Eliminate Auction tags entirely?

[elkaholic]

geeze -- you mean it is about money- i sell the tags - i buy the tags - i get my money back from the tags .

 

plus i get to hunt anytime and place and take what i want - the biggest and the best of course . what a novel idea

 

 

no greed - control or corruption involved - just good business practice

 

eliminate the middle man and save big bucks in the process.

 

All in the name of wildlife- conservation - habitat - youth programs etc.

 

who would object to that. i'm doing my part!

 

plus a tax write-off -

 

who says money isn't everything

[bonuspointjohn]

I have been on the AZ Super Big Game Raffle since the inception, courtesy of Pete Cimellaro, who sold the idea to the commission and the various critter groups. The costs for the raffle are very substantial, since getting the word out is pricey when you mail out over 50,000 pieces all over the U.S. and Canada. Under mandates from the legislation, every penny goes to the AZGFD. Proposing to eliminate any auction tags would have a minor impact, because those who do want to purchase an auction tag can go to any other state and do so. If someone buys a raffle ticket, it is not tax deductible. If you purchase an auction tag, The "fair market " price for the tag is the same as you and I pay. The advice from a good tax consultant is necessary for someone who is claiming the difference from an auction tag selling price versus the listed price for a tag. The Raffle has had people who have invested significant dollars into a particular hunt and they have not been drawn as the winner... so the theory of blowing money for a raffle maybe versus a sure thing in Auction does not have merit. The HPC process has been very successful for those who have been involved. The question those who have worked on the HPC still have is why our tag numbers continue to drop after giving the department over $1,00,000.00 each year through our efforts. Some will say water... some will say food... the real answer is predation... with a side of water....The bigger picture that a lot of sportsmen are not seeing is the marketing ploy by some very bright outfitters who will approach a rancher, offer to pay him say $20,000 per year and then guarantee that only his supervised hunters will be on the checkerboard land.... and not the great unwashed masses that will litter, cut fences, create their own roads and generally cause havoc. That said outfitter will then bring in 10 -15 hunters who each pay a $5,000 access fee as well as the going guiding fee. Everyone comes out happy... The rancher has a source to go to if there are problems, he gets his cash. The outfitter has a clear open area for his clients and the hunter has little if any competition on some public / private land. This has been going on for a few years and it appears to work well. How do those who claim to be "joe average" plan on competing against that in the future?.....

[40-year-AZ-hunter]

The bigger picture that a lot of sportsmen are not seeing is the marketing ploy by some very bright outfitters who will approach a rancher, offer to pay him say $20,000 per year and then guarantee that only his supervised hunters will be on the checkerboard land.... and not the great unwashed masses that will litter, cut fences, create their own roads and generally cause havoc. That said outfitter will then bring in 10 -15 hunters who each pay a $5,000 access fee as well as the going guiding fee. Everyone comes out happy... The rancher has a source to go to if there are problems, he gets his cash. The outfitter has a clear open area for his clients and the hunter has little if any competition on some public / private land. This has been going on for a few years and it appears to work well. How do those who claim to be "joe average" plan on competing against that in the future?.....

 

I believe that the senario you paint of checkerboarded land is rare compared to all the public land in Arizona. We are not Utah where private land is plentiful. The rancher can only prevent access to the private portions and that requires extensive posting of the bounderies of each square in the checkerboard. Now, they can close roads on private land, but most stretches of checkerboard are not that far from edge to edge. Most of the checkerboard land along I40/railroad is open to anyone that signs in.

 

I do have a solution for the "average joe" tho if it ever gets to be a bigger problem. Assuming the Commission is not in the pocket of some special interest group (wink, wink), the Commission can redraw unit bounderies and make separate units out of the areas that don't allow access. Then they merely have to cut the number of permits in those units to zero. Much like they did in all of 19b for antelope a couple years ago, but go further and redefine the unit bounderies to eliminate hunting all together on the offenders lands.

 

Bruce

[krp]

John this is not colo and just less than 80% of Az, that's not rez, is public land. Include the metro areas in the 20% private and you are talking about a very small area of huntable private land. Access to public land blocked by private should be a state or federal resolved issue, that they won't seek compliance is just a reflection of our country's demise into socialism. Anyway, how many of these private areas that will hold 10 to 15 hunters are in the state? so we can have a better understanding of the cost to benefit ratio is if we have to pay ransom. How many can be accessed by foot same as a wilderness? how much of the 20% minus the metro hold huntable populations? You can't just talk generally, you have to bring some statistics.

 

Then how is spending HPC monies on ransom going to increase the number of tags available?

 

And for those in favor of these new tags and expo... how will that make a difference?

 

Kent

[Bugler]

I was wondering when it was going to get to the pay the rancher for land access seeing how bj mentioned he's hot a "few" head of livestock . I thought about it when he posted it.

I tell you how I get around it. If the land is checkerboard and I want to hunt it I do . Maybe not trespass on the private which is usually a very small portion of bottom land etc so a great map is something to have. Your not gonna keep me off land that belongs to the public that you lease to graze then sell off livestock to make money .

That being said I've had my share of raising beef in az and nm. Winter here summer there. But what belongs to the citizen needs to stay with the citizen.

