Help choose next G&F Commissioner

[natureboyfloyd]

Missed the meeting due to work...

Keep the thread going with your thoughts for many of us new to Arizona; I am here only 6 years (love it).

Wilderness designations...exactly what is the issue? I get the Grijalva Freedom Trail (Tucomcari Wild.) problem down south, but many of us newbies could learn from your thoughts.

 

Thanks

Natureboy

[billrquimby]

If he is not kidding we should get the tar and feathers

 

Agreed! I'll bring the brush, tar and several old down pillows, if that's the case.

 

Bill Quimby

 

 

 

[audsley]

OK, I was just yankin' on you guys. And yes, also punishing those who didn't show up and didn't have a good excuse. Some Hernbrode supporters actually drove all the way down here from Mesa. Health issues are understandable, although frankly there were moments last night when I'd rather have been getting my foot operated on than hearing some of the things I was hearing.

 

I'm not sure I'm supposed to disclose the voting results. Let's just say some did better than others, but I think most who attended would agree that we have some excellent prospects.

 

Two didn't show due to prior commitments. Don Deybus was working the polls on election day and veterinarian Ted Noone was in Las Cruces. We don't know much about Deybus. Noone is a hunter, does some ranching around Arivaca. A source I trust knows him and likes him, but we didn't get to meet him and take his measure.

 

Harris, the Sahuarita police chief, believes he can perform the commissioner's duties while working a full time job, although he plans to retire in three years and would have his final two years free. Same with Greg Lucero, who is County Administrator for Santa Cruz County (Nogales.) Jack Williams and Bob Hernbrode are fully retired.

 

John Harris is a past president of ADBSS (late 80s, I believe) and has been involved with various other sportsmen's conservation groups including FNAWS (now the Wild Sheep Society). He was among those who put on the first RMEF banquet in Tucson. Harris has been more involved with these kinds of groups than any of the others. Hunts with every legal weapon including muzzleloader and bow. Was born in Wyoming, still has ties there and goes there to hunt. Cited his experience in dealing with elected officials as police chief and head of police associations. Familiar with budgets. Sees urban encroachment as a major concern. Would like to see wildcat shooting eliminated in some places such as Redington Pass. Believes hunters have the right to a safe border environment. On predator management cites Jim Heffelfinger's book Deer of the Southwest and believes predator control efforts should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

 

Jack Williams, who was Graham County's attorney for 17 years, is an avid Coues hunter who often lurks on this forum but seldom posts. He's also an avid fly fisherman and travels out of state to do it. In his lifetime he's taken about 40 Coues including 3 over 100 points. He has grown sons who hunt and grandkids who are just starting in the outdoors. Always carries a lion tag and has taken two. Cited his experience prosecuting wildlife cases, serving on Cochise County's public lands issues committee, and a public lands access committee. Before becoming Graham County attorney, he served on Graham County's planning and zoning commission and thus is knowledgeable about land use law, property rights and similar issues related to hunter access. He believes major challenges facing us today include hunter access (a large and growing problem in southern Arizona), predator management, and current Grijalva-sponsored legislation backed by horse lovers that would allow feral horses and burros to run any and everywhere on BLM lands and national forests. He believes we need to broaden the funding base for wildlife management and recruit and retain more hunters.

 

Greg Lucero is an avid Coues hunter and guide, and has hunted all over the state. As a U of A student he worked summers for the forest service in Coronado and Apache-Sitgreaves. He's been a V.P. in an engineering firm in Mesa. Is familiar with finances and budgets. Applied to be southern Arizona's commissioner five years ago but was blocked by Tucson's environmentalists, who had considerable influence with Napolitano. That experience sobered him with the realization that the enviros are far better organized and more politically savvy than sportsmen. He sees apathy among sportsmen as one of our major problems. Would like to see performance-based management applied to Game & Fish. Recognizes access as another major problem. As a county administrator, he's especially aware of subdivision approval processes and advised that hunters pay attention to new developments to make sure new subdivisions don't block historic access routes to public lands.

 

Unlike the others, who were telling us what they stand for and would do, Bob Hernbrode has been showing us for four and half years and his record should speak louder than anything said in front of an audience largely comprised of trophy hunters. Nevertheless, he made some interesting statements that bear reporting. He was the only applicant who favors wolf reintroduction. However, he believes efforts in Arizona and New Mexico will not be the key to whether the Mexican wolf survives as a species. He believes the wolf's future will be determined in Mexico where a similar reintroduction effort is underway. On predator management, he believes coyote reductions may be appropriate in some situations but only after research in a specific area has shown that coyotes have been suppressing deer or antelope populations by preying on fawns. He now believes that was the case with sheep on the Kofa and supports removal of offending lions there. He believes predator management includes conservation and recovery of predators, as well control where research indicates control is needed. He is especially focused on hunter retention and recruitment. Believes ATVs have no place in hunting.

