By Mike Totey, Conservation Director
OHA staff provided both written and oral comments on the 2025 sage grouse hunting permit numbers to the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission. Nearly every time the Commission discusses sage grouse in Oregon, they fall into a deliberation on hunting. And every time, OHA staff, along with ODFW biologists and OSU researchers, set the record straight. Hunting sage grouse in Oregon does not negatively impact sage grouse populations. Instead, it actually benefits the sage grouse conservation program by providing valuable information from wing samples submitted by successful hunters.
Hunting sage grouse involves applying for a hunt, waiting for draw results, and if successful in the drawing, purchasing a sage grouse permit and travelling to Oregon’s outback to enjoy your hunt. This all happens in a relatively short time span, making it challenging for many to pull hunting and travel plans together.
Unfortunately, this year the Commission added another step, holding up this process to discuss finalizing permit numbers at its August meeting. Normally, those decisions are made much earlier, then adopted as a temporary rule when the Commission meets at a later date. Not only did the Commission add another unnecessary step to the process, it also set in motion a pathway where both hunters and ODFW staff are under an even more compressed timeframe.
OHA pushed back on the need for this added step and delay. We strongly recommended that the Commission return to the previous process and drop this additional step. Time will tell if we were effective or not. In the meantime, ODFW staff have been scrambling to notify successful hunters, get wing sample envelopes distributed through the mail, and follow up with individuals where hunts were modified.
Oregon continues to take a very conservative approach to our sage grouse hunting opportunity. This approach is based on a strong framework for establishing and reviewing permit numbers, setting an initial hunt plan, and then after current survey and population modelling work is completed for the year, finalizing the hunt permit numbers for the year. This is a rigorous and time-consuming process, but it yields the best results for the birds, hunters and the agency.
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