De-publicize, De-glorify and De-monetize Western State Hunting

[Rancho Loco]

Great, now I just have to pick which camp I am in;
1. Get off my lawn
2. I like hunting
3. Dink shooter
4. Van camper

Need to add: Wears a flattie and drives TRD Pro with 6 plates.

 

[Ben Lamb]

My experience with the Sublette County boom greatly changed they way I felt about O&G, to the point that I editorialized against any new O&G projects in Sublette County after the Anticline. The change for me come not only from the environmental impact to the desert and air quality, but also my home town.

One thing none of use realized when these projects were approve in the late 1990s and early 2000s was the impact to deer. I certainly don't recall the G&F taking a strong stand against approval.

However, if want to continue to look into me for inconsistency, you should be able to find plenty.

Fair enough. But honestly, there were a hell of a lot of us who did raise these issues, and we were subsequently ignored & vilified for it. WGFD didn't raise much of a stink, because they were politically limited in what they were allowed to say. I was in those meetings, and I know what the local field office bios thought, as well as the Cheyenne HQ folks thought.

I sat in a meeting with PAW & WGFD where they essentially line item vetoed anything in planning documents that they disagreed with. But Pinedale got a new library and pollution that rivals LA.

 

[rwc101]

I was probably a dick by piling on (and I can't believe I missed the meeting on One Shot), but the shirts are still cringe.

 

[dgc1963]

@dgc1963 thats a nice buck sir

Thanks Blazer worked hard for it, my 1st and only mule deer happy as a pig in slop with it and folks on here help us eastern guys get it done out their
Hell if my name would ever get pulled for a sheep or goat Id be lost living in Pa I cant fly out 10 times to scout I mean I do have to work a bit too , but I know some folks on here would help one guy already is, and thats priceless, this community has a lot of value IMO

 

[BlazerBeam]

You are just butt hurt because you followed, subscribed, tagged, commented, and featured that film on you social media story and still did not win the marsupial bino harness..

That’s 16 minutes of my life I won’t get back, so you can GFY on top of not winning that prize.

"GFY"???? really, man?

 

[BlazerBeam]

Thanks Blazer worked hard for it, my 1st and only mule deer happy as a pig in slop with it and folks on here help us eastern guys get it done out their
Hell if my name would ever get pulled for a sheep or goat Id be lost living in Pa I cant fly out 10 times to scout I mean I do have to work a bit too , but I know some folks on here would help one guy already is, and thats priceless, this community has a lot of value IMO

yes, I am starting to feel the benefit of it for guys like yourself and the appreciation that certain fellas have for the forum

 

[D_Walt]

View attachment 181156

Does this come in an “extreme hardcore” version?

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

Does this come in an “extreme hardcore” version?

Yes the level of brim flatness determines the extreme meter.
We also have t-shirts for around camp..sleeveless only of course.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Yes the level of brim flatness determines the extreme meter.
We also have t-shirts for around camp..sleeveless only of course.

I'm in.

 

[Hilljackoutlaw]

Yes the level of brim flatness determines the extreme meter.
We also have t-shirts for around camp..sleeveless only of course.

I should add for the forum rules sake. I have nothing to sell and am not selling anything. We just surprised everyone in our elk camp with them one year as a joke and it has stuck ever since.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

yes, I am starting to feel the benefit of it for guys like yourself and the appreciation that certain fellas have for the forum

Yeah, typically pretty awesome community. I got a lot of help on how to rig up tree saddles, scouting for whitetail, resources to find public lands and lands open to the public in ME, NY, VT, NH, PA, and MA, several offers to hunt private, recs on muzzys, shotguns, ammo for both, best ways to deal with checking in deer, beta on places to hunt, etiquette about stands, couple people actually told me spots they had seen deer to try out, outfitters if I wanted to go that way, archery shops, gun shops, meat processors... I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff.

Pretty generous and supportive group.

 

[thebestusernamesaretaken]

Mountain Pursuit didn't develop DDD, but when it came onto our radar we saw it aligned with what we've seen and have been advocating for several years now.

The brutal truth of hunting is that animals suffer and die for the hunter's recreation. Defending this politically is difficult in any environment, but what's happening now via the industry marketing onslaught and social media is this is out there for everyone to see and for anti-hunters to take advantage of. And they are, brilliantly.

The humane society is one of the biggest, most powerful anti-hunting organizations in the US. The humane society also funds dog and cat shelters around the country where dogs and cats are euthanized regularly and by the thousands. So why doesn't the humane society post photos of piles of dead dogs and cats with smiling shelter employees, and videos of dogs and cats being euthanized? Because it's politically stupid.

