Wyoming elk hunter, back in the day.
What issue is that, you might ask? Well, it's the issue associated with Game & Fish Commissioner's licenses. And the larger issue of balancing local subsistence hunters from high dollars.
We expand on that below.
The Star Tribune ran an article this past week about a new organization I'd never heard of, Mountain Pursuit, which the Tribune defines as a "subsistence hunting advocacy organization". Here's part of the Tribune's story:
JACKSON — A new subsistence-hunting advocacy organization with Jackson Hole roots is asking the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to put a stop to alleged abuses of its commissioners’ complimentary license program.
The group, called Mountain Pursuit, recently unveiled a 16-page report about the fundraising program, which provides each of the Game and Fish Commission’s seven appointed members with eight complementary elk, deer or antelope licenses annually to donate to nonprofit charitable organizations, which then auction or sell them. Mountain Pursuit’s report shows that the program is being used as a platform for wealthy nonresident hunters to routinely acquire hard-to-draw licenses, in one case annually. The report also shows that the program is benefiting some poorly-rated nonprofit organizations and other groups that have little or nothing to do with Wyoming wildlife.
“We don’t blame any of the nonprofits for asking for the tags, but we are concerned that the Game and Fish commissioners are giving them away to nonprofits that don’t have anything to do with conservation or wildlife,” Mountain Pursuit founder and board president Rob Shaul said. “There’s money that’s going to music festivals. One was donated for a Wyoming insurance agents association.”
Key Findings
• Records on the tag species, and the dollar amount generated by the license auction or raffle are not complete.
• The dollar amount raised by the auction/raffle of the Commissioner Licenses is significant. Based on the records available, the auction or raffle of Commissioner Licenses generated $7.3 million in funds for the beneficiary nonprofits from 2008-2018, and this total is not complete. Several tag auction/raffle dollar amounts are not reported. Our best estimate of how much revenue these licenses generated is more than $8 million in funds for recipient nonprofits from 2008-2018.
• Elk tags are by far the bulk of the tags being donated by the Commissioners. Completed records from 2008-2018 indicate 474 elk, 103 deer and 5 antelope tags were donated. 125 tags did not have a species designated.
• Nonresidents purchased 564 of the 701 Commission License offered from 2008-2018, or 80.5%.
• At least 116 of the Commissioner Licenses sold/auctioned/raffled were donated to organizations without conservation, hunting, fishing, or wildlife missions, including agricultural organizations, industry groups, veterans groups, hockey and baseball groups, county and town government entities, churches, food banks, etc. This generated at least $1.25 million in total revenue for these non-hunting, non-conservation organizations.
• Multiple Commissioner Licenses were donated to nonprofits located outside of Wyoming.
• The Wyoming Wildlife Federation, Muley Fanatics Foundation, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation and Wyoming Game Warden Association have all received in excess of $300,000 in funding via Commissioner License donations and subsequent tag sales/auction/raffles since 2008.
• 37 individual hunters have purchased three or more Commissioner Licenses since 2008, including five Wyoming Residents. One specific hunter has purchased ten Commissioner elk tags since 2008, eight of which were used for a single hunt area (area 123-1).
• 96 of the Commissioner tags purchased 2008-2018 were used for Area 7 (Laramie Peak) bull elk.
• Once the tag is donated to a nonprofit, it’s entirely up to that nonprofit how the tag is sold. Tags are sold via banquet auction, raffles, phone auction, and online auction sites such as www.onlinehuntingauctions.com and even ebay.com When auctioned, sometimes a required minimum price is required. Other times a price is set and the first person to offer the asking price receives the tag.
• There is no requirement for the nonprofit or organization acquiring the tag indicate how the money from the tag sale is to be used, no mandatory reporting or accounting back to the department, and no documented accounting or follow through from the G&F Commissioners.
Okay, the first thing this does is raise the question who or what is Mountain Pursuit. I still don't really know other than it seems to be an angry organization founded in Jackson Hole by Jackson resident Rob Shaul.
