Landowner tag change!

txhunter58

Long Time Member
Messages
8,499
I understand that the DOW passed regs that state that anyone transferring a landowner tag to someone else must allow them to hunt their private ranch. I am assuming that this is for the tags that allow someone to hunt the whole unit. Please set me straight if this is not correct.

Even though they will still be allowed to hunt public, that should help things out quite a bit. Won't be nearly as many tags for sale to the highest bidder!

txhunter58

venor, ergo sum (I hunt, therefore I am)
 
Hope your right
Thats great news, the way it should be!Put a pimp outa buissiness like Garth! He gets top dollar and then he goes on the fancy hunts,while he slopes it on thick for the poor boys pointing them into poor units that are already over crowded.
Heard it direct from CO. DW. first time many units have reached their quota Thanks to the Huntin Fools!! Thanks Garth.
No I do not subscribe!!!
If I did I place it by the toilet don't you just hate when the roll of TP is empty!!!!
Gilabulls
 
Come on! Garth saw a way to make a few extra dollars and went for it. The landowners he buys the vouchers from are happy and the guys who buy the vouchers are happy. Garth or any of the other "Tag Pimps" are not the ones to blame. CDOW commissioners (and CO residents) gave it the OK a few years ago and obviously at that time there wasn't too many people complaining, because it's here now!

The hunt that Garth killed his monster on in Colorado last year wasn't a "Fancy" hunt, it was on a hunt that could be drawn with 1-2 points.

Garth has the money to do more things than the rest of us because he offers a product that obviously lots of people like. I admire the guy for having built a successful business doing something he loves.

Normally I wouldn't even chime in on this stuff, but I just get tired of the mud slinging because someone is successful. Please, take it elsewhere if that's what you want to do.

Placing blame on "Tag Pimps" is not where it should be placed. Change the system if you don't like it! Hoping for businesses to go out of business is cruel, and it hits home for me, because I work my butt off on this website and I'm sure there are people who wish the same for me, and it makes me sick!!!

Brian Latturner
MonsterMuleys.com
 
The thing I have always scratched my head about is why are they called landowner tags? I would venture a wild guess that 75 to 85% of the bucks and bulls shot with "landowner" tags in Western Colorado are harvested on public land! When the CDOW does their phone surveys they ought to ask guys that purchased landowner tags whether they shot their bucks and bulls on public or private land! I bet you would be amazed at the results in Western Colo!

The guy that shot the outrageous velvet muley with bow this year purchased a so-called "landowner" tag. Not to take anything away from the guy...but the high alpine country where he shot the buck certainly wasn't private land and I have a feeling that buck likely used to winter on public land! I won't mention any names but someone's magazine article seemed to broadcast that the guy shot that buck by purchasing a "landowner" tag? I bet that buck was about 40 miles from the nearest private land when he shot him!

Although it is a step in the right direction requiring landowners that sell landowner licenses to allow access to their land I believe the tags should be limited to private land! I can already see hunter-landowner fights flaring from guys that buy these permits!

There have always been complaints about hunting pressure on Colorado public land pushing big game to private land. "Landowner" tags where hunters are hunting public land are actually defeating the purpose for what these tags were originally intended to do? Landowner tags should be just that....private land only!!!!
 
If I came across as degrading the guys that were selling the tags, I apologize. As stated, if the system allows it, there is nothing wrong with someone doing it. If fact, I have some friends with landowner tags. They offered me a couple this past year, and if I could have swung it, I would have gone.

Doesn't change the fact that I dissagree with the way the DOW has allowed these to be used (public land wihtout private access), and I and a lot of other people let them know that we dissaproved. Looks like the input paid off.

I am all for working with ways to let landowners keep their land as wildlife habitat instead of turning it into subdivisions. However, giving them tags to sell as "public land only" hunts was over the line.

Nuff said.

txhunter58

venor, ergo sum (I hunt, therefore I am)
 
Founder it is here in it's past and present form simply because of political pressure exerted by powerful landowner groups. It has definately moved from it's original intent and morphed into something which I and many other hunter/conservationist's view poorly. Old Tom Chapman has gotten rich using 'legal' loopholes but that doesn't make him a respectable business man. I don't see sellers of vouchers in any other light.

