Washington's 2026 hunting regulations aren't a minor calendar shuffle — there are structural changes in here that affect how you plan your eastern Washington deer season, what you can legally bring back across state lines, and how the big game raffle and auction programs actually function.

"If you hunt deer, elk, or moose in any WDFW management region where CWD has been detected, you're now required to submit a sample of the animal for testing."

Mandatory sampling is a different world than voluntary incentive tags — and the incentive tags are gone precisely because the voluntary program is over. If your eastern Washington deer plan relied on picking up a CWD incentive multi-season tag, that slot in your strategy is empty now.

"You cannot bring whole carcasses into Washington. This applies to deer, elk, moose, or caribou harvested or salvaged outside of Washington as well."

This one catches out-of-state hunters who cross into Idaho or Montana, pile a whole deer in the truck bed, and drive home thinking they're fine. You're not fine. Know what you can and can't bring back before you're standing at the tailgate in a WDFW Region 1 parking lot explaining yourself.

"Possession of naturally shed antlers of deer, elk, or moose is not prohibited unless the shed antlers were retrieved, collected, or possessed while trespassing on closed public lands or department-controlled lands."

The clarification here is straightforward — legal access makes the sheds legal. But "closed WDFW lands" is a broader category than some people realize. If you're doing any shed hunting near department-controlled parcels on the coast or in central Washington, pull the boundary maps before you hike in.

"WDFW is removing most of the prescriptive, contract-specific language from both WACs and moving it into agency guidance documents instead. The rationale is that rigid WAC language was creating compliance problems for staff-limited non-governmental organizations that run these programs on the department's behalf."

This is actually a reasonable fix — making the conservation organizations that run raffle and auction programs navigate a full WAC rulemaking cycle every time something needed updating was a problem waiting to happen. Guidance documents aren't perfect, but they're functional.

If you've drawn a bighorn sheep tag or applied for one — or if you're watching the mountain goat or moose permit structure in a specific GMU — what's your read on how WDFW has been managing permit numbers relative to actual population data you're seeing in the field?

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Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team