With the pics and the type of hunting you re able to do in Washington would stay put. Heck I may even put it on my radar for future trips or career moves.
I am lucky that in my area most guys will respect you if you have access to private ground and not try to get in on it also. Public ground s a different game. I tried to make fiends with guys in the area, scouted, hung stands and thought we had a hunting schedule worked out to not burn the place out. Found out they were in there all the time. I took the time to scout out the exact spot that ducks were wanting to be on the river and took a couple of guys out there. That spot always has sign of people being there, when no one use to be in there. Needles to say, I do not share public ground information any longer.
Based on your previous comments I would definitely keep it on your radar for places to move. I will give you a lot of info here and can answer any questions you may have. I'm laid up in bed recovering from hernia surgery yesterday so I have a lot of time on my hands (bored out of my mind) and I love talking to people about this stuff anyway...so here we go. (chalk up any typos and confusing sentences to the percocet I am on.
It is a seriously beautiful place to live and you can't beat the outdoor recreation opportunities in the area. World class small mouth bass/Walleye fishing, amazing fly fishing opportunities, Salmon, and even the largemouth bass fishing isn't bad in a lot of the lakes (though obviously not the 15 lbs + lunkers you see in southern tier states). I'm not a big fan of Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as I believe they pit hunters against each other (purposely) and often look for ways to minimize recreational opportunity when it comes to hunting...if they are doing it accidentally they are idiots...either way it's the end result of what they do.
All that being said... let me paint the picture for the extremely light pressure you would experience there. In WA you have to choose your tag/season.. You can hunt the Archery, Muzzle, or General season. You can only hunt the seasons you chose a tag for. For instance as an Archery guy I can only hunt 1-25 September and 10 Nov - 15 December (in one county..the other counties start 25 Nov - 15 December. All the game management units (GMU's) are not open to late season archery but all the GMU's are not open to late rifle either (which makes it nice for buck survival). There are some GMU's that are open for all seasons. I will also add that I regularly hunt the areas with the most pressure and the pressure is still relatively light (compared to the rest of the country) and there are still a ton of great bucks in those areas. The only way you can hunt all seasons is if you draw a multi-season tag (which the past few years has been a high draw rate.. but I haven't noticed any significant increase in pressure with that tag)
Here is an example from a numbers standpoint. I hunt four counties and a number of GMUs but I will focus on the two GMUs that I have spend 70 percent of my time in. (numbers come from WDFW). I threw in the multi-season pressure but left out the Muzzle pressure because it's so low.
Total Combined Area of the Two GMUs: 3,500+ Square Miles
Max Archery Pressure in those areas: Approximately 1,600 hunters
Max Rifle Pressure they receive in the respective season: 6,000 hunters
Hunter days average for Archery: Approximately 7 Days
Hunter days average for Rifle: Approximately 5 Days
Archery success rate: 26-32%
Rifle success rate: 19-20%
I want to point out that the above hunters are deer hunters/harvest in general... Most of them are whitetail hunters but you will have a few guys hunting killing Mule Deer in these units too (rightfully so.. the numbers are small but there are big Mule Deer in that country if a guy knows where to look). I should also point out that all 3,500 square miles is not prime whitetail habitat. I have seen whitetail above 6,000 feet during the early season (not frequently but they are there). In the late season they are mostly at 5K and below... and if I remember correctly the Forest Service considers 3,500 and below to be winter habitat... though they will stay up to 5K below through most of the hunting season unless the snow gets to deep then they will move down.
Out of the two units I am discussing one of them does not have a late rifle season so a two week rifle season is all the pressure it receives from them. It is also the GMU that opens to archery two weeks ahead of any other. In this case that leads to a little bit of heavier pressure during those first two weeks (though not bad honestly) and then it really dies off after the other GMUs open (because the early opening GMU is in an area of lower population and more remote from the largest populations centers).
Considering all of the above you can get the picture... It's really a dream from a pressure stand point. The lower rifle success has to do with the fact that most of the hunters simply road hunt or get out of the truck and walk around... there is a ton of escape cover so they rarely get a shot at those old bucks in the mountains. In fact, I'm generally more worried about fellow bowhunters killing a deer I am after than a rifle hunter... That being said...there are many times I'm the only guy in an area seriously bowhunting a specific deer.
