Washington State Reserve to Hunt Program

[Limhangerslayer]

The part i have a problem with is the game department giving then 3 dollars an acre to lease it and they can still let people they know in and can save the best dates for friends and family.   

[Snowgoose1]

I totally understand the program and get the idea of getting some people a few spots to hunt.  Last year a majority of the time the areas were reserved, but left empty.  There were several fields I saw that had a lot of birds on them and nobody was hunting it.  People change their minds and I understand that.  When I went to eastern Washington to hunt, a lot of the reservation fields that I saw had a sign that explain that if nobody was in the spot by 8am it was then open to hunting.  The spot then became open to people who were already entered in the reservation system and all you had to do is fill out a card and you could have it.  I would hope that western Washington could come up with something like that.  I find the popular fields which most everyone knows are gone so fast when it comes time to click on the fields they are gone.  I speak from going up to and near most snohomish and skagit county duck quality fields 3-4 times per week last year.

[CP]

Anyone use this program last year?  If so, how was your experience?  I'm most interested in whether people actually respected the reservations, or if you rolled up to your "reserved" spot and found someone already in it...

Yes, I had one instance last year when I showed up for my reserved spot someone was parked there and in the blind.  I took photos of his rig and license plate and tried to report it but it was 4:30am and no one was answering the phone.  So I just packed up my gear and went out to the blind.  The guy sheepishly left claiming ignorance and complaining that the place is always empty, no one hunts it, blah, blah …

I emailed the photos to the WFDW – don’t know if they ever did anything about it.

In my mind this is the same as poaching and trespassing.  You hunt a spot without a reservation you are stealing someone’s hunting opportunity.

Next time I’ll post the photos on this site for public humiliation.

[CP]

The program does need some tweaking, like you can’t cancel a reservation within 3 days of the hunt.  If they did away with that it would save a lot of “not used” issues.

I’m not in favor of the “if it isn’t used by 9:00am it’s open to anyone”.  That means it gets hunted all day long and the place get burnt out.   I’d rather see the reservation day spilt into 2 reservations i.e. morning until noon – then say 1:00pm until evening.   

It’s a good program and I hope they keep it up and keep improving it.

[EWUEAGLESHUNTER]

Here's my  the reserve program works great for deer and pheasant hunting. You can ask a lot of the deer hunters who use public land to hunt deer, since the program started its reduced a lot of pressure on public lands giving more opportunity to any one who needs public/private land access through wdfw to hunt deer. As far as the waterfowl hunting, I would rather the state use our license money to pay for the land and give anyone a chance to hunt it vs. paying $250 a head to hunt with a guide who is paying the farmer. Plus the more people who give praises to the reserve to hunt program for waterfowl the more money gets funneled into it opening up more and more land. This program is guaranteed money for the farmer vs. guides only pay the farmer when it's their fields being hunted. Bottom line is though even if the program gets more money and more fields for us to hunt, waterfowlimg fields takes a ton of time scouting. So if guys don't put in the time and figure out when the birds are hitting what field then the fields go unused or there is minimal success. Something the state can't control for us.