Looking into it, I frankly think Shaul has taken being personally disgruntled over the top and is guilty of the classic confusion of associating personal interest with virtue. While his new group bills itself as being an organization that boosts subsistence hunting, it's focus is really not quite that. It's clearly very much opposed to trophy hunting, but it's also a bit gushy about bow hunting with Shaul being an avid bow hunter. While I may, or may not, take that a bit further below, as a rifle hunter I don't have anything against bow hunters but the evolution of their advocacy has gone from skill to claims of moral superiority which are weak at best and actually counterfactual at worst. More on that later, maybe. Be that as it may, Shaul hits on something when he states, about his organization;
We want to represent the subsistence-based resident hunter, 2e just like to go out and get an elk or a deer, cut it up and eat it. There’s no one representing that guy right now, and we want to represent that guy.
Actually I think that guy is represented, but Shaul isn't completely without a point, even if he's not completely in focus.
Anyhow, I'll be frank that I've long been disturbed by the practices that have come about on Commissioners' licenses and I frankly feel that the entire practice is contrary to the basic nature of Wyoming's otherwise very sound wildlife management. I'm for very much reforming the practice.
Mountain Pursuit, the organization that got in the paper on this topic, claims to be, as noted, a "subsistence" hunting organization. I'm a subsistence hunter and perhaps that's why, while I'm surprised by this development, I'm not surprised that it came from a subsistence hunter group. I am surprised that there is a subsistence hunter group. If that was its real focus, and I'm not entirely convinced that it is, I'd hope that it would do well. Based on what little I know if it so far, I'm not impressed whatsoever and I don't think this is what it will develop into. But the topic is an interesting one.
And I'll note, some of my opinions that I'll express here are going to be hugely unpopular with some people.
A person might of course ask, legitimately, what the heck I'm even writing about. What's "subsistence hunting". Well, simply put, that's hunting to put meat on the table, whether that be deer, duck or fish (fishing, dear reader, is simply fish hunting). If you look on the topics on this site about fishing and fish hunting (yes, fishing), you'll see that they're all actually about subsistence hunting.
Most American hunters are subsistence hunters. Most globally are. That is, they hunt to put meat on the table. And taking this a bit further yet, humans are evolved to eat meat in their diet and they're wired by their genetics to acquire meat in that fashion, which puts them deeply in touch with nature. Hunting for your meat is the way you should acquire it, if you can. If you can't, the market has long taken care of that, but don't fool yourself, hiring somebody out to do that for you, which is what you are doing, isn't more moral in any fashion. It's less. The least morally sustainable position of them all is that taken by vegetarians and vegans, whose lifestyle guarantees the consumption of vast quantifies of resources to sustain their weird and unnatural diet which is principally based on a hatred of the condition in which they find themselves, a species of self hatred that often expands out into misanthropy.
So if this seems like I'm taking a position that you should go out hunting or fishing, if you can, it is. You should. If you aren't, part of what it means to be a human being and contact with nature is wholly absent and part of your deeper existence as a human being in nature is absent, as you are absent from your nature and nature as a whole. And don't fool yourself that hiking with a sack of free range GMO free granola changes that, it doesn't.
And I'll go one step further than that and continue it on to something that I didn't get to do last year, raise a garden. I.e., I feel the same way about raising your own produce, to the extent you can. If you don't, you really don't understand your food in any fashion and are ignorant on the most basic elements of life.
I'll go one step even further than that. I think the fact that a large number of people no longer participate in these activities is responsible for well over 50% of the problems that plague the modern world. Just yesterday we ran the item Blog Mirror: Why 2018 Was the Best Year in Human History!
which makes really good points, but it's fairly obvious that there are titanic problems out in the modern world including everything from scientific problems, from social problems, to a basic breakdown in Western society as a whole. A good deal of this can be attributed to the fact that most people in the modern Western world live inside houses all day long, work inside buildings all day long, and get their food from other people inside of more buildings. They're profoundly disconnected with reality which has destroyed, in many instances, their sense of a realistic self and now, in recent years, created a world in which so many are so lost that they seek to redefine themselves outside of their own biological constraints. A lot of modern humans see the world as if they're characters in a Japanese anime cartoon.
