Blues have their ‘quality’

Eastern Washington is like the Lake Woebegone of elk hunting. It’s pretty good.

Elk hunters here don’t enjoy the high success rates enjoyed by hunters in Idaho and Montana, but there’s plenty of elbow room and a decent chance of filling a tag even if you don’t draw one of the coveted cow or branch-antler bull permits.

“I consider the Blue Mountains to be a quality hunting experience,” said Pat Fowler, Washington Fish and Wildlife Department biologist in Walla Walla.

“The general season hunter can shoot only spike bulls, but we have some world-class bulls and everybody tells us it’s a thrill to see them. The number of big-bull permits has increased every year for three years.

“We get about 4,000 elk hunters a season down here. That’s a lot more pleasant than the early 80s, when 18,000 hunters were jamming into the Blues.”

Fowler described elk numbers as “fairly strong in five of eight Blue Mountains units, but still below the agency’s goals.

Forest fires in the Blues have impacted more than 153,000-acres in the past four years. Tucannon River fires burned hot and the area is still recovering. However, fires burned a mosaic pattern that created great elk habitat in units 154, 162, 166 and portions of 169 and 175.

“Don’t go out and sit in the middle of a burn,” Fowler said. “Hunt the edges that will be greening up after the first rains.”

Northeastern Washington elk apparently survived the long winter in pretty good shape.

“They seem to have good body fat, but we won’t complete our surveys until later in September,” said Howard Ferguson, state biologist based in Spokane.

Hunters bagged 132 bull elk in northeast units 101-124 last fall, down from 166 in 2006. The brushy country makes hunting difficult, as can be deduced from low success rates.

But the best news is that elk continue to expand in to new areas of Ferry, Stevens, Pend Oreille and Spokane counties.

The recent emphasis on thinning timber for fire control has improved elk habitat.