audsley

Kent, It would be great to have the actual figures for AZSFW's funding by source for the last 2 or 3 years. How much was provided by ADBSS, AES, ADA, YVRG&C, etc., both as member groups and additional contributions. Then look at what they had promised for 2012. Without that information, we're speculating with only a little known, factual data at hand. I'd say whether there will never be enough money depends on what individual sportsmen and the sportsmen's conservation groups want to do. I believe there could be enough money if there was the will to provide it.

Allen, I've been trying to help this process along, but right now everyone seems hung up on the investigation, trial and hanging. As for collecting contributions, I have something in mind, but it's hard to get a web site owner interesting in working out details when there's been no sign of interest in building a sportsmen's advocacy group we can all support and don't mind saying represents us. Thanks for being the second person besides me to say he'd pony up $10 a year. Do you suppose there's a third one out there somewhere? I would think ADA might be motivated to think about a re-design if only to have something positive to talk about Feb. 21.

KRP, The "orgs" will NOT provide adequate funding for a sportsmen's advocacy group. This was tried in the past and didn't work, and it didn't work for AZSFW. Sportsmen's conservation groups are just that - conservation groups, meaning their mission is to protect and enhance wildlife populations. Groups organized to support desert bighorns, antelope, elk, deer, turkey and so on don't work their tails off so they can give a lot of their money to another organization. These are 501 c (3) orgs and are limited in how much they can spend for what is deemed "political" purposes. They can provide some funding and probably will continue to do so, but there won't be enough to be effective unless one or more major benefactors decide to foot the bill, in which case the group's agenda will be the benefactors' agendas, or else individual sportsmen decide to pay for it, or some combination of the two. If you want an organization that serves you and me, then you and I need to help pay the bills. I haven't heard anyone say they're ready to put in $10 a year and that all other sportsmen should do the same. Until that happens, we'll either have nothing or we'll have a group that marches to someone else's drum beat, and I wouldn't expect people with deep pockets to share the same concerns as the average sportsman. I never knew the men behind the curtain at AZSFW, although I did meet one of them once and quickly realized that he couldn't care less about sportsmen's access to public lands. Access wasn't a problem for him. He had other things on his mind. WHen you let others carry the load, they carry it on their terms. Why should we expect anything else? Rather than focusing on what we don't like, why doesn't this discussion turn more toward what we really want and how we might get that?

Archerycrazy, The ALIS could become a very useful tool, but I don't believe it's near enough. For one thing, anyone can pose as a sportsman and use ALIS to demand a jaguar recovery zone or a Mexican gray wolf under every tree. And as we've seen, there's a wide variety of opinions, focus and background knowledge even among legitimate sportsmen. I'm convinced the expression "herding cats" was coined by someone trying to work with hunters and anglers. ALIS might prove to be a tool for confusing legislators instead of informing them. Thom C. asked why sportsmen should need only one group to represent us instead of several. I'll allow that two or maybe even three might work, but I think if it gets to be any more than that, public officials and the public will be getting confusing and often conflicting messages. In recent years, government officials and the press have been hearing from not only AZSFW but also the NRA and Arizona Wildlife Federation, all three claiming to represent sportsmen but not necessarily bringing the same message. I'd hate to see things get more complicated and confusing than they already are. It's good that Arizona sportsmen stood up to defend their territory, but no one has done anything yet to be proud of. It doesn't take much to demolish something. Replacing AZSFW with an organization that can earn and keep the widespread support of the state's sportsmen would be a true achievement. That's what is urgently needed now, and I haven't seen anyone stepping up. I'm convinced that AZSFW is a dead group walking, and I hope for their sake and everyone else's that its principals realize that and won't try to keep operating under that flag. That said, I hope everyone will welcome the participation of individual AZSFW alumni in any future organization that might develop. (That very much includes Bonus Point John.) I believe they felt their intentions were good, and the people in the sportsmen's conservation groups are among the best informed about sportsmen's issues. Purging everyone who was associated with AZSFW would deprive any future group of considerable knowledge and expertise. We don't want to be like the Iraqis who, after purging all Baath party members from their jobs following the US invasion, found there was no one left on the job who knew how to run their public works systems, hospitals, and so on, and had to bring them back. Now let's get back to money. I estimate it would take at least $100,000 a year to do a good job of sportsmen's advocacy. That would be a half or 3/4 time lobbyist at the legislature, allow some money for contracting with national groups (i.e., US Sportsman's Alliance) to work federal issues and handle communication with members, the press and the public. It's clear that the state's sportsmen conservation groups do not want to put large sums year after year for this purpose, but I believe smaller donations of $500 - $1,000 a year might fly. Given 20 sportsmen's groups donating in that range, you'd have $10,000 - $20,000 a year. Where would the remaining $80,000 to $90,000 come from? If just 5% of the state's resident hunt/fish or general hunting license holders (about 130,000 sportsmen) chipped in $10 a year, you'd have another $65,000. Now if only there was some volunteer entity that would assume responsibility for collecting the money via internet and keeping track of memberships electronically... someone we trust... maybe some sportsmen's website.... hmmmm..... Just thinking out loud. Is there a leader in the house?

