Officials with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife say they’re working to make things right after a software glitch bungled the special hunt permit draw conducted on June 12. The error led to a misallocation of some of the state’s most coveted big-game tags and caused headaches for hundreds of hunters who entered the draw.
“We’re working to get [those] people the info they need,” WDFW spokesperson Jennifer Becar told Outdoor Life Thursday. “We did email every special hunt applicant last week, and we are in the process of mailing physical letters to people and making phone calls.”
The agency learned of the mix-up on June 27, and it’s been working toward solutions ever since. In a press release this month, WDFW Director Kelly Susewind apologized to hunters and assured them that some of those solutions had already been implemented, with others still in the works.
“I cannot overstate my disappointment in this situation and the impacts to hunters,” Susewind said. “As hard as it is to implement these corrections, we know that the hunting community expects and deserves an accurate draw that operates within the stated rules that we’ve established.”
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Under those established rules, there are 27 categories of special hunts for deer, elk, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, moose, wild turkeys, and bear in Washington State. When applying for one of these coveted tags, hunters can put in for multiple hunts and rank their choices in order of preference.
According to WDFW, however, a coding error in the third-party software used to conduct the draw scrambled those rankings. As a result, 723 hunt applicants who should’ve drawn a certain tag were not selected, while 738 applicants received tags that they shouldn’t have been selected for in the first place.
Susewind made it clear earlier this month that WDFW had corrected the error and would not be re-doing the draw. Although some hunters will still be affected, he said the agency has already found remedies in most cases. It has issued permits to the 723 hunters who should’ve drawn them in the first place, while allowing most of the hunters who wrongly drew to keep their special hunt permits — either by expanding the number of available tags or by swapping out one tag for another.
“WDFW worked hard to secure hunting opportunities for these individuals by increasing the number of permits, where biologically feasible, to allow those hunt applicants incorrectly awarded a permit with the ability to continue to hunt,” the agency explained. “However, in these circumstances the hunt choice may have changed.”
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WDFW said it will continue to keep affected hunt applicants informed, and that hunters should check their licensing profile for any updates. Susewind also said the agency is working with the software vendor to ensure this never happens again, and that it’s the first time, to his knowledge, that an error like this has occurred in the state.
Similar technical glitches have occurred recently during online draws in Montana, Pennsylvania, and Idaho, where the state’s Department of Fish and Game is sorting through a mailing error that provided hunters with incorrect draw results.