Sorry to have to disagree with you,

Fred Judson
 
This change may have wide ranging implications.

Many of the landowners who get vouchers currently lease their lands to outfitters. I know several who do this. I now suspect all of the vouchers from landowners in this situation will now end up in a outfitter sales channel, and only be sold in conjunction with outfitted hunts.

It may result in a decrease in voucher brokering, as landowners will not allow public access and continue to lease thier land to outfitters. Those available future vouchers with a decrease in supply plus an access component, may command a much higher price then they do today.

The small acreage lanowner may benefit from this change, as bigger landowners drop out of the application process due to outfitting conflicts or get kicked out due to noncompliance.

It will be interesting to see the actual impact and potential legal loopholes/challenges.
 
Holy smokes Grasshopper you bring up some great pts! I can definitely see some flames coming out some ears and noses with conflicts from this system! I still say landowner tags on private land only and that would solve a lot of the problem right there!
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-19-06 AT 10:20AM (MST)[p]The best way to fix the problem would be for people who buy landowner tags to lose their points. If someone wants to buy a landowner tag every year, fine, but they shouldn't be able to continue playing the public draw game at the same time. This would also help reduce the points banking problem and at the same time would reduce the ridiculous price of landowner tags. Landowner tags are merely a way to purchase bonus points which appear to be worth an astounding $1000 a pop.
 
BeanMan is right on the mark: this program has moved a very long way from its original intent, to the detriment of the resource and public hunting opportunity.

The program was originally established to provide incentive to landowners who provide valuable big game habitat to continue doing so, and provide hunt opportunities for the landowner's family in limited draw units. The program originally stemmed from problems on the eastern plains, which have always been limited entry units, where landowners complained that they were being harrrassed by metropolitan hunters for permission to hunt and their own family members couldn't even obtain licenses to hunt their own land every year. When Colorado went to limited drawing for deer statewide, this program morphed into a dangerous privitization of a public resource for two reasons: 1) the abundance of public lands surrounding a relatively few private landowners (as compared with eastern plains units where there is almost no public land to speak of) and 2) the relatively higher deer populations and the resulting abundance of licenses available in western slope units. The surplus of tags created a commodity to which a dollar value could be attached.

Adding to the problem is the fact that the existing rules governing the system are nearly impossible to enforce. Current regulations state that landowners receiving vouchers must allow "reasonable public access" to their properties, yet state law prevents the publication of landowner or license-holder names, so the public has no way of knowing what landowners received tags, and the DOW has no way to enforce the access issue. It is widely known that the vast majority of landowners recieving these tags equate "reasonable access" with "NO access" and they are fully aware of the enforcability problem. So they have their cake and eat it too.

As Grasshopper pointed out, many landowners who get these vouchers also outfit and/or lease their private ground out, and do not (in some cases cannot, due to lease stipulations) allow public access. So a wealthy few individuals who can afford the exhorbitant voucher prices are allowed to buy into premier units every year and hunt public lands with the regular sportsmen who in many cases must wait 8 or 10 years or more to gain the same privilege. Meanwhile, the wealthy hunter is also allowed to continue playing the preference point game and competing with regular hunters on that playing field as well. And landowners don't dare use these vouchers for themselves or their family as the original intent of the program provided, because they see dollar signs with multiple zeroes behind them. We've turned wildlife, a publicly-owned resource, into a private commodity for a very privileged few. This is a serious conflict of interest and a major problem with this program, and the entire thing is money-driven. The system simply was not designed to handle most of the situations we find on the western slope in premier deer units, and vouchers have become unbelievably valuable. Further, neither the DOW nor the Wildlife Commission has ever moved to change the program, while the landowner lobby groups (Cattleman's, Woolgrowers, Farm Bureau, etc) have lobbied long and hard to maintain the status quo, and more recently, to increase the number of private vouchers, which are pulled off the top of the license quota, which means fewer draw opportunities for the average sportsman.

The Commission's recent action to "require" private land access is a huge joke, because that's already in the regulations. All they did was try to divert attention and avoid a fight by giving the rule it's own line-item number and putting it in bold print. The rules haven't changed and neither has the enforcability.