I've been wondering when somebody in this mob would ask the big question. If not AZSFW,then who? Thank you for finally asking it, Archerycrazy. Before we try to decide where we're going next, let's take a look at where we've been. Maybe we can learn something. Here's what I know, or think I know: When AZSFW was in its formative stage, with organizers touring the state and making their pitches for members and affiliates, I was an outspoken critic of their organizational plan, which gave policy and operational control to a handful of financial backers with no mechanism for accountability to the state's rank and file sportsmen. I questioned whether their agenda would serve the needs of most Arizona sportsmen or would it instead serve merely a select and affluent few. But a majority of the most vocal sportsmen, especially those in the sportsmen's conservation groups, felt differently about it. The sportsmen's conservation groups are more aware than the average hunter of the threats to the future of our wildlife and hunting heritage. But being men of action by nature, rather than policy wonks or political strategists, sportsmen are always happy to let others with different inclinations and aptitudes take over the task of haggling with politicians and bureaucrats so that sportsmen can keep going right on doing what's in their nature to do - raising money and putting sweat equity into projects that support bighorn sheep, turkeys, elk, antelope, deer and other species. Thus AZSFW was born, but not without certain key birth defects including lack of visibility and trust among the state's hunters. AZSFW was initially financed by a handful of businessmen whose intention was to hand over the task of financial support to sportsmen once the organization got going. They had reckoned this might take 3 or 4 years. AZSFW made a serious attempt at a membership drive, charging $15 a year and even offering individuals commissions for signing up new members. If even one licensed hunter in 100 had joined, revenue from individual memberships would have been enough to sustain the organization. But very few signed up, so AZSFW soon took to holding its own fundraising events and relying more heavily on its affiliated organizations - the various single-species groups - for donations. That kept them going a while longer, but recently some of AZSFW's biggest backers among the sportsmen's groups announced they were going to stop contributing. I believe HB 2072, which would have brought a lot of money to the single species conservation groups, was a desperate last-ditch attempt to keep some money flowing to AZSFW. Yes, there were a lot of other beneficial deeds portrayed in that bill, but the circumstantial evidence of AZSFW's impending insolvency probably explains why it came when it did. Since I was not actually a part of that organization in any formal way, my explanation might differ a bit from that of some people who were more closely involved, but that's how it looked from where I sat. So what does all this teach us? For one thing, whatever emotion inspires NRA members to keep sending in their dues checks does not seem to inhabit the hearts and minds of most Arizona sportsmen. Whoever has the gold makes the rules, so if everyone wants an organization that represents ALL of the state's sportsmen, then more of us will need to start digging into our pockets. We can talk about transparency, trust, visibility and legitimacy of representation, and I'd even like to talk about the relationship between a sportsmen's advocacy group and our Game & Fish Commission, but first things first: a certain amount of money must be provided for any sportsmen's advocacy group to effectively provide certain services (i.e., skilled lobbying, public relations and communication to members, etc.), and much of that money must come voluntarily from the state's sportsmen as evidence of their support. That's how the NRA does it, and it works. So before anyone starts designing the ideal organization - that's the fun part - do we think we could find a way for sportsmen to finance such a group and keep it going? It's my belief that AZSFW could have worked well if the state's sportsmen had swarmed the organization at the beginning and essentially taken it over by paying a substantial share of the costs and demanding representation that reflected our contribution. We could have earned some ownership through our checkbooks and steered AZSFW toward being what I suspect we can all agree it should have been. But when we let someone else do all the heavy lifting, things will get done on their terms, not ours. I believe that is what we let happen.