But this is exactly what hunters and the hunting industry does.

From the hunting industry side - "content" is produced to sell product, memberships, subscriptions, advertising, etc. Overglorification of western-state hunting is done to lure in eastern and midwestern hunters, or new western-state residents, and get them to spend a thousand dollars on camo, a thousand dollars on a new bow or 3 thousand on a new rifle, 1-3 thousand on optics, $600 on a backpack, and on and on. It's not that complicated.

The problem is it's political suicide. Below is MP's position on DDD:


****************


Nation-wide, hunting is a dying tradition in the United States. Hunting's roots lie in rural areas and rural populations, and as the nation urbanizes, fewer young people will be introduced to hunting.

While rural America has been slowly dying, the interest in western state hunting has exploded - driven primarily by industry marketing and celebrity hunter self-promotion.

Mountain Pursuit strongly believes in the Depublicize, Deglorify and Demonitize (DDD) movement as it applies to western state hunting. Mountain Pursuit did not begin this movement, but rather found it aligns with many of the concerns and positions we’ve taken since our inception.

De-publicize, De-glorify & De-monetize Western State Hunting
Self-promoting hunters and the hunting industry leverage social media to attract eyeballs, which they quickly monetize via subscriptions, apparel and gear sales, memberships, sponsorships, etc.

Eastern and Midwestern white tail deer hunters and non-hunting newcomers to the west are the primary target audience for the hunting industry marketing and media onslaught. The aim is to extract dollars from this target audience.

Within the hunting industry, a corrupt “circle jerk” of celebrity hunters, hunting movie producers, gear/clothing manufacturers, internet hunting service companies (gohunt.com, etc.), podcasters, and approving mainstream hunting nonprofits stroke each other daily to keep content machine producing, audience growing, and money rolling in.

All hunting TV shows, movies, videos, podcasts and self-promoting celebrity hunters glorify western-state hunting. Hunting by its nature is a controversial activity and its glorified over-promotion will only bring unwanted attention and scrutiny from anti-hunters and non-hunters. This unwanted attention will ultimately increase political opposition to hunting in general, and western-state hunting in particular.

Filmed kill shots and dead animal photos are political suicide for the future of western-state hunting. Glorified, self-promoting hunting content is a direct political threat to the future of hunting in the western-state US.

Unlike the East, Western-state hunting is dependent upon hunting being allowed on federal lands - USFS and BLM. Under current law, it only takes a department rule or a Presidential Executive Order to severely restrict, or even end, hunting on federal lands. Even though the states manage the wildlife, and hunting can be a management tool, state governments cannot dictate to the federal government how to manage activity on federal land. Specifically, federal restriction on hunting on federal land happened during the Obama administration in Alaska, and is currently being proposed by the Biden administration, again in Alaska.

Hunting media increases hype and hunting pressure on western-state public lands. Self-promoting celebrity hunters and the hunting industry value money from new nonresident hunters over maintaining uncrowded, quality hunting experiences for western-state resident hunters.

Hunting at its core is about seeing, not about being seen. Cameras, microphones and film crews violate this true spirit of hunting, increase hunting pressure, and bring hunting unneeded attention and scrutiny from anti-hunters and non hunters.

Mountain Pursuit will fight to make hunting social media posting taboo and to forcefully embarrass/discourage self-promotors from hunting.

This group is Anti non-resident and is another reason why Hunters should think about requesting that lawmakers to revisit the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act. Think about how many representatives the East and Mid West has as compared to the mountain States. If we modify how States receive Federal Funds, then perhaps we non-residents can get a more fair opportunity.

 

[Deleted member 28227]

This group is Anti non-resident and is another reason why Hunters should think about requesting that lawmakers to revisit the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act. Think about how many representatives the East and Mid West has as compared to the mountain States. If we modify how States receive Federal Funds, then perhaps we non-residents can get a more fair opportunity.

Not sure I follow.

 

[cedahm]

This group is Anti non-resident and is another reason why Hunters should think about requesting that lawmakers to revisit the Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act. Think about how many representatives the East and Mid West has as compared to the mountain States. If we modify how States receive Federal Funds, then perhaps we non-residents can get a more fair opportunity.

I am confused, which part of the P-R fund appropriation model would change NR hunting opportunities?

One pager model here: https://www.fws.gov/wsfrprograms/subpages/grantprograms/wr/WR_AppnFormula.pdf

 

[ZMT588]

I can't believe I missed all of this...

