Eastmans' Official Blog | Mule Deer, Antelope, Elk Hunting and Bowhunting Magazine | Eastmans' Hunting Journals
SB150_L.001 SENATE COMMITTEE OF REFERENCE AMENDMENT
Committee on Agriculture & Natural Resources.
SB21-150 to be amended as follows: Amend printed bill, page 2, strike lines 3 through 12 and substitute: “33-4-122. Elk, deer, and pronghorn licenses – reserved requirements for Colorado hunters – preference points for groups. (a) WHEN CONDUCTING THE FIRST LIMITED LICENSE DRAW FOR AN ELK, DEER, OR PRONGHORN LICENSE, THE DIVISION SHALL NOT ISSUE TO NONRESIDENT APPLICANTS MORE THAN ONE-QUARTER OF THE TOTAL NUMBER OF ELK, DEER, OR PRONGHORN LICENSES AWARDED IN THE FIRST LIMITED LICENSE DRAW. THIS SUBSECTION (1) DOES NOT APPLY TO ELK, DEER, OR PRONGHORN LICENSES LEFT OVER AFTER THE FIRST LIMITED 10 LICENSE DRAW AWARDS ELK, DEER, OR PRONGHORN LICENSES TO APPLICANTS.
In an attempt at a silent end run to get this onto the books, these two Republican sponsors of this bill did not even contact Colorado Parks & Wildlife. I talked to a senior person there that had not even heard of the bill.
Look. The current nonresident cap in Colorado is 35%. The original bill from last week cut that to 33% and before the Committee even takes it up it has been slashed to 25%. Even worse, it extends the 25% proposed cap beyond the draw to even over-the-counter licenses.
(2) IF A TYPE OF ELK, DEER, OR PRONGHORN LICENSE IS ISSUED WITHOUT A LIMITED LICENSE DRAW, THE DIVISION SHALL NOT SELL MORE THAN ONE-QUARTER OF THE TYPE OF ELK, DEER, OR PRONGHORN LICENSES TO NONRESIDENTS THAN THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF THE TYPE OF ELK, DEER, OR PRONGHORN LICENSES THAT WERE ISSUED OVER THE LAST THREE YEARS.
This REALLY pisses me off.
First, we had a referendum forcing CPW to introduce wolves to Colorado, financed and voted for by people who will never in their lifetime see a wolf and applaud if the deer, elk and moose population goes down and you and I have less to hunt just so Bambi can have her throat torn out by a pack of canine predators instead of a single, humane bullet that drops them in their tracks.
Now, we see a bill to slash the nonresident cap from 35% to 25% AND extend it even to OTC licenses.
If you don’t want to see worse point creep and then find out you can’t get an over-the-counter license then do nothing. If you care about hunting in Colorado you had better call, email and if you can testify.
On March 25 this bill SB21-150, has a hearing in the CO Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.
Here are the committee members:
Sen. Kerry Donovan, Chair (D) 303-866-4871 [email protected]
Sen. Jessie Danielson, Vice Chair (D) 303-866-4856 [email protected]
Sen. Don Coram (R) 303-866-4884 [email protected]
Sen. Rhonda Fields (D) 303-866-4879 [email protected]
Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg (R) 303-866-6360 [email protected]
You can sign up to testify in person, by Webex or in writing by going to https://www2.leg.state.co.us/CLICS/CLICS2021A/commsumm.nsf/signIn.xsp
Sponsors of the bill are Sens. R. Woodward and L. Garcia
Politics has no business interfering in wildlife management. Yes, I know it has an influence, whatever you do, but now wildlife management by politicians and others is threatening to ruin one of the great western states for hunting.
Dave Hoshour
Dave, you a complete clueless idiot. First of all your number consider cow and doe tags which has no nonresident demand, and limited resident demand. Secondarily, after the landowner cut, residents get 52% of the quota. Anyone can buy a landowner tag, but the qualification is based on a unlevel playing field of deep pockets.
In archery OTC units last year, we lost the entire SW portion of the state as they went limited. Everyone was crammed into a smaller landscape. The result, 17,000 nonresidents to 12,000 residents.
You sir, are a clueless idiot.
Futhermore, CPW is considering limiting the steamboat area due to declining calf ratios. Today, it is OTC and said to have excessive participation. Well, the participations breakdown breakdown is 75% nonresident to 25% resident. WTF? Rather then deal with the real issue of to many nonresidents the CPW solution involves limiting residents.