Lark, Go back and read your last post and see if you can find anything that is so far over the line as to reflect poorly on this forum. Audsley

Neb, Glad to see you at today's forest service meeting. Wish there had been more hunters. I'm the one who was reminding the forest supervisor that his agency has a Congressionally mandated mission to provide recreation, among other things, for the American people, and if they forget that people might start asking why we're keeping all this land in government hands if it isn't being used and enjoyed by the people. Some who attended today's meeting would like to change the mission of the national forest to make it more like a national park. Looks like we have our work cut out for us.

BPJ, Your post would fit better on the other thread for HB2072, but I agree that's way over the top. I know most of the people who have been on the front lines taking fire for HB2072, and I believe most - including you, BPJ - share my values with respect to equal opportunity for all and meant well with this bill. I don't believe you or the others I know pretty well are guilty of bad intentions, just bad reasoning and possibly misplaced trust. As for the men behind the curtain at AZSFW, I don't know what their full intentions were. These are some businessmen I don't know personally. But I do know that for a bill that was promoted as a means of improving hunter access, it certainly looked to me like a disaster. I'm not sure the top echelon at AZSFW has ever watched the video Opportunity for All. Any bill that creates a huge pot of money for the purchase of access across private land is a sure design for $20,000 trespass fees to let a small number of wealthy or lucky sportsmen shoot $50,000 elk or antelope on public lands the rest of us can't get to. After one look at the bill I immediately contacted a couple of people at AZSFW and asked how they could do such a thing. I was told that the scenario I depicted was certainly not their intention, and would I please send them some language that would eliminate the threat as I perceived it. I then sent language which prohibited any expenditure for access across lands that are not also traversible by the general public. Whether AZSFW would have incorporated this language into the bill will never be known since the bill was quickly pulled back and scuttled. I hope we can all move on from this and that some of the people who were involved in this mess will be remembered for all that they've done over the years, not just HB 2072. That includes you, John, hard-headed though you may be at times.

Bonus Point John is exactly right in pointing out that creating alternative routes around private property doesn't happen by itself. There's a lot of work involved and potential roadblocks, no pun intened. AGFD and Forest Service officials spend a lot of their time and our money trying to do this. If anyone is wondering, I don't really need to open more gates in order to go hunting. I do most of my hunting in Unit 33, where I backpack in, and in 36B and occasionally 36C where access isn't a serious problem. But I compete for tags in these units with people who might otherwise be hunting in 32, 34B, 35A, 29, 30A and 30B if they weren't so discouraged by the serious access problems in those units. More importantly, sportsmen and our various government entities have allowed defacto privatization of our state and federal lands to become a growing trend, and that's just plain wrong. National Forest and BLM lands are supposed to be multiple use, not single use. They are supposed to be available for recreation as well as grazing. Similarly, licensed sportsmen should be able to access most state trust lands. Except for AGFD and a few individuals in state and federal land agencies, our government have ignored their responsibility to support public ownership of public lands, and we've let them get away with it. There should have been a much louder protest from sportsmen when the 19B antelope hunt was sacked last year. What will it take to light a fire under Arizona sportsmen?

I believe the discussion was about public land that is blocked by private land and what anyone can do to gain access to the public land. There were questions and statements about the laws and what agencies can, should or are doing to regain public access to public lands. I shared what I think I know about those subjects. At no time has anyone indicated a desire to trespass on, hunt on or otherwise have anything to do with anyone's private land. We just want our public land back from those who have effectively taken possession of it.

Got news for you, Addict: Public land is public land! I don't want to hunt your private land. I want to hunt our public land. .270, tell us more about the landowner who "flat-out got raped by a warden a few years ago, but he now allows people across his place." Was somebody having a Brokeback Mtn. moment out there, some "warden" we should know about?

