▶Fred Lebrun has a change of heart on crossbow to help manage deer numbers.

A crossbow as an acceptable tool for deer hunting in our state has been a considerable bone of contention for decades.

Not as to whether it is effective, which no one denies. The modern crossbow, regardless of its primitive origins, is a marvel of current engineering and space-age materials. All of which, by the way, can also be said of the compound bow. The crossbow is a lot of pleasure to use, simple to master, easy to practice with, yielding reliable accuracy for little effort. Nor is there a valid argument it is inherently any less safe than a shotgun, rifle or traditional bow, that is to say, any less safe than the hunter using it.

The contention has always been about where in the spectrum of weaponry it should be allowed in the field during targeted seasons, whether as a gun or as a bow. A crossbow propels an arrow, called a bolt, from a bowstring, but it looks like and is held like a gun and activated by a trigger. So it is neither, and it is both. The state has responded by dithering and making the crossbow partially acceptable.

The fiercest pushback against crossbows has come from the traditional bowhunting community which with great success initially but not so much lately kept crossbows out of the special archery seasons and bow-only hunting areas. I was once a strong supporter of the traditionalists, and still have a great deal of respect for them. Bowhunting requires lots of practice, discipline, physicality and time commitment. Success is much harder to achieve than with a crossbow because of the many variables in play, all in the archer’s hands.

Well, the times they are a-changing. I am all in with the crossbow now — and so apparently and finally is the state — because our former position, bowing to the traditionalists, has been overrun by time and circumstance.

Last fall was my 63rd deer season, and I have looked forward to every one of them. I grew up in deep country with a gun in my hand scooting through the woods. The outdoors has brought a lifetime of joy. How this happened I don’t know, but now I am staring at 80 and my step is a lot slower and more deliberate. I put my bow away a couple of years ago after my upper body strength began to slip and my balance too. Climbing a tree stand ladder increasingly seemed like a very bad idea and I began to doubt I could put an arrow where I wanted. So it was time, for the deer’s sake and mine.

But then two years ago I bought a crossbow and fell in love again. It is everything I noted above, plus the perfect weapon with its horizontal orientation for my favorite, a natural ground blind. Best of all I have gotten back a partial season during warmer weather that I had lost when I gave up the bow.

With the average age of hunters in New York nearly 50, which is 13 years older than the general population, I have a hunch I am singing in a considerable chorus as we wobble and sway.

Last year the Department of Environmental Conservation released a working draft of its 2021-2030 deer management plan. Public comment closed in December and we’ll have more to say about it when the final draft is released. Take a look at the working draft. The 79-page document is available on the DEC website.

A couple of strands run through the plan that woven together form its backbone. More than any other plan before, this one is about deer management, not just deer hunting. Over browsing is putting our essential forests at risk at a time when dealing with climate change dominates. We have an overpopulation of deer, not everywhere, but consistently near cities and suburbs and from the mid-hudson down to the tip of Long Island and out in central New York. Deer hunters remain the primary instruments for keeping the population in check, but we have fallen short. The reasons are declining numbers of hunters, down 40 percent from the high back in the mid-80s – a lack of recruitment, increasingly posted land and state regulations and seasons that are too limiting. We need to open it up.

The 11 percent increase in license sales we witnessed last fall due to the pandemic tells us we can do better.

The plan endorses plenty more hunting opportunity with special seasons targeting areas, tax incentives for landowners to open their properties to hunting, dropping the age down to 12 for big game hunting with a mentor — don’t get too excited about that. We would be the 47th state to do it. Wisconsin has no minimum age at all.

And opening the archery-only spaces and times to archery and crossbows. We need more successful hunters, more deer taken out of these environments. Traditionalists have demonstrated over decades they can’t do it alone.

The state has decided to try to put the full extension of crossbows into our hunting mix, and drop the big game hunting age to 12, into law this year in the state budget currently being debated by the state legislature. Even before the 10-year plan is adopted. Good thinking.

While there is still many a slip possible between proposed state budget language and final DEC regulations, we could well see this fall’s hunting season start at a half-hour before sunrise as opposed to sunrise (and go to a halfhour after sunset), crossbows accepted throughout the archery season, and a 12-year-old in camo sitting next to his or her dad in a tree stand, crossbow in hand waiting for a deer.

That would be more than OK with me. Welcome to a wonderful world like no other. Here’s the baton. It’s well worn, but it fits all hands.