I'm sorry but this made me laugh.
Non resident tags are already steep, so you're saying if there is an elk in your state, you should get taxed more on top of that?
You think we already aren't trying to call the poor management to our own states? It's frustrating to watch. I hunted elk in Idaho this year, invited by an Idaho resident, and was invited back. Why did he invite me? Maybe because we met through mutual friends, and we had invited him out to join our muzzle loader elk hunts in washington, where he had a great time.
And to be transparent...We weren't hunting a "premier" unit with draw tags and huge bulls, but a unit where harvest statistics are in the 10-12% range.
As a resident it's what, 30 bucks for your resident elk tag? Or you drop a whopping 125 bucks for elk, bear, deer, turkey, cougar, mountain lion, steel head, and salmon pacakge? Am I jealous? heck yeah.
Non resident is already at 150 for the license + 416 for the elk tag.
Non resident hunters help fund the greater Idaho fish and game department to practice their (in my opinion) better management practices than my home state.
Out of pure curiosity, I would love to see the revenue of states game departments from license fees and the split of resident and non resident fees.
I don't mean to come across defensive or whiney. In reality, I do understand residents frustrations on this, but there are two sides to the story and it's a bit of a double edged sword.