Published: Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2008 / Updated: Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2008 08:57 AM

The challenge is what draws this special breed of sportsman

Almost without a sound, deer season opened these past two days. Because it was bow season, not rifle season.

Deer hunting is a huge sport in this area and in South Carolina -- wildlife officials say more than 150,000 people in the state hunt -- but at times brings controversy because some people just plain don't like hunting. Yet, the search for deer with a bow and arrow brings out arguably the most focused of all deer hunters, said Bob Hamilton of Sportsman Inc. on S.C. 274 in Rock Hill. On Monday, Hamilton watched a hunter bring in what might be the area's first buck of the season.

"I'm hoping to get a big one myself," Hamilton said.

Hamilton said bow hunters are a special breed because the hunter has to be closer to the deer. Bow hunter Marc Trudel, who splits time between Lake Wylie and Florida, agreed.

"The chances are maybe one in 50 you get a shot," Trudel said. "It's a real challenge to sit still for five hours and hope you get a chance. I know hunters who only use bow, because they like that challenge."

Muzzle and rifle season come later in the fall. This year's bow season will have an even larger base of hunters now that crossbows are legal in the state, said Darren Nichols, owner of Nichols Store, a longtime sporting goods store on S.C. 901 south of Rock Hill popular with Carolinas hunters.

Last year, more than 3,000 York County hunters harvested 5,929 deer with bow, muzzle and rifle, according to state wildlife figures, and across the state, hunters bagged more than 207,000 deer.

The challenge for hunters isn't always just finding deer but dealing with some who don't agree with hunting at all. Yet, hunters and state conservationists who enforce state hunting laws say deer populations have to be culled each year to prevent potential malnutrition and starvation, overgrazing, crop damage and the potential to spread disease.

"Deer are a prey species with a relatively high reproductive rate," said Charles Ruth, a wildlife biologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources who runs the state's deer project. "People have taken the deer's predators out of the mix, so we are somewhat culpable. Mother Nature is typically more ruthless than hunting. Archery for hunting has been around for thousands of years. It is a lethal and a good way to harvest."

Groups such as the state's Quality Deer Management Association work to promote a healthy, thriving deer population through hunting, said the association's Scott Rothenberg.

Fred Dunn of Rock Hill has bow hunted for 10 years. He didn't have any luck Monday and Tuesday but isn't going to quit. Why? The sport and the meat, Dunn said.

Bow hunting isn't as big as rifle hunting later in the fall, but across the state, almost 35,000 people bow hunt for deer and either eat the meat or give it away, Ruth said. Meat is normally butchered by local processors, Ruth said. In Van Wyck just across the Lancaster County line, Kyle Starnes at Hickory Hills Custom Deer Processing had a York County hunter bring in the year's first deer for butchering.

"He had a six-point buck, real nice deer, about 180 pounds," Starnes said.

Alterations to deer habitat from development in growing places such as York County mean that deer are pushed into new surroundings, including crossing roads in search of food. Hunting over the past decade has dropped the state herd from an estimated 1 million -- "Too high for deer to thrive," Ruth said -- to a more manageable estimated 750,000.

A smaller herd means fewer collisions with cars. In York County, 31 collisions with deer were reported last year, down from a high of 151 deer hit by cars in York County in 2001 when the herd was larger.

The state saw a drop in collisions between deer and vehicles from 3,374 in 2001 to 1,560 last year. In rural and less-developed Chester County, where Ruth said the population of deer remains vast, deer/vehicle collisions were down from 90 in 2001 to 12 last year.

Anybody who has hit a deer with a car knows that, unlike a bow and arrow, there is a sound. That deer's death is nothing but horrible and filled with suffering -- and potentially dangerous for the driver.

"Nobody wants to see a deer hit by a car," Ruth said. "There is nothing humane about that."