Privatization kills both Resident and Nonresident DIY hunting opportunity

[bulldawg10]

The UW wide tag situation in NM is out of control. Guys with a 20 acre field getting bull tags to sell. Outfitters making deals to buy most of them up when they already have the garbage guided draw pool that gets more tags than someone who needs no babysitter. The prices pushed the average guy out of buying them. Draw odds in the regular draw would go up if they were all put back in the draw pool. It's not good for resident hunters or nonguided NR that want to go on a lighter budget.

That's definitely not the regular. It's very difficult to get a small property like that to qualify any more...I've tried.

They eliminated 700 ranches a couple years ago for not providing the proper resources. The ones that do exist in small acerage like that typically have some specific reason that make it.


Only like 15 to 20 percent of ranches are setup as unit wide. That opens up 600,000 acres of private land to EVERYONE with a tag in that unit.

Id argue the opposite, you should encourage more ranches join the Unit Wide program, not eliminate it. By encouraging more unit wide ranches, you provide the public more private land access and open up more and more publics by way of private.

I'd also recommend pulling the list of Primary Zone land owners or look at the map of all the land opened up by EPLUS unit wide ranches. It's significant and not at all what you say also.

 

[hank4elk]

The UW wide tag situation in NM is out of control. Guys with a 20 acre field getting bull tags to sell. Outfitters making deals to buy most of them up when they already have the garbage guided draw pool that gets more tags than someone who needs no babysitter. The prices pushed the average guy out of buying them. Draw odds in the regular draw would go up if they were all put back in the draw pool. It's not good for resident hunters or nonguided NR that want to go on a lighter budget.

G&F was supposed to review EVERY ranch in the program after they finally did in my unit 5 or 6 years ago.
They cut a load of those small scam places and useless ones and cut the tags ,doubled or tripled the draw tags.
Nothing since.

 

[schmalts]

That's definitely not the regular. It's very difficult to get a small property like that to qualify any more...I've tried.

They eliminated 700 ranches a couple years ago for not provided the proper resources. The ones that do exisit in small acerage like that typically have some specific reason that make it.

Only like 15 to 20 percent of ranches are setup as unit wide. That opens up 600,000 acres of private land to EVERYONE with a tag in that unit.

Id argue the opposite, you should encourage more ranches join the Unit Wide program, not eliminate it. By encouraging more unit wide ranches, you provide the public more private land access and open up more and more publics by way of private.

I'd also recommend pulling the list of Primary Zone land owners or look at the map of all the land opened up by EPLUS unit wide ranches. It's significant not at all what you say also.

I personally know 2 people who have 20 acres or less of irrigated area who get tags. I also think that the vouchers should not be transferable more than once. Have not looked at the list lately but one guy getting at least 15 tags stopped his H20 pivot and years later was still getting the tags for nothing but dirt

 

[hank4elk]

I personally know 2 people who have 20 acres or less of irrigated area who get tags. I also think that the vouchers should not be transferable more than once.

That place should be fenced then.
I a friend just finally fenced 35ac that was an elk corridor in Reserve area. He got 1 cow tag in 14 years in SCR.
There is now a place on the Rio that gets tags for their alfalfa field damage from elk.
There were NO elk along the lower Rio 10 years ago.

 

[schmalts]

That place should be fenced then.
I a friend just finally fenced 35ac that was an elk corridor in Reserve area. He got 1 cow tag in 14 years in SCR.
There is now a place on the Rio that gets tags for their alfalfa field damage from elk.
There were NO elk along the lower Rio 10 years ago.

I also know of someone who got the fencing on a 10-20 acre plot. Then was busted the next year when the gate was left open during the season and a big bull was shot after the gate closed to trap it. Not sure what the F&G did but they were involved as someone complained, all kinds of fun stuff.

 

[hank4elk]

I also know of someone who got the fencing on a 10-20 acre plot. Then was busted the next year when the gate was left open during the season and a big bull was shot after the gate closed to trap it. Not sure what the F&G did but they were involved, all kinds of fun stuff.

The wild west.

 

[bulldawg10]

I personally know 2 people who have 20 acres or less of irrigated area who get tags. I also think that the vouchers should not be transferable more than once. Have not looked at the list lately but one guy getting at least 15 tags stopped his H20 pivot and years later was still getting the tags for nothing but dirt

You just explained how a 20 acre place possibly gets authorizations.

