4-point rule 117/121

[DBHAWTHORNE]

I know for a fact that if it isn't fun and it's hard to harvest a deer they will quit.

Considering your statement above it is a good thing that it's actually very, very easy to harvest a 4x4 whitetail in those units...and it's only getting easier with the restrictions....... I actually can't understand how someone can't get their kid on one if they are able to put in a few days of scouting and a few days of effort (I do understand that some people don't have the luxury of that time/money...but then it probably makes more sense for them to scout an area out near home rather than half way across the state)

Where I grew up the hunting was often very difficult and there were times I would go a week or more without seeing a single deer. I can't say that I ever felt like I wanted to quit. If kids are quitting because something is hard then I think the parent needs to mentor and parent their chlildren to understand that things that don't  come easy are generally the most rewarding in the end. We definitely don't want to raise a generation of quitters.

After being in the military I am noticing that as part of the problem of this generation. We are having trouble getting kids to make it into my career field because they quit when it's too hard and they don't get that immediate gratification they are used to getting..... It's not really their fault...many of them were raised in this generation where "everyone get's a trophy...even the ones that lost"... of course I understand that philsophy is intended to have the kids best interest in mind.. unfortuantely it doesn't seem to help them in the real world.

Sorry for the rant... back to the topic at hand.

[huntnnw]

 .....what's even more hilarious about all this and some on here that don't wanna listen to us so called " arm chair biologists" is a few of us spend more time in the units than bios do! I have 15 trail cams out scattered everywhere here in NE WA... Wanna know the branched antler buck to spike ratio? It's in the 8:1 to 10::1 !!! There are FAR more bucks running around with 4+ pts than spikes and forks ! Guys complaining that they can't shoot a spike , your hunting the minority!

[huntnnw]

My guess is the guys complaining are the road hunters, obvious they don't wanna put the work in anyways and don't want 1 opportunity at any buck to be taken away. Yet somehow if you cruise this forum every rifle guy on here hunts 47 miles from his rig and packs 150 lb pack, yet none admit they do it. When I lived near Clayton ,WA it was staggering to see how many guys road hunt ! I'd venture to guess maybe 10% of the hunters actual hit the woods. I won't dive into the legal part of these so called hunters driving around in a 99% private area... Another topic

[Jonathan_S]

.....what's even more hilarious about all this and some on here that don't wanna listen to us so called " arm chair biologists" is a few of us spend more time in the units than bios do! I have 15 trail cams out scattered everywhere here in NE WA... Wanna know the branched antler buck to spike ratio? It's in the 8:1 to 10::1 !!! There are FAR more bucks running around with 4+ pts than spikes and forks ! Guys complaining that they can't shoot a spike , your hunting the minority!

   I second what he says and I am new to the trail cam scene.  I have a much harder time locating nice bucks than huntnw and I still agree that spikes and little forkies are a minority.  Early July and all the bigger bucks started showing up and I realize just how many 3.5 year old + bucks are in the woods.

  150 lb pack eh?  That sounds like a pet deer decoy.

[boneaddict]

I've heard as high as 40% can be passed from the mother's line of breeding.

Try 50%.  Antlers aren't sex linked.

[PA BEN]

and, if anybody thinks this rule will be rescinded, ever, is extremely naive.......the reason is very simple and is mathmatically based..........the very first year that you implement an APR, you "save" a bunch of yearling class bucks and create a bubble of them in the population.

what do you think happens when you unwind the APR and let people shoot any buck?  its a complete wipeout.............huge increase in harvest; 

They will never get rid of it;

When I started hunting 121 (it was 117 then) back in the late 90's it was 3 point minimum.  They got rid of that a few years later and it was any buck up until just a couple seasons ago.  I like the APR but I wouldn't go so far as to say they will never get rid of it 

Don't run a gimmick that does nothing for the does, and only reduces the age class of breeding bucks, which further causes other biological issues.

Use good science and do whats right for the herd, even if that means slightly reduced hunter opportunities.

But didn't they also reduce the number of doe permits to almost nothing up there compared to what was available before the APR went into effect?

FYI, 121 has never been 4 point, at least from 1975 until they started it 3 years ago.

[CedarPants]

Correct

[PA BEN]

I know for a fact that if it isn't fun and it's hard to harvest a deer they will quit.

I wonder if that's trumped up more than it used to be due to internet forums etc.   Can't have fun without killing something.  That's an interesting concept.

   I think sometimes perspective is lost when we're surfing the web and forgetting the joy of being afield.  I know plenty of "Ol' Timers" that hunt year in and year out without success.  By and large it isn't because they're hitting it hard and getting screwed by APR, it's because they enjoy sitting at a campfire and storytelling with Jim Beam as much as anything.  I imagine this is widespread.

