ENDANGERED SPECIES — A Methow Valley rancher may get the distinction of receiving Washington's first compensation for livestock killed by wolves.

State and federal wildlife managers have determined that wolves likely caused injuries that resulted in a death of a calf on a Methow Valley ranch May 18 and that the landowner would qualify for compensation.

HUNTING — Friday at midnight is the deadline to apply for special hunting permits for fall deer, elk, mountain goat, moose, bighorn sheep, and turkey seasons in Washington.

Permit winners will be selected through a random drawing conducted by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) in late June. The special permits qualify hunters to hunt at times and places beyond those authorized by a general hunting license.

Applications may be purchased from license vendors statewide or online.

Consult the 2012 Big Game Hunting Seasons & Regulations pamphlet for details.

Read on for more information:

HUNTING — Sportsmen who want to be involved in surveys that might affect hunting seasons and be on the list for other communications from the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department must make sure their contact info is correct.

Update your email and mailing address in the system when purchasing  special hunting permit applications and licenses.

Each year, hundreds of special hunting permits are returned due to invalid addresses.

Hunters have through May 18 to apply for special hunting permits for fall deer, elk, mountain goat, moose, bighorn sheep, and turkey seasons in Washington.

Applications may be purchased from license vendors statewide or online.

Consult the 2012 Big Game Hunting Seasons & Regulations pamphlet for details.

HUNTING — Idaho Fish and Game has updated its Hunt Planner interactive online tool that allows hunters to search for and create maps for hunting areas of interest.

Hunters simply answer a few questions about what game they would like to hunt, how, where and when they would like to hunt it, and a list of all the available hunts that meet their criteria will be generated.

Select a hunt area from this list and the Hunt Planner will create a map that can be printed or provide links to an interactive map that can be customized further.

The Hunt Planner also generates helpful information for the hunt area selected, such as:

• General season harvest statistics.
• Tag, permit and fee prices.
• Landscape characteristics and access.
• Weather.
• Local outfitters and guides.
• Local services, including lodging, camping and restaurants.
• How to get there and current road condition.

In addition, hunters may download current and past controlled hunt boundaries, from the Idaho Fish and Wildlife Information System “Open Data” page. It helps to have a little horsepower in your computer, and you'll need to view the information in Google Earth and GIS programs.

Hunters can also download data for game management units, elk and wolf management zones, generalized game animal distributions and current and past Access Yes! property boundaries.

WILDLIFE WATCHING — About 100 motion-activated cameras scattered across an 8,600-acre Montana mountainside ranch are documenting a wealth of wildlife activity, including images confirming that Western spotted skunks — rare in Montana — have found a home about 10 miles south of Missoula. 

The cameras, some of which transmit wirelessly to a ranch video specialist, are pretty good at documenting poachers, too.

Read the story about the cutting edge stuff going on at the MPG Ranch, devoted to conservation, in this story by the Missoula Independent.

WILDLIFE — After reading my blog about the moose poaching case on Beacon Hill, a woman who lived in this area from the 50s through the 70s wrote to say she never knew there were moose around Spokane.

It's not she wasn't observant.  Moose are relative newcomers to the region, showing up roughly with the first big waves of Californians.

Washington's moose population has been slowly growing since the first confirmed moose sighting was made in Pend Oreille County in the early '50's. Wildlife research pegged about 60 moose in the northeast corner of the state in the early '70s.

The first moose hunting season was authorized in 1977 with just three permits, all for the northeast portion of Pend Oreille County.

This year, 150 moose hunting permits are being offered for a moose population estimated at more than 1,000 — although that estimate appears to have been made before the wolves gained a foothold in northeastern Washington in recent years.

Since the 90s, moose have spread into Stevens and Spokane counties and beyond, where they've been showing up in towns, in school yards, in swimming pools on a hot day. A few people have been charged by moose.  Some have had the misfortune of colliding with moose on area roads.  Heck, one calf fell through a window into the basement bedroom of a home in north Spokane.

 They've only been common for a couple of decades, but nowadays everybody in this area has a moose story.

HUNTING — A bull elk killed by a hunter in Pennsylvania in 2011 has been confirmed as the state record by the Boone and Crockett Club.

An official measurer determined a final score of 442-6/8 B&C non-typical points, which ranks 9th among all non-typical elk in Boone and Crockett records.

William Zee of Doylestown, Pa., killed the elk while  hunting in Clearfield County, Pa.

The bull has nine points on the right antler and eight on the left. The antlers tally 190-3/8 on the right and 188-1/8 on the left, with 47-7/8 inside spread and 29-7/8 in abnormal points. The antlers are unusually wide—an impressive 69 inches at their widest point.

