Elk Tag Future

[Roadtrip]

AP has an interesting article out this morning regarding hunting and fishing licenses. Nationwide there is a decline in sales of hunting and fishing licenses and that is causing a strain on state budgets & conservation funds. Consider these statistics: AK dropped from 345k to 319k licenses. PA (big loss) dropped from 1.3 million in 1981 to 946k last year. Oregon down 100k fishing adn 70k hunting. West Virginia is off 17%. Listed causes are video games and growth in structured activities such as sports.

So...what effect is this going to have on the price and availability of Elk Tags?
Will non residents have to bear all the price burden of these losses? What about the effect of aging baby boomers that still buy licenses but may rarely take the field? Taxes and budgets are already strained. West Virginia has some school districts offering hunter safety courses and they are targeting girls as a method to turn these numbers around. Will Elk tags become more available as less people choose to hunt? Will anti hunting groups be offering non hunting methods such as sterilization and birth control to reduce herd sizes as hunting declines?

I know it is a lot to ask...but I am curious as to other hunters opinions on this issue. Article printed today, author was Dave Gram, Associated Press.

Cheers,
Roadtrip

"Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son" Dean Wormer, Animal House

 

[WVHUNTER]

Some of the decrease in tags sales is due to mismanagement by the wildlife people. In my state they had always managed for quanity instead of quality and then decided we had too many deer and reduced the herd by close to 50%. Now we don't have quanity or quality. Many people stopped hunting, others stopped buying extra tags because the quality of the hunt had decreased so much.

The western states are different, the demand for these hunts continues to inrease, tag prices go up, tags are more difficult to draw and guided hunts go up in price every year. I think a lot of this is driven by the baby boomers. I don't think there has been any group in our history with as much time and money to spend on recreation as the aging baby boomers have. They (WE) are retiring, our house is paid for, the kids are grown and we understand if we don't go now there won't be a tomorrow.

In 10-15 years the boomers will be past hunting and demand for tags may change. But a lot of other things in America will change also.

Where I work the median age is 49, the boomers will start leaving in about 5 years and in 10 years they will all be gone.

 

[SMELLYBUCK]

My personal experience is that when I lived in TX, a heavily privately owned state, I did little more than hunt small game - and that was often at the grace of a land owner. A deer lease cost over $1000 even in the 80's and was out of the question for my parents' finances. (Conversely I could get an out-of-state tag in any western state for $75-$200 at the time and I started making plans for such a hunt) Luckily I moved to UT when I was 15. An in-state deer tag cost $15, there was a lot of public land, and permission to hunt private land was fairly easy/cheap to obtain.

There were plenty of video games and sports 20 years ago when I was a teenager. I think a lot of kids today would prefer to be outdoors if they were exposed to it. I knew very few kids who hunted in Texas although it is supposedly one of the best states to hunt. (What 14 year old is going to save $1000 a year to hunt a whitetail?) I think we are now seeing the results in the east of pricing out a generation of young hunters.

I'm concerned that the same thing is happening to some degree in the west. Western hunting has redirected its attention from family hunting to trophey collecting. Only the most avid hunters are going every year. Its difficult to take kids on a trophey hunt. An enormous amount of money is now chasing western animals and the family hunt is losing out. Our collective obsession with tropheys is hindering our future opportunities.

 

[sageadvice]

SMELLYBUCK,

+1 well said!

 

[BigFin]

Great post Smelly. I agree 100%.

"Hunt when you can - You're gonna' run out of health before you run out of money!"

 

[scoutdog5]

In Oregon, the drop in hunter numbers, in my opinion, is a direct result of the drop in big game herd numbers. Mule deer, from 500,000 plus in the early seventies, to 200,000 to 225,000 in 2006. Rocky Mountain Elk from close to 100,000 in the mid 90's, to 60,000 in 2006.

When we were kids, we literally saw dozens of deer every day. This was what got us hooked on hunting. It was exciting. You always saw deer, were always raising your gun hoping to shoot, getting lot's of chances to shoot, and missing most of the time when you did, but it was exciting and fun. I remember going elk hunting for the first time in the late 60's, and hardly seeing an elk, but it did not matter because by then I was hooked.

Today, on public land in virtually every mule deer unit in Oregon, you would be lucky if your son/daughter saw 20 deer in a five day hunt, and nobody would be surprised that no opportunity to shoot presented itself.

The one hunt that could hook kids is antelope, but in Oregon, it takes a minimum of 10-12 points to draw a rifle buck tag, so by the time a kid can draw, he is no longer a kid, and it is probably too late.

If we are serious about getting more youth into hunting, we are going to have to give them access to quality hunts when they are young. I have proposed to the Fish and Wildlife Division that 5% of tags for every limited entry hunt be set aside in a separate youth draw. Doubt if it will go anywhere, but had to try.

