Question on poaching

[Bango skank]

Oh i gotcha, thought he meant total poached, not total poached plus legally killed.  Still less than lions are eating.

[Ghost Hunter]

1/3 - 1/10.     Conversations I had with a few or more firewood cutters this year makes me wonder.    Comments like " I haven't bought a license in years.  Too easy to sit and watch TV and shoot one in the field." 

[Bob33]

40k x3 = 120k, not 160k

Total: 40k legal + 120K poached = 160K total killed by humans. That seems high to me.

[Caseyd]

Very large chunk from vehicles also

[jmscon]

Surprised it’s as high as 1:1!!


But then again, not really

[Tracker0721]

2nd poached deer, this one a doe dumped in the middle of a county road. Buck only area. Passed it and took pictures this morning, just called it in and no one else has even reported it. 6 hours on a pretty “busy” road. This is why people would think poaching isn’t as high because no one reports it and no one talks about it.

[DOUBLELUNG]

In the late 1980s, I did a synthesis of the available literature at the time looking at poaching rates vs. legal harvest.  On big game, rates varied from about half to more than double the legal harvest.  Most studies had a caveat that those were minimum poaching rates.  One stat that stuck in my mind was from Wisconsin, where under buck-only hunting the illegal kill of antlerless deer during the season was equal to the harvest of bucks. 

The instructor for that class had started as a special deputy game warden in Wisconsin in 1954, after his Korean war service.  Wisconsin that year hired several wardens to focus exclusively on "jacklighting" deer.  In his first year, he arrested over 200 spotlighters.  In his second year, less than 50.  Results were similar for the other special deputies, they put a heck of a dent in the prevalence of night hunting deer. Targeted enforcement works.

 

[DOUBLELUNG]

How is "illegally taken" defined?  If it's any violation of any associated rule/law then the overall impact is probably very low.  For example, if they count not leaving evidence of sex, or no hunter orange as "illegally taken"...I'd argue those are infractions but not anything that should be used in discussions of how many deer are illegally taken each year. 

Studies I looked at included illegal animals during an open season (e.g., does during buck-only), animals taken by illegal means (night hunting, trapped/snared, over limits etc), and animals taken during a closed season. 

[KFhunter]

I didn't much care about locals shooting backyard deer,  but now that I feel the population is crashing there's a lot more awareness on poaching and now I care. 


We need those backyard deer to help keep the population up,  might come a time when we need to relocate and back fill dead areas.

[DOUBLELUNG]

on the last day of modern this year. two young men pulled up to talk to me as I came out of woods.
Asked what I had seen. Nothing.

Its over today.
They said," the local's season starts tomorrow" and laughed.

When I lived in east Lewis County, numerous locals said things to the effect that it was no use hunting during the season, that's when the animals hide.  We lived 8 miles from Mossyrock on Green Mountain Road, in 10 months my wife and I counted 110 rifle shots at night from our house.  At the time, the Lewis County Sheriff estimated 10% of the county residents were involved in the meth trade.

[Rainier10]

I didn't much care about locals shooting backyard deer,  but now that I feel the population is crashing there's a lot more awareness on poaching and now I care. 


We need those backyard deer to help keep the population up,  might come a time when we need to relocate and back fill dead areas.

This one has me completely puzzled.  Can you expand on your thoughts?

[Bob33]

Sounds like it's time for an open seasin on poachers. Stop the illegal killing and pick up ten bonus points to boot.

[Odell]

Social media and becoming "Instafamous" are two contributors that can't be discounted.

There's an entire group (two families) of shady hunters near our property. Never wear orange, tell people they can't hunt on public land and get in your face about it, drive ATV's through wherever/whoever's property they want, regularly scope anyone wearing orange, shoot outside of legal hours or seasons, name a rule and they've broken it. Reporting has never had any apparent impact on them.

Yet they got their Hunting Washington Instagram feature this week and thousands of likes. I'm not a betting man but I'd put money down it'll happen again next year, like every year...

 

If this is for real, and you can stand by your claim i really think you should name names

[Skyvalhunter]

Seems it's you responsibility to report them but that's just my thought

[brew]

Seems it's you responsibility to report them but that's just my thought

yeah if only it were that easy.  I've been hunting the weyco vail permit for the past 5 years and have seen zero,0,none, nada, zip, 1 minus 1 LEO persons up in that area.  During that time I have seen countless vehicles entering and driving up from that gate well after dark then I have seen during my entire day hunting that unit.  I have personally been driving out 30 minutes after dark and have heard countless gunshots less than 200 yards from where i'm driving---am i going to drive over there and see whats going on ?  Hell no. Yes i have reported to WDFW about the after hours shooting and have talked to the forest patrol up there about the rampant poaching.  Forest Patrol says WEYCO is aware of the poaching but they are not armed and they are not going to approach someone who has shot after hours.  Forest Patrol says WEYCO is aware of the poaching but they are doing what the timber company wants--reducing the deer population on their tree farm.  Just this past Saturday i took my son up there archery hunting.  We were coming out just after dark and stopped at a blind crossroad to take a leak.  we were standing there and saw a rig fully lighted up with LED lights heading up into the unit we were leaving...about 2 miles from the mainline and about 3 miles from the gate.  Stayed there until they came up and asked them what was up.  they said a buddy arrowed a deer on that road and they were going to help him find the deer.  Asked them what road his buddy was on and we could help.  Dude gave a bogus road number and didn't even know what road he was on.  Kinda funny that he was coming up a road he didn't know what number he was on nor what number his buddy was on and he was going about 10 MPH swinging the lights side to side.  Way more poaching going on than people think.  Report what i can but believe nothing really happens