I went out to the Game & Fish this week as I didn't quite grasp the turkey regulations.
It was my fault, I just wasn't reading them correctly. The reason for that, in part, was an element of hypervigilance on my part due to recent in the field discussions I've had with young game wardens, and also being acclimated to the regulations the way that they were, rather than the way they currently are.
Anyhow, the pleasant surprise is that there are now so many turkeys in Wyoming that you can get two or even three licenses. The bad news is that the extra licenses were already all taken. Indeed, that surprised the very helpful warden who was helping me, as he had hoped to get an extra tag himself.
I meant to get around to checking this a couple of weeks ago, but I didn't as I was too busy.
I also meant, fwiw, to apply for a buffalo license, the deadline for which was yesterday, but I forgot to do so. I tend to do that.
In discussing the turkey licenes with the Game Warden, I noted that I should have expected this as it seems that COVID 19 is causing people to get outdoors. He said that was really true and that this year they'd seen a record number of out of state big game licenses applied for. Far more, by a huge margin, than ever before.
That likely will mean the same for in state licenses as well.
This gets back to this bill in the Wyoming legislature, and my earlier comments on it:
March 3, 2021
Sometimes you learn of these bills in surprising ways.
A bill has been introduced and advanced in the legislature which seeks to adjust the percentages of licenses between natives and out of staters. I'm sure I wasn't in the intended audience, as I'm an instater.
It reads:
SENATE FILE NO. SF0103
Resident and nonresident hunting license issuance and fees.
Sponsored by: Senator(s) Hicks, Kolb, McKeown and Schuler and Representative(s) Burkhart, Harshman, Henderson, Laursen, Stith, Styvar and Wharff
A BILL
for
AN ACT relating to game and fish; modifying provisions governing resident and nonresident hunters; modifying resident and nonresident license reservations; increasing resident and nonresident fees as specified; repealing nonresident license reservation requirements for elk, deer and antelope; making a conforming amendment; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1. W.S. 23‑1‑703(e), 23‑2‑101(e), (j)(intro), (xv), (xvii), (xix), (xxi), (xxiii), (xxv), (xxvii), (xxix), (xxxi), (xxxiii), (xxxviii), (xxxix) and (k) and 23‑2‑107(c)(intro) and (e) are amended to read:
23‑1‑703. Limitation of number of certain licenses; reservation of certain licenses; reservation of certain unused licenses.
(e) The commission shall reserve eighty percent (80%) of the moose and seventy‑five percent (75%) of the ram and ewe and lamb bighorn sheep, mountain goat not less than ninety percent (90%) of the limited quota big game animal, wild bison and grizzly bear licenses to be issued in any one (1) year for resident hunters in the initial license drawings. In any hunt area with less than ten (10) licenses available, the commission shall not issue any licenses to nonresident hunters under this subsection. The commission shall determine the allocation of resident and nonresident mountain lion harvest.
23‑2‑101. Fees; restrictions; nonresident application fee; nonresident licenses; verification of residency required.
(e) Resident and nonresident license applicants shall pay an application fee in an amount specified by this subsection upon submission of an application for purchase of any limited quota drawing for big or trophy game license or wild bison license. The resident application fee shall be five dollars ($5.00) seven dollars ($7.00) and the nonresident application fee shall be fifteen dollars ($15.00) seventeen dollars ($17.00). The application fee is in addition to the fees prescribed by subsections (f) and (j) of this section and by W.S. 23‑2‑107 and shall be payable to the department either directly or through an authorized selling agent of the department. At the beginning of each month, the commission shall set aside all of the fees collected during calendar year 1980 and not to exceed twenty‑five percent (25%) of the fees collected thereafter pursuant to this subsection to establish and maintain a working balance of five hundred thousand dollars ($500,000.00), to compensate owners or lessees of property damaged by game animals and game birds.