Agriculture gets a bonus in the scoring. They also almost certainly provide water. Makes perfect sense to get a tag in that scenario.

That's the exception, not the norm.

Also, in the 15 tag case. Let's look at it. We can look at imagery that isn't that old. What unit, what ranch?

We can easily see the land owner list and see what they got. To have 15 tags, that sounds like a base property, or multiple properties

 

[Valley1320]

That's definitely not the regular. It's very difficult to get a small property like that to qualify any more...I've tried.

They eliminated 700 ranches a couple years ago for not provided the proper resources. The ones that do exisit in small acerage like that typically have some specific reason that make it.

Only like 15 to 20 percent of ranches are setup as unit wide. That opens up 600,000 acres of private land to EVERYONE with a tag in that unit.

Id argue the opposite, you should encourage more ranches join the Unit Wide program, not eliminate it. By encouraging more unit wide ranches, you provide the public more private land access and open up more and more publics by way of private.

I'd also recommend pulling the list of Primary Zone land owners or look at the map of all the land opened up by EPLUS unit wide ranches. It's significant not at all what you say also.

I know a guy that has 13 acres and gets at least one tag sometimes more

 

[ImBillT]

^^^This. A beneficiary inures nothing from the trust on account of any preferred standing. Every beneficiary is treated equally for purposes of trust benefit. The latin phrase is Cestui Que Trust, meaning equal in benefit.

The Trustees can/should enter into transactions to improve the trust assets. Those transactions can be with beneficiaries of the trust, but are not a function of that person's standing as a beneficiary. Whatever value comes from those deals is due to the value each party brings to the transaction.

Most land is held in a corporation or an LLC. Those entities are not public trust beneficiaries. Many want to conflate being a landowner or an owner of an entity that holds land, as being a beneficiary. Thus is not the case.

If the land owner is a resident, he is a beneficiary of the public trust. The land ownership(and whether it’s owned by an individual or a corporation) is not what makes him a beneficiary. His residency does(if he is a NM resident). That’s not to say that his landownership grants him unequal representation under the public trust doctrine, but he is not excluded from representation. The same goes for resident outfitters, and non-hunting residents(which you yourself pointed out on a podcast). Resident hunters wanting to acquire tags through the draw are not the only beneficiaries of the public trust. I’m not certain legally, but I would suspect that funding NMGF via NR license sales would count as benefiting the beneficiaries even if it isn’t the benefit they seek, and that comes back to the beneficiaries needing to hold the trustees to account on HOW they want the trust to be managed, not whether it is a violation of the public’s trust.


Aside from the legal issues(which are important, but which I’m not qualified to dove very deep into and have probably already been wrong on) there are some very practical issues. What are NM residents trying to accomplish? If they want more tags in the draw, eliminating E-PLUS isn’t going to do that. No one is going to be forcing land owners to allow public access, and taking away their elk tags is very unlikely to result in more tags for the public. Is the issue “if I can’t hunt elk on your land then you can’t either!”? If so, this is a very unproductive path to be going down. There are some very compelling legal arguments for doing away with the landowner authorizations, but I’m not convinced that hunting groups should be pointing them out until someone can show me how eliminating E-PLUS is going to be something better than NM residents cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Hunting groups in NM have gone down very unproductive paths before. In the late 80’s or early 90’s they decided to cap non-resident hunting. Sounds like a good idea. The result wasn’t so great though. The outfitter supported lobbyists managed to get the outfitter cap to include more tags than outfitters had even been able to sell, while cutting the non-outfitted NR substantially below the number of NR tags that had been bought, but the total of 16% (10% OT and 6% NR) added only a few percent of the total tags to the resident pool compared to what they had been drawing. The result? Resident odds barely changed. non-outfitted NR odds were cut substantially. Odds in the outfitter pool were almost 100% and outfitters got more business than they’d ever had because NRs that didn’t really want an outfitter were incentivized to go into the outfitter pool for the near 100% draw odds. Who won? The outfitters! The movement was largely pushed by the NM BHA, but the outfitters took over control of the outcome and NM residents got almost nothing. More recently, NM BHA decided to take up the R/OT/NR distribution as their cause. They need a cause so they can look like they’re doing something. What was the problem? NM was rounding tags up instead of down whenever the distribution to a pool resulted in a fraction of a tag that was .5 or greater even if the result was that they issued 1 tag more than published in the book. The result? NM residents were getting the 84% of the published tags, but that 1 extra tag per hunt on about 1/4 of hunts resulted in NM residents getting closer to 83% of actual tags. The solution? Change the rounding rules. The results? NM residents got the exact same number of tags as the year before! But NR’s and OT’s lost 1 tag on a number of hunt codes, even resulting in many hunt codes becoming unavailable in the NR pool. I did the math the year they did it, and I don’t remember, but I believe that NMGF lost around $250k in non-resident tag sales(through both the OT and NR pools) yet NM residents didn’t get even one additional tag in the total of the draw. Some of those hunts went from 11 people in the field to 10. Others went from 111 to 110. Not one NM resident gained anything of value from that change, but now they get over 84% of the actual tags, so I guess some them might have a warm fuzzy feeling. Thanks NM BHA. Now here we are with with the possibility of change, and NM residents need to make sure that this time, the changes are positive and meaningful, and most of what I’m hearing from NM residents sounds like “I don’t like what he’s doing so I’m not going to allow it, even if I don’t get anything from it!” or it sounds like someone who thinks that eliminating tags in the E-Plus system is going to put them all in the public draw, and I just don’t see strong evidence for that.

