Hunting with bow and arrow is nothing new, we’ve been doing it for some 50.000 years give or take. Although firearms have since replaced this seemingly simple stick and string, the bow has never really left the stage. Not only indigenous hunters to this day still use the bow, but a new generation of ethical hunters are pursuing their quarry with its modern versions. These bows made with cutting edge materials and technologies are besides being highly accurate, powerful enough to pass through an African buffalo. An American trend with a matching growing industry that followed, it didn’t take long to hit the European mainland. France, Finland were one of the first nations which regulated the use of bow and arrow. Nowadays there are more European countries with legal forms of bowhunting than there are where it isn’t allowed yet. And numbers are growing. Bowhunting in Belgium’s Wallonia happened overnight. A loophole in the hunting legislative texts, “hunting by shooting” does not exclude by definition bowhunting, making it possible to legally use a bow and arrow. An estimate average of 1500 bowhunters in a total of 15.000 hunters are bowhunting in Belgium. This year the government made a slight change to the rules by excluding the bow on driven hunts. Since a bow is not really suited for fast travelling game, this was a good decision. There are no extra licenses or courses if you want to bowhunt in Wallonia. You have to pass your hunting course and tests and those are done with rifle and shotgun, but that’s about it. Flanders has yet to follow. The main issue here is that all legal hunting tools are described in the Flemish hunting directives, making changing or adding tools, such as a bow a political matter. Together with some friends we are currently lobbying to get things legalised.

For me the ball starts rolling in May, when roebuck season opens on the first of the month. Most of the roe deer will start moving to feed and bucks will start cruising their territories. It’s also the perfect time to select smaller bucks that don’t have potential so you can remove them from the gene pool before they get a chance to breed. Since you’re hunting and covering a lot of ground, it gives you an idea where the females are and this will eventually lead to a big buck. I had enough encounters from a fixed treestand looking over a meadow and equal good opportunities when stalking the ferns and oak forest but besides a clean miss, I couldn’t seem to bag a roebuck. And trust me I tried hard.  By the end of the month I had enough intel to prepare a game plan. On one occasion I could video a fairly decent buck but with low light conditions I couldn’t really make out specific treats. The season closes end of May and reopens the 15th of July, which is just before the rutting starts. The rut is something special and most years it all comes down to a 2-3-day window where big bucks will lose their wit chasing females. Too hot and the action will move to the middle of the night, too wet and the does will lose interest all together. But when you are in the right spot and the right time, things will appear magical. Calling bucks is another skill and most of the time this works for small bucks since the big guys smell a fake from miles away. They don’t grow big by being dumb. In the last days of the rut. It’s frustrating at times, battling the hours ticking away, knowing that your chances are dwindling away with every day the rut gently is ebbing away. So after doing a lot of stalking and calling with some younger bucks coming in, I changed to the treestand in the last moments of rutting activity. Older and mature bucks will use these last moments to catch maybe a female more and sometimes that makes them just a little less aware of their surroundings. So, you reduce calling and waiting is the way to go.