![]() The bruin season was in part to mitigate losses on the fawning and calving grounds. ![]() But meanwhile the region is brimming with wolves, locked into population-based cougar harvest quotas and the spring bear hunt has infamously been taken away by a faction on the commission. To rebuild the whitetail herd, WDFW has sharply curtailed antlerless permits in recent years. Some of “the other factors” she points to include the aforementioned disease issues, plus wildfire, drought and roadkill – “people don’t realize just how many deer are hit by cars.”Īnd then there’s habitat loss this landscape just is not what it was in the 1980s for whitetails as old farms and forests are converted to development. “And combined with all the other factors, it can add up to a drop in population numbers in some years, depending on what else is happening,” spokeswoman Staci Lehman in Spokane told me early last month. “I’m not a scientist but I think we have a predator-prey imbalance,” he said.įor its part, WDFW openly acknowledges carnivores do have impacts on ungulates. Rancher Scott Nielsen, who was among several livestock producers who spoke to trust issues with WDFW around wolf management and called for more coordination with local governments, said that as a young men, there were times when he could count 400 or more deer on one particularly rich south-facing slope that greened up early in spring, but the last several years he hadn’t counted more than 30. He said hunters used to have WDFW and the commission’s back, but not so much more, pointing to the cancellation of the spring bear hunt and outlawing of coyote derbies. Jim Ebel, who said he’d lived in the area from a young age, said he hadn’t seen so few deer “since the winter of ’68,” his first year hunting. As a shed antler hunter he said he just isn’t seeing the amount of skeletons in the woods he used to. Hunter Bill Philpot noted that years back logging on private land had opened up habitat for ungulates but that bounty has dissipated. He related a story about how his grandchildren had built a snowman and afterwards he found large wolf tracks intermixed with those left by the kids. ![]() Steve Bruchman who lives on 5 acres in the Kettle Falls area, said he’s seen a steady decline in deer numbers the past decade or so as well as increasing predator tracks left in the snow. STEVE BRUCHMAN MAKES A POINT DURING THE MEETING. ![]() “If we have another year with bluetongue or a hard winter, we’re going to be out of deer” and then what with predators?, Giannecchini wondered. The 2015 hunt was very good statewide and in the northeast it was buoyed by relaxation of the four-point minimum. Last year’s general seasons saw 3,544 taken, a low mark over at least the past nine falls if not much further back. He acknowledged last year’s horrible EHD and bluetongue outbreaks among local whitetails, but also that deer harvest after 2015’s dieoff was still around 8,000 animals and it’s dropped off by 60 percent. State wildlife managers have their population data, of course, but in addition to numerous anecdotes, today’s commenters offered some “citizen science” observations of their own.įreddie Giannecchini said that in years gone by, he would see 2 deer a mile and 14 bucks a day on his 45-mile roundtrip to work as a longtime employee of Clarks All Sports in Colville, but this year he’s averaged one deer per every 46 miles and just nine bucks overall. It was a message “from the center of wolf recovery,” as one state representative put it and whose comment led off local media coverage. The meeting was broadcast over TVW and on Zoom. They want the citizen panel that oversees WDFW to better manage the wild herds and carnivores and used the commission’s trip this week to Colville to make their thoughts known. FREDDIE GIANNECCHINI SPEAKS TO THE WASHINGTON FISH AND WILDLIFE COMMISSION THIS MORNING. Speaker after speaker this morning said they’re seeing fewer and fewer deer but also longterm increases of wolves, cougars and black bears, making for much tougher hunting, increased domestic animal depredations and safety concerns. Northeast Washington hunters, ranchers, local residents and elected officials talked to the Fish and Wildlife Commission today about rising predator numbers and declining ungulate numbers. Updated 9:26 a.m., Saturday, Octowith new 22nd and 23 paragraphs.
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