This subject is too complicated for forum posts, and the pain meds I'm taking from last month's knee replacement surgery isn't helping me concentrate. But I've been actively working public lands access for some time now, and I can speak to a couple of the issues that have been raised. Starting with Str8Shot's question about public funds for maintenance of private roads, the courts have said that's OK as long as the public is allowed to use the private stretch of road and thus receiving a benefit from having it maintained. But once a landowner locks out the public, that landowner is then responsible for taking over the maintenance. There can be exceptions and qualifications involving the health and safety of third parties, but that's generally how it works. Consequently, we should not be funding what Coach has called "very long driveways" to private ranches, but it's my understanding that this sometimes happens anyway. Any citizen who encounters locked gates on roads maintained by taxpayer dollars should approach the county BOS for an explanation. If the county's response isn't satisfactory, try going to the newspaper or even taking the county and the landowner to court and asking the judge to make the defendants pay your legal fees when he rules against them. Several government entities have the power of eminent domain and could legally take possession of private stretches of road while compensating the landowners at fair market value, but they'll never do it for recreational access. They will do it for developments and major highway construction, but not just so people can go hunting. The US Forest Service and BLM could do it, but they almost never do because of the political fallout associated with government taking private property. ADOT and any county can do it, but they don't want the political fallout either. There is a federal law, RS 2477, that allows historic routes existing at the time of statehood to be declared public roads regardless of current ownership, but only state or county transportation agencies can invoke it, and state and county governments won't do it for public access to federal lands. Game & Fish does not have any such powers and consequently has been begging and buying public access to state and federal lands but with limited success. Each year they pay thousands of dollars to ranchers and perform work that benefits both wildlife and the landowner's livestock operation. Unfortunately, many landowners aren't interested in such arrangements. Hobby ranchers, who may be trust fund babies or made their fortunes in other businesses, don't need the money. Some landowners hate government including the land management agencies they hold grazing leases with, and many see Game & Fish as their enemy. Some see the benefits of having control over the public's federal land as being worth more than Game & Fish will pay them to share it. Game & Fish does try to purchase easements for alternate access and develop rods across state trust or federal lands, but funds are limited and the topography doesn't always lend itself to an easy alternative. Roads that go through narrow canyons are sometimes the only feasible routes for motorized access. The state land dept. is under a mandate to make all uses of state trust land beneficial to the trust beneficiaries, which results in SLD requiring that roads be built to a county standard in order that it adds value to the land. This usually turns out to be a more expensive road than just a 2-track that would be adequate for hunters and thus burns up access money at a faster rate. Roadless rules and wilderness designation threaten to compound the problem by making no provision to allow alternate access roads when traditional routes are locked off. The deck is stacked heavily in favor of the landowner who padlocks his piece of private land and enjoys the benefits of sole possession of state and federal land without having to pay taxes on it. That won't change until Arizona sportsmen get as worked up about it as they just were over HB 2072. Until then, the political will to end an outrageous situation just isn't going to be there. Until then, chew on this: A couple of the roads in southern Arizona that cross private property and theoretically could be locked off to the public include Rucker Canyon in Unit 29 and the Ruby Road in 36B. Both of these are major roads that lead to Forest roads. Up north, the Chino Grande Ranch shut off access across the checkerboard lands costing 65 antelope hunters their permits, and I'm hearing other ranches may soon do the same. Landowners have seen that if the public can be locked out of historic sites on national forests such as Generonimo's surrender site (Skeleton Canyon), they can do it other places too. Well, you've been told. If Arizona was a prison cell block, the Arizona sportsman would be everybody's b&*ch. Either get used to it or do something about it. Now I need to go take a pain med before I get any crankier.

I didn't know Joe Reid (referenced in Scoutm's link) was back at Lawson's. He is indeed a first-rate gunsmith. So is Frank Wells, who works part-time at 2nd Amendment Sports, or at least did last I knew. At either of these places you might not get the gunsmith of your choice, but I'm reasonably confident you'll get good service anyway.

Hmmm... a retired G&F supervisor mentioned that individual to me a while back. I'll ask him what he thinks.

Sportsmen will need to have our act together or else the whackos will close us down. Arizona should be kept hospitable to jaguars, but there should be no restrictions beyond leaving them alone. The future of the jaguar does not depend on what happens in Arizona. Rather it depends on what happens in Mexico. Kind of like another species I can think of, which is called the Mexican gray wolf, not the Arizona gray wolf, for a good reason. Personally, I very much like having these things around. It isn't the wolves or the jaguars that bother me. It's the people who exploit them for money and power under the pretense that they are helping to save thedr species, which they are not.

