Washington General Season Deer Harvest: 1997-2017

[X-Force]

special permits
shifting units from permit only to OTC
adding or eliminating late season hunting
adding or reducing antlerless harvest

Just this year WDFW cut antlerless moose harvest way back by eliminating antlerless tags and eliminating the any moose and making it bull only. WDFW also wanted to eliminate OTC archery antlerless elk hunting in the colockum, hunters complained and now we have a split season.

If you don't see managers doing something its because you don't care to look.

Predators are an issue but encroachment on habitat and forestry practices are the number one issue.

Its hard to have good forestry practices when logging has the threat of lawsuits and other practices (controlled burns, invasive species eradication, habitat restoration, etc.) are in the same budge as wild land fire suppression.

For habitat to improve a different budge/revenue stream will need to be found to deal with fire related issues.

[Rainier10]

You’re correct I forgot the addition of the couple days at the end of general season for most east side hunts. To me that would suggest they felt the population was doing well which from what I’ve seen from 30 years or so of experience in some of the areas isn’t true. A lot of areas have seen drastic reductions in deer numbers but that’s just what I’ve noticed not anything scientific.

I hear ya on that.  I often question what they do and why they do it.  They are pretty open about it if asked.  Do I agree with the explanation or reasoning?  Not always but at least I know what they were basing their decision on.

I went to one of the town hall meetings in Federal Way years ago.  Dave Ware was there and a guy took a petition to him about elk hunting in a certain gmu and how he wanted the season changed and he had hundreds of signatures agreeing with his position.  Dave listened intently, asked a few questions and then asked if he could have a copy of the signatures and petition.  The guy said no problem and gave him the copy.  He then assured Dave that they were real signatures.  Dave said he didn't doubt that at all.  He said he was just going to take a random sampling of the names, punch them into the WDFW system and make sure that they had purchased a hunting license and specifically an elk tag in the past.  No point in changing a season for people that don't even hunt.  He was really looking out for us as hunters was my impression.  I know Dave Ware gets a bad wrap on here but that is one example that I saw personally that made me think they do have the hunter's interest in mind when making decisions.

FYI the guy started stumbling on his words and said well these are people that live in the area so they know best even if they don't hunt.  Pretty sure Dave was spot on with his thought of verifying who was on that petition.

[meatwhack]

I also want to say I’m not ragging on F&G for how they manage or the decisions they make I’m just throwing out what I’ve observed over the years.