Multi season $

[pianoman9701]

In the overall scheme of things I do think that archery is a bit harder. I also don't fault the archery guys for having month long seasons. They have a much larger user base and therefore have a greater influence on their seasons. That's just the way polotics works. Money + People = month long seasons.  I also love muzzy elk season. I will take that one week at the beginning of October over a month of September any day. The only real gripe I have with our muzzy seasons is the lack of available GMU's. The concentration of muzzle loaders into a few units is really getting to be a problem and in some area's is starting to resemble the modern rifle season. A better comparison might be the volleys at a civil war reenactment. LOL.

So I guess I will rest on the argument of which one is worse and concede to the archery guys. I guess I'm just jealous of the bargaining power that the larger user group has on available areas and seasons.

There are three times as many rifle hunters than archers, so I'm not sure I can agree with you about the bargaining power argument. In most states, the archery season is much longer due to the difficulty of taking an animal with a bow. Some states have up to a 3-month season. In WA, even with the season being almost twice as long as the rifle season, elk hunter success is almost even, with modern at 8.5% to 10.5% for archery. For special permits, modern hunters definitely have a huge advantage over archers, according to the statistics.

[jstone]

Ya i bet part of that is cows. If they took cows away in all units for archers the % would be way lower.

[pianoman9701]

60% of archery elk harvested are antlerless, as opposed to 33% for modern firearm. This holds pretty steady for both general and special permit hunts.

[Chesapeake]

I hunted muzzle loader Elk for 10 of the last 11 years. Last year I hunted Modern elk, but killed my bull with my muzzle loader in a restricted unit.
In my opinion WDFW messed up muzzy from the getgo. They have always only given the ML hunter the lowland populated units to hunt on the west side (dont hunt east). Yeah they give us cows, but thats a small concession. Then they started in on the "equalization of user groups" bit and further screwed things by cutting the seasons. Then when they came out with the "draw catagories" they took away cows and now make you draw for them.
More or less they chased me away from ML season, Modern now has much better seasons, units, draw tags, ect.....

I shoot paper out to 200 yards. I'm about 12" low at 200, 5" low at 150. In our camp (5) we consistently kill elk out to 150 yards. Our camp gets 1 or 2 a year in the 130-150 yard range. The open sights and low bullet energy make shooting elk and deer past 150 a no-go for our camp. My ML launches the bullet at 1700 fps+. A bow will maybe do 300 fps+ with a hunting arrow. No way are they equal.

I've drawn the multi-season deer 2x now. The first time I killed a nice muledeer in the High buck hunt and the second time I killed a 3x3 blacktail in the modern rifle season. Niether time did I hold off the trigger and make a good use of the tag. Maybe next time. Have 5 or 6 points for the elk tag. I'd love to draw it and am a bit dissapointed in my poor luck.

I kind of wish they would give first preference in the draw to folks that havent drawn and those that have drawn and shown that they will buy the tag from past purchases. I think they should have a rule that if you draw and dont buy, you should have to sit it out for a year or two.