said.
He said he received a call Thursday to set up a meeting with department officials. They will discuss what research bowfishers believe is necessary.
“All we are asking for is good scientific data,” Woodward said. “I told them we’ll help ‘em, and we will.”
The commission passed one bowfishing rule that clarifies bowfishing equipment consists of a bow and string and a tethered and barbed arrow. It would prevent the use of air bows.
The commission also eyed a list of 18 hunting rule changes and passed all but a proposal to create a late-summer lottery-based hunt to allow the taking of some bucks in velvet. Department officials said public comments were firmly against a velvet-buck season.
