Nooksack Over 65 special permit

[johnsc6]

Unless you have permission before hand there is no sense in applying ..All private ...same for the youth tag .

 

[Tbar]

What happened to hunting the hancock or whatever it is and them giving you keys to the gates like in the past? Is the 65+ area not the same???

To answer your question, no.  This is the valley floor, a checkerboard of private land ownership of varying size parcels. There are a few very small parcels of public land (a guess would be 90+/-% private).
 

[westside bull]

There's also youth tags call the wdfw and get the  list of land owners who get money for the elk that damage there land etc. From what I've been told if a land owner is getting money from  damage they have to let hunt there land!

[Tbar]

One thing that bugs me a bit is the semantics.  This is not a Nooksack tag.  It's a damage mitigation tag in the Sauk (437) GMU.

[BOWHUNTER45]

The only thing that bugs me is how this state manages things .. Look at the east coast ..They can hunt in city limits with a bow ..if they caught you hunting here within city limits you would be charged with reckless endangerment  We all love to hunt and I am not trying to be an ignorant butt hole but it really stiNKS for all the hunters we have in the valley and one of the healthiest elk herds in the state and we can not hunt them .. they need to come up with a tag that benefits the local people ..not just here but down south or any other place where they give out damage permits ..It just makes local hunters sick when they can not use the resource available to them , when they live in the heart of the herd ..  I know they are not managing the herd because if they were they would be giving out some cow tags in 418 ..you can not just keep killing bulls ..You have to kill a few cows too ! I should have ignored this thread ..just hard to do 

[Boss .300 winmag]

The timbered land west of Hearns field is all Forest Service land, so you could hunt that and those elk frequent that a lot especially during the rut.

2516 Nooksack U WF, WM, WA Sept. 21-23, Oct. 5-9, and Oct.18-31 Any elk Elk Area 4941 5 NEW.

So who gets to hunt when? The way I read it WF is Sept. 21-23. WM is Oct. 5-9. WA is Oct.18-31.

If that's the case WF would almost be a slam dunk west of Hearns field where they rut, herd bull is always chasing the satellite bulls back into the forest service land there. And some of those bulls would be herd bulls in other units with less bull to cow ratio. 

[baker5150]

The only thing that bugs me is how this state manages things .. Look at the east coast ..They can hunt in city limits with a bow ..if they caught you hunting here within city limits you would be charged with reckless endangerment  We all love to hunt and I am not trying to be an ignorant butt hole but it really stiNKS for all the hunters we have in the valley and one of the healthiest elk herds in the state and we can not hunt them .. they need to come up with a tag that benefits the local people ..not just here but down south or any other place where they give out damage permits ..It just makes local hunters sick when they can not use the resource available to them , when they live in the heart of the herd ..  I know they are not managing the herd because if they were they would be giving out some cow tags in 418 ..you can not just keep killing bulls ..You have to kill a few cows too ! I should have ignored this thread ..just hard to do 

Arent the cows harvested by the Master Hunters and Damage permits?   Maybe that's their grand plan for herd management? 

[Tbar]

The only thing that bugs me is how this state manages things .. Look at the east coast ..They can hunt in city limits with a bow ..if they caught you hunting here within city limits you would be charged with reckless endangerment  We all love to hunt and I am not trying to be an ignorant butt hole but it really stiNKS for all the hunters we have in the valley and one of the healthiest elk herds in the state and we can not hunt them .. they need to come up with a tag that benefits the local people ..not just here but down south or any other place where they give out damage permits ..It just makes local hunters sick when they can not use the resource available to them , when they live in the heart of the herd ..  I know they are not managing the herd because if they were they would be giving out some cow tags in 418 ..you can not just keep killing bulls ..You have to kill a few cows too ! I should have ignored this thread ..just hard to do 

Arent the cows harvested by the Master Hunters and Damage permits?   Maybe that's their grand plan for herd management? 

No, not part of the herd plan overall.  Cows are only harvested to mitigate damage. That's where the master hunter program comes into play.

[BOWHUNTER45]

notice the word mitigate ...at 1st glance I thought it said migration  lucky I read it again before opening my trap  Like I said most of these elk were born on the valley floor ..they live there mostly all year long ..going to hard to control them unless you kill them all ..this problem will go on forever unless the take drastic measures ..I love seeing and hearing and eating them ...the only thing missing is the eating part 

[Tbar]

Like I said before it's not all bad and I applaud the WDFW for providing the opportunity.  There will be landowners that will allow access but it's a politically charged area.
     Here's a brief history of this hunt.  This area was first 941, an area created to address crop damage and keep the elk off the valley floor.  There were unlimited otc tags and was a largely exclusive hunt for people who had access (there was little to no success with door knocking,  asking for permission). There was a very long season starting first with archery and following with muzzy, creating a 3-4 month general season. Somewhere around 20 years ago they changed it to 4941 (with a smaller boundary than we now know) it continued with both seasons until around 08(guess) when they eliminated the muzzy season, citing various safety concerns. This hunt continued as a damage hunt as archery only until 09(Dec 29 I believe), this was the end of the otc hunt.  The end to this hunt put the entire workload onto enforcement as they were tasked with damage control, which imo they did great (although this spread them quite thin). This was the beginning of a valley floor population explosion and when the majority of the valley floor elk became "residents" and non migratory.  Fast forward to 2013 and welcome Brandon Griffith, a damage control specialist. In beginning I was in complete support of him(although I later did a180) . Brandon issued what seemed to be limitless damage tags for cows and created the management nightmare we are experiencing now. (Brandon has moved on and taken his career elsewhere).
On the bright side it's a positive step, there is opportunity now where there wasn't before. Also this hunt will cater to the least able, again a positive step.

[baker5150]

The only thing that bugs me is how this state manages things .. Look at the east coast ..They can hunt in city limits with a bow ..if they caught you hunting here within city limits you would be charged with reckless endangerment  We all love to hunt and I am not trying to be an ignorant butt hole but it really stiNKS for all the hunters we have in the valley and one of the healthiest elk herds in the state and we can not hunt them .. they need to come up with a tag that benefits the local people ..not just here but down south or any other place where they give out damage permits ..It just makes local hunters sick when they can not use the resource available to them , when they live in the heart of the herd ..  I know they are not managing the herd because if they were they would be giving out some cow tags in 418 ..you can not just keep killing bulls ..You have to kill a few cows too ! I should have ignored this thread ..just hard to do 

Arent the cows harvested by the Master Hunters and Damage permits?   Maybe that's their grand plan for herd management? 

No, not part of the herd plan overall.  Cows are only harvested to mitigate damage. That's where the master hunter program comes into play.

I wouldn't be so sure.  I talked with a gamey about it at Rasar a couple years ago.  He said they go into each year assuming a set amount of animals will be harvested thru the damage program.  Which is smart I guess.  But if this is the case, opening up a cow season would make better sense, rather than paying for damage, and shelling out tags to only have the Elk come right back the next day. 
They should also be giving incentives to land owners for opening up their property to hunting, even if it's for a certain quota or season. 

[BOWHUNTER45]

I done a remodel on Rasar Park ...all the land around it is private ..I killed elk in there in the past until all this crap started ..One spot you could actually hunt without being near the Highway ...when I was doing the park the wardens always drove in to check on JB  making sure Jb did not have one hanging in a tree since they past by all the time .... Man I sure miss the good old days ..my horn supply has definitely decreased since then