According to Borderland Jaguars by David E. Brown and Carlos A. Lopez Gonzalez, the last female taken in Arizona was in 1963. Females were also taken in 1949 and 1932, but prior to 1948 fewer than half the recorded kills have sex information. It does appear that there was a breeding population in Arizona in the early 1900s as there are two recorded harvests of females with cubs. Also, the early history shows a very few jaguars ranging pretty far north (Chevelon Canyon, Black River on the WM Apache Res and around Prescott and the Grand Canyon). But most are in southeastern Az. The Brown/Lopez book also provides Sonoran (Mexico) jaguar data from 1900-2000. I looked up the locations where females were taken in the last twenty years. Since most of the locations given are ejidos near small towns and villages, I used Google Earth to see roughly where places like Sahuaripa, Granados, San Javier, Baviacora, etc. are in relation to the border. The northernmost of these little Sierra Madre villages is over 100 miles below the border. There are several that appear to be between 100 and 150 miles south of the border. Evidently there are, or have been, quite a few jaguars in the Sierra Madre forests and surrounding thornscrub about 50-100 miles south of Lake Angustura. Evidently the jags have been holding their own there at least until recent times.

They tend to be a little larger than lions. Males can exceed 200 lbs., and supposedly some over 300 lbs have been recorded. The ones that live in the open country tend to be a little larger than the ones that live in the forest. They also give the appearance of being larger than mountain lions because whereas lions have a sleek appearance, jaguars have a stocky appearance.

Macho B should have been collared several years earlier when he was younger and healthier. That might have told the Jaguar Recovery Team whether and where there was a breeding female in the region, probably in Mexico if there was one. Without any breeding females in the picture, a lone jaguar is just a conversation piece. It can't help sustain the species any more than the occasional male mountain lion that turns up in the Midwest will help restore mountain lions to the Midwest. Any time you capture and collar an animal there is some risk that it will die. That's true of bighorn sheep, pronghorn and other species that are captured for collaring and sometimes transplanting. That's just the way it is. The death of one jaguar out of the thousands living in Mexico, Central American and South America combined is not significant to the future of the species. What is significant is whether US borderlands have a breeding population and thus could play a role in keeping the species going. The last four jaguars found in Arizona have all been males. There are certain interests that do not want AGFD involved with jaguars, nor do they want further scientific investigation of jaguars along the border. What they want is to use the Endangered Species Act to control land use and activities there. When Macho B first came to our attention, wildlife biologists wanted to capture and collar it in the hope that the timing and duration of its movements could reveal whether and where it had a lady friend. They encountered fierce opposition from non-profits who did not want that question pursued. I believe it's because they didn't want to risk having it determined that he was simply an itinerant or expatriate male, such as we often see in mountain lions, and that its presence here does not signify a self-sustaining population. These non-profits wanted to quit while they were ahead. The mere prospect of jaguars of southern Arizona gives them enough to put jaguar images on their letterheads, raise funds and clamor for a recovery zone with all its attendant restrictions. USFWS should attempt to capture and collar this animal. If it dies, so be it. It's the animal welfare enthusiast who worries about one animal. True conservationists and ecologists concern themselves with entire species. Whether there is a breeding population near the border should be the basis for whether USFWS establishes a "Jaguary Recovery Zone" there. The agency is presently considering doing just that, and in my opinion their decision should hinge on whether they can locate a female near the border. If not, jaguar recovery along the border is merely an illusion and a hoax. And as noted jaguar expert Alan Rabinowitz has said, establishing a jaguary recovery zone in an area of the US that offers no hope of contributing to recovery can actually hurt the jaguar's future by diverting funds and misleading people into thinking the species is being helped when it really isn't. It is neither fair nor prudent for sportsmen to hammer on AGFD for the death of the last jaguar. They were tricked by a subcontractor and lied to by an employee, and some bad luck was involved as well. Sportsmen need to keep their heads in the game and watch where this thing is going.

What should chiefly concern us are the additional wilderness areas. Some of the groups pushing these designations are the same ones that have successfully sued Az Game & Fish, US Fish & Wildlife and the land management agencies to stop providing wildlife waters and lion population reductions to aid our struggling bighorn sheep herds. Wilderness activists oppose active management of wildlife and regularly use the courts to advance their agenda. Sportsmen should attend these meetings and demand, as a condition for sportsmen's support, exemptions from the Wilderness Act for any and all acivities aimed at benefiting wildlife. The wilderness lobby has been approached with this idea before and has refused to accept it. They want to be able to sue to stop any activities they disagree with, and they disagree with a lot of the things our wildlife biologists sometimes believe are necessary. It is extremely difficult to manage wildlife in areas governed by the Wilderness Act. Wilderness is a socio-political construct, not a biological one, and the wilderness lobby is politically driven. Don't believe what they tell you about wilderness designations being good for wildlife or that you will continue to have reasonable access for sheep and deer hunting in once the designation is made. If we want our grandchildren to enjoy what we've been enjoying in Arizona's outdoors, we need to fight this proposal and win.