As far as kids go: if a hunting child is bored because they can't blast a doe wherever they go, I think they're parent/mentor has done a poor job of instilling a Sportsman Mindset into that boy or girl.  Hunting is a right but killing isn't a right.  If deer hunting is too hard, go shoot some grouse or pheasants.

Obviously you have never started young kids hunting. The first year of the 4 point rule my buddy's daughter was very excited about her first deer, we put several small bucks in front of her. Not legal. Some that were legal she couldn't shoot. It takes a proper rest for young hunters. By the time doe season opened she was so burned out she gave up. She wasn't going to hunt ever again. She did go out last year and harvested a nice doe, now she is hooked. I don't care who you are or what you think, harvesting a deer is very important for a young hunter, and yes the over all experience is important but the bottom line is getting a deer. BTW, I have 5 daughters and started them at age 8 and 9. My youngest is 14 now and like her older sisters love to hunt "AND HARVEST A DEER". They seem to like getting bucks the older they get. The goal is to get them out hunting and enjoying it.

[bearpaw]

I guess I'm an arm chair biologist.

With nearly 50 years hunting in NE WA, every day of many of those seasons, I've been hiking these NE mountains since I was a kid in the 60's, there are very few mountains I have not been on. I can remember all the ups and downs of the deer herds. Every 5 to 10 years we get a hard winter that kills 50% to 80% of the deer and it takes WDFW 2 years of looking at low harvest numbers to figure out the deer were lost 2 winters back and then they cut back doe permits and the herd grows again. 

I've never figured out why any biologist would want to continue killing 400 to 2000 does in each of our GMU's after a hard winter, unless they just don't know. For crying out loud, cut off the doe permits for a couple years and we'll be right back in the whitetail business sooner than later and we can justify lots of doe tags. Any biologist data tells you that you hunt females to reduce or maintain a herd, not to grow a herd. Part of the problem is that upper management has these bios spending most of their time counting lynx tracks, bald eagles, martin, fishers, wolverines, pigmy rabbits, or some endangered toad or butterfly, they get to spend very little time with deer and elk. 

I started guiding cougar hunters in December 1977 and we averaged a week to find a good adult cat for a hunter. Mule Deer were plentiful, you could go and count a couple hundred any winter day in Ferry County, you could even see wintering groups of mule deer in Stevens and Pend Orielle counties. The WDFW used to have feed stations to help the deer through the winter. In addition to all the mule deer there were whitetail by the hundreds in all the major wintering areas.

In the mid 80's the animal huggers killed the fur industry and coyotes exploded, plus WDFW put cougars on permit at about the same time, the coyote and cougar population expanded rapidly and within 2 or 3 years I was offering 3-day Guaranteed Cougar Hunts to lucky permit holders. By the 90's we were averaging about 5 fresh tracks per hunting day and would cherry pick for the biggest toms. We had a strong whitetail population so it was holding it's own during this time but the heavy predator population was diminishing our mule deer rapidly. Then in 1992 we had a hard winter that really set back the whitetails too, they have never fully recovered from that winter. It was slowly improving then we got hammered in about 1996 and again every 5 to 10 years since. In the mid 90's they voted out hound hunting for cats and bear, the cougar and bear population exploded further. Each time we have a hard winter the predators have prevented the deer from coming back to the levels before that bad winter.  The deer population has been up and down since, but the highs between winter kills continue to decline because the predators prevent the deer from fully recovering.

My best cougar hunting day ever was in December 1995, found 15 different fresh cougar tracks in one day. Ten or fifteen years before I would have called anyone a liar who said they saw 5 fresh cougar in one day.

For several years we couldn't hound hunt cats. Roughly during 2003 to 2010 we had cougar removal seasons and the Pilot program with limited permits, it helped some but now it's closed again and some quack biologist professor from WSU named Weilgus is driving cougar management for WDFW. He is responsible for the very low cougar quotas. I can show anyone a dozen fresh cougar tracks almost any day during the winter, some drainages almost seem to have nearly more cats than deer. Coyotes are at the highest levels I can ever remember and bear numbers have been high as well.

As long as we have anti predator hunting professors driving the predator management in WDFW it's going to be impossible for deer to fully rebound. To compound things further these anti predator hunting professors are teaching our young bios in school that you shouldn't hunt these predators very much, so we end up with a bunch of bios who don't want to hunt predators. 

