while the raffle benefits a few, the quantity of harvestable animals does not support this, a lot of older hunters have not had a successful hunt in many years due to antler restrictions.
Right now the wdfw should be looked to the future of moose hunting and see that our moose are disappearing and have been for about 8 years. The numbers have been falling on a steady year to year basis. Probably 90% of this is do to wolfes. If the game department isn't goi g to open up more predator hunting opportunities then wdfw should be trying to cut back on moose tags and preserve what little there are left not open things up more for more hunting opportunities! I have been locating moose for the same tag holders, raffle hunters ect., for probably 8 years. So I completely know what I am talking about and what I see and don't see out there anymore. I quit helping locate for hunters a couple of years ago due to the lack of moose. We used to ha e so many moose at any given time of the year I could take my family to see and observe moose. Not any more, I can spend relentless hours looking with little results. This is clearly yet again another huge failure for our wdfw to acknowledge this problem year ago and adjust or actually try to manage the moose population. It's a very sad thing to watch!!
The formatting of the recent 2021-2023 Proposals was quite disappointing. The lumping together of multiple issues, many of which were quite opposite of each other in nature, forced commenters to either agree or
disagree with the whole list as a collective. It seems as though this angle was used intentionally to get the public to agree or disagree with certain items, by lumping other contrasting items in with them. The Mountain Goat proposals are a good example. A
hunter such as myself who believes that Mountain Goat hunting is too limited in WA based on our tag to population ratio as compared to other states, would either have to agree for tag reductions in the Cascades in order to also agree with issuing conflict
tags in the Olympics, or vice versa. When in actuality, I agree with having conflict tags in the Olympics, but strongly disagree with tag reductions in the Cascades.
Still shaking my head. “Let’s increase here and decrease here”. Goat permit areas need to be expanded throughout Gifford Pinchot I see considerably more goats than deer or elk in high country in GPNF. I’ve seen goats around 3000’ but yet deer and elk seasons are wide open for the tragically declining deer and elk herds. The main reason for our declining deer and elk is due to lions,wolves and native over harvest. If there is any decrease in goat rocks permits those permits need to be made up in surrounding areas because there are goats ON EVERY HIGH RIDGE IN GIFFORD PINCHOT! Hound permits for lions need to be put in the mix before any permits are reduced.
