Washington deer help

My son (22) moved to the Seattle area from Wyoming (likely not permanently) and texted me last night, wondering about hunting opportunities in Washington state.

As background, he has hunted since he was quite little, taking whitetails, pronghorn, and elk, but hunting was never really "his thing" and, although a great outdoorsman and horseman, (camping, endurance horse riding, climbing, etc.) he grew away from hunting.

As such, I was surprised (and pleased) to hear from him last night that he was looking for opportunities to hunt in Washington.

Can someone help me help him? I know very little about Washington opportunities. Although he is in the Seattle area, he travels well, and I think the entire state is in play here. What resources are best to start looking at? I'm sure the Game & Fish page is good, but are there others?

The WDFW website is a decent place to start. They have a GO HUNT map feature that allows for layering of public lands. He will need to decide what he wants to hunt first. He can download a copy of the big game regs as well. He will need to be real familiar with the rules and seasons for each GMU.

On the west side of the state (where Seattle is) blacktail's are the deer. Plenty of public land, but also a lot of timber company lands that may or may not require permits. The central and eastern parts of the state have mule deer. Again- plenty of public land, but some area's (gmu's) are almost exclusively private land. There are some whitetails to be found- mostly eastern side, but they seem to be moving a bit more central.

Washington has a whole bunch of rules too. He must pick a weapon for deer- archery, muzzy, or modern. He can only hunt those designated seasons. You can use a more primitive weapon during a different season if you choose, but you need to have the corresponding tag-I.E. you can use your bow during modern season, but you have to have a modern tag to do so (and you would have to wear hunter orange). They do offer multi-season tags to hunt all of the seasons, but they are a draw and he is too late for that this year.

For elk you have to decide which side of the state (east or west) and what weapon before you buy your tag. Same opportunity's as with deer.

Anyhow- that is a quick rundown. I don't have time to go really in depth. Spending a bunch of time on the website and reg book should give him a pretty good idea of what to expect. Hope it helps.

Full Choke has nailed a lot of good points in his post, there is a lot of information in the Go Hunt section of the WDFW web site. And yes he is correct...lots of rules in Washington. A little specific help i can recommend is checking out the Capital Forest. It is entirely State land just south of the state capitol of Olympia, about an hour and a half south from the Seattle area. I have killed several nice Blacktail bucks in this area.
If your son is new to Washington he had better be expecting lots of moss, trees, and brush, think rain forest, close quick shots.
At this time in the year he most likely needs to be looking for public land. There is a LOT of private timberland that requires a paid permit, and a lot of these are sold out by this time of year. One of the many reasons i big game hunt in ID and MT now.

We have the most difficult regs in the world to understand, there's a million rules and not all of them are in the regs (like Game reserves).

Hunting in washington is as much a patience game with other hunters as it is actually hunting. You will see 10x the number of hunters as game, and not just in the roads, they're everywhere, even deep in the wilderness (though most stay on or near trails). The best bets are to find crappy, steep, brushy areas, away from roads, and hope there's no one else there. Oh, and expect most of the hunters you run into to be jerks. But the climbing in the summer is pretty sweet and no one has jumped on the alpine grouse hunting yet.

In terms of other resources there's a hunt-washington forum page that is similar to this, but much crappier. The quality of people is sub-par at best.

There's a reason no one posts about hunting Washington...

Thanks for this information! This should be a good spot to start. I think he's just looking for an "opportunity" hunt -- meat would be the primary goal. We'll see if he can get out there and get after it this fall.

I've lived here 5 seasons now and the hunting can be frustrating and hard to figure out but there are plenty of opportunities. Blacktails are unlike anything I've ever experienced and that's what makes them fun to hunt but there seems to be a steep learning curve for those of use more used to whitetails. For deer, it really doesn't seems to take much effort to get away from other hunters.

There are a lot of deer here, and lots of public land. Western Washington can be tough because the woods are thick & black tail are afraid of themselves, it seems. They can be a tough hunt. The East side of Washington's probably a lot more like Wyoming. Fairly open to wide open spaces and some thick nasty areas. There are a lot of people, but it's not too difficult to get away from them. A lot of people here are jerks, but most sports people are pretty nice. www.hunting-washington.com will have more local information. There are lots of good people on there. Don't go on just expecting people to provide spots to hunt, though. e can get help with general areas of the state for what he wants to do, tactics, etc.

Good luck to him.

I haved hunted 25 years in Washington, in every corner of the state. There is plenty of opportunities for deer and elk but if you hunt modern firearm you will have to wade through the ocean of orange vests in the woods. The best hunts for me are the muzzleloader hunts. You have approximately 1/10th the number of hunters in the woods and you get to hunt the animals before the orange herd comes through. If it were me i would go hunt the north east corner for deer with a muzzleloader. Its a fun hunt with lots of animals and very very few other hunters. Pm me for more info.

Thanks again for all the responses. This is a great forum for this sort of thing. I'll mull things over with him, and we'll see how this all goes over. Does he really have the time needed? Is 2018 a better plan? (As a consolation, he and I are headed to Kodiak for blacktails this year, so he will get some hunting in!)

Why skip a season just because it's his first year here. It just makes next year the first season.

How long has he been in Washington, does he have his residency yet? Washington non-resident fees are a bit high for the opportunity/quality of hunt. Maybe use this first fall to just explore the state and see what it has to offer.

Residency requirement is 90 days prior to purchasing the license, I was thinking it was 6 months, he may be good to go for residency status.

Needs to get on Hunt Washington forum... tons of info and members

I have lived in WA my whole life...theres much to be desired here, but there are some parts of the state that offer great hunting for elk,deer and bears. Some of the best bear hunting in the lower 48 is in WA, the draw elk tag units(doesn't help now) are fantastic if drawn and NE WA has some world class whitetail hunting