audsley

If the ranch owners wanted to, they could charge whatever they wanted and skip any agreement with AGFD. Does anyone know why they aren't doing that? Other ranches do. Is it because Cholla Land & Cattle and the Navajo tribe A. Are basically pure of heart and just want to be good guys B. Want to keep getting the other perks (road and fence maintenance, water tank cleanouts, erosion control, AGFD's help with acquiring government grants, etc.) that might be withheld if they did this unilaterally and independently like ORO and others? C. Fear that there could be legal and/or political consequences from reaping profits from so much state trust land (gifting clause) D. Other Just so everyone knows, currently there are landowners who do not allow hunter access but are nevertheless receiving benefits from funds allocated through the habitat partnership program. Here's another question: Shouldn't there be a clause assuring that all paying recreational users will have full access to all areas of the ranch? What I'm concerned about here is that guides could give tips to the hunt manager in exchange for exclusive access to prime areas, and average hunters would be told they can't camp or hunt near X, Y or Z because it's already too full. Not that anyone would ever do a thing like this, of course, I'm just throwing this out hypothetically. As a long time access activist, I'm watching this one with a mix of hope and anxiety, and pretty heavy on the latter. I expect all the small ranchers in southern Arizona to demand more money for letting people through their gates to the state and federal land beyond. By my calculations, the Boquillas deal will net the ranchers about $150,000 just for the recreation permits alone. That's based on roughly 2,500 big game permits sold for unit 10 in 2011. Once word gets out that G&F is sanctioning a per-head access fee, we can expect the rest of the sharks to come into feed pretty quickly. That will include ranchers who, unlike the ORO and Boquillas, don't really have any private land we want to hunt on, but only have a strip of land that blocks our access to state and federal lands beyond. Many are already receiving thousands of dollars per year just to allow hunters to drive across their property. But don't look for new hunting opportunities on BLM and national forest lands where private ranches currently are blocking your access, and the ranchers have lucrative deals with guides that are netting them big bucks and involve only a small number of hunters, including business and political cronies. Those ranchers are doing fine under the current system. The Boquillas deal won't change that.

I don't understand. You applied for 5092 in Units 33 and 37B as a first choice. Were there leftover tags for Hunt 5092 in those units? There aren't any now.

Wyoming gives landowner tags that can be used by the landowner's immediate family but cannot be sold or transferred other individuals. This is better than some other states where re-sale is allowed, but even Wyoming's plan can be corrupted when there's big money to be made. If we see another push here for landowner tags, the "immediate family only" could be a way of getting a foot in the door. Wyo. agency's poaching case -- spanning 12 states -- nears end Thursday, January 10, 2013 One of the largest poaching cases in Wyoming history is drawing to a close after more than three years of investigations, pleas and trials. The suspects in the case had made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling their landowner tags to out-of-state hunters. It's a move that is illegal in Wyoming, said Mike Ehlebracht, a supervisor with the state Game and Fish Department's Wildlife Investigative Unit. No one but the department can sell the licenses. "Nowhere in the world can you hand someone your license and say, 'Go fill it,'" he said. Ehlebracht was first tipped off to the poaching ring after two Oregon men signed up for a hunt with Big Horn Adventure Outfitters. In the middle of the hunt -- after one of the men had already shot a large bull -- the pair learned the hunt was illegal. The second man decided not to shoot his elk. After the trip, they reported the crime in January 2010. The move launched the Wyoming department's investigation into the matter, led by Ehlebracht. The department spent months conducting interviews, looking through license histories and game tag records, and doing background searches. Landowner Richard Carter Sr. had divided his land into four sections and received eight total elk tags from the state. He then gave them to his son, R.C. Carter, who ran Big Horn Adventure Outfitters and sold the tags. Richard Carter's other son, Mark, was a guide for the company. The hunts cost between $6,000 and $7,500 per person. Officials said the family made nearly $300,000 from the hunts. Officials coordinated a sting in which all the suspects would be contacted at the same time, so they wouldn't have time to corroborate their stories. Within 24 hours, 65 people were interviewed, and police served four search warrants. "Working these poaching cases is not for us, it's for you," said Jim Gregory, investigator with the Wildlife Investigative Unit. "You picked up the deer regs and read them and did what you were supposed to do and went home. It's a protection of the resource, and we did this for you" (Christine Peterson, Casper [Wyo.] Star-Tribune, Jan. 9).