Buckspy is right, you may see some far more significant changes to the program in the near future because the state legislature has recognized these problems and there are bills now being drafted to put the checks and balances in place that the Wildlife Commission has not had the political will to implement. In my opinion, the changes are long overdue.
 
Make the tags nontransferable and for use only on the private land where it applies - the contiguous ranch land of more than 80 acres. Nope, can't even use it on the fed or sate piece that's checker boarding your place. The ranches contiguous private land only. That would put the end to all the fighting and take away the all the outfitter/transfer issues.

Last I looked wildlife in Colorado is not private capital.


"Roadless areas, in general, represent some of the best fish and wildlife habitat on public lands. The bad news is that there is nothing positive about a road where fish and wildlife habitat are concerned -- absolutely nothing." (B&C Professor, Jack Ward Thomas, Fair Chase, Fall 2005, p.10).
 
Sneak said: "The Commission's recent action to "require" private land access is a huge joke, because that's already in the regulations."

I am pretty sure you are wrong about that. They used to have that in the regulations, but I was told by the DOW that they were no longer requiring "reasonable access". And, when this was in force, that meant access to the "public", not the voucher holder. As you said, this was unenforceable because "reasonable access" might be 2 uncles and 2 friends.

Also, there are currently 2 kinds of landowner tags. One is definately PLO (provate land only). The other voucher has no private land requirements: doesn't require them in the regs to allow ANY access to their property, and can be used unit wide (in other words: public land). These are two distict and different tags/vouchers.

I dissagree that this is a joke. If I were to pay $3500 for a voucher, and the law says that I am required to have access to the property, you can be D#$% well sure that I would force the landowner to give me access or I will most certainly report them and force the issue.

I believe it is a great "first step" that does have some teeth.

txhunter58

venor, ergo sum (I hunt, therefore I am)
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-19-06 AT 12:20PM (MST)[p]I would like to see vouchers only good for the private land they were based on when issued.
As thin as the game wardens are spread in CO, I don't think that the access issue can be enforced and the pilot programs will not be beneficial to people holding non-vouucher tags. Hope I'm wrong.
 
What percentage of landowner tag holders actually harvest an animal? Does the DOW have that info? Or does any one here on MM know that answer? I bet it's alot lower than the general success rate of the rest of the permit holders.
 
In terms of the written regulation.... compliance, enforcement, and interpretation are all very different things.

A landowner might offer access for a day, restrict access to a geography or timeline void of animals and it may still meet the letter of the written regulation as interpreted by a judge. Then again, should noncompliance occur, hunter recourse including judgement pursuit or criminal prosecution, may not be worth the investment or penalty.
 
Tex:

"They used to have that in the regulations, but I was told by the DOW that they were no longer requiring "reasonable access"."

What you were told is incorrect. Check out the Colorado revised statutes: it's still on the books. What DOW personnel may have meant was that they realize it's unenforcable and that, despite the law, they don't require compliance because they have no means to do so. I agree that since this has become an issue in the spotlight, the landowners will be taken to task, as will the brokers. You will see an elimination of advertisements that claim "no private access comes with this voucher" unless the broker is either stupid, or is willing to become a test case in court. Still, it doesn't change the fact that this law is already on the books, nothing has changed other than they've brought the verbage to everyone's attention.

On another point, when you state that access was only required for the public, not the voucher holder, does that mean a voucher holder is not a member of the public and is not entitled to "reasonable access" as anyone else with a license? If I paid a premium to a landowner and the tag fee to the state, I'd argue that if anyone was "entitled" to reasonable access, it would be me. It further proves the point about the system's breakdown: if a landowner won't provide "reasonable access" to a guy who pays him a boatload of cash, why on earth would he provide access to anyone from the "general public" at all? Again, right back to the enforcibility of the statute.

Finally, a major point that many have missed in this entire discussion is Colorado's landowner requirements. This is another major problem with Colorado's system: there is absolutely no accountability to anyone that land enrolled in the voucher program provides wildlife habitat of any kind, let alone for the species in question. There are no field inspections or reviews by local game wardens. The only requirement is that the landowner show title to at least 160 contiguous acres of land in the unit for which he applies for a voucher. Period. That land could be a landfill or a Walmart supercenter. No matter. That "landowner" qualifies for at least one voucher. They "ramp up" voucher availability so that larger landowners can get more vouchers, up to a cap of 6 per landowner/year. But the crafty ranchers figured that out too--they have several tracts of a single ranch listed in dad's name, some in mom's, brother Joe's and 'Lil sister's name, so larger landowners with extended families can plug into significant numbers of vouchers and outcompete not only the public, but also other landowners in the unit.