The result is a state full of biologists many of which don't really have a clue what kind of predator numbers this state can handle and how many predators need removed to help a deer population fully recover. We have a local biologist here in Colville, he is a great guy I like him, but honestly he never lived here when we had a lot of deer and so he doesn't know what it's like to have a high deer population. Cougar hound season has been closed probably before he came to the area, how can he or his superiors who have been brain washed by anti predator hunting professors possibly call the shots on bringing back our deer herds to previous levels. 

Washington used to have an estimated 2000 cougars, now we have an estimated 3000 to 4000 cougars. According to government studies an average cougar kills from 25 to 50 deer per year. For easy math let's say every cougar kills 40 deer per year. So when we had 2000 cougars they were killing 80,000 deer per year in Washington. Now that we have 3000 to 4000 cougars (WDFW estimate) they are likely killing 120,000 to 160,000 deer per year. Hunters killed only 29,154 deer in 2011, hhhmmmmm, not to hard for this armchair biologist to figure it out. 

Washington Deer Harvest Drops Vs. 2010; General Rifle Numbers, Buck Take Reach New Low
By Andy Walgamott, on May 2nd, 2012

Fewer Washington hunters killed 4,000 less deer and were more unsuccessful last fall than in 2010′s season.

Figures fresh out from the Department of Fish & Wildlife show that a total of 29,154 muleys, blacktail and whitetail bucks and does were killed by 125,537 general season and permit hunters last year, including 23,382 bucks for a 23.2 percent success rate.

By comparison, 2010′s stats were 33,391 deer for 131,133 sportsmen, including 27,272 bucks for a 25.5 percent success rate.

The figures confirm some field reports from last year of sharp declines in hunter numbers, but makes puzzles of others.

http://nwsportsmanmag.com/headlines/washington-deer-harvest-hunter-numbers-drop-vs-2010/

Sorry about the rant, but these bios and managers are not deer management gods, many have been brainwashed by anti-hunting professors, many don't know what our herds used to be like, and they don't know how to get the deer back. Killing predators just wasn't taught in their wildlife biology classes.

This is nothing personal toward any biologist or manager, I happen to like most of them on a personal basis, but it's the dead honest truth about the wildlife management situation throughout the west, not only in Washington. 

[boneaddict]

In response to PA Bens post

Maybe you forced your agenda on them by starting them at 8.  Maybe you should have waited until they were a little older and could understand what hunting was all about.    OBVIOUSLY I have no clue.

[steeleywhopper]

I remember when the Dayton area went to "spike only elk" and 3pt min for deer. They said it would be a 3yr trial and then it ended up sticking forever. I don't see it changing. Once the WDFW takes something away your not getting it back. In this case I like it, leave it 4pt min.

[idahohuntr]

I guess I'm an arm chair biologist.

No...you are a guy with on the ground experience...something that is unfortunately not valued as much as a college degree these days

I don't have much of an opinion on the 4 pt issue but I definitely support people who are willing to share their background/field experience and not just accept a biologists word as the gospel.  I say that as a biologist for the feds (I will have to go into hiding now ).  I deal with a wide range of contentious issues and I never discount experienced, local knowledge.  I also never use "Im a biologist" or "I have degrees in fish and wildlife" to support a position...if I can't provide evidence or information or articulate my opinion/position better than "I have a degree" then I probably ought to re-evaluate the issue

[huntnnw]

In response to PA Bens post

Maybe you forced your agenda on them by starting them at 8.  Maybe you should have waited until they were a little older and could understand what hunting was all about.    OBVIOUSLY I have no clue.

 

[huntnnw]

I remember when the Dayton are went to "spike only elk" and 3pt min for deer. They said it would be a 3yr trial and then it ended up sticking forever. I don't see it changing. Once the WDFW takes something away your not getting it back. In this case I like it, leave it 4pt min.

The blues will NEVER have a general elk season ever again....WAY to many people in this state to have a season there. Dont you rememeber how terrible it was before the permits started? it was horrendous!

[bearpaw]

I guess I'm an arm chair biologist.

No...you are a guy with on the ground experience...something that is unfortunately not valued as much as a college degree these days

I don't have much of an opinion on the 4 pt issue but I definitely support people who are willing to share their background/field experience and not just accept a biologists word as the gospel.  I say that as a biologist for the feds (I will have to go into hiding now ).  I deal with a wide range of contentious issues and I never discount experienced, local knowledge.  I also never use "Im a biologist" or "I have degrees in fish and wildlife" to support a position...if I can't provide evidence or information or articulate my opinion/position better than "I have a degree" then I probably ought to re-evaluate the issue

No hiding needed, and please don't think I simply dislike biologists, not at all. I was simply trying to point out that they are people like anyone else, that their experiences and agenda does affect their ability to manage our wildlife for the benefit of hunters and fishers. Glad to hear you are a federal bio, it sounds like you have some wisdom.