Big Brown, I don't know where you plan to hunt - 36B is a big unit with whitetail spread over most of it - but one place that should be generally safe is near the Border Patrol command center (or whatever it is) between the border and the southern edge of Buenos Aires wildlife refuge. I don't think you'd have any trouble within a quarter mile or so of that facility.

Can't tell you how excited I am to see someone else starting this thread on public lands access and so many participating. I've focused on this subject for some time now and here's some basic information some might not already know. Condemning land for public roadways - State, county and federal agencies have the legal authority to do this, but it's very controversial and you'll never see them do it for recreational opportunities. They'll do it for developments and highway projects, but not just so someone can go hunting or birdwatching. Public access provisions for grazing lessees - At the federal level, the written lease agreement grants the forest service (and probably BLM too, although I don't know as much about them) access to cross the lessee's private property for purposes associated with the agency's administration of the grazing lease. For any other purpose involving wildlife, timber harvest, mineral extraction, monitoring forest conditions unrelated to grazing or recreational issues, the federal agency has no legal right to cross the private land of a grazing lessee without permission, and permission can be denied. In actuality, that does happen. As a law enforcement agency, AGFD can go anywhere it wants when investigating a possible crime, but AGFD can't cross private land without permission just to survey the antelope or deer. Under Gov. Hull the commission proposed inserting provisions in all state grazing leases that would allow the public access across the leaseholder's private property to reach state trust land. The governor's administration refused to support it and the idea died. Programs for conservation/access easements - These do work in some cases, but don't be fooled by all the brochures and glowing PR about the program. While the sportsmen's access program has been going on, we've been steadily losing more access. Some landowners simply aren't interested. Who is a landowner? We tend to think of landowners as ranchers, but much of the private land blocking access to the national forest/BLM lands/state trust lands is actually owned by investment banks, developers, mines, out-of-state owners and commercial entities who simply make it a policy to lock gates as soon as they acquire property and don't give it a second thought. Bad sportsmen behavior as a cause of locked gates. Yes, it's a big factor, but it's also a smokescreen in many cases. With no legal guidelines in place, each landowner is free to decide how much impact is tolerable. Some want to be good citizens and will accept a certain amount of damage, perhaps recognizing that their low public lands grazing fees partly reflect the expectation that they'll share the land with the public, but others lock gates over the slightest excuse. There are several instances of landowners having vast portions of federal lands as private hunting preserves for themselves, their friends and family, and business associates, not to mention hunting guides who contract with them for exclusive access to federal lands. Gated subdivisions and ranchette communities can demand higher selling prices for exclusive federal lands access for residents only. We all pay the taxes to administer the lands, but they get the benefits. My solutions: Federal government offers to pay willing sellers for permanent right of way. Unfortunately, this is a poor time to suggest government expenditure, but frankly I consider the federal government to have an interest in facilitating the public's access to the lands it holds in trust for all of us. Access to federal land boundaries is an important component that is missing from our nation's public lands program. There are limits to how effective this would be since wealthy hobby ranchers and big commercial outfits probably wouldn't find the money attractive enough, but some of the smaller independent ranchers who are struggling would be grateful for the opportunity. At the state level, grazing leases should require access across the lessees private land, subject to certain conditions including a sign-in kiosks and perhaps brief periods when the ranch is closed for a specific reason following notice given to AGFD and the state land dept. This law would be very tough to get passed because ranchers would fight it, and much of the public, including hunters, is under-informed and confused about the subject. We need to pass a constitutional amendment allowing specific land swaps by ballot initiative. This hasn't worked in the past because the public doesn't trust land swaps and does not understand the need for them. First we would need a public education offensive on this subject. For big companies such as mines and solar power plants, we need to impress upon them that it's in their interest to maintain good relations with the community where they're situated. We could even sweeten the pot with property tax breaks for good land stewardship PLUS controlled public access. Again, I can't tellyou how pleased I am to see this subject on this forum. I'm sure there are folks in AGFD, BLM and the forest service who share my sentiments.

OK, I'll bite. What's a "non-burro" Coues? And is there such a thing as a "burro" Coues?