The Boone and Crockett scoring system is based on antler size and symmetry, and accepts only trophies taken in fair chase.

Since the early 1900s, the Boone and Crockett scoring system has been used to measure the success of wildlife conservation and management programs across North America.

Elk are native to Pennsylvania but had been extirpated by the late 1870s. Hunters and game commissioners in 1912 began discussing the idea of re-introducing the species. The following year, a shipment of 50 elk arrived by train from Yellowstone National Park. Half were released in Clinton County, half in Clearfield County.

By the late 1990s, the elk reintroduction and habitat restoration efforts began generating significant tourism, wildlife watching and hunting opportunities.

 Boone and Crockett recognizes 10 Pennsylvania bulls as records. Seven are non-typical elk with a minimum score of 385; three are typical elk with a minimum score of 360. All have been taken since 2003.

TROPHY HUNTING — A Rocky Mountain goat taken by a hunter in 2011 in British Columbia has been named a world record for its species by the Boone and Crockett Club.

Kentucky resident, Troy M. Sheldon traveled to the Sitkine River region of British Columbia for a backpack mountain goat hunt with Hedi Gutfrucht of Northwest Ranching and Outfitting. On Oct. 8, 2011, the seventh day of the hunt, Sheldon dropped a billy that, after the required 60-day drying period scored 57-0/8 inches.

The official measurement by a panel of B&C judges announced today is 57-4/8.

The new world record goat surpasses the old mark – a tie between BC goats taken in 1949 and 1999 — by a substantial 6/8 of an inch.

Sheldon claimed his trophy using a Tikka T3 .270 WSM to make a 319-yard shot across a ravine.

 Costal British Columbia ranks #1 of all states, provinces, and regions for the total number of Boone and Crockett mountain goat entries. The province is home to more than half of the world’s mountain goat population. Trophy-class specimens have been trending upward each decade since the 1970s. 
  

HUNTING — Steve Solberg of Spokane was grousing in good humor on April 15 that he'd passed given his brother, Jeff, first shot at an opening day gobber then ended up coming home empty-handed himself.

“Seeing your brother finally bag a nice gobbler on opening day after 3 unsuccessful YEARS of hunting – priceless,” he said.

“Passing up on an easy shot to let your brother score – stupid?

“Maybe, but it was just great being in the woods again. My bird is still out there.

“My time will come.”

Indeed!  This week, Solberg's patience paide off with a bruiser tom.

“I was rewarded,” he said in an email with the photo above. “This was my biggest bird ever.”

The bird weighted more than 22 pounds, beard was 9 inches. But look at those spurs: 1-1/4 inches.

“Life is good!” Solberg said, noting that he has a placed pegged to take a kid this weekend.

POACHING — An anonymous informant could soon be $2,500 richer after leading wildlife agents to moose poachers.

At least two suspects are being investigated for illegally killing a cow moose on the north side of Beacon Hill in Spokane Valley around April 10.

Washington Fish and Wildlife police report they have confiscated 95 packages of moose meat and the archery equipment used in the moose poaching.

Under a search warrant, officers also seized the vehicle they suspect was used for transporting the moose off the popular recreation area east of Esmeralda Golf Course.

Formal charges are pending results of DNA testing on the meat, said Madonna Luers, the agency’s spokeswoman in Spokane.

An anonymous tip led officers to the evidence, she said.

If the suspects are convicted, the informant is eligible for a $2,500 reward offered by a national animal welfare group.

HUNTING — Taking a wild turkey gobbler can be difficult for a hunter with a shotgun, but think about the chances of spooking an incoming tom when you have to draw a bow.

Spokane-area hunter Chad Berry shows how it's done in a short, sweet video.

The spring gobbler season opened Sunday.

HUNTING/FISHING — Safari Club International and the NRA are praising the U.S. House of Representatives today for passing H.R. 4089, the Sportsmen’s Heritage Act of 2012, advancing the controversial legislation to the Senate.

The legislation has good parts on which most sportsmen can agree.  But it also has divisive components that warrant sending it back to the drawing board.  Sportsmen really don't need any more divisiveness. We see how little gets done in Congress under those conditions. Why not learn from that?

Read on for details about the act and why reasonable sportsmen should contact their senators to kill it.

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT — Perhaps it's a hint of the difference wolves can make. While Idaho cut back on elk hunting opportunity for this fall, Washington — where wolf expansion is still in its infancy — is expanding elk hunting permits.

But the Fish and Wildlife Commission wasn't game for proposals to allow electronic devices for hunting. During its meeting Friday and Saturday in Olympia, the commission left intact the statewide ban on using electronic decoys to attract waterfowl and illuminated knocks on hunting arrows.