E-PLUS should have some changes. Someone who lives there and deals with it will have more and better suggestions that myself, but a few changes seem quite obvious to me. 1) No more ranch only tags(not the right word but easier to type), or at least a substantial reduction in tags if you want them to be ranch only. Along these lines, if you want a landowner tag, you allow public hunting on your private land by anyone with an elk tag, or better yet, anyone with any tag. At the very least, there could be a requirement for any landowner receiving a LO tag to allow others access to public land which his land blocks. This would be particularly useful as a lot of the ranch only tags are issued to large ranches with lots of elk on them during the season, and I’ve even heard some outfitters explain that they sell hunts to public land tag holders by allowing access to public land through private land that they hold ranch only tags for and have access agreements they’ve made with landowners. Leaving E-PLUS intact, but making this change would offer the public substantially more land than they can currently hunt. 2) Disallow anyone who enters the public draw the ability to validate a LO authorization. The authorization must be validated with NMGF in order to receive the actual tag, and NMGF knows if they participated in the draw or not. This change would reduce public draw applicants substantially. No it wouldn’t reduce it as dramatically in the resident pool as in the NR and OT, but it would reduce it some. Currently LO’s who receive LO authorizations can participate in the draw, and if they draw, they can then choose to sell the authorization. By denying them that ability, draw participation, even in the resident pool, will be reduced. Super easy change. Doesn’t take any money from a landowner’s or hunter’s pocket. Only the outfitters will cry about that because they current use their client’s money to gamble for tags in the draw even after they’ve sold the client an LO authorization. 3) If you put a small percentage of the LO authorizations into the public draw E-PLUS should gain more public support, as there would be direct benefit to the public when a ranch participates in E-PLUS. If used in conjunction with suggestion 1 and the public tags were contingent on private participation, then LO’s would suddenly be seen as benefiting the public. If a ranch currently gets 10 ranch only tags, but to continue participating in E-PLUS they would have to open their ranch to the public and receive only 9 tags, and one extra tag was added to the draw, then the public could more easily see the benefit of LO’s getting tags. If the LO doesn’t participate, then the public doesn’t have access to that land, the public land that it locks up, or the elk tag that it contributed to the draw(after all, you can’t hunt there anymore, and we can’t be hunting extra elk on public when the elk that tag correlated to will not be getting hunted). 4) Add another fee to validating a LO authorization for a non-resident. Currently a non-resident has to pay NMGF the non-resident license fee when they validate it, thus funding NMGF at roughly 10X the level that a resident would. You could add another fee, and allocate all of the additional funding to some specific purpose such as habitat improvement or public access. In this way NM residents could see additional benefit compared to what they currently do. I’m sure there are much more technical changes to E-PLUS than I would be aware of. The point is that E-PLUS currently has more awareness than it has in a very long time, and there is a chance to make positive changes, but most of what I’ve been hearing seems unlikely to result in big positive changes.

