I’m no proponent of SFW, and wouldn’t trust them to take care of a pet rock, let alone be good stewards of our “conservation dollars.” So let me start with that.
But with that being said, this happens every year, and honestly doesn’t seem that much of a stretch. Roughly 200 tags available, and several thousand applicants. The odds of “Remi” specifically drawing ANY tag are low overall. But you’ve gotta step back and think about how many famous people and “influencers” are playing the game. Between every insta-celebrity, the Meateater crew (probably 8-15 of their guys applied), Hush (probably 10 or so for their crew), Randy’s crew (7-10 apps for them), Born and Raised Outdoors (5-ish of them), hunting companies like Stone Glacier and GoHunt and OnX (gotta make hunt films for marketing purposes), and every other YouTube hunter on the market, the odds that SOMEBODY with their face on social media gets a tag is relatively high. Whether it was Remi Warren or Steve Rinella or Randy Newberg or Lyle from Stone Glacier’s marketing team who won the tag raffle doesn’t matter. An “influencer” is gonna get a tag every year by sheer luck of the draw. Not necessarily the same influencers always, but AN influencer or 2 or 3 is going to get A tag every single year. I’m no math guru and got a C+ in stats in college, but it doesn’t surprise me at all that, mathematically, a couple people who could be designated an influencer won a couple of the tags. In reading the list, there were 2 “famous people” that I recognize their names that got tags: Remi Warren and Gage Butler (Casey from Hush’s son). That’s 2 of the 200 tags that went to “famous people” this year, about 1%. In my puny math brain, that means if there were 200,000 total tag applications, 2,000 of them came from influencer types. If every influencer puts in for every tag, that would mean only 10 influencers would need to put in for everything to mathematically make it to where 2 of them got a singular tag. I know stats isn’t that simple, but even if my influencer application numbers are off by a factor of 5 and it actually takes 50 influencers applying for every tag to hit that 1% threshold, it’s not that far fetched. Heck, I rattled off 40 at the top of my post.
My feeling is that if guys are THAT mad about how the draws are run and feel they’re so shady and dishonest, just stop sending them money every year. Don’t put in for tags, don’t pay to go to the expo, don’t play the game. The only way to topple the perceived corruption is if the money dries up. But somehow, my guess is that in 11 months, everyone will have forgotten about this year’s draw and will instead be pouring over the list of tags again, squirreling money away, and dreaming about the potential of drawing that Book Cliffs Bison tag.