Things are not the way they were…Onx says otherwise about 50%+ on some of the archery tags I am talking about that I have personally been on and shot 280” 6 points in back to back years.
The outfitter pool is dumb in my opinion as well. EPlus is a bad system too, but how do we reward private landowners for keeping their habitat in good shape if they have 0 incentive to do it. There has to be some level of incentive for them whether that be payments for BMA type access or through some amount of preference for tags that are in units they live in. I don’t think anyone I know is pissed off about landowners getting tags for their own property to hunt on, I think they’re pissed about those properties that are getting those tags and selling them to the highest bidder which is the true issue.
Take away all of the landowner tags and give the landowner $5-10 per acre. The states that have done that have really opened up some great Mule deer and Pronghorn hunting. Some states have over a million private acres open to public hunting with similar programs.
Elk hunting here is big money and there is some big fraud with little oversight. Some of those E-Plus tags are sold two or three times if the outfitters don’t book the clients. Pay the state a hundred dollars more for a tag or pay a tag broker thousands for the same tag. That’s the difference. Resident and DIY non-resident hunters pay the lion’s share for management of the resource with our excise/income taxes. The back bone of the North American Wildlife Management Model.