The Dueling Duo

Hunting for Dollars
Are public game herds being privatized?

Con
by Ron Spomer

Hunting in the good old USA is undergoing a sea change, and I’m not sure it’s the best thing for our grand old heritage. Increasingly, dollars determine who gets to hunt and where. Tagging a trophy has more to do with how much you can spend than how well you can hunt.

You can’t argue that wildlife, or the right to pursue it, has value. That’s why the king chopped off peasant’s hands for poaching “his” deer - until we puny peasants rose up and lopped off some kingly crowns. This tradition of the aristocracy going hunting while the peasants went hungry ended with the radical idea of a democratic republic called the United States of America. Wildlife, like air and rivers, would belong to everyone. This was never a perfect system, but it gradually developed to save most species from exploitation and return them to abundance. The restoration of bison, elk, pronghorns, turkeys and other commonly hunted game became conservation’s high water mark. The system worked. Everyone shared in abundance and scarcity. Everyone contributed to restoration. Everyone got the same chances at hunting opportunities through limited seasons, bag limits and lottery selections for limited tags. A wealthy person could buy more guided hunts into the hinterlands, but never more tags for more game.

The rush nowadays is to buy a chunk of land, post it, maybe high-fence it, and farm it for wildlife. Most of these land purchases are 15 to 100-acre plots, but some are 10,000 to 100,000-acre ranches. Nearly all are posted. Nearly all used to be open to hunting. All you had to do was ask. This easy access increased hunter numbers which in turn increased license sales, pumping more money into hiring biologists and game wardens, restocking, habitat improvement and the like. This funding increased wildlife numbers and maintained high hunter participation which, in turn, increased sales of guns, ammunition, calls, decoys, boots and more.

Today, the average Joe finds “No Hunting” signs on private lands because most are reserved for hunting by the owner or leased to outfitters who take paying clients on canned adventures - “Sit in this box and when you hear the feeder go off, get ready.” This issue is contributing to the continuing decline in hunter numbers, a serious issue now causing concern among Fish & Game agencies. A decrease in hunter recruitment means fewer license sales to support conservation work. Recruitment of young people is poor. Not many kids can walk or bicycle from the house to a pheasant field or deer woods anymore. These youth have to wait for a rich uncle to take them to Real Life Hunting Adventures Lodge for a $5,000 deer hunt.

Fortunately, public lands such as our National and State Forests, grasslands, BLM lands, wildlife management units, etc. remain open to public hunting. However, so many of us commoners are squeezed into these public areas that trophy quality suffers. In many cases, experienced game flees public land at the first gunshot and camps on private ranchlands for the season where they are not hunted at all or selectively harvested by wealthy patrons. In some states, landowners are pressuring legislatures to give them licenses and tags to sell to the highest bidder.

I can understand a landowner charging a trespass fee to offset the costs of wildlife eating crops. Ditto someone trying to keep the deer he feeds and protects into old age (and trophy size) on his property so the neighbors can’t poach it, but not when this leads to privatization of wildlife.

One fairly equitable solution seems to be some sort of Block Management in which high-priced, non-resident tag fees are used to pay landowners to open their property to general hunters. A few ranches remain leased for wealthy clients, but many others, formerly posted against all hunting, are opened. Some tags are reserved for non-residents only, but residents still benefit because those who do get tags have more places to hunt.

Private control of public wildlife sounds like a good idea when you own the land on which that game lives and can manage it for maximum trophy size and “trespass” fees. It’s a bad idea when an anti-hunter buys the big ranch and closes it to all hunting. Either way, it’s a bad trend for average hunters and the future of hunting in general. Reasonable access to land and wildlife is essential to maintaining equitable distribution of hunting privileges to all citizens. Without this, real hunting for real, wild game will soon die out.

Pro
by Scott Grange

I have always disliked using the word “never.” It’s one of those universal qualifiers we all use, especially when we want to stress a point. However, every now and then an issue arises that demands the use of this awful adjective. So, here goes. The good old days of the general public hunting vast parcels of private land along with unlimited tracks of public acreage for trophy big game, for the mere cost of a license, will never be experienced again. Never!

The mentality that all game animals belong to the public and that we should all have free access to whatever ground they inhabit is as antiquated as black and white television. Anyone possessing such an attitude is dangerous. Why? Because such an individual has their head buried so deep in the sand that they have to be oblivious to everything around them, not just big game issues.

Thirty five years ago, I killed my first bull elk. It was a beautiful five-point and the best thing about it was that I took him on public ground. I’ll never forget the words of my older brother Steve.

“You’d better cherish this moment because you may never,” there’s that adjective again, “kill another bull like this as long as you live.”

For those of you who entered this world after 1971, I wouldn’t expect you to understand such foolish sounding words. But, back then, killing a bull elk of any kind in my home state of Utah was a big deal. And, to be lucky enough to harvest a mature bull put me on a pedestal among my teenage peers almost equal to that of Sandy Koufax. Okay, maybe not Koufax, but it was huge.

Thirty-six years and more big bulls than I care to admit later, I would no more shoot a bull like the one in 1971 than fly to the moon. My son just got his bull back from the taxidermist. He took it two years ago on public land and it scored 372! Last year he took a 325 bull on private property.

So, what happened in that twenty-five year period? Did a space ship come down and dump a boat load of wapiti in our mountains? I don’t think so. Did the animal rights freaks belly up to the bar and give wildlife a much needed hand? That will be the day. Or, did this phenomenon just happen, kind of like the big bang theory? This is where you need to remove your head from the sand.

With a few exceptions, hunters of today want to harvest trophy class animals, whether they’re hunting whitetail or wapiti, This type of hunting takes proper management, habitat improvements and a ton of money to produce such specimens. Add to that the fact that more and more folks are being forced to sell their ranches to greedy developers as they can no longer afford to pay the taxes, let alone make a living off the land.

Enter the necessary evil of private ranches, high-priced tags, and the privatization of wildlife. Do you think the two or three hundred dollars Bubba spends annually on hunting big game supports wildlife? It doesn’t support squat. It’s the millions of dollars that are shelled out by dedicated sportsmen and women along with organizations like FNAWS, RMEF, SFW, MDF and other conservation groups, coupled with wildlife agencies who can see the big picture, that make all this happen.

The tradition of the aristocracy going hunting while the peasants go hungry may have vanished with the creation of the democratic republic of the United States. However, with that democratic republic came taxes, free trade and greed. Like it or not, our society is changing. The good old days that our fathers and grandfathers enjoyed are gone forever. But hey, neither my dad nor his dad ever killed a 350-class bull elk or 160-class whitetail. So, what will it be, a handful of inferior bucks on over-hunted public ground for free? Or, trophy class animals on public and private ground for a fee? You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Tags: Dueling Duo, HI32, Ron Spomer, Scott Grange

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