State wildlife agency puts fresh restrictions on bow hunting in Northeast Oregon

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is putting new restrictions on archery hunting for elk in Northeastern Oregon. Elk hunters who want to use a bow will now be subject to a restricted system based on a seasonal quota, similar to the restrictions put in place for elk hunters who use rifles. Previously, during Oregon's elk hunting season, which started on August 27 and runs through September 25 this year, archers could be certain of acquiring a tag almost anywhere.

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 added that there should be a minimum of 10 elk males for every 100 elk cows in order to ensure a good breeding season. Now, wildlife officials are hoping that restricting archer hunting inside 13 units, or borders for wildlife management, will let more elk males mature into reproductive age. Mike Slinkard, a bow hunter and local of John Day, rejects this tactic. He believes that the focus of wildlife officials should be on imposing restrictions on non-resident elk hunters who go from states like California.

“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.