As the 63rd annual archery deer season approaches, many area archers are getting excited about the Sept. 15 season opener. Among those is Darren Barnard, an avid bowhunter and St. Joseph area resident.

Excited about the prospects of the upcoming season, Barnard decided to kick it off right by inviting area archers to participate in a friendly bow shoot along with some good, old-fashioned preseason story swapping.

His idea was a hit, and word spread throughout the area. On the day of the shoot, Barnard had nearly 30 of Northwest Missouri’s most diehard archery hunters flinging arrows at 3D targets strategically placed in a field south of town.

One of those hunters was Sutton Mattucks, who was introduced to the sport just last year by Barnard and has become addicted.

“I’m thinking about selling my guns and upgrading to a really nice bow,” Mattucks said.

Last deer season was his first with a bow in hand. Just one night after Barnard helped him hang a stand in the woods, Mattucks was lucky enough to have two shooter bucks come within bow range.

Unfortunately, the first-year hunter came down with a strain of buck fever that only veteran bow hunters have learned to ward off and the young archer missed both opportunities. While his first season ended without taking a whitetail, conditions look great for the upcoming season.

According to the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) top deer biologist, Lonnie Hansen, hunters should find more mature bucks roaming the woods when archery season opens in just over a week.

With four-point antler restrictions now heading into their sixth season, hunters should continue to see an increase in bucks with bigger headgear.

MDC officials noted that long-term studies show a whitetail bucks’ antlers attain only 25 to 35 percent of their maximum size when they are 1 1/2 years old.

This figure increases to 60 percent by age 2 1/2, and by age 3 1/2, a buck’s antlers are 75 to 80 percent of maximum size. For those lucky enough to get within bow range of a 4 1/2-year-old buck, their antlers should be 90 to 95 percent as large as they will ever grow.

Hansen points to the ages of deer taken by hunters in counties with the antler-point restriction four years after the rule went into effect. The number of 2 1/2-year-old deer went up 20 percent compared to counties without the restriction. The number of 3 1/2-year-old deer was 62 percent greater in antler-point restriction counties, and the number of 4 1/2-year-old deer was up an astonishing 202 percent.

“You have to be a bit cautious about the big differences in 3 1/2- and 4 1/2-year-olds,” Hansen said. “The number of deer that hunters take in those age classes is small, so even a modest difference in the absolute number of deer shot translates into a big percentage difference.

“Nevertheless, a significant difference is attributable to the antler-point restriction,” Hansen said.

Outdoors correspondent Jeff Leonard can be reached at outdoors@npgco.com