The number of deer sightings in a day can vary greatly.. In the late 90's and early 2000's our numbers were much higher and if I hunted private land/alfalfa fields I have seen over 100 deer a day with 30-40 bucks and 15-20 being Pope and Young (with top end usually being in the 140-150 range). It would be rare to see something like that today as deer numbers are lower.....back-to-back bad winters a few years ago, higher predator numbers (poor predator management), EHD, and more than anything a drop off in Alfalfa production. In the mountains my best day has been about 20-30 deer sightings though on average I would say it is 0-5 per day. The cameras tend to show that suitable mountain habitat probably holds anywhere between 10 - 20 deer per square mile in the mountains with buck to do ratio being 1:1 ( sometimes buck ratio is higher and vice versa.. though honestly I see it in favor of bucks more than does most of the time).
It's rare that I don't have at least one P&Y buck on any camera I put out but to be more accurate we could probably call it .08/1 or so. It probably isn't that high for the state a whole but I have learned what to look for over the years an I get into areas that aren't pressured. Sometimes you will be shocked what you see in the same area between the early season and late season. The National Forest has cattle on it until October in a lot of areas so it makes it more difficult to get deer pictures in those areas... I definitely don't write them off.. my biggest deer have been killed in those areas.
140-145 gross is going to be your average nice mature buck with 150+ ratio being found on 1:20 camera site ratio and 160-180 being found on about a 1:40 camera site ratio. That 180-200 mark would be more like 1:200 cameras..and maybe more.. not enough data to gather that accurately..they just kind of show up when they do... but I know they are out there on any given year just waiting for me to find them...(haven't connected on that 180+ though.. when you focus your efforts on a single mature buck in any area of the country it's tough...but this is tough terrain with a lot of escape cover...fortunately the lower pressure helps quite a bit but they receive constant pressure from predators) . Bottom line I can't run 200 cameras a year but I can run 40-60 which is why I know that will find me at least 160+ on any given year.... My best year ever I had a 200+ gross, 180+ gross, and 2 160+ gross on camera along with a smattering of 140-160 gross bucks.
There seems to be a much higher ratio of big Non-Typicals in WA than Typicals. However, I have found that I see far more typical frames holding 5+ points per side than I do in other parts of the country (Gordon Whittington even commented on that to me one time). If you go onto B&C you will see that Stevens County has 15 all time Non-Typical in the book (It is the 30th best county in the book for non-typical). The best Iowa county has 20 all time (Madison). Now.. I know both states have a ton of people that don't enter bucks.. and Iowa probably has a ton of others in the P&Y... However, if you consider that Stevens is not all prime agriculture habitat, has a smaller deer population than Madison, probably less deer being killed, etc... I think Stevens stacks ups as a great county from a sheer numbers standpoint... Stevens is also the county where the 200 3/8 (215 gross typical) Cartwright buck was killed so at a minimum we know the genetics and potential to hold a world record typical is there.
However, when you look at the top-end of non-typical (and even typical on average) then you will find that WA doesn't stack up in what the Midwest can produce year after year... The biggest non-typical killed in WA scored 236 5/8 and only 4 deer have scored over 230. I personally have never seen any undocumented WA buck that would go over 236 in trail cam pictures or on someones wall. However, I have seen a couple old hunting photos of bucks that may go over 230 and I did hold one set of sheds that was in that 230 ball park (from mountain/big woods habitat).
If we open the aperture a bit and focus on the inland Northwest (Eastern WA/Northern ID/Northwest MT) then we are looking at like habitat and this is what we see.... ID has produced 3 bucks over 230 with the biggest being 267 4/8..... MT has 6 230 plus but not all are from the NW and none are as big as the Idaho kill. However, in the 60's and 70's NW Montana produced three bruiser 190+ typicals with two of them being 199 and some eighths.
If Elk/Mule Deer are your primary interest I would chose Idaho or Montana over WA but even if you did choose WA you couldn't go wrong (if you draw the right tags you can get on some of the best elk in the nation). For Whitetail I prefer WA but you would probably get a variety of opinions on that one... Of course WA has the blacktail which are some of the most challenging animals in the world to hunt and people fall in love hunting those creatures of the temperate rainforest.
Anyway.. I hope this helps.
