Public Land Near Ellensburg

[kglacken]

I'm transferring to CWU next year and one of my concerns is the amount of public land there is to hunt in the area. Is there much? Not looking for places or honey holes. Just wondering if there is public land there for me to scout and hunt? Never hunted anywhere close to that area

[UBA]

Lots of it and pretty much in any direction

[kglacken]

Awesome guys!  I have a big 4 wheel drive f250 so I should be able to get anywhere. I am hoping to make a few scouting trips up there over summer. Gonna find some public land, put the boot to the ground and maybe shoot some yotes and help out the deer population! Thanks guys

[time2hunt]

Hundreds of thousands of acres to hunt but also a lot of hunter to compete with, we are to close to the wet side

[bobcat]

Tons of public land to hunt over there. Any direction you go, once you get out of the valley, will be public land.

To the north you've got the Colockum Wildlife Area (WDFW) and the Naneum State Forest (DNR). And further north and west will be National Forest.

South will be the Yakima Training Center (military) and to the southwest the LT Murray Wildlife Area (WDFW). Continuing west you get into more National Forest, that pretty much goes forever.

Definitely no lack of public land. The only issue you'll have is if you're looking for bird hunting areas.

[kglacken]

No I will be looking for deer. I still am looking to score on a monster blacktail, so I may end up driving back home a couple weekends to find one, but on weekends where that is not an option I may stay around school and hunt Mulies. I have only hunted them one time when I was younger and we hardly saw anything, but I am looking forward to learning a new skill.

[bobcat]

The bad news is the deer numbers around Ellensburg are down to practically nothing.

Look at the harvest report for Naneum, Taneum, Mission, Manastash, Umtanum, and Teanaway.

Teanaway is probably your best bet, but it gets tons of pressure from people driving over from the westside.

[kglacken]

The bad news is the deer numbers around Ellensburg are down to practically nothing.

Look at the harvest report for Naneum, Taneum, Mission, and Teanaway.

Teanaway is probably your best bet, but it gets tons of pressure from people driving over from the westside.

Well thats no good! This is the very beginning of my research. I like putting some miles on my boots and learning new country so Hopefully I can find some good areas. Even if the numbers are down, Id rather be hunting an area with fewer deer, then sitting at home. 

[bobcat]

I was going to CWU back in '89 and killed a nice fat 2 point mulie up in the Teanaway. I still love hunting over there, but I hate how crowded it is.

[Stickerbush]

Yes there is tons of land to hunt! I wish I had taken more advantage of it when I lived there, but I did have this pesky college thing taking up a lot of time. 

On a side note bobcat would you necessarily correlate harvest reports to overall deer numbers? This might be a side topic in itself but I think there are other influences on harvest. 

[buglebuster]

Ive never had a problem seeing 30+ deer a day in manashtash, and thats not just does

[bobcat]

On a side note bobcat would you necessarily correlate harvest reports to overall deer numbers? This might be a side topic in itself but I think there are other influences on harvest.

Yes, I'd say there's a correlation between the deer population and success rates. I consider success rates that go from 4% up to 11% to be pretty poor. Teanaway used to be in the mid-20's.

[Stickerbush]

I didn't realize they dropped that low recently, but could this be due to less hunters afield? Or possible changes in reporting? I have nothing to compare it to so I have to defer to those who have hunted these areas for a long time.

[Chris]

I graduated from Central in 98. I loved every minute I was there. We hunted Manashtash pretty hard. We would frequently come out near the Nile as well as up towards Cleelum. My two roommates and I got bucks every year. We missed a few spike bulls, but never killed any. We also went over to Royal City and killed a few nice bucks. I the fall we would only take 12 credits and never had a class before noon. I absolutely loved Ellensburg!

[PlateauNDN]

Observatory(umtanum unit) didn't seem slow, archery and muzzy camps that I seen had bucks hanging and modern opener sounded like the 4th of july, I helped a non-tribal relative witha buck tag in there and we were in deer like ticks.