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« Last post by GeoSwan on Today at 06:38:51 PM »
My brother and I heard a gunshot and saw a nice injured buck crest over the plateau into a drainage. He had a dangling front leg and no kneecap.. A survivable injury ultimately.
The hunters who shot him appeared at the top of the plateau 15 minutes later and clearly didn't see that the area the buck went into was a mere 100 yards away from them. They gave a feeble attempt at trying to locate the deer and turned around and walked away.
We ended up shooting the deer who had by now dropped a few hundred feet in elevation and was sitting under a cliff. My brother snuck up to him and put him out of his misery.
I called WDFW to get an actual legal opinion on this and they said what I though: If everything else was legal, which it was, (tag, 3 point min, shooting hours, public land etc.) then you were fine from a legal standpoint. I know I know, shoot first and ask questions later, but we were 99% sure what were were doing was legal and we were ultimately correct.
I think I know the answer that most of you will give, which is yeah, go put meat in your freezer because the first shooter was done looking for it, but I just want to see of anyone had any other opinion on this from an etiquette perspective.