Mr. Mears who in your family owns a ranch or who are you good friends with that does? You still havnt answered my question about Hamberlin.

[elkaholic]

********....The bigger picture that a lot of sportsmen are not seeing is the marketing ploy by some very bright outfitters who will approach a rancher, offer to pay him say $20,000 per year and then guarantee that only his supervised hunters will be on the checkerboard land.... and not the great unwashed masses that will litter, cut fences, create their own roads and generally cause havoc.*******

 

 

bpj--

 

 

how would revenue from auction tags/banquets going to prevent this?

 

oh yeah azsfw has a secret plan - they got all the answers but no facts to back up anything they say.

 

 

when you take wildlife out of the control of G&F and put in into the hands of the legislators or private groups - guess what

 

you just caused exacatlly what you say you want to prevent !!

 

 

I guess we are now - how did you say it!!

 

unwashed masses that will litter, cut fences, create their own roads and generally cause havoc.

[donniedent]

BPJ,

 

The predator control issue you mentioned is a big part of the problem. But in my opinion it is our problem as sportsmen to take care of. The dept can create a good environment for predator control but its our responsability to do the predator control. Its not the dept's fault that we can no longer trap, its our own fault. Now, if we are looking to the dept for arial shoots, we need to share the financial burden of that. This is our state and our wildlife, its our responsability to take care of it.

 

As to the checkerboard question. There's not a problem there. This isn't eastern Wyoming or eastern Colorado. We have relativley small areas of private land here. I believe in landowner rights. We have great landowners in this state overall. A lot of our tag money goes to keeping access open to private land. If the majority of landowners do decide, which I don't think they will, to do what you mentioned with outfitters, then we'll croos that bridge when we come to it. There will be issues like these as long as there is game to hunt, that's why we stay engaged in the process and teach our children to.

 

Donnie

[audsley]

From Bonus Pt. John:

 

"The bigger picture that a lot of sportsmen are not seeing is the marketing ploy by some very bright outfitters who will approach a rancher, offer to pay him say $20,000 per year and then guarantee that only his supervised hunters will be on the checkerboard land.... and not the great unwashed masses that will litter, cut fences, create their own roads and generally cause havoc. That said outfitter will then bring in 10 -15 hunters who each pay a $5,000 access fee as well as the going guiding fee. Everyone comes out happy... The rancher has a source to go to if there are problems, he gets his cash. The outfitter has a clear open area for his clients and the hunter has little if any competition on some public / private land. This has been going on for a few years and it appears to work well. How do those who claim to be "joe average" plan on competing against that in the future?..... "

 

Many of us sportsmen are indeed seeing it John. Now you ask US how WE plan on competing against it in the future. My question would be how does AZSFW, which claims to represents the interests of the state's sportsmen, plan on competing with it? Or is the situation you describe exactly the arrangement AZSFW seeks to promote? You say it's working well. For who? Does AZSFW exist to support the state's sportsmen or to exploit us?

 

AZSFW's persistent narrative that wildlife and hunting can be turned into big business with profits for lots of people wore thin with us a long time ago. When AZSFW first started, sportsmen were reluctant to support it because its organizers had shown what appeared to be sympathy for ranchers' demands for landowner tags. AZSFW denied that and even printed on their brochures that they do not support landowner tags. But when HB2072 was introduced, it contained a provision that would allow our license and tag fees to pay ranchers big bucks to allow only a few hunters through their gates to the public lands beyond. With that kind of arrangement, what rancher would need landowner tags? What HB2072 provided was perfectly tailored for Arizona landowners, whose main leverage is access to public lands: trespass fees instead of landowner tags.

 

Since AZSFW started, I haven't seen them make any serious effort to improve sportsmen's access to public lands, at least not by means that would be acceptable to folks without tens of thousands in disposable income, nor have I seen any effort to support Game & Fish in its struggles with federal land and wildlife agencies or environmentalists. What I've mainly seen is AZSFW working the state capitol to get control of Game & Fish.

 

If you look at the web sites for SFWs in other Western states, you'll see the same message on every one: predator control. Wildlife biologists do not support landscape-level predator eradication because it is not practical and would be prohibitively expensive to do at a level that would be effective, but it makes for good demagoguery to energize a movement of the weak-minded or under-informed.

 

This brings me to Don Peay, who writes the scripts for all these unimaginative but persistent groups including Arizona's: Don Peay says public ownership of wildlife is "socialism" and that wildlife should belong to the landowner. (Do you suppose that in Arizona that would mean the Forest Service, BLM and USFWS?) Don Peay is AZSFW's intellectual leader. Enough said.

[Bugler]

I wonder if the azsfw had any part in the ranch closure last year for the antelope hunt fiasco. I'm just thinking is all. What a good way to orchestrate things if it was involved.

I can't help but think hmm real estat, ranch land, real estate laws, land laws , Alan hamberlin, legislator lobbyist, big money for access. Maybe I'm way off track here just maybe. Or maybe it's the smell in the wind I don't know.

[Bugler]

Need to research hamberlins ties to ranch access and relationships with ranches like the float etc or maybe gilstraps relation donations to legislators that tried to push this.

 

Again a little time on my hands till I go to work and I'm just in my head.