 

All applicants except Hernbrode opposed the wolf reintroduction. All applicants except Herbrode opposed prairie dog reintroductions. Williams felt the money spent on prairie dogs could be better spent for other purposes. Hernbrode believes PDs are an important prey species for raptors, ferrets and other predators and should be returned to the eco-system.

 

Harris and Williams are particularly concerned about the potential for raids on Game & Fish funds by a legislature desperate to solve its budget problems. Williams believes the Heritage Fund is especially vulnerable to raiding even though the voters stated their intentions for those monies when the Act was passed.

 

Only one applicant stepped on a land mine. In discussing the need for new tools to gain hunter access, Lucero made passing mention of landowner tags. Someone asked if he would consider approving landowner tags and he said yes, he would. Apparently no one ever told him that speaking favorably about landowner tags is very nearly a hanging offense in Arizona, at least among hunters. The other three quickly condemned the idea. Hernbrode said he'd seen it introduced in Colorado and that it has been nothing but headaches since inception.

 

The current commission is made up of 2 Republicans, 2 Democrats and one independent, which means Gov. Brewer can appoint from any party this time. (By statute, no more than 3 commissioners can be from the same party.) Of the six applicants, only one is a registered Republican. That would be Ted Noone. Deybus, Harris and Williams are registered as independents. Hernbrode and Lucero are Democrats.

 

For what it's worth, I would not rule out Lucero in the future. If our next governor is Terry Goddard or some other Democrat, and if that governor decides the commission needs a Democrat from southern Arizona, I would personally drive down to Nogales and try to persuade him to apply again. I'd just want to make sure he knew why Arizona's hunters are adamantly opposed to landowner tags. Could be he just hasn't thought about it much. Believe me, if the Dems get the governorship again, I'd be praying for someone like Lucero.

 

That's my summary. It's only a fraction of what was said over two and half hours, and the applicants or any friends of theirs are certainly welcome to supplement or correct if necessary what I've said here.

 

The sportsmen turnout was somewhere around 35. Should have been 75.

 

 

 

 

 

[cmc]

Audsley - I would only add a few things.

 

John Harris - in regards to 'eliminate wildcat shooting' he spoke of being in favor of building more shooting ranges. Not wanting to just shut down the shooting but develop organized shooting ranges not just there but lots of places..

 

During the land owner tag question Bob made mention of a few concepts to look at. One was possibly giving tags to only the land owner, non transferable, not for resale. Another one in my note were to not give them the tags but the the equivalent face value dollars of those tags but not tags so they can resale.

 

Bob did bring to light an interesting point when talking about urban sprawl taking up public grounds but his topic was about all the green energy initiatives in our state. He mentioned that the BLM has recieved permits looking at 77K acres of solar farms if my notes were right. Couldn't that be done on roof tops around the cities so you don't have to back haul the power to the city?

 

All in all a great recap Audsley. Well done.

 

cmc

[.270]

i got up at 430 for this? i guess i'm glad the lion woman was a joke. i wasn't there so maybe i don't have much call to crtiique. i have good reasons for not being there, but i still wasn't there. but i have a combo license and that gives me at least some right. everyone of these guys have some glaring problems. here's my take. hernbrode sounds like a antihunter through and through. he's the last guy outta this bunch that oughta be on there. he has an agenda, pure and simple. and it is contrary to what we know is right.

 

deybus and noone didn't even bother to show up. sounds like a lack o' commitment to me.

 

john harris sounds like a coyote lover. predator control on a case by case basis ain't good. especially when we have some real predator problems. i don't like the "wildcat" statement at all. bobcats don't bother much of anything. solitary, not a bunch of em, eat what they kill. but lions is another deal. i'm against anything that further limits the ability to shoot lions. others should be too.

 

williams sounds like a hunter and that maybe he has his ducks in a row. maybe. being from graham county originally i remember some cases he really screwed up as county attorney and that makes me a little cool on him.

 

lucero sounds interesting, but like the others in the meeting, i have some real concerns about land owner tags. if this wasn't something that he didn't want, he wouldn't have admitted to it there. this must be something he's thought a lot about.

 

hermbrode needs gone. no need for a hugger on the commission. these other guys have some real holes in their views.

 

here's my take. the wolf program has been a complete and total failure. from the start. no pure wolves to start with. the curs they have are pen raised. they're done nothing but decimate the elk herd and cause grief to everyone that has anything to do with the land in the areas they've been realeased. time stop the charade and quit supporting it. they're in it to the tune of over $1 million per wolf. the mexican wolf is extinct and needs to be buried.