I don't discount your belief that "it is a great 'first step' that does have some teeth" but this step is really a pittance when you look at the monumental problems this system has and the abuses it allows. We're in need of major overhauls, not baby steps.
 
In California they have the "Private Landowner Management Program". This allows landowners to take their property out of the regular season and they get about 1 tag per thousand acres. The tag is good for hunting only on the actual ranch the tag was issued for. In return the landowner does some habitat enhancement projects, and can sell the tags for market price.
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-19-06 AT 02:32PM (MST)[p]>Change the system if
>you don't like it!
>Brian Latturner
>MonsterMuleys.com

Like Buckspy and Sneak have hinted.....Stay Tuned!
 
>Sneak said: "The Commission's
>recent action to "require" private
>land access is a huge
>joke, because that's already in
>the regulations."
>
>I am pretty sure you are
>wrong about that.

Here You Go Tex,

?Landowners receiving licenses pursuant to this section shall allow hunting on their land to properly licensed hunters, subject to the limitation of a reasonable number of such hunters.?(CO Statute 33-4-103(2))
 
Tex:

Just made a call to the DOW special licensing office to double check my facts on the landowner voucher system before replying to the rest of your post.

You are correct when you state there are two landowner preference systems, but you are incorrect in stating that some of the tags are private land only tags. The drawings work like this:

The DOW sets license numbers for each GMU in the state. By regulation, 15% of that quota is allocated to landowners right off the top. The first drawing is for "Priority Landowner Preference," which equates to the voucher system. If there are any licenses within that 15% allocation leftover after this first draw, then the second "Traditional Landowner Preference" draw occurs. This draw results in actual licenses to the landowner or his desingnee, not transferable vouchers. In either case, the licenses that are issued in this 15% allocation are good unit-wide and are in no way restricted to private land at all.

The DOW is phasing out the Traditional landowner draw because of the popularity and preference allocated to the voucher system. In short, the DOW informs me that very few units in the state have any licenses in the 15% private landowner allocation left over for a traditional landowner draw because demand for the vouchers is so high they end up allocating the entire 15% to the Priority voucher system. Again, making a voucher transferable in the private marketplace escalates its value far beyond average hunter's means, and is creating this push we now see in the Wildlife Commission to give landowners yet more tags and an ever-increasing slice of a dwindling public pie.
 
LAST EDITED ON Jan-19-06 AT 05:55PM (MST)[p]?Landowners receiving licenses pursuant to this section shall allow hunting on their land to properly licensed hunters, subject to the limitation of a reasonable number of such hunters.?(CO Statute 33-4-103(2))"

Nowhere does it say "public access" in this statute, unless you are not reporting it verbatum. A landowner who leases his ranch out to only paying hunters sounds to me that he is compling with this. This seems to be written just to ensure that the land gets hunted by someone, and who is up to the landowner. So I am still not sure that I am wrong.

I looked at the Big game brochure for 2005 (06 is not out yet) and it does not say anywhere in there that landowners have to allow public access to get the landowner vouchers/tags. Not saying that this is the only place it would be, but a couple of years ago the wording we are disscussing was in the brochure. I remember reading that statement "reasonable public access" in the brochure itself.

As far as PLO tags, maybe I was thinking about the hunt codes in the brochure that are coded PLO. I guess these are not really landowner vouchers, but simply tags given to people who apply for them and have permission to hunt that land.

