Oregon Officials trace drop in hunting to several factors

I saw that ad in the paper last Friday as well.

Their opinion as to the decline in the interest in hunting is a bunch of BS!

The declining number of hunters if from our generation being sick and tired of spending our hard earned dollars on hunting/fishing licenses and applying for tags, and then not getting to hunt because you either (1) did not successfully get any of tags that you applied for (my scenario the last two years with applying for 7 tags), (2) you didn't get any tags so you were left to try and fill archery deer and elk tags with most of them being spike elk only in Eastern Oregon (which is hard to do with the weather patterns we've been having in Oregon the last few years, or (3) every bull elk tag in Eastern Oregon is draw tag only now. I personally have only seen 1 spike bull elk this past two years, with everything else being a branch bull.

It comes down to this, Oregon hunters are tired of spending $40+ for a combination hunting/fishing license - which is required before you can even apply for each tag at $4.50 each. Then if you don't draw any tags you've already shelled out $40-71+ just to try to get a chance to hunt anything at all. And it's not so much about the money, but it's the fact the tags that are available, nobody wants to hunt for because the majority of them are for spike elk which are few in numbers now. That leads to poor hunter success rates, but still fills the game commission's pockets. Oregon has left it's hunters with nothing to hunt with the hunting regulations the way they are now, and we're tired of it! I've heard that archery season will be draw tag next year, just like the rifle tags are now. That will only leave general hunting seasons for beer and cougar...whoopdefreakingdo! I suppose next year, we'll have to apply for draw tags to fish for steelhead, salmon, or sturgeon.

Of course, the Oregon Dept of Fish and Wildlife does not care about the hunters or their success rates, they only care about the dollars generated by draw tag fees, hunting licenses, the governor's tag, and the raffle tags that generate big money for their pockets. It's all about the money to them! And the only people that can afford to spend $10,000 or whatever it is for the governor's tags, is some big city guy with deep pockets and liberal ideas from the West side of the state.

With Oregon's game management practices all blown to hell the way that they are now, the bears and cougars are killing almost of our elk calves and deer fawns (75% according to ODFW) as they are being born from the wombs of their mothers. This has led to extremely low populations of elk and deer in Eastern Oregon the last few years, which also attributes to low hunter success rates due to the lack of animals to hunt.

No, they can try to blame it on anything else but the truth, but it's their own game management practices that has led to the decline in hunters and revenue in the state of Oregon.