Free: Contests & Raffles.
This proposal provide recreational deer hunting opportunity and protects deer from overharvest. The proposal continues general deer hunting season opportunities for 2016 in most Game Management Units, but reduces archery and muzzleloader antlerless deer hunting opportunity in several northeastern Game Management Units as a conservative management strategy due to population uncertainty created by a blue tongue disease outbreak in 2015. These changes were not proposed earlier, but ongoing information sharing necessitated additional proposed changes.
A friend just saw three wolves this morning, we've also seen cougar this spring, and we've been 100% shooting opportunity on bear again this spring, no doubt there are plenty of predators!The blue tongue really hit hard around agricultural areas where we had the highest numbers of deer. I'm glad to see WDFW is cutting back antlerless harvest until herds can begin to rebound.
Quote from: bearpaw on May 28, 2016, 11:17:08 AMA friend just saw three wolves this morning, we've also seen cougar this spring, and we've been 100% shooting opportunity on bear again this spring, no doubt there are plenty of predators!The blue tongue really hit hard around agricultural areas where we had the highest numbers of deer. I'm glad to see WDFW is cutting back antlerless harvest until herds can begin to rebound.Do you think black bears have much of an impact of fawns in the spring? I've always wondered if they really make a dent or not.
Are these changes actually going to happen or are they still just proposals at this point?
It's just the beginning of the tag cuts in the NE. Hunters will be systematically replaced by other predators. And, it'll happen fairly quickly now.
Quote from: pianoman9701 on May 31, 2016, 06:25:58 AMIt's just the beginning of the tag cuts in the NE. Hunters will be systematically replaced by other predators. And, it'll happen fairly quickly now.Exactly. That is the end result of WDFW's inexcusable refusal to manage predators. The NE today the rest of the state tomorrow.
Quote from: buglebrush on May 31, 2016, 10:59:31 AMQuote from: pianoman9701 on May 31, 2016, 06:25:58 AMIt's just the beginning of the tag cuts in the NE. Hunters will be systematically replaced by other predators. And, it'll happen fairly quickly now.Exactly. That is the end result of WDFW's inexcusable refusal to manage predators. The NE today the rest of the state tomorrow. The doe hunts will be back in a couple years. They did the same thing after the bad winters in 09-11. No big deal....Predators are not going to kill all the deer.
Not long ago I talked with an Idaho game warden about predator control. He summed up the situation pretty well I thought. He said the "administrators have restricted predator control on bear, cougar, and wolves to the point that the only predator they can now control is the hunter". We are now raising deer and elk to feed the Bears, Cougars, and Wolves. The hunters can find something else to eat!!
That's the problem I have with this. How are people supposed to know that the seasons have been changed? Lots of hunters don't participate in Internet forums like this one. I'm assuming if this proposal passes, and I assume it will, that there will be a lot of antlerless whitetail deer harvested illegally this year.However, I do have to say, I'm glad they're doing it, if that's what needs to be done in order to bring the numbers back up. It's just unfortunate they couldn't have done this before the hunting regulation pamphlet was printed.
leaning towards blue tongue being a scape goat for too many predators issue