 

i don't see any reason for wholesale shooting of lions. the kofa lion deal was handled in a horrible way tho. echos of sabino canyon. they should have got some hound men to go in there several years ago and take care of the problem. i doubt that the kofa sheep will ever recover from the damage. but i think that taking away lion season for the summer is devisive and was done to benefit a few lion hunters, at the expense of the other 99% of the guys with hunting licesences. anyone that wants to limit lion hunting in anyway isn't good for us. with the few guys with hounds in this state and the lions that get shot just because they saw them and the case by case stuff the gov't trappers do, i think we can do a fairly good job of keeping lions from doing much damage. again, no room for anyone that wants to limit lion hunting.

 

landowner tags aren't the answer for anything. landowner tags take away from public tags. i'd rather have nonresidents have free rein like uso wanted. the only landowner tags that are very marketable are bull elk and maybe kaibab deer. problem is there is very little private land where these 2 animals live. landowner tags in places like new mex and colorado are used to open up private land to everyone. some units in colorado are 100% private land. not far from that in new mex in a lotta places. too bad it's come to that, but it has. Az. is completely different. outside the southeast part of the state, their aren't many vast tracts of private land. i don't see how landowner tags are any benefit to anyone but a few people. worries that one of these guys thinks enough about it to put it out on the table.

 

if you couild frankenstien these guys and take the best parts and put em together you might come up a with a pretty good commissioner. but i see some real glaring character faults here. audsley is visibly upset at the lack of participation by sportsmen who attended. and he's justified. but the 2 guys that didn't even bother to show up just need to be scratched off the list. don't care how good they are. they shoulda been there. hernbrode showed his spots real well. get rid of him. don't even consider that joker. he's bad for Az. that leaves 3 guys. which one is best? i don't know. but i don't see any of the 3 three being what i think we need.

 

oh yeah, and if anybody knows audsley's address, i want it. his house needs egged. woman from the mlf. that was pretty good. you have some potential. Lark.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CouesWhitetail]

Thanks to those who attended the meeting and to those keeping this discussion interesting. I very much appreciate your posts even though I haven't been taking part in the thread. I just had some time today to read it. Thanks!

 

 

Amanda

[dave]

What was meant by "wildcat shooting" is those that go target shooting, blowing up beer bottles, cans, refrigerators etc. leaving their garbage behind and had nothing to do with bobcats.

The "case by case predator management" is not about what the public legally does with predators, it is about action the Department would take. Examples would be arial gunning of coyotes prior to antelope fawning, taking out five or six lions from the Kofa before they eat half of the sheep there. It is possitive action not negative non-reaction.

 

Larry, did you mention John Harris was a hunter?

 

"John Harris is a past president of ADBSS (late 80s, I believe) and has been involved with various other sportsmen's conservation groups including FNAWS (now the Wild Sheep Society). He was among those who put on the first RMEF banquet in Tucson. Harris has been more involved with these kinds of groups than any of the others. Hunts with every legal weapon including muzzleloader and bow. Was born in Wyoming, still has ties there and goes there to hunt. Cited his experience in dealing with elected officials as police chief and head of police associations. Familiar with budgets. Sees urban encroachment as a major concern. Would like to see wildcat shooting eliminated in some places such as Redington Pass. Believes hunters have the right to a safe border environment. On predator management cites Jim Heffelfinger's book Deer of the Southwest and believes predator control efforts should be considered on a case-by-case basis."

[dave]

Heck, I should change my handle to "Thread Killer".

[Simple Hunter]

Lark/Audsley:

 

What specifically do you not like about landowner tags? You both mention that hunters are adamantly opposed to them but didn't give specifics why. I have never heard of any discussions on this site before and of all the hunters I know, we don't discuss them. When asked to think outside of the box, how can you rule out landowner tags?

 

I don't really have an opinion on them, other than initially it seems like a tool in the shed that could be used. Why do you automatically assume that landowner tags have to be issued like they were in New Mexico or Colorado. Why can't Arizona have its own unique system?

 

As a private property owner that has frontage on Forest Service property, what kind of incentive are you going to give me to entice me to open my property up to the public?

 

I am going to stay open minded on this one until I have been given sufficient reason to oppose them. I don't think Lucero should be grilled for addressing a problematic issue of Access. What were the other candidates solutions to Hunter Access?