Scoutdog

 

[crcountry]

The reduction in tags/licenses are lowerinng....and the revenues are still the same!.....States should recoginize this....They will continue to increase the fees, and loose more hunters....at the end of the day, they've created no new opportunities, and are making the same amount...
Cr

 

[Hunterted]

>Great post Smelly. I agree
>100%.
>
>"Hunt when you can - You're
>gonna' run out of health
>before you run out of
>money!"


AMEN!!!

 

[Califelkslayer]

Scoutdog, good points. Nevada has a great program for resident youth only. Colorado has a price reduction, NM has great hunts for youth and AZ has some. Other than junior duck and Pheasant hunts, my son and daughter never drew a youth big game hunt in Kali. Either odds were worse that regular season or they couldn't draw.

I believe the demand for trophy hunts will continue to increase but general hunts will decline. In the 90's I applied for NV deer most years and started building points for Colorado elk. Now I apply for 30+ tags a year. In the 90's, I'd get a general tag as a leftover if I didn't draw. Now I'm almost assured of at least one tag, sometimes more. The on-line application process got lots more people involved, me included.

 

[proutdoors]

"In Oregon, the drop in hunter numbers, in my opinion, is a direct result of the drop in big game herd numbers. Mule deer, from 500,000 plus in the early seventies, to 200,000 to 225,000 in 2006. Rocky Mountain Elk from close to 100,000 in the mid 90's, to 60,000 in 2006."

I believe this is true for most western states, at least for deer. The decline in mule deer numbers since the mid-80's as had a huge impact on license sales. Luckily, many sportsmen are joining forces and working on habitat improvement and other means to increase deer numbers, which in turn means increases in tags (opportunities).

PRO

Define, develop, and sustain BOTH trophy and opportunity hunts throughout the state of Utah.

 

[Hooked_on_Coues]

The changing times should be as obvious as a slap in the face when a NM youth tag has less than 5% chance of drawing the same unit that a guided Non-Resident has a 17% chance at.

We are fixin to lose a whole generation of hunters.

 

[alsatian]

First, and perhaps most importantly, I too like to draw wisdom from that movie classic, Animal House, that you quote in your signature line. For example, I find many occasions -- in my work life and in my family life -- to respond to the situations I am in with a resounding "Please sir! May I have another!"

To your question. Yes, there are things that are changing the hunting scene. Keep in mind, however, that the hunting scene has not been and is not static. In years past many states didn't have any deer hunting season because there were not any deer. This was true in Illinois when I was growing up. It didn't seem like deer hunting was allowed until about 1973 or so in Illinois. So part of the hunting scene that has changed is the populations of some of the game animal species. I suspect pronghorn antelope and turkey are another such story.

It is becoming harder to find places to hunt, and this strikes most particularly at youths. I go to hunt out of state in Oklahoma for deer and waterfowl. I have paid for my son's deer license a couple of times, but have not gone the further step of paying for a $140 hunting license to enable him to go duck hunting with me, because the cost is a little daunting. Maybe there should be a different non-resident pricing for youngsters out to about 22 or 25 years? Why not?

I agree that trophy hunting is not healthy for hunting as a whole.

 

[Buxndiverdux]

We hunters pay for the lion share of all the game depts budget and wildlife/habitat restoration projects. What concerns me the most about the declining numbers is when the game and fish depts run out of cash, they will look elsewhere for the funds. If non hunters start financing the game and fish departments, then you can expect the non hunters voice in how game should be managed will be heard. We already have non hunting biologists in several state and federal level wildlife departments. What do you think they could do with a little support? It really makes you think about the hunter recruitment process. Take a kid hunting has never been so important. I hear a lot of people complaining about big game draws and not being able to draw a tag, but kids that are new to the outdoors should start out chasing small game anyway. The action is usually better, the work is easier and the bag limits are higher. It is a lot cheaper too. I don't know of any rabbit or squirrel draws in the west... Get them out there any way you can....

 

[SMELLYBUCK]

Good thoughts Bux, I must admit I didn't learn to love big game hunting until I was an adult. I loved fishing and bird hunting, but big game was more of a frustration until I learned to be more patient, stronger, and more seasoned. This post probably should have been put on a different section as elk hunting is probably not the best way to introduce a kid to hunting. A lot of the concerns I shared have more to do with deer, which is where most of us are introduced to big game. Its tough to draw a LE entry bull tag in Utah, and the public land left for general elk hunts are just the scraps; however, meat hunters have never had it so good with the generous numbers of cow tags. In some ways the elk hunt is the one bright spot in Utah's big game future.

 

[firementl23]

Lets wake up guys!the small guy is BEING PUSHED OUT BY THE RICH.This mite be my last year elk hunting.Why try to find a place to hunt not cheap when you do NR tags $550.00 gas $3.79 PG.I not trying to start a pis@#$# match but think about when you were younger you could hunt just about any were NOW ITS pay up.In 5 to 10 years hunting will get worst.If you think I am wrong ask some one who is in a crunch with his house or a college kid about his student loan<americas next BIG problem> if he will have the money to go hunting