Several public areas in Missouri offer managed, archery-only hunts throughout the course of the deer season.

Missouri’s archery season offers hunters the first crack at harvesting deer in the Show-Me State each year. The Sept. 15 season opener provides archers a great chance at tagging a whitetail well before any other deer hunters set foot in the woods.

Bowhunters bagged the second largest number of deer ever recorded in Missouri during the 2007-08 archery season by taking 39,866 whitetails statewide. Hunters can expect the same good hunting this archery season.

Deer hunters in Missouri are blessed with an abundant deer population of about 1.3 million whitetails and several million acres of public land on which to chase them. Accordingly, finding the optimal place to hunt can be like looking for a needle in a haystack.

We’ve put together some of the best places for you to begin your quest for bagging a whitetail deer on public land during the 2008-09 archery deer season in Missouri.

BOB BROWN CA
The northwest region’s Bob Brown Conservation Area is in Holt County just two and a half miles west of Forest City off of state Route 111.

Bob Brown CA spans 3,302 acres, including about 200 acres of woodland timber, 850 acres of cropland, 800 acres of old fields, 130 acres of grassland, 3 acres of lakes and ponds more than 1,000 acres of wetlands. The area is bounded by the Missouri River for three and a half miles.

“The north end of the area is the upland portion of the Bob Brown Conservation Area and has lots of higher ground,” said MDC resource assistant Rex Reynolds. “We plant food plots including a lot of legumes, alfalfa, ladino and red clover, milo and millet in this part of the area.”

Hunters will find small timbered patches on the upland portion at Bob Brown, as well as two relatively large wooded areas there. Shrub rows and windbreaks are great travel corridors for deer traversing between sanctuaries.

“We get a lot of deer swimming the Missouri River back and forth from Kansas,” Reynolds added. “The deer on this area are very nomadic.”

Deer hunting is limited to archery-only methods -- great news for bowhunters. Keep in mind that as a wetland area, some portions of this public tract are closed to deer hunters during the waterfowl season. Make certain you get an area map and understand all rules and regulations regarding this area before hunting or scouting it. For more information, contact the MDC at (816) 271-3100.

TED SHANKS CA
The northeast region’s Ted Shanks CA is 17 miles south of Hannibal on state Route 79; then, head east on county Route TT in Pike County.

The 6,705-acre CA includes eight and three-quarters miles of Mississippi River frontage. The area’s timber was greatly damaged by the flood of 1993. However, the habitat is recovering and this area offers hunters a great place for using bow and arrow to stick a deer.

“For the past four years we have been doing work on the 2,000-acre lower portion of the area that was damaged by the flood of 1993,” said MDC wildlife management biologist Mike Flaspohler. “We’ve been clearing the dead logs and snags there leftover from the flood and mechanically and chemically disturbing the reed canary grass that had overtaken this portion of the area.”

This area’s mosaic of habitat includes about 750 acres of bottomland hardwood timber, 2,000 acres of marsh, 1,364 acres of mixed shrub/scrub/emergent wetlands, 1,350 acres of row crops, 575 acres of oxbow lakes and sloughs and 722 acres of old fields, upland woods, levees and roads.