It's pathetic.
Okay, so what's that have to do with this story, if anything?
Well, perhaps more than it might at first seem.
As noted above, and elsewhere on this site, most of the local hunters and fish hunters are subsistence hunters, and indeed most of them in the United States are. But somewhere in modern times the "trophy" hunter came along.
Now, we need to be careful here and not go down the road that Shaul apparently is. "Trophy" hunting doesn't even have an accepted definition and it flatly doesn't mean the same thing to every person. Under our state's law, trophy hunting is actually really limited to the hunting under license of mountain lions, wolves and grizzly bears, the latter of which you can't hunt for at least the time being even though their numbers are expanding off the charts.* It's assume that everything you hunt you intend to eat and indeed its a crime if you don't use your wild game in that fashion. You shoot it, you eat it.
But what some people mean by "trophy hunting", and that includes somebody like Shaul, is what is sometimes called "head hunting". I.e, hoping to secure a large set of horns to display.
Now, what should be obvious from the discussion above, if you shoot a deer or elk, or what have you, with a large set of antlers, etc., you still have to eat the meat. So there's nothing intrinsically wrong about focusing on that sort of "trophy". Keeping the trophy has been a common thing to do since time in memorial.
Having said that, however, the focus on it really is fairly new, and an odd development in some ways. While records, actually for scientific purposes, have been kept by hunting organizations of trophy sizes for over a century, for the most part really focusing on rack size is something that was relatively uncommon until fairly recently.** And, in spite of the focus on it that clearly exists, it still isn't the primary focus of most hunters today. So what's the problem here?
Well, like a lot of things, its multifaceted and involves money.
A feature of our really rich society has been, at least since the 1980s, to focus a lot of money into nearly any activity and, when the Baby Boomers flood it, to allow the money angle to pervert it. Numerous wholesome and ancient activities have undergone this since the 1970s. Things as simple as even riding a bicycle have been appropriated by classes that insist that your bike must have the same cost and technological level of development as the F-36. Riding a mountain bike, a really neat type of bike in my view, that my wife bought me over 20 years ago brings this home to me every year as some will insist that the bike must be replaced by a new super expensive high tech one, because it can be.
This same sort of emphasis has lead to a situation in the Western U.S. in which game and fish agencies must contemplate the views of local subsistence hunters, local head hunters, local trophy fishermen (yes, I'm still including fishermen), and well funded out of staters. Add into that mix landowners who see dollars from out of staters as well, and it's an interesting mix.
And the Commissioners licenses feed into that story, which is why Shaul's group notes that. His real complaint is that difficult to get licenses have become subjects of high bidding through the largess of the commissioners.
There is something to that.
Now, in a lot of cases these licenses go to benefit organizations that benefit wildlife in the first place. But that's not really the point. We should be really careful about catering to the really wealthy in something as basic, elemental, and fundamental as this.
Indeed, we ought not to do it at all. I.e., it would be best for the Commissioner's licenses, in my view, to simply go.
But, by the same token, I wouldn't stop there. I frankly think that management for horn size, if it really occurs (and its not all that clear that it really does), should likely go as well and that all of the Wyoming areas ought to be draw in for every species. And out of state licenses ought to go out the window as well unless there's a lack of local hunters for the required draw, which rarely happens. That would be hugely unpopular with many as it removes a source of income from the state, but it would also suggest that those from out of state ought to focus on the hunting opportunities where they live, and they really should. I'm not completely adamant on this however, so I would yield and see reasons to yield on allowing out of state tags but the focus on the subsistence nature of hunting should remain, in my view.
Indeed, I'm so adamant on it I'm going to go on and anger a bunch of people that I probably haven't angered yet. The donaters.