Bill, There's a group in Tucson that's doing exactly what you suggest, although we haven't exactly set the world on fire. We meet every two months at the Game & Fish Region V office. We have representatives from the following: Southern Arizona Hiking Club. This one is very important, and their president is very active with us. Cochise County Trails Association. Similar to SAHC except in Cochise County. Tucson Rough Riders - 4WD club. A Tucson equestrian club I can't recall the name of. Hunters. We had a mountain biker and a guy from a mineral prospecting organization show up, but they didn't stick. Green Valley Hiking Club can't seem to get a representative to our meetings even though they have members who have expressed interest, and they problems with access just like the rest of us. The name of the group is Arizona Public Lands Access Coalition (AZPLAC). We elected not to have the group speak as a united voice but instead to carry information back to our respective groups, so you won't see letters or hear public presentations from AZPLAC. This way bodies like the G&F commission, state land dept., forest service and BLM getting multiple letters instead of just one, and we don't have to negotiate wording among the various groups. We weigh in on national forest plans, travel management, wilderness designations, Pima County conservation lands and so on. Southern Arizona is the poster child for a growing national problem. At the national level, there's a coalition that's working on "Keeping Public Lands Public." It includes the NRA, Nat. Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited and about 40 other groups. I'm hoping they will continue being active and get something accomplished at the federal level. They managed to get a bill that would have provided a pot of money to buy permanent easements through private ranches. Unfortunately, that effort got rolled into a larger bill that has no chance of passing, so they'll need to try again. Here in southern Arizona, more than 2/3 of the roads leading into Coronado National Forest cross private lands that can be blocked by ranchers, developers, mine owners or whoever owns the land. We're gradually being crowded into those areas where there is still access while much of our public lands become inaccessible to the public and instead serve as private playgrounds for landowners and their families, friends and business associates, or for guides contracting with the landower who controls the access to the public lands beyond his gate. And someone's earlier comment about law enforcement officers getting to hunt where the general public can't is no joke. It's happening.

I'd like to attack the problem that way too, but so far neither the state nor the federal govt is willing to make public access a condition for grazing permits. The game and fish commission tried to get this accomplished for state trust land permits under Gov. Hull, but her administration refused to support it. People in the forest service have tried to do the same thing with federal grazing leases but the agency's top management refuses to go along with it. Lease agreements stipulate that lessees must allow access to forest service employees for purposes related to administering the grazing lease, but not for anything else. Some leaseholders only let forest service personnel in for reasons related to the grazing lease, while denying access to forest service employees working on wildlife, recreation, mineral or other issues. Some of us tried getting something started in the legislature a couple of years ago, but nobody understood it, including some of the lobbyists for utilities and other recreation groups. The horseback riders opposed it, saying they would prefer to cut deals with individual ranchers rather than improve access for the entire public. It's very easy for landowners to make it look like big government is pushing them around and trampling on their property rights, and they do whatever it takes to make that argument, including the outright lie and false accusations of criminal wrongdoing against officials trying to perform their duty to the public and stop the theft of public lands by private parties. These are public lands ranchers, which means they must share the land with other users under the multiple use concept. That's one reason why they pay less per acre for grazing fees than on private grazing land. Meanwhile, your license and tag money is being used to do "habitat" improvements on lands leased by the very ranchers who don't allow you access to your public lands. How does everyone feel about that?

I've tried taking this issue on but haven't been able to get a lot of other hunters excited about it. Seems like hunters get upset when this happens but go on about their business once they find another place to hunt. There are some pretty big names who have been taking advantage of their official positions to hunt where the rest of us can't. Meanwhile the problem is getting worse all the time. Now more closures are on the horizon in Unit 32. It's just going to keep on getting worse until the peasants pick up the pitchforks and storm the capitol. Here's an idea. How about going to Arizona Sportsmen for Wildlife and asking for a law that says there can be no hunting on any public lands that aren't open to the general public, and that any federal, state or local government employee or appointed official caught hunting on public land that is not generally open to ALL of the public is guilty of a misdemeanor, and that conviction is grounds for dismissal or removal from office for any appointed or elected official of the state. And why AzSFW? Because they're the big dog sportsmen's organization that represents hunters in this state. There are some other efforts going on nationally with respect to public access to public lands, but at the state legislature and with the commission, where things can be made to happen fast, AzSFW is the horse to ride.