Thanks for the support guys.
I can only do so much. I love to hunt deer therfore I have many of the same concern as you guys do. I hate being out on patrol and seeing so few deer.
Unfortunately I had to ask... what do I have control of? My control as a Fish and Wildlife officer is over the illegal take of critters. I do not issue tags, nor do I work on habitat, nor can I give input on where subdivisions go. I can work on compliance with the law. The sad part is that we lose big deer every year to headhunters out of the season. If you really wanted to tabulate the numbers... I really dont think it is that much. I have years of data to stand behind my claim. We went out into the Interstate to check "tag compliance" and were astounded at how many folks actually hunting did not have a tag. A lot of folks dont think too much if Uncle Harrold fills grandmas tag... that is they dont think it is an issue. Unfortunately if 25% of the people out in the woods are the "Uncle Harrolds" then you can start seeing the trouble. If you wanted to tabulate these numbers, the cases where a person shot a deer and put another persons tag on it, the numbers grossly outnumber the other types of poaching.
In the first year of working the decoy we found folks with Western Oregon tags, Silver Lake tags, Klamath Unit tags, and Sprague unit tags as well as those with no tags. Now you can cut all the tags you want to, but if folks keep cheating like this, the tag reductions will never have an impact. One has to ask, what good is the system if the cheating is this bad?
I am rambling and I hope I am making some sense here. The bottom line is that ignoring the buddy hunting without a tag is like giving a blessing to the guy who shoots a deer out of season. Both types of activities are illegal and both are killing bucks. A very loose estimate calculated that the in-season illegal harvest in the Interstate may have equated to as many as 400 deer. The winter range poaching may be 20 to 25. What I ask is the bigger problem?
The problem was similar in the Keno Unit. The big difference there is that most folks are using Western Oregon tags to cover for their activities. The original estimate for non-compliance was 25-40%! No wonder there is a problem!
I gotta get. If any of you have questions feel free to call me at my office. It is listed in an above post.
Randy