Free: Contests & Raffles.
Land owners in general are not going to want strangers on there property. So they give tags to friends, family, and most of the time youth hunters. Most of the landowners I know won’t let most master hunters on there places. In my opinion it is being handled as it should in our state.
I watched the episode. Looked good to me. I like Wyomings answers to problems like this over the way Washington handles it. In Washington you would never even hear about the problem publicly. They would just give the complaining land owner some permits that he could use or give out to his buddies/family/or sell. This in my opinion has a lot of options for miss-use and funny-business. In Wyoming if there is a problem it is solved by the public through a draw system. The area of the hunt was extremely small to make sure the elk of concern were being the ones hunted. I have a friend that owns an orchard outside of Walla Walla. The deer come and eat in his orchard and cause some minor damage to his trees. he can get damage tags for doe and buck on a very regular basis and he can shoot them, his family can shoot them, and anyone else he decides to let in. In my opinion these hunts should be done in some kind of orderly fashion and people of the state should be allowed through a draw of some sort. Maybe youth or seniors. If the landowners that want the damage controlled don't allow a public option of some sort to solve the problem, then in my opinion they shouldn't get the tags and or any damage control money. The average elk hunter for example in the state of Washington probably kills an elk (cow or Bull) every 10-15 years is my guess. They are very few and far between. Yes there are guys that do way better than that but there are others that do even worse. To see a landowner and his family harvesting multiple elk a year off of damage control tags is wrong in my opinion. There should be some system in place to offer these animals that are owned by the state to be hunted by the public hunter in some sort of controlled fashion that would not be to hard to put in place. some kind of damage control lists or draws that could be coordinated by the landowner and the Dept of Fish and Game. I think the average public hunter in the state of Washington would be shocked at how many deer and elk are killed each year by landowners and their buddies through damage control tags. Just my thoughts for whatever they are worth.