 

[bulldawg10]

If the land owner is a resident, he is a beneficiary of the public trust. The land ownership(and whether it’s owned by an individual or a corporation) is not what makes him a beneficiary. His residency does(if he is a NM resident). That’s not to say that his landownership grants him unequal representation under the public trust doctrine, but he is not excluded from representation. The same goes for resident outfitters, and non-hunting residents(which you yourself pointed out on a podcast). Resident hunters wanting to acquire tags through the draw are not the only beneficiaries of the public trust. I’m not certain legally, but I would suspect that funding NMGF via NR license sales would count as benefiting the beneficiaries even if it isn’t the benefit they seek, and that comes back to the beneficiaries needing to hold the trustees to account on HOW they want the trust to be managed, not whether it is a violation of the public’s trust.


Aside from the legal issues(which are important, but which I’m not qualified to dove very deep into and have probably already been wrong on) there are some very practical issues. What are NM residents trying to accomplish? If they want more tags in the draw, eliminating E-PLUS isn’t going to do that. No one is going to be forcing land owners to allow public access, and taking away their elk tags is very unlikely to result in more tags for the public. Is the issue “if I can’t hunt elk on your land then you can’t either!”? If so, this is a very unproductive path to be going down. There are some very compelling legal arguments for doing away with the landowner authorizations, but I’m not convinced that hunting groups should be pointing them out until someone can show me how eliminating E-PLUS is going to be something better than NM residents cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Hunting groups in NM have gone down very unproductive paths before. In the late 80’s or early 90’s they decided to cap non-resident hunting. Sounds like a good idea. The result wasn’t so great though. The outfitter supported lobbyists managed to get the outfitter cap to include more tags than outfitters had even been able to sell, while cutting the non-outfitted NR substantially below the number of NR tags that had been bought, but the total of 16% (10% OT and 6% NR) added only a few percent of the total tags to the resident pool compared to what they had been drawing. The result? Resident odds barely changed. non-outfitted NR odds were cut substantially. Odds in the outfitter pool were almost 100% and outfitters got more business than they’d ever had because NRs that didn’t really want an outfitter were incentivized to go into the outfitter pool for the near 100% draw odds. Who won? The outfitters! The movement was largely pushed by the NM BHA, but the outfitters took over control of the outcome and NM residents got almost nothing. More recently, NM BHA decided to take up the R/OT/NR distribution as their cause. They need a cause so they can look like they’re doing something. What was the problem? NM was rounding tags up instead of down whenever the distribution to a pool resulted in a fraction of a tag that was .5 or greater even if the result was that they issued 1 tag more than published in the book. The result? NM residents were getting the 84% of the published tags, but that 1 extra tag per hunt on about 1/4 of hunts resulted in NM residents getting closer to 83% of actual tags. The solution? Change the rounding rules. The results? NM residents got the exact same number of tags as the year before! But NR’s and OT’s lost 1 tag on a number of hunt codes, even resulting in many hunt codes becoming unavailable in the NR pool. I did the math the year they did it, and I don’t remember, but I believe that NMGF lost around $250k in non-resident tag sales(through both the OT and NR pools) yet NM residents didn’t get even one additional tag in the total of the draw. Some of those hunts went from 11 people in the field to 10. Others went from 111 to 110. Not one NM resident gained anything of value from that change, but now they get over 84% of the actual tags, so I guess some them might have a warm fuzzy feeling. Thanks NM BHA. Now here we are with with the possibility of change, and NM residents need to make sure that this time, the changes are positive and meaningful, and most of what I’m hearing from NM residents sounds like “I don’t like what he’s doing so I’m not going to allow it, even if I don’t get anything from it!” or it sounds like someone who thinks that eliminating tags in the E-Plus system is going to put them all in the public draw, and I just don’t see strong evidence for that.

