Photo by BillKinney.com

Kansas deer hunting is a pastime cherished by many. The tradition started in 1965 with Kansas' first modern-day deer hunting season. Fewer than 4,500 permits were issued for a short season in specific portions of the state. In total, 160 deer were killed by 1,220 archers, and 1,340 deer by 3,935 firearms hunters.

In virtually every year of the last four decades, the state has made changes to everything associated with the regulation of deer hunting, the object being to increase opportunity and/or to accommodate groups and individuals concerned with or affected by wild deer. As a result, such things as negotiating the permit-issuing process and the season structure and interpreting state statutes governing the sport have become increasingly difficult to manage.

In an effort to simplify this legal and administrative hodgepodge for Sunflower State deer hunters, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks recently undertook the effort of creating a more user-friendly deer hunting season with easier-to-understand regulations and information.

"It really started when the 2005 House Wildlife and Tourism Committee of the Kansas Legislature asked the agency to look at our deer-related statutes and bring recommendations back the following session on ways to condense and simplify those statutes," said Mike Miller of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. "We kept getting changes to our deer permitting and our deer management programs through the Legislature. Those statutory requirements had become a complicated collection of statutes."

Miller was assigned the monumental task of chairing a 10-member task force made up of KDWP personnel from across the state to address the Legislature's request. Most of the members had more than 20 years' service with the KDWP and were deer hunters themselves, so they had a firm grasp on the mood of their fellow enthusiasts. In the course of their initial meetings, held regularly, the members quickly realized that the system had become increasingly complicated.

"As our deer hunting tradition grew and specialty groups wanted special seasons and special equipment restrictions, and as the resource grew and the opportunities became more available, we got into this entire permitting process," Miller said. "One of the analogies was that we started out with a one-room house and we kept adding rooms on and kept adding rooms on. We eventually created a maze of regulations that was difficult to navigate through."

More changes were implemented in the 1990s as deer populations in some parts of Kansas got a black eye. "Residents of Kansas thought we had too many deer as deer/vehicle accident numbers increased, and we had lots of deer depredation complaints from landowners with crop damage. Management shifted from protecting a limited resource to controlling a growing population," Miller noted. "Not only were we trying to make adjustments through the regulatory process, but we were getting statutory changes as well, and it became something almost impossible to keep up with as it changed so much from one year to the next."