Let me note, before I go on further, that I'm not only advocating this position, I partially live it today and I've fully lived it in the past. A friend of mine, who briefly went through a delusional period of being a vegetarian, returned full blown to this position and calls himself now a "killetarian", and that's pretty much how I once did it.
From the point at which I left home to go to university until the point at which I was marred, and I was married at age 32, meat on my table had been meat that I'd shot or hooked. As my father grew a huge garden every year, for much of the year I also had vegetables that we'd raised. Indeed, after he died I took that over, but due to a recent well failure, I didn't put in a garden last year and since getting married and imagining myself to be really busy, there's been more years than not which for which I haven't done one. Still, even at that, I can recall when my children were small harvesting my potatoes the day after I harvested my deer, which is how things should be.
Which leads me to trespass on something that people cringe upon when you do, which is an evolving "donate the meat".
An odd thing about most foods is that while we crave basic things fairly universally, oru individual taste adjust to what's available in our diet. Everyone has met people who simply don't like certain foods, which tends to be as they've not tried them as adults and if they do, they'll be outside of their frame of reference and taste strange at first. Growing up in a household in which wild game was on the table very often, and vegetables we grew ourselves, and apples from the backyard, etc., I have a really wide food palete and there aren't too many foods I won't try or find strange.
I think this was the norm, actually, with most people up until some point after World War Two. But it isn't any more. Now most people have incredibly small food paletes, another deficit of the modern age. Indeed, I've noticed that even a lot of people in agriculture, whom you would think have wide ones, have extremely narrow ones. And not all that long ago I read an article which verified what I suspected; people in an aboriginal state have much larger food paletes than people in urban societies.
I note that as this brings up the "I don't like that food" claim. This comes about for a variety of reasons, a primary one being that a lot of people know how to cook one type of meat, and one only, that being fatty commercial beef. Another reason, however, is that this is what they're used to eating, and only that. Even vegetarians and vegans really tend to only have that as a frame of reference.
Indeed, in recent years this has become so pronounced that I've noticed entire demographics that in former years would have been familiar with at least pork, lamb and poultry in addition to beef no longer are. This past Thanksgiving, for example, I heard for the first time in my life people state "I don't like the taste of turkey". That's because they're eating a processed turkey once a year.
One of the things that was noted at the time that various Plains Indian tribes surrendered and came on to reservations is that they complained that their beef rations were "sweet". I've lived that and know what they mean. When I ate only wild game from about age 20 until age 32, adjusting back to beef in the diet was really weird. It was so sweet. By that time, I'd so acclimated to wild game that my tastes very much preferred it.
As my wife is from a ranch and we have cattle, we're going to be eating beef and she's acclimated the other way. But even at that, our beef is a range cow that chose to retire, and it tastes completely different from what's sold in the stores and at restaurants. I tend to order steaks and what not when I'm traveling or going to restaurants (although I'm about to stop as I'm continually disappointed by restaurant beef) and I'm nearly always disappointed with what I get. It's not that I'm getting a poor cut of meat, I'm not. I'm getting what most people consider a really good one. But I'm so used to grass fed cows that have not been fed out, I think that most of the beef in restaurants is really strange tasting. I've had commercial buffalo a couple of times in the past year, and it doesn't. It's a lot closer to range beef.
Anyhow, the reason that I note all of this is that I have a suspicion of the "donate" crowd as I feel if you hunt it you should consume it. I might be capable of being convinced that the donations aren't taste motivated but I'll have to be convinced. And as the donations defeat, at some level, the nature of hunting as set out above, I'm really not too keen on this development
Taking this even a step further, I've witnessed in the last year a new trend in which at least in my state ranchers are allowed to donate their landowners tags for charity. I'm totally opposed to this.
Now, I'm entitled, I should note, to a landowner tag. I'm going to start applying for it this year as I've passed and not been able to get where I wanted to go. I'm not against landowners tags and they fit in with what I've noted. People owning agricultural land should, I feel, live on it and from it and taking part of the game they've supported is part of that.