It gets better. Vigil to be held for elk killed by Colorado officer The Associated Press BOULDER, Colo. -- A candlelight vigil is planned to remember the life of a bull elk that was shot and killed by an on-duty Boulder police officer who has since been placed on administrative leave. The Daily Camera reports ( http://bit.ly/Ur2uCo ) the vigil will be held on Mountain View Road at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. Police say an on-duty officer killed the animal late Tuesday, and an off-duty officer took the elk home to be processed for meat. The officer who shot the elk allegedly said it was limping and appeared as if it needed to be put down, though a resident has said it wasn't limping a few hours before it died. Colorado wildlife officials are investigating whether any crimes occurred.

Yes, Jamaro, this is very important. I contacted Az Congressmen Ron Barber's (Gabriel Giffords' replacement) about the Heinrich bill last August. I was asked to send written materials on the subject, which I did. I never heard a word back from them. Very disappointing. The problem is equally severe in southern Arizona, probably worse.

I knew this would happen. It got caught up in the political chess game over the "fiscal cliff." It will be very hard to get any money for things we like in the next couple of years or longer. Sessions stopped it based on an objection that it violated the Budget Control Act. This bill had bi-partisan support. McCain had voted for it earlier. Kyl had voted against it. I don't know what Kyl's reasons were, but I think he had wanted to insert something else into the bill. Either way, we didn't get it. I doubt that will change. The Dems tried to persuade the Republicans to waive the procedural violation of the Budget Control Act, but the Republicans are making them toe the line. It's gonna get ugly.

Amanda is out of the room, isn't she?

Just went through a long back and forth with horse huggers in response to a similar piece in High Country News. http://www.hcn.org/blogs/goat/wild-horses-to-the-slaughter In a comment string that went on for several days, they proved 2 things beyond a reasonable doubt: they don't understand math and are prepared to reject science when it doesn't suit their goals. I'm afraid they will always have the mainstream press on their side, which means they'll also have the public on their side. And I couldn't help noticing that the pro-science side was mostly male while the horse huggers were mostly female. Where's a rational female mind when you need one? And for how many more thousands of years will men have to keep asking that question?

Has anyone seen these drone cameras used for scouting yet? I figure it's just a matter of time.

Hey Average Joe, why don't you go demand a re-count on that Prop 120 you were promoting a couple days ago. That ought to keep you out of trouble for a while.

I've always wondered why the 6.5x55 isn't mentioned more often as a youth gun. More recoil than a .243, but not so much most young teens of either gender can't handle it. I see from the bolt safety that it's a sporterized military gun. But I notice it lacks the stepped barrel characteristic of Mausers. Did you have it re-barreled?

Hey Joe. I think you're below average.

