I am writing in response to several letters that have been published regarding hunting in Island County. To those individuals that have written in saying that hunting has never been allowed in the Kettles, where have you been for the last 10 or 15 years? Residents of the county have been allowed to hunt in the southeast section of the Kettles since 1996 by ordinance and for many years prior to that.
I have hunted the Kettles and Greenbank with my son and neighbor. Like all law abiding hunters on Whidbey Island, we follow the rules and regulations set forth by Washington state, such as observing the hunting hours, not using high-powered rifles on the island and the numerous other restrictions that our state has listed in the hunting regulations. We don’t want our licenses revoked, our vehicles and firearms impounded of the meat in our freezers taken by game wardens for not following the hunting regulations. We don’t intentionally go hunting to make life difficult for others. We may be out hunting, off and on, for two or three weeks without firing our black powder rifles (black powder rifles, shotguns with slugs, bows and handguns are the only legal methods of hunting in Island County). So between the three of us, throughout the hunting season, you may only hear one shot each, if we’re lucky enough to get the same and clean shot.
Folks have been hunting in Island County for years, with no accidents or fatalities. According to the Department of Fish and Wildlife, there has not been a hunting accident of incident in Island County since 1990 and that incident happened on private property at the south end of Whidbey Island. The individuals that are causing the problem for the hunters are the poachers. Poachers don’t observe the regulations and those are the ones that should be stopped. Unfortunately there aren’t enough law enforcement or wardens in Island County to catch them. The poachers don’t come to the open meetings on hunting, the law-abiding hunters do. Don’t lump all hunters into one category, don’t compare us with kids and young adults that are in the woods playing with target arrows or pellet guns that look like high-powered rifles and don’t condemn us before you get all of the facts.
To the individuals complaining that hunters start shooting before of after it’s legal to do so, are carrying high-powered rifles into the woods, shooting at houses with arrows or threatening home owners with bodily harm, and they’re getting slow response from officials, how about helping out a little bit instead of demanding a ban on hunting?
We all know that there isn’t enough in the county budget to hire more officers or the state budget to hire more wardens and there isn’t much we can do about that. But we can become involved. Descriptions of the individuals that are causing the problem, license plate numbers of the vehicles that more than likely belong to the problem-causing poachers, pictures of the individuals, anything that would help the officers or wardens to track down the offenders
Most of the hunters in Island County are courteous, respectable and law-abiding. We want to work with the residents of the county to come up with a viable solution that everyone can be comfortable with. Hunters are not out every day of the year, but for a limited amount of time during the year. Hunters aren’t complaining about the hikers, horseback riders and bicyclists scaring the game away during the short hunting season that we are allowed and we’re not making a big deal of the horse or dog droppings that the hikers and riders leave behind when they use the trails.
Hunters understand that the land is there for all to share, whether it’s hiking, riding or hunting.
David L. Hollett lives in Oak Harbor. The Island County Commissioners will hold a public hearing on the Kettles Trails hunting issue Monday, Sept. 26 at 6 p.m. at the Coupeville High School Performing Arts Center.