CPW and PWC has does nothing in decades. This ain’t biology, and the legisllature is the eacto spot to do this, it needs to be law – like Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, AZ, and NM
Buy a clue Dave!
Interesting comments including calling someone a clueless idiot. WOW! You maybe versed in statistics (?) but your language…typical for someone who was brought up to be disrespectful to others. ! Sorry Dave, it must be the name. LOL
You are badly off on your numbers, Steve. On elk, Colorado residents were given 64% of the tags in 2020 plus resident landowner tags. You don’t subtract landowner tags from the resident allotment and even if you did, you wouldn’t come up with 52%
On your other figure, I’ll check with CPW on OTC sales but I think you’re pretty far off on that one too.
Dave the level playing field is the public draw. Vouchers are for those with deep pocket who get to totally bypass the preference points and the draw. Whoever they go to, did not get them in the draw or use points and to take those into account is stupid.
Counting doe and cow tags is ridiculous. PLO tags require access and quotas are set high to appease landowners and tell them tags are available.
You can’t look at statewide stats, it reveals a rosy picture. In the southwest, we shut down hunter opportunity for all archers due to low calf ratios becuase our success rate at 11% was to high, yet they issue late season cow tags at 50% plus success.
If you wouuld like me to fill your inbox with real data, get in touch. In the meantime, youu should issue a retraction for your hack job on residents.
Start sticking up for the little guy. I have lost all respect for eastmans.
Actually, I forgot to add resident youth licenses. If you add them, Colorado residents got 71% of the licenses plus landowner licenses.
If you look at bull and either sex tags, residents still got most of the tags. Look at Unit 6 either sex. Residents got 67% plus another 4% in resident youth licenses.
The lowest I can find is unit 49 – residents got 57%, landowners got another 17% for a total of 74%. Now a lot of those landowner tags got sold, but not all of them. If you want to restrict something, you ought to restrict how many landowner tags are given out and resold to people with a lot of money, not the nonresident allocation.
As for residents vs. nonresidents, in 2019 CPW sold 361,089 big game licenses total. Nonresident licenses for deer, elk, pronghorn and bear – the categories most available to nonresidents, totaled 102,444, or 28%.
You guys at eastmans should stick to those “public land DIY hunts” on the Hill ranch that cost 15 or 20k.
Do you have any idea what happened to draw odds when CPW switched to pay later. Do you know a large part of the resident anxiety relates to points and the delay in drawing due to giving the tags to an out stater, while other states are extreme in limiting license to nonresidents. You can argue who drew what, but how years were they FORCED to wait because of awful policy?
Do you know when none of the residents draw the license they seek, the place residents are forced to go is unlimited hunting zones that are continually packed with nonresidents because we are dumping ground for all the other states that nonresidents could not draw in? Those zones keep going limited, and we lose more places to hunt, and the hunt quality has severely declined in terms of solitude, and hunt quality.
Do you have any idea unit 61 first rifle that take like 18 years for a resident to draw is allocated at 65/35 instead of 80/20 becuase of commission policy based on dats from 2007-09. Do you know how the draw works in that landowner is off the top so if the quota is 100 the the 65/35 split is across the 80 licenses unless the LO tag demand is not met.
Before you tell residents how they should feel blessed, and slam whats going on, maybe you ask them how they feel and why before publishing damaging information to their cause. If you don’t know, sometimes it is better to keep quiet then ruin everyones chances for change by publishing damaging information. You just PO’d every resident in the state that isn’t out to earn a living off wildlife, bit I guess your making money on this. Not smart.
This number is misleading because it includes less coveted cow tags and doe tags which very few nonresidents buy. When you send in a CORA request it should be for bull and buck licenses OTC and limited. Those are the facts that ring true for serious hunters. I love eating cow elk but most hunters do not dream of harvesting a cow elk.
Perhaps it is high time the Feds took over the distribution of big game licenses on National Forest lands in Colorado and the other western states; after all, those lands belong to all Americans, not just Colorado residents.
There is way too federal control as it is. I don’t want my whole life being run by the crazies in Washington. Wildlife management belongs at the state level. States can be inept at times and subject to favoritism at others, but I trust the federal government less than any of them.