[.270]

first off, compared to other states especially, Az doesn't have much private land. particularly in areas that have very many animals. in the past, every time landowner tags have been mentioned, they weren't really going to be landowner tags, anyway. folks with leased public land wanted tags for compensation for what the leasee percieved as losses they were incurring on public land. the other tax payers in the state didn't much want to subsidize folks that they already felt were getting a pretty good deal anyway. seems like the state agreed in concept with the cattlemen association at one time to work out some sort of permit deal, for public land lesee's too. as i recall, there was a near riot over the deal, and the state decided to withdraw from the negotiations. in states like colorado and new mex that have vast tracts of private land, the landowner permit programs are supposed to entice the landowners to open up their land to the general public and to make up for whatever losses they may incur because of wildlife being on their private land. there are a lot of cow operations in Az. that are on 100% public land. for a forest service grazing permit you have to own a minimum of 10 acres, in that forest, in a place that is at least in the vicinity of the lease, in order to qualify. most cow operations have very little private land. and most of the few that do have a lot of acres, are in places that don't have a lot of game anyway. as it is now, it's pretty hard to get a premium permit of any kind, in Az. it's getting harder to get any permit, as far as that goes. by giving away even more permits to landowners/leasee's, it would just make it even harder for joe hunter to get drawn. there are a few big clumps of private land in Az. and most of them have made some sort of deal with the azgfd to allow access to at least cross the private land in order to hunt public land, and a lot of the landowners have agreed to allow hunters access to their property. without having to give them landowner permits. there are several programs in place that work with them. i don't know the names of the programs off hand tho. as for as myself, i hate the idea of landowner tags in a state with so little private land. and in a state with so few permits available anyway. i've never had a bighorn permit in Az. and have had only one pronghorn tag, in over 40 years of applying. and that was 15 years ago. if we give away any of the few permits that are available, it isn't going to make anyone happy other than the guy that gets the tag and the rich non resident that buys it from him. i think most folks think that landowner permits would be like opening pandora's box and would lead to even more loss to joe hunter. there have actually been a couple things the azgfd have done over the years that i agree with, not many, but a couple. one of them is resisting "landowner" permits. that vast majority of the dollars that run the azgfd comes from permits and taxes paid by the little guys. (us) i'm against any program that is going to take away anymore opportunity from us little guys. i don't even like the auction tags. they should just raffle off 2 tags, instead of auction one and raffle one. but that's me. i have to look with a real jaundiced eye at anyone that thinks landowner permits are a good thing. they probably have something other than wildlife conservation in mind. you can decide what that might be. Lark.

[Simple Hunter]

Lark,

 

I do believe we have an access issue down south. Development continues to encroach on former access routes to forest, state, and BLM land. What happens is not a complete lack of access to the unit, but it crowds the unit where access is good and leaves the non-accessible portion of the unit underhunted. People are tired of the hunter densities being greater than the deer densities and much of it is due to lack of access.

 

Matt Walton, with Game and Fish is doing a great job with the landowner relations program, but even he acknowledges the access issue down south is getting bad. I wonder what his opinion on landowner tags are.

 

I personally don't care if a landowner gets a couple of deer tags per annum if he opens up hunting to new parts of the unit. Down south we wouldn't give away elk and pronghorn tags, just deer.

 

Another option that should be considered for additional hunter access is opening our National Parks to hunting. Imagine the revenue the state would generate if it could sell tags on National Parks. They could single handedly bring the State of Arizona out of the budget crisis.

 

 

[.270]

if you give one guy a landowner tag, you gotta give em to em all. if you selectivey gave out landowner tags, the guys that were allowing access would shut it down immediatley. i don't see a way that i could support landowner tags in Az. too little private land, too few permits to start with. i know there are access issues in some places. but i don't see landowner tags being any kind of viable answer.

 

hunting on national parks? that's a new one on me. personally, i think there should be places that hunting isn't allowed. national parks are a perfect place for that. sit down and think about it for a minute. can you imagine what kind of nuclear blast it would cause if all the sudden you could shoot bambi in yellowstone or next to el tovar or in yosemite? there could be a fair amount of money made by having a mule deer hunt on the north rim, for a couple years. but you couldn't bring in enough to even make a dent in even our states economy. we're talking billions. billions is a bunch. you couldn't get even a fraction of a billion dollars out of it. you might sell a few pronghorn tags in the petrified forest, yoo. but you're never going to make enough to cover for the damage that would be done to hunting in general. it'd cause an anti hunting backlash like none we've ever seen. we need to put our efforts into not losing anymore than we have now. not into trying to get access to national parks. it ain't gonna happen. as hunters, we are so much in the minority in this country that if you think about it, it's wonder hunting has never been outlawed all together. we don't need to cause ourselves anymore problems. Lark.