Well, since I was out Elk hunting the last several days.... which allows one to spend a lot of time thinking about all sorts of important and unimportant topics....

I think my big rag on Fish & Wildlife here in Oregon, and also the one in Washington, as I had a couple of guys from the forum come down and hunt with me here in Oregon earlier in the deer season....and they stated that the chances of getting a shot at a deer in Washington was less than 5 per cent.. according to some state pamphlet....

Anyway, my big rag is based on my point of reference comparing Oregon and a lot of the west, with formerly hunting back in the Upper Midwest....

I lived in Minnesota for 15 years and also hunted annually with friends over in Wisconsin... While I had my complaints about the DNR's of both states, one really has to give them a lot of credit.. compared to Oregon..

I ran across some game wardens that were real buttheads back in the Midwest, but I think that was a personal thing, because they seemed to be rejects that couldn't make the State Police force... so they carried their anger out on the rest of the world, via the DNR regs...

But one has to give the DNR in MN and Wisc credit... the amount of game has steadily increased where they are even offering double tags....and liberal doe permits etc...
MN and Wisconsin also cooperated by encouraging hunters from the other state to hunt their state...Wisconsin's deer season started the weekend of the ending of MN's Zone ONE which had the longest season... Fees for out of state hunters was the same for each state...

I have family that lives in West Virginia, and WVA also has a program that is recipicated by several bordering states... where residents from those states can purchase a hunting license in WVa for the same price as a resident... and vice versa in those states... PA, MD and Ohio and KY I think all recipicate...
Virginia didn't which I always thought was stupid.. but I think Virginia still grinds the axe over WVa, splitting during the Civil War..

Iowa use to also have a law that people from Kansas couldn't buy a deer tag in Iowa... because Kansas had a law against out of state hunters.....well good for Iowa, if that is still in effect...

But east of the Mississippi, people are entrenching more and more into wildlife habitat... yet the game population is booming...

and hunting fees are reasonable, even for out of state hunters...

Game in the west has done the exact opposite...
Fees are sky high, especially for out of state hunters...Laws are complex and getting worse...

The excuse is used for the game's decline in populations, because of loss of habitat.... Bull-Lony.....

Wolves have been re introduced, like that is going to do something environmentally positive...

Ban on hunting of cougars, or hunting cougars with dogs.. have caused cougar populations to soar... which have decimated huge amounts of the herds of deer and elk on the west coast...

My own personal estimation, I bet that 90% plus of the number of Elk and Deer that were here in Southern Oregon 10 years ago, are now gone...

I went to three different areas that I know were ELK hot spots 10 years ago when I moved here... while spending a lot of time on foot... I look for Elk sign... ( Elk poop)... and the same for Deer..... Zippo almost....

It is almost like Fish & Wildlife have been out " beautifying Oregon" by picking it all up for us.....

If the Fecees isn't there, the animals are not there....

And then I ran across my first " anti hunting" idiot out in the woods...lecturing me on how I should not shoot elk.. they don't hurt anybody...Yada Yada Yada...

Some other guy, now trys to heard them off of BLM land, onto his 400 acres.. right behind the NO TRESPASSING AND NO HUNTING signs....another ANTI HUNTING IDIOT... He even proudly displays a big huge sign in his front yard on his property out in the this small isolated Valley...

It states : "Hunters... Go Home... Elk herds have gone south for the winter.... Will return this spring..." Then every vehicle he sees pass by to go onto the BLM land, he gets out and follows in his little Jeep Cherokee...then he tries to stop you to have a conversation, while sitting behind his steering wheel, holding a pistol in his lap... if you go on and walk into the fields or woods, he lays down on his horn to scare everything in a large radius with the noise....evidently the week of elk season, he also goes around the area and arbitrarily shoots off a shot gun to scare the elk out of the area....

if you give him the time of day, he really loves to rag on the Californians and how they messed up Oregon... ( knowing the local area, he is probably a Calif transplant also... but the dumb think about them.. is they think they are the last " GOOD ONE" across the state line.. everyone AFTER them is some sort of asshole...

I really think the Fish & Wildlife people either encourage these idiots, or just turn a blind eye to it....When I hunted MN and Wisconsin, at least I have seen the DNR do something about those that Harrass hunters...In West Virginia I wouldn't be surprised if the state law allowed you to just shoot them.... ....

The better game management is back east....the west has sold out to big money, cliques of the connected, made hunting a large revenue source, catered to the anti hunting crowds, built up Dept's much larger than they need to be... and have created an environment that has made much of the game disappear, by being destroyed by preditors such as wolves and cougars....

And I can only speak for my opinion about the Oregon Hunters Association... If it really was an organization dedicated to hunters... they would be screaming about this stuff... they are not.. and if they are.. they are doing it behind closed doors...

Yet the hierarchy in OHA seems to make out quite well in the Special Draws, or in the Controlled hunts... as do a lot of "advisors" who make up the "consultants" to the state Fish & Game Dept... and always seem to be those based out of Portland & Salem....and none from the other 99.99% of the state.....

so the Western States can take a lot of lessons from Eastern States on game management... or the Eastern states can take a lot of lessons from the western states or Corruption in Game Management....take your pick....