SILVER LAKE — Ray Neuneker has been hunting since he was a teenager, and he’s been shooting deer, elk and bear on Weyerhaeuser Co. land since the 1960s.
The 73-year-old retired Reynolds Metals Co. worker guesses he’s driven every road on Weyerhaeuser Co.’s St. Helens Tree Farm, which covers much of the land between Kelso and Mount St. Helens — multiple times.
Ask Neuneker how often he likes to hunt and he’ll answer, “All day, every day.”
So Neuneker was willing this year to pay $300 for an annual permit to hunt on the St. Helens Tree Farm.
The company this year nearly doubled the price over what it charged for access to the area in 2014 and 2015.
Now, however, the permits are good for a whole year; the 2014 an 2015 permits were good for only six months.
Weyerhaeuser reports that it has nearly sold out the thousands of permits it offered this fall.
But many hunters who were willing to pay for a $160 permit in 2014 and 2015 are refusing to pay $300.
Some have stopped hunting altogether, while some have found other, more distant places to hunt. Some hunters are worried that escalating access fees are pricing people out of hunting and making hunting an elitist sport like it once was on “the king’s land” in England.
“It’s becoming a rich man’s land,” Neuneker said.
Weyerhaeuser spokesman Anthony Chavez said the company tried to accommodate low-income hunters by instituting the $50 non-motorized day-use permit, which he said some people requested this year.
Chavez said the price increased this year to account for the costs of providing year-round access and permission to camp up to 10 days and chop two cords of firewood. The permit system will continue to evolve, Chavez said.
“Every year we’ll do a review of what’s working well and what can be tweaked. Clearly the demand is there,” he said.
In 2015, the company offered 5,000 six-month permits and sold about 3,900.
This year, it offered 3,000 year-round motorized permits and 500 non-motorized permits.
As of early last week, Weyerhaeuser reported that it had sold all but one of the motorized permits and all but 46 non-motorized permits.
Lee Wolf of Kelso bought one of those non-motorized permits.
He’s been hunting on Weyerhaeuser land for 25 years, but refuses to buy a $300 permit. He called the $50 permit “a joke.”
“Keeping some of the overall rationale for permits in mind, no one walking in is dumping a bunch of garbage and no one walking in will cause a big safety concern,” he told The Daily News.
Cody Palm of Olympia said he’s been hunting local Weyerhaeuser lands for 13 years, since he was 10 years old, and he’s been exploring the same woods with his dad for even longer.
He stopped purchasing a permit when the company increased it to $300 this year.
“It is not worth it. It’s a scam. The elk population in St. Helens has been on a decline for about seven or eight years,” he wrote in an email. “Vandalism rates have gone down on the tree farm, but the garbage is worse sitting outside the gates and on the side of the public roads.”
It’s unclear whether Weyerhaeuser’s permit system has made a difference in the amount of game on its land.
Anecdotally, permit holders say they don’t see much of a difference since the system began. Chavez said Weyerhaeuser doesn’t track the number of animals killed on its property, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife can provide only very rough estimates because of how game management units are outlined (the St. Helens Tree Farm crosses at least two GMUs).
Chavez said the permit system — which Weyerhaeuser has used for decades in the southeastern United States — has produced the intended effect.
“Since we’ve instituted the program, we’ve seen a noticeable decline in vandalism and dumping,” he said.
Chavez said the company estimates the monetary value of that vandalism, but Chavez didn’t have those numbers available.
Weyerhaeuser is among many major timber owners that now charge access fees to its lands.
For example, Rayonier charges $420 per person for an access permit on its lands in western Wahkiakum County.
After 47 years in the sport, Dale Williamson of Ostrander said he’ll likely stop hunting altogether because of the new price tag. He purchased the $160 permit last year but said that was his limit.
“It’s just not worth it,” said Williamson, a 59-year-old retired account manager for Applied Industrial Technologies.
He said there’s no state or federal land close enough to make a hunting trip worth it. He sympathizes with Weyerhaeuser’s desire to protect its property, but he worries that fewer hunters will mean less money for the local economy.
“When you really start thinking about the money issue, sure Weyerhaeuser is getting their $300, but look at all the people who aren’t getting the money” from state licensing fees, sporting equipment and gas purchases, he said. “It’s just sad. We had access to that land for so many years. I understand their position with the vandalism and garbage. It’s just a few people who cause this to happen — 99.9 percent of the hunters are law-abiding because they appreciate being in the outdoors.”
He also said he worried about the permit system’s impact on the future of the sport itself in Cowlitz County.
“Here’s a tradition that I see going away if it gets too expensive for families to hunt,” said Williamson, who was taught to hunt by his father and in turn taught his son to hunt.
Chavez, Weyerhaeuser’s spokesman, said the company understands and wanted to honor that tradition by allowing a permit to cover the holder, his or her spouse, children under 18 and grandchildren.
Jim McCulley purchased a permit last year but not this year.
He said he wanted access to the land to explore where his father, Bill McCulley, used to log, adding that, like many other hunters and hikers, he’s often helped clean up Weyerhaeuser land.
“I wish the garbage dumpers loved the woods like I do,” he wrote in an email. “Well, now the gates are closed, and it takes $300 bucks to go where I used to go for free. That’s too rich for me, so I’ll have to rely on my memories.”
Recently, Neuneker was looking for bear to shoot. He rumbled his Dodge Dakota truck down the “19 mile road,” a logging road east of Castle Rock that shoots off Spirit Memorial Lake Highway. Alder, hemlock and Douglas fir dominated the rain-soaked terrain around him.
With “Dr. Death” — the 7mm Savage short magnum rifle he uses for all his hunting — relaxing at his right hip, the veteran hunter explained that he sympathizes with Weyerhaeuser’s choice to charge for access to its land, which the company said it did to cut down on vandalism and illegal dumping.
Neuneker said he’s seen less garbage since Weyerhaeuser started the system.
And Neuneker loves hunting so much he said he’d likely pay anything to be on Weyerhaeuser land.
“I would bitch about it, but I’d probably buy it,” he said.