 

[thebestusernamesaretaken]

It seems that the root of all of this groups issues are really the perception of non-resident competition in THEIR hunting space. They want to limit the share of the pie that non-residents have in theory to increase theirs. They want to take advantage of the massive amounts of public land available in the West with out interference from the more populated Mid-West or East.

However, I think that the real issue that the Mountain States are experiencing is that more and more people are moving to the lesser populated areas. They have growing pains. I think that, this trend is going to speed up post-covid. In the pre-industrial age, a bunch of folks migrated out West looking for a better life, stopping along the way taking up residence populating the whole of the country. During the the industrial age the rural areas became depopulated as people moved in favor for jobs to the more urban areas. Folks in the Western Mountain States got used to a lot of breathing room.

Now, due to globalization and the digital age; how people work and where they work have changed. Now many in the service and financial industries can really work anywhere there is an internet connection. People are moving from those overpopulated urban areas into the more rural less populated areas, and they are taking with them all their ideas changing those rural areas forever. The focus is of all the hate is on non-resident hunters and digital age awareness but in reality - the Mountain States are getting more and more peopled. It's the same old story really. There seems to be a classification of old residents and new residents wherever I go. There are always up streamers/down streamers and flatlanders no mater the State. My in-laws moved to AZ 30 years ago because HI and CA were too expensive. At that point they were the newcomers. Now they complain about all the new people moving out West as if they are somehow better than the others.

Now to the wildlife act. This is extraordinary controversial because to be honest, I don't know how a vote to change how the Pittman-Robertson excise taxes would go if we brought up this today. Meaning, I'm not sure that folks who buy ammo (majority of the money comes from target shooters), but not hunt, would feel about being taxed for wildlife. But, the more Western resident hunter groups see non-resident hunters as competition rather the appreciated financial windfall that benefits all hunters in the State, the more these types of issues will arise.

Western Mountain States benefit greatly from federal funding for all their wildlife projects. Most of these excise taxes are going to be procured in the more populated areas (those states that don't have large tracks of public land and ELK). Therefore most of these taxes are generated in non-Mountain States but are distributed to those States. Additionally, non-resident hunting fees are generally, several times that of resident hunters and usually account for around half of the income the department takes in.

If 1/3 of a Western States wildlife management budget comes from resident hunter tags, 1/3 from non-resident hunter tag fees and 1/3 comes from excise taxes that were mostly precured in a non-Mountain State; it seems that the funding is absolutely dependent on non-resident hunters who have developed both a love for the wildlife and a love for those wild mountains many of you call home.

We could change how the funding is distributed to go to those States who have a more fair system of distribution of non-resident tags at a reasonable fee based on equitableness in tag fees. Since most of the money come from non-Mountain States doesn't it seem reasonable that the funds go to benefit the those states that provide a adequate opportunity to enjoy that wildlife? Eastern States have more representatives than Western States and therefore influence more votes. They could quietly make amendments to the Act or change it to include other items. Those Eastern State reps could obtain a greater financial benefit for their States smoothing out the distribution of the funds further based on equitable tag issuance and fee structure as they don't overprice or limit tags already. They have a WIFM to do this now. We currently don't have a public advocacy group but this would likely be what they would fight for.

This could ensure that Western Mountain states have a better appreciation for non-resident hunters and would put us all on the same side in a more mutually beneficial role, rather than constantly being pitted up against each other. I feel that hunters really need each other because there are more non-hunters in the U.S. than us. It's not that far fetched that the beautiful Mountain States will become the new East in the not so distant future. Hunters in States with limited big game and public land needs States with abundant big game and public land and vice versa. There will however be conflict until we see each other as equal.

P.S. This is just an opinion and I am prone to being a devils advocate. It's just a talent or curse. We all have our issues don't we?

 

[BlazerBeam]

It's not that far fetched that the beautiful Mountain States will become the new East in the not so distant future.

Holy crap.....don't say that

 

[Deleted member 28227]

It seems that the root of all of this groups issues are really the perception of non-resident competition in THEIR hunting space. They want to limit the share of the pie that non-residents have in theory to increase theirs. They want to take advantage of the massive amounts of public land available in the West with out interference from the more populated Mid-West or East.

However, I think that the real issue that the Mountain States are experiencing is that more and more people are moving to the lesser populated areas. They have growing pains. I think that, this trend is going to speed up post-covid. In the pre-industrial age, a bunch of folks migrated out West looking for a better life, stopping along the way taking up residence populating the whole of the country. During the the industrial age the rural areas became depopulated as people moved in favor for jobs to the more urban areas. Folks in the Western Mountain States got used to a lot of breathing room.