Butch, we should have the feds run your state hunting as well. This way its fair for all Americans regardless if you pay state taxes or not? You don’t have a hunting right in Colorado because there is federal land. Just like, I don’t have a hunting right in another state because I am an American. Hunting rights and tags are regulated by the state. Its unconstitutional for the federal government to enforce a state law without a cession of jurisdiction by the State.
Believe me you don’t want to start turning states into federal enclaves, unless your a socialists / communist.
I don’t make any significant money on giving my viewpoint here so I’m not sure where you got that from.
It is true that CO is the most generous state in terms of the residency allocation split and that having no limits on the OTC tags means that nonresidents make up a bigger share of the hunters than in other states.
In 2020, that resident/nonresident split on either sex and bull OTC tags was 51.8 % to nonresidents for either sex archery elk and for OTC rifle bull elk it was 39% to nonresidents. In the draw, it was more like 27% to nonresidents, though the cap is 35%.
Here’s the core issue. Nonresident elk licenses are the single biggest revenue source for CPW.
Here’s why. Over the last 20 years, resident license costs have actually gone down in inflation-adjusted dollars while nonresident prices have skyrocketed to where nonresidents are now asked to pay more than 12 times what residents pay and so it is nonresidents who overwhelmingly carry the burden of financing wildlife management costs in Colorado. If you would like to change that to where residents are paying for most of the cost of wildlife management, you would have more of a case.
I agree with you on the high percentage of landowner licenses in some areas. I don’t like it. There are other ways of working with landowners to compensate them for elk damage and to open up areas for hunter access. Those vouchers mainly get bought by rich guys and I would like to see a lot of those licenses go into the main draw for both residents and nonresidents.
But I am not in favor of reducing the nonresident draw cap of 35%.
I will say that having no cap at all on OTC elk licenses for residents or nonresidents doesn’t make much sense. If it was up to me, OTC licenses would be capped for everyone and would be regional like they are in Idaho.
Now with that position, which I think is reasonable, I’ve probably succeeded in ticking off residents, nonresidents, landowners and outfitters. But, that’s usually what a reasonable compromise does. You should understand that this is my view and does not represent the view of Eastman’s as a company or anyone else at Eastmans.
Update – the bill was dropped in committee and is dead for this legislative session.
No state sells out resident hunters worse than Colorado and we have to read this BS on Eastmans. As a resident of Colorado these types of articles make me realize how selfish hunters are. Nearly all western state only give 10% of their tags to nonresidents. Yet Colorado gives 20 to 35% of limited deer and elk tags to nonresidents. In 2019 there were more non resident OTC archery elk hunters than resident archery OTC elk hunters in CO. I know I paid for the CORA request. Here read this if you want the facts. https://publiclandjurisdiction.com/no-state-treats-resident-hunters-worse-than-colorado/
New Mexico offers up 6% to nonresidents, South Dakota – 0%, Utah 10%, Wyoming 20% (with a tag quota cap so its not a real 20%) Montana 10%, Idaho 10%, Oregon 10%. Colorado has not even updated their draw stats for changing which limited units should be 20% vs 35% since 2009–its reference on page 4 of the big game brochure. Which means trophy elk units like unit 40 (8-10 pts to draw) are still giving away 35% of limited elk tags when the rules mandate it be 20%.
The CO draw has a fake cap and it hits resident hard in some less popular limited draw units. The outfitter loop hole, which steals limited deer and elk hunts from my kids (residents) and gives them to nonresident hunters. Examples and pictures are in the referenced article. Example, Unit 41 1st season limited elk hunt gives over 50% of elk tags to nonresidents each year. Resident can’t build up preference points (1st choice) and pick up up a second choice tag in this unit because all the tags go to nonresidents with a first choice pick. Another example is Unit 43 limited muzzleloader deer, over 60% of these deer tags go to nonresidents. The 35% nonresident cap only applies to the first choice. If there are still nonresidents left for first choice, they get the tags and residents get ignored for their second, third and 4th choices. Its a fake cap.
In Colorado, CPW is allowing nonresidents to make decisions on elk and deer tag allocation for a resident resource. In Arizona the trophy elk tags have a less than 1% chance of draw. Nonresident Elk Draw Odds in Western States (Arizona), and Trophy Tags are just 100 Years out to draw. https://publiclandjurisdiction.com/nonresident-elk-draw-odds-in-western-states/
Do you ever wonder why it is so hard to find out how many hundreds or thousands of nonresident elk hunters are putting in for a tag in a western state?