Should ALL general season Elk hunts be canceled in favor of permit only hunting?

[BreezyBear]

Like the modern general elk season in the Colockum is a quality hunting experience? Not even close, it's past time for an actual management strategy!

[ghosthunter]

If you go permit only everyone loses.
All the big camps will give up and go some where else.

You will kill hunting in this state.

[Jpmiller]

There are monster bulls in Washington and I personally have known guys who pull elk every year. Making it permit only won't put a monster behind every tree or even in every drainage. The system right now let's me hunt elk every year and I like that. Success rates are low sure but if you put in the time and effort and get out of your truck and out of eyesight of a road you can get into elk.

I see this more as a blame the natives and the state for my not getting an elk issue. We have permit only areas and we have general season areas, as I can see the system is OK. I am no biologist however.

[Fl0und3rz]

No. Hunter recruitment would suffer, I'd think.  You have to start somewhere, and you won't start by unsuccessfully putting in for permits year after year.

[Colorado Kid]

I don't know about you, but I look forward to elk season every year. I wouldn't want a permit only season, I already don't like the fact that for muzzleloaders they put our general deer season on top of our general elk season which shortens my hunting season! Like many of you, I enjoy the time spent with family and friends hunting. I look forward to days spent in the woods enjoying the sights, sounds, and sharing experiences at the end of the day. It isn't all about filling a tag (though it sure is great when it happens), I have great memories of teaching and guiding our daughters, and learning from them. I hope that our hunting privileges won't get limited to the luck of a draw as in other states (Nevada is all special permit :-( ).  It would be great if we could get all parties to adhere to the harvest numbers for the elk! Then we could all keep looking forward to the fall 

[KFhunter]

There are monster bulls in Washington and I personally have known guys who pull elk every year. Making it permit only won't put a monster behind every tree or even in every drainage. The system right now let's me hunt elk every year and I like that. Success rates are low sure but if you put in the time and effort and get out of your truck and out of eyesight of a road you can get into elk.

I see this more as a blame the natives and the state for my not getting an elk issue. We have permit only areas and we have general season areas, as I can see the system is OK. I am no biologist however.

I always hear the same thing.   I know guys who do it every year, get out of the truck, don't blame the natives because you cannot hunt like the guy I know, It's about the hunt not the kill.......

Sorry jpmiller.  If I want to go camping I'll go camping.

[Roperfive88]

My perspective has nothing to do with the health of the herds, increasing the size of the racks, or the meaning of "quality experience" to other people. It is just my selfish desire to be able to hunt elk every year in my home state.

why it will never get better for you guys. I just hope after this round of new regs over here Idaho jacks the out of state prices way up. there's already an increase coming for next year I believe. you guys will get just what your asking for I promise

The price increase is on resident hunters and using a price lock where if you buy your license every year it wont go up. IDFG runs on revenue form license and tag sales. Last time they raised out of state licenses it actually cost them money because some out of state hunters quit buying licenses.

[pianoman9701]

I oppose blanket, non-scientific-based regulations on hunting. If the herd of a given unit is lagging and needs stiffer regulation, then do it unit by unit. To make the decision a statewide change would be disastrous to license sales and make an already over-regulated hunting state even moreso. I think we'll start seeing this happening in units which include the Mt. St Helens herd soon enough.

[Special T]

I don't think you can talk about big game management elk or deer without adressing predator management. Trying to solve the issue with out doing so is a circular firing squad.

If horses are getting attacked by cougars how do you think the deer and elk are doing?  Quotas in general and low ones to boot for cougars, wolves, coyotes and bears need an adjustment in management.  It is also likely the 1 area where you can get broad support from hunters. So many of the small things have been done to protect predators we could make pages of un needed regulation to repeal.

I'll give you one small example. A few years ago you could buy a deer or elk +bear+cougar combo.   There are no elk with a general season here in the nw part of the state (of any real consequence) yes the 407 has a couple of really small patches. I always bought the deer bear cougar combo. When they took that away I would either just purchase a deer or cougar tag to go with the small game.  On its own it seems like a small change, and the wdfw reasoning for it was BS but it was only one small part to the puzzle.
Start stacking all the other things they do to make it hard to kill just cougars and it makes a big difference in how many are harvested... same goes for bear, and coyotes, and protected wolves.
If you want to pick a battle it needs to be one worth fighting and that makes a difference. 2c

[sumpnz]

Copying my response on this topic from another thread.

I'm of a couple minds on this topic.  I liked that it (draw only in AZ) kept the crowds down so you could have a quality experience without needing to hike 15 miles from the nearest road.  But, because your points were for "elk" not "antlerless elk" and "bull elk" and "quality elk" it also meant that you had to generally choose to hunt the less desirable areas most years, or hold out for that once in a decade chance to hunt the premier units.  E.g. I only ever bothered to put in for antlerless hunts for elk because the draw odds meant I could hunt about every other year.  Bull tags would take 6-10 years to draw.  If I only wanted that bull tag I'd need to go out of state if I wanted to hunt elk at all during the years I didn't draw the AZ tag.  And that was unaffordable for me.

If you went to draw only here in WA I could definitely support that if you kept the basics of the draw system we already have and just greatly expanded the number of tags.  Though, the special permit application fee should be reduced since everyone would be forced to apply if they wanted to hunt at all.  So, keep separate draws for antlerless/bull/quality with separate points accumulation for each.  That way if I want to hunt cows while I wait for my quality tag to come through I can.  And then make the current general season areas bull rather than quality tags and provide enough tags for about 50-75% success rates to leave a harvest similar to what we see now.  So, if a given GMU sees a 5 year average of 100 bulls harvested then give out 135-200 tags for that unit.  Then adjust tag levels based on observed success rates and management needs.

Same could be done for deer as a means of better managing things like the Methow mule deer herd.

[Bunny Thumper]

Hunting elk every year is something I would never give up. I'll hunt rag horns every year and be happy with it. If your hunting experience is measured by larger antlers hunt harder or go out of state.

[Buzz2401]

I like hunting every year but if we were to divide the hunters in two and you got to hunt every other year with half the people I think that would be kinda cool to.  Be able to hunt deer one year and elk the next.  Could be hard coming up with a system to be able to hunt with your regular hunting partners though.

[sumpnz]

I like hunting every year but if we were to divide the hunters in two and you got to hunt every other year with half the people I think that would be kinda cool to.  Be able to hunt deer one year and elk the next.  Could be hard coming up with a system to be able to hunt with your regular hunting partners though.

Out of the last 4 years elk hunting my group has harvested 3 elk.  Which, BTW, is WAY better than average success rates.  Given that, even if only 1 or two of us had a tag we'd all still go since in the current system only one of us is likely to shoot something anyway.  And if we just have 1 tag we could either chill out and drink beer for the rest of the season, or go home early once we get that elk rather than continue what so far has been a quixotic quest for a second animal.  Only difference would be that only those with tags would bother bringing their rifle.

[Special T]

Or hunt bear & cougar

[WAcoueshunter]

And if we just have 1 tag we could either chill out and drink beer for the rest of the season, or go home early once we get that elk rather than continue what so far has been a quixotic quest for a second animal.  Only difference would be that only those with tags would bother bringing their rifle.

The difference is that most people wouldn't say chilling out, drinking beer, going home early, and not carrying a rifle are actually hunting.