We as in hunters, follow the North American Conservation Model> One of the core principles of that model is Public Wildlife that is on Private Lands. Everyone needs to have equal access to our public lands. Unit Wide Landowner tags are the anti-thesis to public use of public lands. I am confident that we will soon see the last of Unit Wide landowner tags in New Mexico. All of those UW tags should go into the public draw. But to make that work, we need to remove outfitters from the public draw as well and go to a split random draw that is 90% res and 10% non residents.
The problem with ranch only private land tags is that the public doesn’t have equal access to hunt private lands either. Also, the landowner loses property rights when he leases to outfitters. What maximizes hunter opportunity is to do away with landowner tags altogether and put those tags into the public draw as well. Landowners could opt into programs where they are paid per acre to allow public hunting access. If they don’t want to opt into a program, they could sell access to individual hunters who have public draw or over the counter license-tags. Two states that are quite successful recruiting private property for public hunting access is Montana and South Dakota. Montana has its Block Management Program. South Dakota has the C.H.A.P and walk-in programs. In South Dakota, 95% of the pronghorn and mule deer hunting is on private lands enrolled in those two programs.
I said it at least a dozen times that when a non-hunter position on a Game Commission appoints an anti-hunter to that position that hunting opportunity quickly unravels. Also, letting an outfitter on the commission is like putting a fox in the hen house because hunter opportunity again suffers. In New Mexico, roughly fifty percent of all big game tags go to landowners which are not part of the public draw. Most of those private land tags by far are rolled into outfitted hunts which are booked by non-residents.
The Montana BLM program has actually had a decline in land owner participation over the last decade, because people suck.
Your altruistic view has a major flaw, elk compete with cattle, damage fences, and raid crops at a much more significant effect than deer. If they have no value, they will be killed via damage permits etc. Oregon kills thousands to appease ranchers each year either through hunters or APHIS. AZ has whole swaths of elk habitat that are OTC to appease ranchers and farmers, if they saw money from those they'd probably be a bit more tolerant.
Beyond that LO's don't lose their property rights when they lease to outfitters, do you just make shit up to try and sound smarter?
Comrade, what you leave out of your lies, is that in exchange for UW tags, the general public gets to hunt private. We're going to lose hundreds of thousands of acres of ground to hunt, a lot of it prime habitat and water sources.
You strip the value and the elk numbers will decline significantly. If the ranch makes a 100k a year on hunting and your proposal makes that go away, they'll replace those elk with 100k worth of cows ASAP.
You're background is from a place with no real elk numbers and its blatantly obvious, I've hunted them since I was a kid, guided them for a decade off and on, and have long term relationships with lots of landowners. Most LO's go easy on deer, not with elk and rightfully so, they cause a lot of damage. Elk populations are limited mostly by social constraints and not habitat capacity.
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