Bad as the federal govt can be, state government is even more inept and susceptible to manipulation by special interests. Simple Hunter, I disagree with the premise that state lands are not to be held in the public domain forever. If these lands are generating revenue for the trust, they are serving their intended purpose. It is believed that some state trust lands in remote locations will never be developed. These lands will likely continue to earn revenue through grazing fees and other uses specified in the state's constitution. Nothing wrong with that. As for national forest lands, the forest service was created to manage the lands that no one wanted to purchase. Remember that the federal government (which I tend to think of as the American people rather than some bureaucrat) acquired all Western lands in the first place (Gadsen Purchase, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Oregon Treaty and Louisiana Purchase) and then offered these lands for sale to private entities. Land along watercourses was quickly bought up, but most Western lands, including forested areas and mountain tops, remained unsold. Unregulated, uncontrolled use of the unsold lands posed a lot of problems such as overgrazing in places (which led to conflicts between ranchers) and the threat of floods due to unregulated timber cutting. Farmers and residents along the watercourses wanted to ensure that the forests would continue to moderate runoff. Management purposes of national forest and BLM lands have been refined over the years through the Multiple Use, Sustained Yield Act of 1960 and the Federal Land Management and Policy Act of 1976, and other legislation. The federally legislated purposes of these lands are watershed protection, grazing, timber harvest and recreation. Mining is allowed under a separate 1872 law. All of these lands are managed under a "public trust" doctrine - the land belongs to the public and is managed by federal agencies appointed to be the trustees. It belongs to all of us. We, the people, are the property owners. And as all property owners should know, one must be constantly on the lookout for thieves and pickpockets who would chisel off a piece for themselves. Their agents (lobbyists) are paid to prowl the halls of state legislatures and Congress looking for new ways to make a buck. Politicians are happy to please them in exchange for financial and political support. I will agree that federal management of public lands is exasperating. But like Democracy, it's the best system we could have if we want to maintain the West's wide-open spaces where alternative uses of rural land would not generate a significant economic return. This isn't Ohio or Missouri where agricultural income per-acre is much higher, and hunters need to know someone with private land or pay to belong to a hunting club. Rather than doing away with our current approach, we should be striving to improve it. Of course, that would require that some of us make more of an effort to understand the current system. State trust lands were allocated to states as a gift from the federal govt at the time of statehood. (Remember, the feds, AKA the people of the U.S., owned all the land that hadn't been purchased.) The primary purpose of this gift was to raise revenue for schools in the absence of an adequate tax base. The state land dept. has historically tried to maximize this revenue by leasing it until it has significant real estate value. This is preferable to squandering it by selling it off where its taxable value would be very low and future leasing revenues would be forever terminated. Someone said something about wishing there were 50 different states instead of just one. Well, wish no more - just head for Texas if you want what Prop 120 would bring. I'm sure there are some who would prefer the Texas style of land and wildlife policy.

I wish people would quit worrying about whether Prop 120 is constitutional and just vote NO on it. We don't want to see this kind of thing again, and I want to fail so miserably that it will be another 30 years before they try it again. (They tried it 30 years ago. Remember James Watt?). The GOP needs an education on public lands and wildlife. If we don't tell 'em, it's our fault. If we tell 'em and they go ahead with their schemes to privatize land and wildlife so only the wealthy can afford to hunt, then we'll know what to do next. I actually plan to vote for a couple of the people who are advocating this on the premise that they can be re-educated. If not, then I'll actively work against them next time. Hunters in other states like Texas and New Mexico would kill for what we have in Arizona. We need to protect our resources from people who want to grab what's ours and from politicians who are all too eager to give it away.

Scoutm, I'm with you all the way on No. 3. If the state's sportsmen had equal access to ALL of the legally huntable public land in Arizona, we probably wouldn't need to worry about No. 1. There would be plenty of habitat, game and elbow room to go around. I've been very disappointed in the lax attitude Arizona hunters have shown toward this issue. Sportsmen's conservation groups and AGFD have been expanding wildlife waters, but cattle numbers are down and livestock operators are letting their tanks go dry in the early summer to save money. We need to keep up our support for adding new wildlife waters and maintaining existing ones, but I doubt we'll see much of a bounceback in deer populations until more rain falls to produce cover and feed over a wide area. Same with mountain lions and coyotes. More rain will solve our problems. Predator removal will only band-aid the situation, although predator removal is critical when antelope and sheep are translocated to a new area and when ungulate populations have dropped to very low levels. As for mandatory reporting, I worry about truthfulness and compliance in general. I think there enough eyes on the ground to tell us how deer populations are doing. What might be a good idea is an additional survey of what hunters saw during their hunts, not just what they harvested. This could be done on a sample basis where only 10-20% of hunters are surveyed in each unit regarding what they saw.