(j) Subject to W.S. 23‑2‑101(f), 23‑1‑705(e) and the applicable fee under W.S. 23‑1‑701, the following hunting licenses and tags may be purchased for the fee indicated and subject to the limitations provided:
(xv) Nonresident deer license; one (1) deer
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372.00 655.00
(xvii) Nonresident youth deer license; one (1) deer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110.00 150.00
(xix) Nonresident elk license; one (1) elk, fishing privileges . . . . . . . . . . . . 690.00 1,100.00
(xxi) Nonresident youth elk license; one (1) elk, fishing privileges . . . . . . . . . . . 275.00 300.00
(xxiii) Nonresident bighorn sheep license; one (1) bighorn sheep . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,318.00 3,000.00
(xxv) Nonresident mountain goat license; one (1) mountain goat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,160.00 2,750.00
(xxvii) Nonresident moose license; one (1) moose
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,980.00 2,750.00
(xxix) Nonresident grizzly bear license; one (1) grizzly bear . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000.00 7,500.00
(xxxi) Nonresident antelope license; one (1) antelope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324.00 600.00
(xxxiii) Nonresident youth antelope license; one (1) antelope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110.00 125.00
(xxxviii) Resident turkey license . 14.00 20.00
(xxxix) Nonresident turkey license . 72.00 75.00
(k) Any resident qualified to purchase a moose or ram big horn sheep hunting license under subsection (j) of this section may pay a fee of seven dollars ($7.00) ten dollars ($10.00) in lieu of applying for a moose or ram big horn sheep hunting license. Payment of the fee for a particular species under this subsection shall authorize the person to accumulate points under W.S. 23‑1‑703(b) for that year in the same manner as if he had unsuccessfully applied for a hunting license for that species. Payment of the fee shall be made in compliance with application dates.
23‑2‑107. Wild bison licenses.
(c) Subject to the limitations imposed by W.S. 23‑1‑703(e), the commission shall promulgate reasonable rules and regulations regulating wild bison licenses and the management of wild bison. The rules shall provide for:
(e) A resident applicant shall pay a license fee of four hundred twelve dollars ($412.00) for a license to harvest any wild bison or two hundred fifty‑eight dollars ($258.00) for a license to harvest a female or calf wild bison and shall pay the fee required by W.S. 23‑2‑101(e). A nonresident applicant shall pay a license fee of four thousand four hundred dollars ($4,400.00) six thousand dollars ($6,000.00) for a license to harvest any wild bison or two thousand seven hundred fifty dollars ($2,750.00) for a license to harvest a female or calf wild bison and shall pay the fee required by W.S. 23‑2‑101(e). The fee charged under W.S. 23‑1‑701 shall be in addition to the fee imposed under this subsection.
Section 2. W.S. 23‑2‑101(f) is repealed.
Section 3. This act is effective January 1, 2022.
(END)
As can be seen, it dramatically increases the costs of out of state licenses, in some categories as well.
Well so be it.
I learned of this bill when an outfitter that I really don't know except by business name sent an email "alert" to my email on this, noting that it would supposedly destroy my ability to hunt in Wyoming, by which it meant a state that it though that I, as a visitor living elsewhere, would only be visiting to hunt, and wouldn't be able to.
This taps into a long running slow burn cultural battle in the state that really began in the 1970s. Prior to that time outfitting wasn't really a statewide business and may not have been a full time business of any category at all. In that timeframe, however, there was an effort basically to attempt to stabilize the business, more or less at their request, by requiring they be hired in certain areas for those who came from out of state.
Since that time, the business has really grown and there have been real efforts to directly aid them, including even granting them some licenses to be sold directly. For native Wyomingites this has been a huge issue as natives don't use guides at all and the feeling is that these efforts directly impinge on a sort of native right. This feeling has increased as some outfitters have locked up ranch lands in deals which reserve the lands for the outfitters clients. There's various arguments on this on both side, some of which they will not commit to in print but will openly voice. The printed one, form the outfitters, is that out of state hunters bring in a lot of revenue to the state.
For native hunters the counter is that they largely don't care. They don't benefit economically from it, and indeed, the opposite is true in that they loose opportunities to hunt. The past few years this loss has been keenly felt as licenses that were once easy to get now no longer are. Indeed, I haven't drawn an antelope license for two years running at this time.
With an influx of outdoorsmen of all types due to the Coronavirus pandemic, this has been all the more the case.
An interesting aspect of this bill is the absence of sponsoring names that appear on the "hot" topics this year.
On other matters, a bill a bill has advanced allowing the holders of real property to remove racially restrictive covenants from their deeds.