Click “continue reading” for more details on the commission's decisions for 2012-2014 hunting seasons, plus info on new wildlife lands purchase in Asotin and Okanogan counties and the landowner hunting program approved for the Turnbull area.

• All of the changes approved by the commission will be incorporated into the state’s 2012 Big Game pamphlet, available later this month.
• The audio transcripts of the commission meeting will soon be posted.

HUNTING — At least 8 gobblers raising hell in every direction from my stand from 5:15 a.m. to 6:25 a.m. this morning, opening day of the spring wild turkey season. 

Then the woods virtually went silents — except for the damned flicker that kept coming by to drum on a nearby bird box and establish its territory.

At 7:25, my calls were answered in one of the best two minutes of turkey hunting in my career.

Shot this boy strutting with my decoy as at least three hens were within 15 feet of me. Had to wait a bit longer as a hen walked in at 10 feet and stopped with its head directly in line with the bead on my shotgun and the gobbler.

Could have bagged a second gobbler, but … naw.

Awesome morning of turkey hunting, just when I was thinking it was getting old.

HUNTING — This is where I have permission to hunt for the spring gobbler season. Tomorrow morning, half an hour before sunrise: Game on!

HUNTING — These wild turkeys feel free to trot through the Ponderosa neighborhood in Spokane Valley even though Washington's general turkey hunting season opens Sunday.

The front-runners are clearly jakes, as indicated by the short “beards” protruding from their breasts.

This little neighborhood parade (photo by Bob Bartlett) illustrates why non-hunters look at you like you're a nut when you get all loaded up with hundreds of dollars worth of equipment to go after a spring gobbler. 

OFF-ROAD VEHICLES — Idaho recently came within an eyelash of stripping the Idaho Department of Fish and Game of the authority to regulate the use of all-terrain vehicles on public land during hunting seasons.

An editorial in the Idaho Mountain Express notes that if the state Senate had not stopped a measure that had been approved by the House, Fish and Game would have had no say on where hunters could operate ATVs during big-game hunting seasons.

That would have been a big mistake, the opinion piece suggests. 

Read on for the editorial's reasoning.

Click here for the Idaho Fish and Game Department's web page on ATV issues.

POACHING — A cow moose was illegally killed Monday night on Beacon Hill in Spokane Valley, Washington Fish and Wildlife police say.

The poachers killed the animal using archery equipment on the north side of the mountain above Valley Springs road.

The animal was butchered on the spot, leaving little more than the two front feet and head behind.

Tire tracks indicate a small vehicle was used, possibly a small four-wheel drive, said Officer Dave Spurbeck.  A landowner heard a vehicle leaving the area around 2 a.m. Tuesday.

Officers have few other clues and welcome any information that might help solve the case.

• Call the investigators directly: Officer Paul Mosman, 710-5707, or Spurbeck, 993-3997. You can remain anonymous and still be elligible for a reward.

Beacon Hill, which holds several communications towers, is the prominent mountain just north of the Spokane River and just east of Esmeralda Golf Course. It's popular with mountain biker and hikers.

This web page details how poaching tips in any case can be provided anonymously by phone, email or text message.   Rewards are offered.

Otherwise call (877) 933-9847 anywhere in the state.

To reach the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Spokane Region Office during work hours, call (509) 892 1001.

HUNTING – The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission is scheduled to take action on more than a dozen proposed changes in hunting rules for the 2012-14 seasons at a public meeting April 13-14 in Olympia.

New rules proposed for adoption include allowing waterfowl hunters to use electronic decoys and allowing bowhunters to use illuminated knocks. A separate item on landowner hunting permits also is on the commission's meeting agenda.

Some of the proposed hunting rules were developed after a series of public meetings and online surveys that began last summer. However, several proposed rules emerged after those meetings started, including the provisions on electronic decoys, lighted knocks and changes to the master hunter program for elk hunting near Turnbull National Wildlfie Refuge.

In other business, the commission will:

• Consider adopting a statement designed to guide WDFW’s implementation of the state’s wolf plan,
• Receive a briefing on legal aspects of the species’ protected status in Washington state.
• Consider approving a request by WDFW to purchase 1,144 acres along Asotin Creek in Asotin County and 49 acres on the Methow River in Okanogan County to maintain habitat for fish and wildlife.

WILDLIFE AGENCIES — After wading briefly into the world of social media, the Idaho Fish and Game Department has had to “unfriend” itself on Facebook.

Comment threads on issues such as wolves got so ugly, it was taking too much effort to monitor the traffic.