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This issue is NOT about landowner rights. For me it is about license demand, fair license opportunity, and issuing tags without any regard to unit herd management.
Also, I have nothing against outfitters, but I don't think we should be pimping the public?s wildlife to support a few select hunters and private businesses. A good business person would have researched supply, demand, and available resources before going into business and would have known the parameters before starting.
I am currently putting together some stats for my comments to the commission. But currently the special buck tag is one of the easiest buck tags to draw for both R & NR. Many of the regular tags have odds of only 20%-30% for nonresidents while the special buck tags have odds of 62%. Where is the real demand & need here? If we really need to increase the number of tags then lets increase them in the right area!!
These special buck tags as well as LOL?s are issued without any management basis. The GFP staff even admits this fact. They state that there are very few tags and that they get spread out throughout the entire western half of the state and therefore don't have a significant impact on specific unit herd harvest. However, when you combine the harvest from both of these licenses I think they do have an impact on some specific units. I did a calculation of one area and these two tags resulted in approximately 17% of the bucks harvested. I think that is significant enough to justify consideration. Also when you add in the youth, archery, and muzzy tags that are non-unit specific, these tags start to really impact the harvest in popular areas. Some popular areas are really getting hammered with all of these non-unit specific hunts. I'm not suggesting that all of these tags need to change to unit specific licenses, but rather that they be considered a little more closely to see the real impact.
Yes I know we are only talking about adding 200 tags, which is a very small number for the entire western half of the state. However, keep in mind that these tags are issued with no regard to herd management and so they wouldn't be cut in the future if herd numbers decline like the regular tags would be. Also, keep in mind that once this is established it will be very hard to get it reduced or eliminated in the future.