E-PLUS should have some changes. Someone who lives there and deals with it will have more and better suggestions that myself, but a few changes seem quite obvious to me. 1) No more ranch only tags(not the right word but easier to type), or at least a substantial reduction in tags if you want them to be ranch only. Along these lines, if you want a landowner tag, you allow public hunting on your private land by anyone with an elk tag, or better yet, anyone with any tag. At the very least, there could be a requirement for any landowner receiving a LO tag to allow others access to public land which his land blocks. This would be particularly useful as a lot of the ranch only tags are issued to large ranches with lots of elk on them during the season, and I’ve even heard some outfitters explain that they sell hunts to public land tag holders by allowing access to public land through private land that they hold ranch only tags for and have access agreements they’ve made with landowners. Leaving E-PLUS intact, but making this change would offer the public substantially more land than they can currently hunt. 2) Disallow anyone who enters the public draw the ability to validate a LO authorization. The authorization must be validated with NMGF in order to receive the actual tag, and NMGF knows if they participated in the draw or not. This change would reduce public draw applicants substantially. No it wouldn’t reduce it as dramatically in the resident pool as in the NR and OT, but it would reduce it some. Currently recipients of LO authorizations can participate in the draw, and if they draw, they can then choose to sell the authorization. By denying them that ability, draw participation, even in the resident pool, will be reduced. Super easy change. Doesn’t take any money from a landowner’s or hunter’s pocket. Only the outfitters will cry about that because they current use their client’s money to gamble for tags in the draw even after they’ve sold the client an LO authorization. 3) It won’t be as popular, but if you put a small percentage of the LO authorizations into the public draw E-PLUS should gain more public support. If used in conjunction with suggestion 1 and the public tags were contingent on private participation, then LO’s would suddenly be seen as benefiting the public. If a ranch currently gets 10 ranch only tags, but to continue participating in E-PLUS they would have to open their ranch to the public and receive only 9 tags, and one extra tag was added to the draw, then the public could more easily see the benefit of LO’s getting tags. If the LO doesn’t participate, then the public doesn’t have access to that land, the public land that it locks up, or the elk tag that it contributed to the draw(after all, you can’t hunt there anymore, and we can’t be hunting extra elk on public when the elk that tag correlated to will not be getting hunted). 4) Add another fee to validating a LO authorization for a non-resident. Currently a non-resident has to pay NMGF the non-resident license fee when they validate it, thus funding NMGF at roughly 10X the level that a resident would. You could add another fee, and allocate all of the additional funding to some specific purpose such as habitat improvement or public access. In this way NM residents could see additional benefit compared to what they currently do. I’m sure there are much more technical changes to E-PLUS than I would be aware of. The point is that E-PLUS currently has more awareness than it has in a very long time, and there is a chance to make positive changes, but most of what I’ve been hearing seems unlikely to result in big positive changes.

Solid argument and solutions. I also mentioned previously in the thread to encourage more unit wide access not less!! Land access is such a critical issue and EPLUS is a strong tool to getting even more access to private land (and public) while still using the elk as a valuable tool to accomplish this...it results in the largest net positive to have value in elk.

I can't understand how this isn't the avenue most are chasing! Encourage unit wide properties...But as you said, they want to cut off their nose to spite their face.

Even if nothing changes, the current format is WAY better than the BHA / NMWF solutions of draw only, no landowner tags. It's better for everyone that hunts elk. But your suggestions are very logical and reasonable.

 

[ImBillT]

Id argue the opposite, you should encourage more ranches join the Unit Wide program, not eliminate it. By encouraging more unit wide ranches, you provide the public more private land access and open up more and more publics by way of private.

I think it should almost be unit wide or nothing.

 

[ImBillT]

Solid argument and solutions. I also mentioned previously in the thread to encourage more unit wide access not less!! Land access is such a critical issue and EPLUS is a strong tool to getting even more access to private land (and public) while still using the elk as a valuable tool to accomplish this...it results in the largest net positive to have value in elk.

I can't understand how this isn't the avenue most are chasing! Encourage unit wide properties...But as you said, they want to cut off their nose to spite their face.

Even if nothing changes, the current format is WAY better than the BHA / NMWF solutions of draw only, no landowner tags. It's better for everyone that hunts elk. But your suggestions are very logical and reasonable.

This is the number one reason my suggestions will likely never get widespread support. Emotion is more powerful in today’s world.

 

[hank4elk]

If the land owner is a resident, he is a beneficiary of the public trust. The land ownership(and whether it’s owned by an individual or a corporation) is not what makes him a beneficiary. His residency does(if he is a NM resident). That’s not to say that his landownership grants him unequal representation under the public trust doctrine, but he is not excluded from representation. The same goes for resident outfitters, and non-hunting residents(which you yourself pointed out on a podcast). Resident hunters wanting to acquire tags through the draw are not the only beneficiaries of the public trust. I’m not certain legally, but I would suspect that funding NMGF via NR license sales would count as benefiting the beneficiaries even if it isn’t the benefit they seek, and that comes back to the beneficiaries needing to hold the trustees to account on HOW they want the trust to be managed, not whether it is a violation of the public’s trust.