Now, due to globalization and the digital age; how people work and where they work have changed. Now many in the service and financial industries can really work anywhere there is an internet connection. People are moving from those overpopulated urban areas into the more rural less populated areas, and they are taking with them all their ideas changing those rural areas forever. The focus is of all the hate is on non-resident hunters and digital age awareness but in reality - the Mountain States are getting more and more peopled. It's the same old story really. There seems to be a classification of old residents and new residents wherever I go. There are always up streamers/down streamers and flatlanders no mater the State. My in-laws moved to AZ 30 years ago because HI and CA were too expensive. At that point they were the newcomers. Now they complain about all the new people moving out West as if they are somehow better than the others.

Now to the wildlife act. This is extraordinary controversial because to be honest, I don't know how a vote to change how the Pittman-Robertson excise taxes would go if we brought up this today. Meaning, I'm not sure that folks who buy ammo (majority of the money comes from target shooters), but not hunt, would feel about being taxed for wildlife. But, the more Western resident hunter groups see non-resident hunters as competition rather the appreciated financial windfall that benefits all hunters in the State, the more these types of issues will arise.

Western Mountain States benefit greatly from federal funding for all their wildlife projects. Most of these excise taxes are going to be procured in the more populated areas (those states that don't have large tracks of public land and ELK). Therefore most of these taxes are generated in non-Mountain States but are distributed to those States. Additionally, non-resident hunting fees are generally, several times that of resident hunters and usually account for around half of the income the department takes in.

If 1/3 of a Western States wildlife management budget comes from resident hunter tags, 1/3 from non-resident hunter tag fees and 1/3 comes from excise taxes that were mostly precured in a non-Mountain State; it seems that the funding is absolutely dependent on non-resident hunters who have developed both a love for the wildlife and a love for those wild mountains many of you call home.

We could change how the funding is distributed to go to those States who have a more fair system of distribution of non-resident tags at a reasonable fee. Eastern States have more representatives than Western States and could quietly make amendments to the Act. They could get a greater financial benefit as they don't overprice or limit tags already. This could ensure that Western Mountain states have a better appreciation for non-resident hunters and would put us all on the same side in a more mutually beneficial role rather than constantly being pitted up against each other. I feel that hunters really need each other because there are more non-hunters in the U.S. than not. It's not that far fetched that the beautiful Mountain States will become the new East in the not so distant future.

P.S. This is just an opinion and I am prone to being a devils advocate. It's just a talent or curse. We all have our issues don't we?

The total PR to CO is about 18MM a year, NR CO elk tags alone provide 36MM.

CO residents consistently talk about wanting to cut NR elk tags in half. If you're willing to lose 18 MM in license revenue I don't think you care about a couple million in PR dollars.

Generally speaking I'm entirely against measures to stick it to one another. I think Residents and Non-residents need to understand the position and value of each other.

Back East you can buy half a dozen deer tags a season and the season goes for 3 months, then you bitch about your CO deer tag. A CO resident gets 1 deer tag and it's good for a week.

There absolutely should be huge advantages for residents. NR also pay for the lions share of the fish and game budgets, that should be recognized and NR shouldn't be "punished" for the growth of western states.

It's stupid to see cutting the NR quota as the solution.

So there are 1000 R and 1000 NR that apply for 100 tags 80 go to R and 20 to NR. If you give 10 NR tags to residents you only improved odds by 1% but you cut NR odds in half.

Meanwhile the only reason there are 100 tags, is because 5 large land owners dominate the political landscape and mandated extremely low elk quotas hundreds of animals below what habitat would support because the elk eat their cops in the winter. The elk could be moved of their property by hunters, but the landowners won't allow hunting.

But yeah cut your budget by 50% and don't address the problem at all.

 

[thebestusernamesaretaken]

Holy crap.....don't say that

I know, sorry

 

[mtnprst]

The total PR to CO is about 18MM a year, NR CO elk tags alone provide 36MM.

CO residents consistently talk about wanting to cut NR elk tags in half. If you're willing to lose 18 MM in license revenue I don't think you care about a couple million in PR dollars.

Colorado, like Wyoming, gives far too many limited quota elk and deer tags to nonresident hunters - and we will work to get that fixed to the 90/10 allocation that Montana, AK, WA, ID, OR, NM, AZ, etc. all currently have.