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Officials with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife say they are working to make things right after a software glitch ruined the June 12 special hunting permit drawing. The error led to the misallocation of some of the state’s most coveted big game tags and caused headaches for hundreds of hunters who participated in the drawing.
“We are working on it to [those] “Giving people the information they need,” WDFW spokesperson Jennifer Becar said Outdoor living Thursday. “We emailed every special hunt candidate last week and we’re in the process of sending out physical letters to people and making phone calls.”
The agency learned of the confusion on June 27 and has been working on solutions since then. a press release This month, WDFW Director Kelly Susewind apologized to hunters and assured them that some of the fixes had already been implemented, while others were still being worked on.
“I cannot overstate my disappointment in this situation and the impact on hunters,” Susewind said. “As difficult as it is to implement these corrections, we know the hunting community expects and deserves an accurate draw that falls within the established rules we have put in place.”
Read more: 64 hunters accidentally signed sheep and elk tags for Montana, 7 get to keep them anyway
According to these established rules, there are 27 categories special yachts for deer, elk, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, moose, wild turkey and bear in Washington State. When hunters sign up for one of these coveted tags, they can sign up for multiple hunts and rank their choices in order of preference.
However, according to WDFW, a coding error in the third-party software used to conduct the drawing disrupted those rankings. As a result, 723 applicants for the hunt who should have drawn a particular tag were not selected, while 738 applicants received tags for which they should not have been selected in the first place.
Susewind said earlier this month that WDFW had corrected the error and would not re-draw. While some hunters will still be affected, he said the agency has found solutions in most cases. It has issued permits to the 723 hunters who were supposed to draw them in the first place, while allowing most of the hunters who were drawn in error to keep their special hunting permits — either by expanding the number of tags available or by swapping one tag for another.
“WDFW has worked diligently to secure hunting opportunities for these individuals by increasing the number of permits, where biologically feasible, to allow those hunting applicants who were issued permits in error the opportunity to continue hunting,” the agency explained. “However, under these circumstances, the choice to hunt may have changed.”
Read more: Auction vs. Lottery Tags: Should States Stop Selling Big Game Tags to the Highest Bidder?
WDFW said it will continue to keep affected hunting applicants informed and that hunters should check their license profiles for updates. Susewind also said the agency is working with the software vendor to ensure this never happens again and that, to his knowledge, this is the first time such an error has occurred in the state.
Similar technical glitches recently occurred during online draws in Montana, Pennsylvaniaand Idaho, home to the state’s Department of Fish and Game is sorting out a shipping error causing hunters to receive incorrect draw results.
Dac Collins
