Salt Lake City -- If you're going to hunt deer or elk in Emigration Canyon this fall, you'll have to do so with a bow and arrow.

Earlier this year, the Utah Wildlife Board created an archery-only zone in the canyon. Most of the more than 570 homes in the canyon are now protected by a boundary. The boundary will act as a safety buffer for the canyon's residents.

Joan Gallegos, vice-chair of the Emigration Canyon Community Council, says residents in the canyon aren't against hunting; they're just concerned about hunters shooting rifles near their homes. "Since we live in one of the lower-elevation canyons found close to the city, we get a lot of hunters driving through the canyon," Gallegos says.

She says residents have seen hunters shoot from the road. She says a bullet almost hit one of the canyon's residents, and many other unsafe incidents have occurred. "We've even had a hunting blind constructed in the backyard of one of our resident's [homes]," she says.

Gallegos says many of the homes in the canyon are secluded and cannot be seen from the main road. Residents feel archery-only hunting will provide a safer way to manage the deer in the canyon.

Map of the zone

Emigration Canyon is part of the Wasatch Front Extended Archery Area. The canyon is open to archery-only deer and elk hunting until Dec. 15.

More information about Utah's extended archery areas is found on pages 11, 12 and 16 of the 2010 Utah Big Game Guidebook. The guidebook is available at www.wildlife.utah.gov/guidebooks.

A map and boundary description for the Emigration Canyon archery-only zone is available at http://go.usa.gov/xma.

The map is also available on signs that biologists and officers with the Division of Wildlife Resources have placed at the main entrances to the canyon. The signs also show access points to the archery-only zone.

For more information, call the DWR's Central Region office at (801) 491-5678.