Such restrictions are void in any event, so this bill simply allows such restrictions to be officially removed. As few people read their deeds and as people likely generally don't repeat the illegal
I don't know why the bill failed, but I'd really hoped it would pass.
Later I heard that Wyoming tends to be unique in regard to out of state licenses in holding more for out of states than other states.
I don't know why the bill failed, but I'd really hoped it would pass.
Later I heard that Wyoming tends to be unique in regard to out of state licenses in holding more for out of states than other states. I don't know why we do this, although I do know that some years ago an asshole who lived out of state sued the state under the Equal Protection Clause claiming that the Game & Fish should make no distinction between in state and out of state licenses. That suit failed, and I hope that his lawyer was charging that guy something like $5,000/hour and he went bankrupt, but I've wondered if the G&F has been a bit gun shy since that time about adjusting these numbers. After all, they've withstood the test of litigation, so I'd get that.
If that is it, I'd yield to their considerations of those factors.
On the other hand, a common argument has to do with the dollars that out of states bring in for hunting, fishing and everything else they come in for.
Wyoming has undoubtedly been in the economic dumps for some time, due to the state's reliance on fossil fuel extraction for income. Everybody knows this, but nobody is willing to do anything much about it, yet. There are things that could be done. We have other raw products, beef, wool, etc., we produce, but we don't bother to finish them as we prefer to live like a colony. . . oh wait, that's not it. We don't do that as we're used to the petrol and coal bucks and can't really grasp anything else, even though we didn't always rely on those things. We had sheep, cattle, wheat, etc., before we ever had oil and coal in a marketable fashion, and we have uranium right now in addition to the fossil fuels. We're not, however, going to look at state sponsored meat packing plants, wool processing plants, or nuclear power, and if we started to somebody, probably somebody from somewhere else, would start decrying a "slide into socialism". So we're going to wait for things to get really bad.
In the meantime we're going to make reference to tourist dollars, such as in this instance. This rings the money in, the argument goes. And I suppose it does.
But money isn't everything and to the extent changing these percentages would impact things I doubt it would do so in a very harmful way.
Outfitters, as noted, were very much against this bill, but here too we have to consider the oddities of this. Right now, in order to go on the public land hunting in some areas of the state you need an outfitter by law. This is the case, as a friend of mine pointed out, even if I am from Alaska and hunt in the wilderness all the time. And its also the case if I come into the state to fish, rather than hunt, or to hike. The argument that out of state hunters will get lost is a dog that doesn't hunt, and we know that. The law is just a way to help guaranty employment for outfitters.
Outfitting used to be a part time job done mostly by guys whose full time jobs allowed them to have the fall off, which is still partially true. And it used to be a part time job for ranchers. Now, however, outfitters often hire out of state guides whose familiarity with the wilderness is probably not that much better, in real terms, than the people they're guiding from time to time. Some time ago, for instance, I spoke to a guide who was here for the season from Tennessee. Not exactly the rough Wyoming cowboy spending the winter as a guide as people might imagine, before he starts riding the grub line. Given that, I don't think outfitters would really be that hurt by a change in the law, and I really don't care if out of state guides are hurt. They can stay in Tennessee for all I care. Local outfitters, if they're busy enough to hire Tennesseans, can decline to do so and take care of their business themselves. That may sound callous, but I don't mean for it to be, and I think they'd be okay, money wise.
Which also gets back to this. In something like this there's an entire set of competitive interest over a limited resource. That resource, it seems to me, should be scaled towards residents and more than that, scaled towards subsistence.
Sort of a combination of Subsidiarity and Field to Table, if you will.
I'm serious about that. I'm not going to argue that the general public has a right to dictate what ever square inch of private property is used for, but the table is a basic. At the end of the day, hunting is for food, and food directly acquired is acquired in the best way possible. I don't begrudge somebody from far away coming to hunt in Wyoming, but we should be honest. First of all, in spite of what people may think, there are hunting opportunities in every state in the United States.
Even Hawaii has big game hunting. There's nothing wrong with crossing state lines to hunt, but if you are trophy hunting in another state chances are high that the Chile con Carne aspect of it is probably not what took you there.
Again, that's fine, but the Chile con Carne hunting is something deeper and more meaningful. It really ought to be the thing that controls.
