quote:
Columbia river valley is some of the best hunting around, but my word is it a fortune these days. Last I heard is outfits wanting $500+ per gun per day for just drive in hunts, lord only knows what it costs to lodge with them as well.

Outfitters have everything locked up and they know what they have.

Part of the reason I moved to the area and a major factor in leaving was duck and goose hunting. Moved there because the hunting looked like it should be fantastic. Moved back to the south partially because management practices in the area make it almost impossible to hunt ducks and geese unless you belong to a very expensive ($100K or more a year) club where they add water to grain. I have hunted ducks and geese in almost all of North America and even some in Europe and the management of waterfowl in Washington is aimed solely at keeping private clubs with well heeled members knee deep in ducks and geese and to hell with practical biology. Its worse than Europe. The hunting on public land, if it was managed sensibly, would be as good as it is anywhere in north America except Canada and it would be pretty close to that. Public area management is done by forcing anyone who wants to hunt public areas into very small, over pressured areas and leaving vast areas of perfect habitat suitable for hunting out of bounds. The particularly galling part of this, to me, was the public not only accepting this but defending it. It is not at all unusual to see hundreds of thousands of birds a day, almost everyone of them using areas that belong to the public and are suitable for hunting which are not open to hunting while hundreds of hunting parties are jammed together on a very small area adjacent to those areas but not used by birds because of the pressure on the areas that are open. It is very bad. Great area to birdwatch, lousy place to be a public land hunter. If you have $100K to spend on 5-6 hunts a year its fantastic...mallards of the year pouring into the decoys like they do in Canada. If you aren't able to spend $15K a hunt you can watch them doing it from afar. The stated reason from the state is to protect the resource and keep them from migrating to California. That is the official stand. When asked why they are honest...to keep the quality of hunting in Washington at a high level...on private clubs. And the residents, not the club members, are more than OK with this....they will get fighting mad if you question it.

It is indeed possible to hunt some of those clubs for a price for the day. Its only possible when birds are stale or not there in big numbers. The price is outrageous compared to comparable areas in the central flyway but people do it and often enjoy a hunt of a lifetime which could be done almost everyday of the season if the state managed the resources with everyone in mind instead of private clubs.