Aside from the legal issues(which are important, but which I’m not qualified to dove very deep into and have probably already been wrong on) there are some very practical issues. What are NM residents trying to accomplish? If they want more tags in the draw, eliminating E-PLUS isn’t going to do that. No one is going to be forcing land owners to allow public access, and taking away their elk tags is very unlikely to result in more tags for the public. Is the issue “if I can’t hunt elk on your land then you can’t either!”? If so, this is a very unproductive path to be going down. There are some very compelling legal arguments for doing away with the landowner authorizations, but I’m not convinced that hunting groups should be pointing them out until someone can show me how eliminating E-PLUS is going to be something better than NM residents cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

Hunting groups in NM have gone down very unproductive paths before. In the late 80’s or early 90’s they decided to cap non-resident hunting. Sounds like a good idea. The result wasn’t so great though. The outfitter supported lobbyists managed to get the outfitter cap to include more tags than outfitters had even been able to sell, while cutting the non-outfitted NR substantially below the number of NR tags that had been bought, but the total of 16% (10% OT and 6% NR) added only a few percent of the total tags to the resident pool compared to what they had been drawing. The result? Resident odds barely changed. non-outfitted NR odds were cut substantially. Odds in the outfitter pool were almost 100% and outfitters got more business than they’d ever had because NRs that didn’t really want an outfitter were incentivized to go into the outfitter pool for the near 100% draw odds. Who won? The outfitters! The movement was largely pushed by the NM BHA, but the outfitters took over control of the outcome and NM residents got almost nothing. More recently, NM BHA decided to take up the R/OT/NR distribution as their cause. They need a cause so they can look like they’re doing something. What was the problem? NM was rounding tags up instead of down whenever the distribution to a pool resulted in a fraction of a tag that was .5 or greater even if the result was that they issued 1 tag more than published in the book. The result? NM residents were getting the 84% of the published tags, but that 1 extra tag per hunt on about 1/4 of hunts resulted in NM residents getting closer to 83% of actual tags. The solution? Change the rounding rules. The results? NM residents got the exact same number of tags as the year before! But NR’s and OT’s lost 1 tag on a number of hunt codes, even resulting in many hunt codes becoming unavailable in the NR pool. I did the math the year they did it, and I don’t remember, but I believe that NMGF lost around $250k in non-resident tag sales(through both the OT and NR pools) yet NM residents didn’t get even one additional tag in the total of the draw. Some of those hunts went from 11 people in the field to 10. Others went from 111 to 110. Not one NM resident gained anything of value from that change, but now they get over 84% of the actual tags, so I guess some them might have a warm fuzzy feeling. Thanks NM BHA. Now here we are with with the possibility of change, and NM residents need to make sure that this time, the changes are positive and meaningful, and most of what I’m hearing from NM residents sounds like “I don’t like what he’s doing so I’m not going to allow it, even if I don’t get anything from it!” or it sounds like someone who thinks that eliminating tags in the E-Plus system is going to put them all in the public draw, and I just don’t see strong evidence for that.

