And, again, there’s a degree of devil’s advocate in what I’m saying here. I don’t like the concept of government land ownership (I’m a ‘forts and ports’ guy) but I believe that any attempt to ‘fix’ it would be much worse, if it involved sales or transfers to states or private interests. The leeches would show up to rent-seek and middleman the process to death. So, no.
But overcrowding is ultimately an economic problem, a ‘tragedy of the commons’ and when people complain about it, I’ve been there and seen the problem, that’s why I prefer paying for private access, I went back this year and it was even worse, but, again, if people are going to recognize the problem, let’s discuss solutions. Transfers to the state is basically piracy. Transfers to private hands would be a trainwreck. The only way to preserve any semblance of the western life people love is to recognize that the resource at issue isn’t just the animals, it’s also the land, and the majority of the land is involved is federal. Every US citizen is a stakeholder and hunters are the minority and I don’t for one minute think the average stakeholder (who probably doesn’t hunt but might hike) would push back against user fees for hunters. Hikers tend to not like hunters. They’d be happy to see us less.
Then if the state wanted to use those outrageous nonresident license fees to mitigate land access costs for residents, paid we could see a tag reallocation - residents might get fewer tags but they could quite easily do side work as guides for nonresidents (which probably pays enough to buy beef instead of shooting an elk….) and nonresidents would be thinned out by the costs of hunting - but even then, that’s not terrible. The people still paying would be the guy who actually saw the value in the experience and was willing to shoulder the costs of federal land administration. Hunters would gain a politically stronger voice in federal land management decisions (wolves, anyone?).
Residents might see fewer nonresidents. But those that came, would be paying land fees that trickled down through local work contracts. Higher quality federal land hunts could at least possibly ease pressure on private land hunts and mitigate price hikes. It wasn’t long ago we could find $5000 bull hunts. Two years ago I paid $6500. Now anything less than $10k is rare.
That doesn’t even begin to address the plagues of social media, which has implications far beyond hunting.
I’m all ears for better ideas. I’d genuinely like to see better experiences for everyone. I just don’t know how without moving to a pay to play model and honestly don’t understand why people hate that. For most of my life most of my hunting has been pay to play. Reality is, culture has changed. We’re a minority now, I know very few actual hunters in person anymore, but there’s less huntable land in the east and greater demand (in absolute numbers) across the west.
I don’t see how we fix this without paying for it. I just don’t. And in saying all that I deeply appreciate the idea of the western way of life and hunting. I just don’t know how to preserve it in the face of an increasing population where hunters are greater in number but lesser in political power.
Perhaps a hybrid system experiment could work where some reduced number of tags was available and nonresidents had to pay for federal access, to subsidize residents. But to actually reduce the crowding, that would have to involve reducing the tags overall, but that’s no worse than if CO created more ‘quality’ units with limited entry.
I am slightly hopeful that CO will be more huntable in the future hybrid draw system but don’t see it as a cure-all.