I am still undecided how much teeth this does have. You guys have brought up some good points/info. However, how would the landowner keep me off his property? If I have a landowner voucher from his ranch that says I can hunt the second rifle season, and the law says he has to give me access, then I submit that I can go during the second rifle season and he can't do anything about it. Don't see how he could charge me with tresspassing! And do you think a game warden would back him up in trying to run me off when I paid the guy thousands of dollars to have that right?


txhunter58

venor, ergo sum (I hunt, therefore I am)
 
Let's see the language they actually passed last week:

"The Commission also added some regulations to the landowner preference program. Landowners who transfer any license voucher will have to include permission for the license holder to hunt on the land for which the voucher was awarded. Landowners who are applying for leftover vouchers within the 15 percent allocation will pay $25 for each leftover choice. The money will be refunded if they are unsuccessful. Any landowner who does not follow the regulations will be disqualified from participating in any landowner preference program during their next year of eligibility or application."

Let's just take two sentences out of there:

"Landowners who transfer any license voucher will have to include permission for the license holder to hunt on the land for which the voucher was awarded........... Any landowner who does not follow the regulations will be disqualified from participating in any landowner preference program during their next year of eligibility or application."

To me that is some pretty plain language with a stated consequences: disqualification next year.



txhunter58

venor, ergo sum (I hunt, therefore I am)
 
Tex:

I agree there's some nice clear language, BUT...

When you get the tag and the landowner says, "OK, you can hunt this basin here, but not the rest of the ranch because I have cattle over in these other 5 basins and I'm afraid you might shoot one accidentally or leave a gate open and mix my replacement heifers with my sale herd, or push them away from the water hole, salt blocks, etc..." And so you are given access, but pretty darn poor access and certainly not to the entire ranch, and probably not to any of the "good stuff" at all. Now these access limitations are completely at the discretion of the landowner, and the Commission has included absolutely no language to address this problem. (And if you don't believe this kind of situation will be a common problem, you need a towel to wipe behind your ears.)

So now what do you do? Complain? To whom? File a lawsuit? Against who and on what grounds? What exactly are you going to prove? The guy gave you access and met the "letter" if not the intent of the law, and he has very valid and time-honored reasons for restricting your hunt, but your "pretty plain language" didn't help you one bit. And exactly how are you going to get the DOW to disqualify this guy next year? On what grounds?

Now I have to ask, are you still certain that this new rule change is the wonderful cure-all you claim it will be?

My point being (to all hunters who feel as though the Commission can do no wrong)the voucher system is seriously flawed, it is being exploited in so many ways it is difficult to comprehend, and this recent attempt by the Commission to correct long-standing and grievous errors falls far short of a cure.
 
Did I miss somthing????

If the NEW rule states that anyone that buys a landowner tag gets to hunt the private landowners property, wouldn't this make the permits even more valuable???How would that hurt tag brokers??

Now the tag brokers can resell the landowner voucher with GUARANTEED access to the private property as well as all public lands. If this is the case, I can see buyers wanting the tags even more. Furthermore, the Brokers(Known as Tag Pimps on MM) will benefit bigtime, due to the fact in the past a lot of landowner didn't want to let the hunters trespass, even if it was one of their vouchers/tags !!!

Snowman
 
Yes, I believe that you did miss something. I believe the biggest reason the landowners applied for and sold the tags is that they DIDN'T have to let the people they sold to hunt their land. They already have hunting on their land maxed out or leased to outfitters, so they don't want any more hunters. This was an opportunity for them to make MORE money without running any more hunters through their land. If they have to let these people have access to their land, they won't be as likely to apply for and sell the tags.

txhunter58

venor, ergo sum (I hunt, therefore I am)
 
I haven't read every word of every post in this thread but I think there is still a lot of room for concern here. The ranching for wildlife system in Colorado has shown that permission to hunt prime real estate doesn't exactly equate to big animals on the ground. These land owners give permission to hunt their property to the residents who draw the tags but then they can put so many constraints on the hunter that they may enjoy the level of success that they believed they were due. For example, you may have to check in at head quarters at 7 am and out at 5 pm. You can't hunt certain pastures or sections due to wildlife or safety issues, etc. I'm not sure that the private land voucher system will be any different.
I like the direction they are taking with the voucher system but I don't think this is a substantial change yet. Just my opinion...
am
 
OK,

I can see that it will hurt the landonwers where there are a lot of public permits available, but as for the premo areas, like 10, 21, 201, late 30, 44, 61, 50s, late 43 it might not be that big of a deal to landowners due to the fact there are not many tags available through the public drawings.

