I finished the podcast today, thank you Robby for bringing light to the issue and giving us a peek behind the curtain. Some of the comments and situations referenced about commission decisions were infuriating. To try and convince us sportsmen that the commission isn't anti-hunting, seems grossly hypocritical. I think Woody does a wonderful job of smoking up the mirrors over important topics to mitigate scrutiny from his constituents.
RCW 77.04.012 Mandate of department and commission - "The commission shall attempt to maximize the public recreational game fishing and hunting opportunities of all citizens, including juvenile, disabled, and senior citizens".
Commissioner Myers:
"Also with this large diverse human population, there's a lot of folks who feel like they wanna have a say in how the states fish and wildlife are managed; that's become a juggling act; " - it starts to derail here, when non-consumptives who do not contribute to the funding by buying applications, licenses, tags, etc. are weighing in on the wildlife commissions decisions to limit hunting, when their legal obligation is to maximize hunting opportunities. Anything from those outside groups should be disregarded immediately.
"We're giving professional opinions in place of high quality data" - that's been discussed in previous posts, it's obvious.
"Even how hunters, what they'll say about biologists is you guys don't know what you're talking about because where I hunt the population's doing this or that" - I just looked up some general rifle season harvest statistics from 2 popular units in my local area comparing 2013 to 2023 of antlered deer (3 point minimum) harvested. 1st in 2013 there were 104 harvested with 13% success rate, 2023 there was 54 with 7% success rate. 2nd in 2013 was 92 harvested with 11.2% success rate, 2023 there was 47 with 6% success rate. These are not prime years, they're the oldest and most recent on record. When I got my drivers license (2006) you couldn't cruise the forest roads in either of those units without seeing decent bucks. Now if you find one, it's likely barely legal. The only management changes have been less predator harvest, and less hunt opportunity.
"I pushed the agency to return to the way that we were managing cougars which was by a harvest management goal of a certain percentage of the population" - Well he didn't represent that during the meetings. In one of last years meetings addressing the "carnivore plan", where commissioners were discussing further limitations on all predator hunting including potentially banning coyote hunting, Woody referenced wanting to "see the data from a study on black bear populations being conducted in BC". Knowing that they had data showing the 8% harvest quota had never even been hit, and an average annual harvest was 4-6% INCLUDING SPRING BEAR HARVEST BEFORE THEY TOOK IT AWAY, feels like an even heftier slap in the face.
"They weren't able to present the data in a convincing way; We had the data, we just didn't have it in the form that we do now" - is this a shred of hope that we could see progress and data driven management decisions?
"The process of going through that spring bear exercise that resulted in losing the spring bear season was so stressful on the commissioners we have remaining they don't want to pursue anything more right now" - aaand the answer to my last question.
They didn't even touch on the wolf reintroduction that met objective years ago and are left unchecked, or the ridiculous decision to bring Grizzly bears back to the North Cascades.. (Hopefully that changes once the bears find the constant food sources along the PCT).
I'm not a fan of social media influencers, but I seriously hope some of them, and other industry professionals or businesses, can use their platforms to rally enough people to be overwhelming to the commission. Otherwise, I think we're probably SOL on getting any progressive management for hunting.