As I understand it, antler restrictions can result in degrading the gene pool. A buck with exceptional genes and nutrition can become a small 3-point in a year and a half. A buck with poor genes for antlers can remain a spike after 2 1/2 years. Antler restrictions would have us removing the superior buck and preserving the inferior one and allowing it to keep breeding. I believe that's why antler restrictions in Colorado and elsewhere failed to produced the results expected. A lot of this stuff remains a mystery. A friend of mine killed a buck that was in the neighborhood of 100 pts and took it to AGFD for aging. Their tooth analysis said the buck was only 2 1/2 years old. No one believed that, especially since the buck generally had a grizzled, mature look about it overall, but that's what the teeth said. We now refer to it as the "applesauce buck" because we figure the only way that deer could have prevented normal tooth wear is by staying on a strict diet of applesauce its entire life. Go figure.

Wow! All the G&F $ are swept into the general fund? And Naplitano mandated it? The Napolitano administration did some bad things regarding Game & Fish, but mandating sweeps wasn't one of them. I think it boils down to this: When bowhunters aren't drawn for their first choices for deer, what do they do? Do they buy an OTC tag and go hunting deer in an OTC unit? Or does failure to drawin their preferred unit result in no dder tag being sold to that hunter? Same with firearms hunters. Do they go for their 4th or 5th choice (often southern Arizona), or do they stay home and spend their money on something else? I don't have the data to know, but Game & Fish does. They can analyze the substituion behavior of less successful applicants and see how it impacts hunting participation when it's all said and done. Maybe they already have. But that part of the argument about lost revenues is missing until we see the numbers for substituion.

Good idea, Desert Bull, but I've got a better one. Why don't general season hunters just hunt with handguns? Then success rates will be really low and everybody can go hunting!

So Tonto Rim believes increased archery success is attributable to baiting, while Desert Bull, Kimberx2 and others believe it's better archery equipment, trail cameras and ground blinds. Is there anything else that might give us a clue? How about archery antelope? I don't believe antelope are subject to baiting (although I've seen them use salt licks), but better archery equipment, ground blinds and decoys could be factors. I don't know about trail cameras for antelope. But if increased archery success for deer is the result of baiting, shouldn't we look at another species hunted by archers without benefit baiting to see if those hunts show a different trend from that for deer? Again using the hunt statistics published by AGFD, we see that success rates from 1974 to 1980 ranged from 0 to 9.8%. From 1981 to 1990, success ranged from a low of 6.4 in 1981 to 11.6 in 1990. Notice that the lowest was at the beginning of the decade and the highest was in the last year of the decade. From 1991 through 2000, success averaged 16.3%. From 2001 to 2006, success improved to 19.1%. Then our last 5 years of 2007-12 saw overall success zoom to 30.5%. So for archery antelope, success has been steadily increasing through the years. Maybe I'm naive or out of touch, but I didn't think there was much baiting, if any, going on for antelope. If that's true, and if success for the unbaited species is improving at least as rapidly if not more so than the baited species, what should we conclude? For my part, I'll conclude that it is unlikely that baiting is the principal reason for improved deer success for archers. Just sayin'...