E-PLUS should have some changes. Someone who lives there and deals with it will have more and better suggestions that myself, but a few changes seem quite obvious to me. 1) No more ranch only tags(not the right word but easier to type), or at least a substantial reduction in tags if you want them to be ranch only. Along these lines, if you want a landowner tag, you allow public hunting on your private land by anyone with an elk tag, or better yet, anyone with any tag. At the very least, there could be a requirement for any landowner receiving a LO tag to allow others access to public land which his land blocks. This would be particularly useful as a lot of the ranch only tags are issued to large ranches with lots of elk on them during the season, and I’ve even heard some outfitters explain that they sell hunts to public land tag holders by allowing access to public land through private land that they hold ranch only tags for and have access agreements they’ve made with landowners. Leaving E-PLUS intact, but making this change would offer the public substantially more land than they can currently hunt. 2) Disallow anyone who enters the public draw the ability to validate a LO authorization. The authorization must be validated with NMGF in order to receive the actual tag, and NMGF knows if they participated in the draw or not. This change would reduce public draw applicants substantially. No it wouldn’t reduce it as dramatically in the resident pool as in the NR and OT, but it would reduce it some. Currently LO’s who receive LO authorizations can participate in the draw, and if they draw, they can then choose to sell the authorization. By denying them that ability, draw participation, even in the resident pool, will be reduced. Super easy change. Doesn’t take any money from a landowner’s or hunter’s pocket. Only the outfitters will cry about that because they current use their client’s money to gamble for tags in the draw even after they’ve sold the client an LO authorization. 3) If you put a small percentage of the LO authorizations into the public draw E-PLUS should gain more public support, as there would be direct benefit to the public when a ranch participates in E-PLUS. If used in conjunction with suggestion 1 and the public tags were contingent on private participation, then LO’s would suddenly be seen as benefiting the public. If a ranch currently gets 10 ranch only tags, but to continue participating in E-PLUS they would have to open their ranch to the public and receive only 9 tags, and one extra tag was added to the draw, then the public could more easily see the benefit of LO’s getting tags. If the LO doesn’t participate, then the public doesn’t have access to that land, the public land that it locks up, or the elk tag that it contributed to the draw(after all, you can’t hunt there anymore, and we can’t be hunting extra elk on public when the elk that tag correlated to will not be getting hunted). 4) Add another fee to validating a LO authorization for a non-resident. Currently a non-resident has to pay NMGF the non-resident license fee when they validate it, thus funding NMGF at roughly 10X the level that a resident would. You could add another fee, and allocate all of the additional funding to some specific purpose such as habitat improvement or public access. In this way NM residents could see additional benefit compared to what they currently do. I’m sure there are much more technical changes to E-PLUS than I would be aware of. The point is that E-PLUS currently has more awareness than it has in a very long time, and there is a chance to make positive changes, but most of what I’ve been hearing seems unlikely to result in big positive changes.

So I can't apply for the draw ?
If I don't draw a tag I use one of my RO authorizations. If I so decide.
So I can't use a LO tag if I applied for the draw 2 months earlier?

I understand the UW benefit to the public, access. I think all large ranches should be.

You must understand my wanting to remain RO. Maybe not.

I'm surprised my solar panel has not been shot, let alone stolen completely. Public hunters crossing my neighbors property without permission trying to shoot an elk on my land or leaving. The windmill fan is full of holes now.
I will not open my little place to public hunters.

Take the RO tags. Cool.
My choice. Put up with elk or else, move...LOL
I can barely keep up with the fences I have ,let alone fence it with 8 foot screen and pipe poles concreted in. Not happening.

At least there is a reasonable discussion going on here.

This they are OUR elks and we should have all the tags and access too will not fly. Not in Catron county.
Try and hunt my place without my permission.
Not emotion. Fact.

 

[bulldawg10]

This is the number one reason my suggestions will likely never get widespread support. Emotion is more powerful in today’s world.

I wouldn't want RO to be taken away. As private property is important and privacy is important in America.

But maybe incentivize the unit wide properties, possibly in the same pool as the Habitat Incentives are issued.

Get a bonus for being public accessible

 

[ImBillT]

So I can't apply for the draw ?
If I don't draw a tag I use one of my RO authorizations. If I so decide.
So I can't use a LO tag if I applied for the draw 2 months earlier?

I understand the UW benefit to the public, access. I think all large ranches should be.

You must understand my wanting to remain RO. Maybe not.

I'm surprised my solar panel has not been shot, let alone stolen completely. Public hunters crossing my neighbors property without permission trying to shoot an elk on my land or leaving. The windmill fan is full of holes now.
I will not open my little place to public hunters.

Take the RO tags. Cool.
My choice. Put up with elk or else, move...LOL
I can barely keep up with the fences I have ,let alone fence it with 8 foot screen and pipe poles concreted in. Not happening.

At least there is a reasonable discussion going on here.

This they are OUR elks and we should have all the tags and access too will not fly. Not in Catron county.
Try and hunt my place without my permission.
Not emotion. Fact.

Although it may have been worded poorly, suggestion 1 in my post didn’t necessarily mean that every LO should loose their tags or make their property open to all. It certainly mentioned that as an option. It also mentioned some lesser levels of return to the public in exchange for you being granted more access to wildlife than the general public. Something I didn’t mention, but should be discussed, is a provision withdrawing certain areas within reason. Some examples would be a perimeter around the homestead(which I personally think could be quite substantial 20, 40, maybe 160acres), completely denying access to certain roads or drives that are used for ranch purposes, large areas around buildings or equipment, don’t shoot an elk on the actual agricultural field perhaps. The number of tags would have course be correlated to what portion allowed access. What about ranches over a certain size cannot have ranch only tags? I don’t know. Someone else would have more and better suggestions. Am I saying E-Plus should go away if they don’t force all participating land owners to allow public access? No. Am I suggesting that doing that on some level(or perhaps completely) would increase the public’s positive perception of E-PLUS? Absolutely.