All in all, it most likely will effect landowners that lease to outfitters, and then it will maybe hurt the big brokers.

Again, I don't think it will effect the "Premium" units/tags. The landowners make $3K-$4k on just one tag.
 
I still think a quick and easy solution to all of this would be to limit "landowner" tag holders to hunting private land only. There have always been complaints about too much hunting pressure on public land and this would solve more than one problem in one giant step! Let the landowners, outfitters, and hunters that obtain landowner tags deal with the price, permission, and whatever else is involved with hunting on private land only!

I think the majority of guys that hunt public land would be more inclined to compromise a chunk of the total tag allotments to landowner tags if there were fewer hunters to contend with on public land and more hunting pressure placed on private land that potentially might help public land hunter success.
 
This is a step in the right direction. I think TxHunter58 is right about you have access during the season to their private land. Someone will wind up duking it out in court, but they couldn't get you for trespassing. Sale of the license constitutes a contract for access (in my mind).

I think there ought to be two options considered for further improvement of this system:
1. Make landowner tags nontransferrable and allow them to be good for all land within a unit. I think a person should be able to hunt his own land and the surrounding area on a regular basis. That privilege should not be for sale.

OR

2. If they really want the tags to be transferrable, then they should be private-land only.

Preference point creep wouldn't be such a problem if there weren't so many ways for people to still hunt and not use preference points.

304099.jpg
 
If the original issue was, as stated, concern that the landowners and their families did not have an opportunity to hunt, then the whole deal is a mess. The Wyoming system allows for landowner licenses, but they may be issued only to members of the immediate family and the licenses may not be otherwise sold or transferred. In a corporation, only stockholders may receive licenses. Additionally, there is a limit of two licenses per landowner or corporation. And the landowner must be able to demonstrate 2000 annual use days for the species for which the license is issued, subject to approval and sign-off by the local game warden.

What's wrong with going back to that original intent, where the landowner and their family could not hunt due to the point system and providing the family some nontransferrable licenses?

We don't have any "tag pimps" in Wyoming and the landowners still have a chance to hunt. Seems like a reasonable alternative.
 
ICM:

You hit upon nearly every problem there is with the Colorado system, and I agree completely that Wyoming's system is reasonable. My discussions with many landowner's in Colorado show that they agree.

Our main problem is that the system was originally designed as a landowner license (like WY), and was based on the eastern plains where nearly all land is private. The program was then modified to this voucher system and tossed onto the western slope where about 2/3 of the land area is public. The program simply wasn't designed to deal with the land ownership, tag numbers and access issues found there. Then a few businesses and individuals figured out the loopholes and have exploited them beyond all reason, which is why we're having this debate today.

And for solutions, kudos go to an earlier post that said return to the non-transferable landowner license system, or if you must sell vouchers, they need to be valid on private land only. Fair to all parties and meeting the original intent of the law.
 
My question to all that disagree with the landowner system as it currently works is... How should landowners be compensated for providing habitat for wildlife?
 
How should they be compensated? Directly. Currently it is just an end run, so the DOW doesn't have to pay them directly. In theory, it is a decent idea, I am all for keeping ranches as habitat, not subdivisions.

However, it is just not fair to give them free tags to sell for public hunts and let the buyers of the tags hunt only on public land.

Call a spade a spade, they are not landowner tags when you can't even have access to the property, they are a giveaway of public land hunts to landowners.

txhunter58

venor, ergo sum (I hunt, therefore I am)
 
No tags valid to hunt on public lands should be sold to the highest bidder. CO landowner, Utah landowner, Utah Wealth tags, AZ Strip "plane and remote camera sweep for the biggest buck" tag, UT governers tags....nothing. It is a ridiculous notion that these tags are for the benefit of helping wildlife more than the rich guides and landowners that sell/(sorry)tag pimp these tags out.

The harm to public sport hunting from selling 1 or 1000 tags to the highest bidder for Western public land hunts is far greater than the 1 or 2 million dollars raised for the habitat or DWR budget helps public sport hunting.

If you are in favor of these tags you must be gaining personally from them (whether you buy them, tag pimp em out and/or guide for $$$) and are not truly concerned about the health of the game species and not concerned about public opportunity to hunt big game.

IMO

-pinenut
 

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