Three Rivers Ranger District, Colville National ForestLocation: northeast WashingtonSize: 483,916 acresZIP: 99141
West across the Columbia River, Game Management Unit 101 in Colville National Forest’s Three Rivers Ranger District in Ferry County offers an excellent opportunity for bowhunters. Most of Washington’s mature buck harvest comes during the late firearms season, which ends just before the peak rut and the onset of late archery season in mid-November. But Unit 101 doesn’t hold a late modern firearms hunt. As a result, bowhunters can look forward to more bucks and less disruption, and they get to hunt the entire rut. Three Rivers Ranger District tends to be more arid, and the forest here is more open-and thus more suited to the tree-stand hunting bowhunters in the state seem to prefer. “Those archers do take a higher percentage of nice big bucks,” Zender says.