 

[ImBillT]

I wouldn't want RO to be taken away. As private property is important and privacy is important in America.

But maybe incentivize the unit wide properties, possibly in the same pool as the Habitat Incentives are issued.

Get a bonus for being public accessible

I do believe suggestion 1 that I made did mention an option of reducing tags to the LO if they did not make the ranch unit wide. If it did not, it was supposed to. That is only one of many possible options for ensuring that E-PLUS is more directly beneficial to the pubic. I think there are some changes that can and should be made, but I’m not an expert on E-PLUS.

What I am certain of is that shutting down E-PLUS because the elk are public and your land is not, is more likely to end poorly than it is to end positively.

 

[Big Fin]

If the land owner is a resident, he is a beneficiary of the public trust. The land ownership(and whether it’s owned by an individual or a corporation) is not what makes him a beneficiary. His residency does(if he is a NM resident). That’s not to say that his landownership grants him unequal representation under the public trust doctrine, but he is not excluded from representation.

Agree. I think we are saying the same thing. A Beneficiary is a function of residency, with no Beneficiary being any more important to the Trustee than any other.

The same goes for resident outfitters, and non-hunting residents(which you yourself pointed out on a podcast).

Non-resident hunters are not Beneficiaries. Outfitters, if they are residents, are Beneficiaries as a function of their residency, not their role as outfitters.

Resident hunters wanting to acquire tags through the draw are not the only beneficiaries of the public trust.

Agree. Every New Mexico citizen, not just those who hunt, is a Beneficiary of equal standing.

I’m not certain legally, but I would suspect that funding NMGF via NR license sales would count as benefiting the beneficiaries even if it isn’t the benefit they seek, and that comes back to the beneficiaries needing to hold the trustees to account on HOW they want the trust to be managed, not whether it is a violation of the public’s trust.

Funding to manage the Trust assets must be considered by the Trustee. Where that ends up and what mechanisms used is as varied as the states themselves. If it involves the transfer of trust assets to any party, whether cash or hunting opportunity, the Trustees decision is to be based on his/her belief that such transaction is a net benefit to the Trust and the Beneficiaries.

 

[ImBillT]

Agree. I think we are saying the same thing. A Beneficiary is a function of residency, with no Beneficiary being any more important to the Trustee than any other.


Non-resident hunters are not Beneficiaries. Outfitters, if they are residents, are Beneficiaries as a function of their residency, not their role as outfitters.

I think you misread this one part. I don’t know how to quote myself and quote you. My post said “non-hunting residents” which I believe you misread as “non-resident hunters”. Too many hyphenated words to keep track of.

I was just pointing out that residents who want tags are not the only beneficiaries. All residents are beneficiaries, but not all residents want the same outcomes from the trust. Land owning residents want certain outcomes, outfitting residents want certain outcomes, and hippies in Sante Fe that have never been hunting and never will go hunting want certain outcomes.

 

[hank4elk]

Although it may have been worded poorly, suggestion 1 in my post didn’t necessarily mean that every LO should loose their tags or make their property open to all. It certainly mentioned that as an option. It also mentioned some lesser levels of return to the public in exchange for you being granted more access to wildlife than the general public. Something I didn’t mention, but should be discussed, is a provision withdrawing certain areas within reason. Some examples would be a perimeter around the homestead(which I personally think could be quite substantial 20, 40, maybe 160acres), completely denying access to certain roads or drives that are used for ranch purposes, large areas around buildings or equipment, don’t shoot an elk on the actual agricultural field perhaps. The number of tags would have course be correlated to what portion allowed access. What about ranches over a certain size cannot have ranch only tags? I don’t know. Someone else would have more and better suggestions. Am I saying E-Plus should go away if they don’t force all participating land owners to allow public access? No. Am I suggesting that doing that on some level(or perhaps completely) would increase the public’s positive perception of E-PLUS? Absolutely.

Sorry, I woke my cancer up from a nap cranky it seems...LOL
Glad there is a serious discussion .
Yooz guys is mo elequinter than meez.

 

[ImBillT]

I’m not eloquent! I make a twenty word simple statement into a 1000 word confusing and redundant mess!