For years Phil Volker left the island to hunt deer, usually heading east of the mountains. But about a decade ago, Volker said, he realized hunting was just as good right on Vashon, a place he can hunt in his own backyard and where meat is flavored by the apples and gardens deer feed on.
“I used to drive two or three hundred miles to get a deer,” he said. “Then I realized Vashon has some of the best venison around.”
As hunting season draws to a close this week, Volker and other local hunters say Vashon, with its large deer population, has good hunting but not always easy hunting. With only one public place where hunting is allowed — Island Center Forest — most hunting happens on private land.
“You have to have permission, the parcels are so small, and there are so many different philosophies next door to next door,” said Volker, who also teaches hunter safety classes on the island. “You have to be careful what you’re doing.”
Last year, about 200 people reported to the state that they hunted on Vashon, with most doing so during the three-week modern firearm season in October. Registered hunters reported taking 121 deer last year, the first year the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife (WDFW) kept a record of Vashon’s harvest.
WDFW, which regulates hunting, previously lumped Vashon with the rest of King County as one hunting area, or Game Management Unit. But last year the agency made Vashon its own unit, making it easier for the agency to track how many deer are killed on the island.
State officials say that while there’s been no study of Vashon’s deer, they know anecdotally that Vashon has a large population. It’s a cause for concern, said Chris Anderson, WDFW’s biologist for King County, as Vashon’s deer are a nuisance to farmers and gardeners and are frequently hit by cars. What’s more, dense deer populations can become unhealthy and can alter a forest as large numbers browse on certain plants.
“It can change the entire habitat, and that’s concerning,” Anderson said.
Because of its large deer population, Vashon is one place where the WDFW allows hunters to harvest either male or female deer, as opposed to only bucks. And several years ago, the state began allowing for hunters to take a second deer on Vashon as well.
“We’re encouraging the taking of any deer on Vashon,” Anderson said.
Hunting has taken place on Vashon for decades and was first regulated in the 1920s by the King County Game Commission, according to island historian Bruce Haulman. However, around that time, Vashon’s deer population had been greatly decimated, likely due to the clear cutting of island forests and over-hunting.
“In the 1930s, the Great Depression, people were out of food,” Haulman said. “Hunting for subsistence or food, that suppresses the population.”
In 1928, a gun club was organized to hold shooting events on the island, followed by the formation of the Vashon Sportsmen’s Club in 1933. According to a newspaper article at the time, the purpose of the Sportsmen’s Club was to “preserve the game already on the island, and to secure new stock.”
While some Sportsmen’s Club members hunted deer off-island, local hunting efforts largely focused on eliminating pest animals such as crows and feral cats. In 1933, for instance, the Sportsmen’s Club put on a feral cat hunting contest, and the winning team brought back 91 cat tails. The club also brought pheasants to Vashon for hunting, stocked local streams with trout and unsuccessfully attempted to secure federal money to establish a 600-acre game preserve.
“It’s interesting for us to remember that the environmental movement formed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by people who wanted to make sure there were animals to hunt,” Haulman said.
By the 1960s and 70s, however, the economy had recovered, as had local habitat, making “perfect conditions for deer to rebound,” Haulman said.
Brad Shride, an avid hunter who has lived on Vashon his whole life, says the island is a good place to hunt for those who know where to do so. He and other hunters have developed relationships with people who allow them to hunt on their property each year. Sometimes hunters will also knock on doors to inquire with homeowners about hunting. The Sportsmen’s Club provides permission slips to be signed by property owners, in case a hunter is questioned.
“There are some people that would like the deer that frequent their property to be thinned out,” Shride said, noting that there are also some who prefer hunting not happen near their homes.
Phil Mahurin, another local hunter, has knocked on doors to ask about hunting, and about half the time homeowners will say yes, he said, adding that he’s been yelled at only once. He’s gotten a deer on Vashon nearly every year for the past 20 years.
“For people that have been on the island for a long time like I have, hunting is not a problem,” he said.
However, Mike Mattingly, who has also hunted on Vashon for decades, said island hunting also comes with challenges. Many parcels are small, so hunters usually can’t walk for long distances, must watch out for homes, and can’t use rifles, which shoot farther than other firearms.
“There are a lot of deer, it’s just the ability to be able to hunt them and harvest them,” he said. “You don’t have spaces where you can use the long rifle and get a bunch of deer.”
Several local hunters said that they and their friends are careful and respectful when hunting on Vashon, but others sometimes aren’t, and they’ve heard of people hunting from the road or hunting on property without permission.
Shride has personally reported people who he believed to be hunting illegally, he said, including a group he once saw get out of their car and shoot a deer near the road.
According to King County Sheriff’s Office reports, just one hunting violation has been reported on Vashon this year, when two hunters went into the Neill Point Natural Area on the south end and were reported by a neighbor. A deputy responded and gave the hunters a warning.
In late September, Lisa Devereau, on the board of Vashon’s cemetery, also called police after someone found a pile of deer entrails in the middle of the cemetery. It was during the island’s monthlong archery hunting season, so the deer may have been legally killed on another property, Devereau said, but the hunter should have cleaned up.
“That ruins it for me and my friends who do hunt legally,” Shride said of hunters who have caused problems on Vashon. “It gives us a bad name.”
However, some hunters also said they hope illegal hunting instances become less common now that Island Center Forest is open for hunting, providing a place for off-islanders or those without connections on the island to hunt.
This is the fourth year that King County has closed the 200-acre Island Center Forest, where hunting has historically been allowed, to everyone but hunters as a pilot program. While the three-week hunt initially drew complaints from some forest users and people who live nearby, Dave Kimmett, a natural lands manager for the county’s Department of Natural Resources and Parks (DNRP), said the only complaints in recent years have been about deer entrails left behind, and last year the county didn’t even see that. Last year, 58 hunters registered at trailheads at the forest, and just two deer were reportedly taken.
Last week, about a dozen days into the hunting season, more than 40 hunters had registered at Island Center Forest and two deer had been taken, one of them a four-point buck. More than half the hunters were from off-island, coming from King, Pierce, Kitsap, Snohomish and Thurston counties. Kimmett said he thinks hunting will be better at the forest after a recent tree thinning opened up the woods there.
“It is a niche activity, but I think it’s important to show we are serving a pretty broad base of people,” Kimmett said. “For the first time, we’ve had people from Snohomish county, and who knows how they heard about this.”
Kimmett added that he knows some islanders don’t like hunting on Vashon, but others, such as those who advocated for hunting at Island Center Forest, believe that losing it would be letting some of the island’s rural nature slip away.
“We don’t want to be like Bainbridge. We like being a rural community, and a lot of people see deer hunting as reflective of that,” he said. “Having 200 acres of public land at Island Center Forest opened for hunting is also part of that rural character.”
