Bull Elk, Washington Hunting Seasons and Limits 1973

The Washington Game Department was created by a 1932 voter initiative that carved game management away from food-fish management, installing a six-member appointed commission to run it. That name held for over fifty years before the legislature renamed the agency the Department of Wildlife in 1987, then merged it with the Department of Fisheries in 1994 to form the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, which still publishes equivalent pocket regulations today. Every hunter in Washington was legally required to carry a copy of the current season booklet while afield.

The cover illustration centers on a bull elk in a classic bugling pose — head thrown back, antlers sweeping low over the haunches, mid-call. Bugling is the high-pitched territorial vocalization males make during the rut (mating season) in September and October. Washington hosts two elk subspecies with different ranges and regulations: Roosevelt elk (Cervus canadensis roosevelti, named for Theodore Roosevelt) occupy the western rainforest zones and the Olympic Peninsula, while Rocky Mountain elk range through the drier interior and eastern portions of the state. Season dates, bag limits, and antler-point requirements differed between subspecies zones — distinctions a pocket booklet like this one was designed to clarify.

On December 28, 1973 — weeks after most of that year's deer and elk seasons had closed — President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. The ESA didn't immediately affect elk hunting, but it fundamentally reframed how state wildlife agencies weighed harvest against habitat and population, with compounding effects over the following decades. The 1973 season was the last conducted entirely outside that legal architecture.

The physical condition of this copy tells its own story. A sharp horizontal crease bisects the cover exactly where the pamphlet was folded in half to fit a shirt or vest pocket; the spine edge shows wear from repeated removal and replacement. Red tape at the top-left of the binding suggests the staple pulled loose and was repaired in the field — consistent with a document that spent several wet autumn days in a hunting jacket.