I don't really have a dog in this fight, but some important principles are at stake, so I'll weigh in. I just put together an Excel spreadsheet using the past five years (2007-12) of hunt stats published by AGFD for Unit 23. During that period, archers accounted for 52% of the hunters and 22% of the harvest. Success rates averaged 24% in the general hunt and 6% for archers. How can anyone conclude that archers are taking too large a share of the deer and need additional constraints placed on them? It might be different if people were born either rifle hunters or archery hunters and could not change. But if the grass looks greener on the archers' side, why not simply take up bowhunting? That's what I did nearly 30 years ago after I filled my November whitetail tag on the second day and felt the need for more time in the mountains. I bought some used archery equipment and was back out there January 1. Most hunters are physically capable of doing the same. By placing archery tags in the draw for some units, AGFD is already forcing some hunters to sit home or else hunt in a different unit. Why should they place additional curbs on bowhunters in order to keep some rifle hunters from suffering the same? Why not look at it this way. With firearms harvest rates being four times archery harvest rates, doesn't the dept. sell more tags (make more money) for the number of deer harvested by selling archery tags? AGFD should return all units to over-the-counter for archery deer. Going strictly by numbers and logic, a bait ban doesn't make any sense. I can't help wondering if there isn't some agenda I'm not seeing. And I'm not buying the disease issue. And why is baiting so much more prevalent in Units 22 and 23 than other parts of the state? Might it have to do with the difficulty of hunting by other methods in those units? I live in southern Arizona where the terrain is suitable for spot-and-stalk, but I've seen some country in Arizona where the junipers are so thick that I couldn't imagine hunting deer there, at least not by my usual methods. Some of that country is in 22 and 23. Which brings me to the time I was going toe-to-toe with Bonus Point John over this very issue, and I called Pope and Young, that outfit that will not accept trophies taken by "unsportsmanlike" means such as using radios. The man who answered said, yes, they've talked a lot about whether to allow trophies taken over bait, and have always reached the same conclusion: since people tend to do this mainly in places where it's necessary, they accept trophies taken over bait. The problem, he explained, is that if baiting isn't allowed in some areas such as mesquite-covered flatlands in Texas, there will be little if any deer hunting there because no other means is practical. (I figure the same could be said about the country around Payson.) Pope and Young concluded that it's better that deer are hunted over bait than not hunted at all. This discussion took place about four years ago. If P&Y has sinced changed its position, someone can tell me. But that's how they were seeing it when i spoke with them. As I said, I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't hunt deer in 22 or 23, don't hunt over bait and don't even buy archery deer tags any more. But I don't like restrictions that don't make sense and leave me wondering what's really driving the agenda. It's not like we don't have more important things to talk about.

I happened to be present at the commission meeting when the hunter lost his license for shooting the prairie dog. The defendant's story was that he was aiming at a running coyote and just happened to center punch a luckless prairie dog. Wonder how long it took him to think that one up. The defendant's story lacked credibility and I wouldn't be surprised if the commissioners weren't a little annoyed that he thought they would believe it. To ArcheryCrazy's good advice about showing up, I will add this: Don't try to sell an improbable story, or tell them your dog ate your copy of the regs. Just tell them you're a bonehead who hadn't studied the regs as well he should have, and that you're very sorry. MAYBE they'll show you some mercy. And I think you guys are making WAY too much of the Husted-prairie dog affair.

AZSFWC would do themselves and the conservation work they support a big favor if they'd just change their name back to WCC or something else that wouldn't confuse them with the now-defunct political lobbying group. The AZSFWC is a group of generally good guys who perform a valuable service to sportsmen and wildlife. I don't know why they continue to hang on to the name they adopted when the lobbying group came into existence.

" When the credit card transaction denial is finalized, Game and Fish personnel must then determine who was next in line to get that hunt-permit tag, and then process that person’s credit information as well. In some cases, it might take multiple iterations to finalize the process on a single tag." So does this mean my charge in the amount for deer might only be a back-up, and that I will only get the tag if someone ahead of me is denied? Everyone has been assuming that a charge means they got a tag, but I'm not so sure. I'm wondering if it just means you probably are getting a tag.

Congratulations, Outdoor Writer! I'm eating my heart out. I only put in for 2 deer choices, both good ones, and guess I should be satisfied to see a $34.75 charge. But it's that ram tag I'm desperate for since these legs aren't getting any younger.

I'd say 110 gross.