But donating a tag, even for a charitable cause, defeats that and brings back disturbing recollections of a time in which agriculturalist in this state took a serious run at trying to get the legislature to give them ownership of the wildlife. Wildlife is wild, it doesn't belong to anyone. Being able to donate a tag is contrary to that reality, and it shouldn't be allowed. I'm for wounded veterans being able to hunt, but they are able to hunt as per the regular system, which I'd note I'd modify. I might be willing to entertain a special class of license for truly wounded veterans, although I'm frankly hesitant here as well as I've lived through the era in which there were vast numbers of combat veterans who were given no special breaks at all and find the new era a bit suspicious in some ways.
Anyhow, I'm for subsistence hunting in the emphasis. Indeed, I'd propose a lifetime subsistence license be created, which would be modeled on the existing lifetime small game/bird/fishing license that already exists. It'd be costly, but it'd be worth it. I can imagine fairly readily how it would work, but I'll skip going into that here.
I'll skip it in part because I'm going to pick on "trophy" or "sport" fishermen for a moment here.
If I've seen some evolution on hunting, and I have, over the years to more of a focus on "trophies" than once existed, I've really seen one on fishing.
My father and one of my uncles were adamant fishermen and as a kid growing up we had trout constantly. As an adult I've been baffled by the romanticization of trout fishing that followed A River Runs Through It, even though I think it's a great movie After that film, fly fishing, which was locally just a way to catch fish, turned into some huge Metrosexual Uppie activity and the cost of it shot out of sight.
The local river, indeed, went from the local river, into being a Blue Ribbon Trout Stream, and along with that change in status came "fishing guides". That a person would need a fishing guide just baffles me no end. What's a fishing guild do? Anyhow, along with all that came "catch and release".
I think catch and release is absurd. Fishing is fish hunting and you catch the fish to eat them. Catching an animal to let it go, particularly after catching it with a barbed hook, is simply delusional.
Now, all fishermen let some fish go. A person doesn't want to take a tiny fish that can and will grow into a larger one. But to let the big ones go you caught? It's weird.
I've caught a few big fish in my life and my father caught many more. We kept and ate them. That was the point in the first place. Indeed, at my parent's home they had a small plaque with the image of my relative, on my mother's side, Jonathan Dean Swift in which he was quoted as saying:
They say a fish should swim thrice, once in the sea, once in butter, and once in good claret.
That quote was attributed to him on that plaque, but in looking it up its also attributed to a certain O'Keefe (which would please my fishing uncle, who was an O'Keefe). However, it also seems to be a Polish proverb, in this version;
Fish, to taste right, must swim three times – in water, in butter and in wine.
It wouldn't surprise me, frankly, if the quote is a Polish proverb and the fancier Irish/Anglo Irish version was simply adapted from it. Oh well.
But it's correct.
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*Before this is misconstrued, there are real reasons to hunt these "trophy" animals at least in my states and the surrounding ones. They're all hugely successful predators that prey on domestic livestock and, at least in the case of grizzly bears and mountain lions, are also dangerous to human beings when uncontrolled. They basically fit into what's normally considered a "predator" under our state's law except that the need to regulate their taking is acknowledged so that they're preserved, even though quite destructive and dangerous.
**As has been noted previously on this blog, the practice of really focusing on trophy size was almost completely absent in this region when I was a kid. People appreciated a nice "rack", but most of them were acquired purely accidentally. On occasion a hunter would focus on a trophy they knew to be where they were hunting, which was admired for the skill required, but almost nobody saw it as one of the primary reasons they were hunting.
Today it is often emphasized and many people will ask you what your deer or antelope "scored". I've never learned the scoring system but I'm still flustered when asked. I has in my late 20s before anyone ever asked me that and up until that time I really never even thought about it. I'm asked it routinely now.
It needs to be emphasized that this may mean something or nothing in a larger sense. If a person wants to focus on a large deer, elk etc., well so be it. But at the end of the day, it's meat on the table that should be the primary focus.
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