Hunting Washington Forum

The 3-year season setting package discussion is getting started with WDFW.  The archery seasons are always discussed and possibly modified as part of this process.  All of us have an opinion about how the seasons should look once the dust settles and the regulations pamphlet comes out at the hardware store.

This is your chance to voice what changes you think should be made to the seasons before you grumble about what came out in the pamphlet.  It's opening a can of worms to ask for suggestions, but I think patterns may emerge which could lead to meaningful change for all bowhunters.

If you were setting the seasons, then what changes would you make and WHY?

Take the opener for Sept elk back to the 8th and end on the 21st 

This early Sept hunting is crap 

Im gonna have to agree with the later early elk season, Its been getting hotter during early archery and the elk aren't talking as much during this season anymore.

It is a vicious cycle, when Archery was the first 2 weeks of October, it was too late, when it was the first 2 weeks of September, Labor Day users conflicted with hunters, that is why it is "floating" now.
Archery will never get the last week of September, and because of the feedback asking for 2 full weekends, calendar differences year to year make it difficult to achieve with only 13 says in the season.
I say let us have the day back (14 days) and start on the 8th every year, but that will never happen, more than likely we will have a 12 day season, 11 day, ... soon it will only be a week -10 days like ML and MF.
Then we will all be buying multi or hunting elsewhere...

2nd Saturday of sept would be best.

How about this but then only a 9 day season? That would still give two weekends, although with it being only one week, the weekdays would probably be more crowded. But it would be a later season like everyone seems to want. The problem with a longer season is in certain years you'd have issues of overlapping with muzzleloader hunts and modern firearm permit hunts.

Getting a later archery season for elk is certainly a common theme in any discussion about seasons these last few years since we lost the hard start date of the 8th.  We certainly have this as a recommendation to get changed.  The problem comes in when you look at overall success rates between user groups (the main way seasons are allocated).  Archery hunters account for 24.8% of the hunters and 31% of the total elk harvested in general seasons but only 19.9% of the bulls. 

Pushing the season closer toward the rut would likely slightly increase the bull harvest.  Anterless harvest likely wouldn't change significantly.  Therefore, to get the date changed to keep the allocation numbers in line would take a reduction in overall anterless harvest. 

The single best thing having a later season would do is to add another week onto the weather patterns.  We'd likely see cooler average temperatures and, therefore, less lost meat. 

Why not just give us the entire month of September.  Oregon, Idaho and Montana do it.  Also a third of the elk harvested annually are taken during archery season. Which directly is in line with the number of hunters using archery equipment.  The success ratio is still around 10 %.  Based on 2012 results from WDFW. I have heard the argument that if we get to hunt the last weeks of September that we will impact the breeding season.  As with most nocturnal animals most of the breeding occurs at night outside of legal shooting times.  I don't see it causing a major impact. 

I think early elk season should be the focus get it set to the 8th again.  The other thing I would like to see is more late season blacktail areas open like gmu 448.  407 is open but is hard to find public areas to hunt.  448 has a ton of public land.

We will never see a late archery season in 448. DFW wants to protect all of the elk in that unit from any kind of pressure.  It is a real shame too.  Late season up there has some toad bt's running around.