Pope,
I appreciate your thoughts and agree that an 8-21 would be good for set dates.
I think one of the arguments to make, and from what I have heard it is the same argument that was made to justify the dates for the rifle rut tag dates, is that the animals are pressured by all the activity on the holiday weekend. Archery is the only user group that has to deal with the effects on the elk of all of the non-hunting activity over a holiday weekend. I think we all know that elk and deer both change behavior/patterns based on human activity in the woods, the increased activity over the Labor Day weekend changes those patterns/behaviors and takes several days to "settle down" or return to normal. I know its anecdotal but I have several years worth of trail camera activity that shows elk coming into the same area regularly up until the holiday weekend. There are times during the summer when it appears that the activity on the camera is steady M-F and decreases on the weekends...presumably when human activity increases.
From what I have heard, the justification for moving archery to the Tuesday after Labor Day (and away from the established dates of the 8th-21st as it was at the time) when they created the rifle rut tags was that they (who they were I am not sure) wanted to give the elk some time to settle down and get back into a normal behavior pattern before the rifle rut tag season started. If that is true, then why not make the same argument for the archery seasons, give the elk a chance to settle down into a more normal pattern after the chaos from the holiday weekend?
I've sat in my camp on Labor Day weekend and watched all kinds of strange happenings in the woods while I was supposed to be trying to chase elk. I am not saying those folks who want to ride motorcycles, pick berries, have raging bon fires while partying like crazy (although I will continue to call those illegal fires in), bring their families to the woods etc shouldn't be able to. I am just saying we as a group shouldn't have to put up with all of that too when none of the other user groups have to deal with anything remotely close to that much activity in the woods.
I started bow hunting for elk in 1988, in those days our seasons were the same as the muzzle loader seasons and we split the GMU's. I am not foolish enough to think we will ever get the last week of September and the first week of October back for our seasons, but I don't see any justifiable reason to keep opening archery season the Tuesday after Labor Day. I know based on the calendar that next year we are supposed to open on the 8th. Conveniently the new 3 year season cycle starts next year and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the WDFW didn't push to open archery elk on September 1st for the next 3 years and then move the opener back to the Tuesday following Labor Day again.
You asked for our thoughts and those are mine, hopefully they make sense after a little Pendleton.....
