The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is placing new limits on archery hunting for elk in Northeastern Oregon.
People wishing to purchase a tag from the state agency to hunt elk with a bow will now be under a controlled system, based on a seasonal quota, similar to the limits placed on elk hunters who use rifles. Previously, archers could be assured of getting a tag nearly anywhere in Oregon during the elk hunting season which began on August 27 and ends on September 25 this year.
Bow hunting for elk in Oregon will become subject to some restrictions this year. Officials for Oregon's Department of Fish and Wildlife say the change is needed to meet state wildlife management goals after many hunters switched in recent years from rifles to bows.
Courtesy of Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
Jeremy Thompson, a district wildlife biologist for the department, says that the change is needed to meet state wildlife management goals after many hunters switched from rifles to bows.
“As we started to put control mechanisms in place for rifle hunters in the ‘90s with the adoption of our first elk management plan, that’s when we saw this shift of a lot of our hunters into archery,” he said.
“So we created the monster a little bit, if you will, by having that change in regulation for rifle hunters.”
Thompson also noted that to maintain a successful breeding season, there should be a minimum of 10 elk bulls per 100 elk cows.
Now, wildlife officials hope that placing limits for archer hunters in 13 units, or wildlife management boundaries, may allow more elk bulls to reach breeding maturity.
But bow hunter and John Day resident Mike Slinkard disagrees with this strategy. He thinks wildlife officials should focus instead on placing limits on nonresident hunters who travel from places like California to hunt elk.
“All they really should have done is implement some sort of a nonresident quota. And it would have completely solved the problems here,” Slinkard said.
Slinkard also attributes the motivation behind the new limits to “jealousy” from rifle-using hunters who have been subject to quotas for decades, unlike their bow hunting counterparts.
“And I get that, I really kind of do. But the fact of the matter is that archery is still a primitive weapon, and our success rate is a fraction of the rifle hunters,” he said.
So far the new restrictions don’t seem to be curbing interest among bow hunters in Northeast Oregon. All 12,000 hunting tags the state has allocated for controlled archery hunting this season have already been purchased, according to Thompson.
Jeremy Thomspon and Mike Slinkard spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation: