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We have a new in the field Fishing Corner from Michael where he runs through his process of winter nymphing for trout.
A few news articles this week include the announcement of the U.S. Fish Wildlife Service to launch a 12-month status review on whether or not they should delist grizzly bears from the Endangered Species List in select populations.
Two wolves were recently captured and fitted with GPS collars in Colorado reminding us that they are naturally migrating into the state before the mandated reintroduction from Proposition 114 has taken place.
U.S. Senator Steve Daines was suspended from Twitter for having a hunting photo in his profile picture. The suspension was short-lived after Elon Musk, reached out and amended the policy.
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has implemented a statewide emergency closure for shed antler hunting. Influencers are furious.
The Western Hunting and Conservation Expo hosted events in which two Mule deer auction tags sold for $725,000 and $500,000 respectively. For our Deeper Dive, we talk about auction tags in general, whether we think they’re a good idea and if the money is going towards a good cause.
00:00 Intro
00:24 Michael’s Fishing Corner
05:29 Grizzly Bear Delisting
06:11 Wolves Collared in CO
07:03 Senator Steve Daines Twitter Suspended
08:31 Utah Shed Closure
09:57 Deeper Dive on Western Hunting Expo Tags
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The state of wildlife would be NO DIFFERENT if auction tags didn't exist! Just another form of Robinhood style hunting. Every single western state is turning NR away and are flush with funding! These tags are a joke…
Out of shape, rich shooters are taking all the game. I wish I had more money than sense.
Utah is missmanaged. The .01% premium tags are fantastic once every other decade, but for 99.99% of people 99.99% of the time it is trash.
Love the content. Question : looking for a guided Moose hunt in Idaho. Do you recommend someone? Thank you
Good discussion. More and more seems to be hidden from the public eye and so strange… some folks pockets get fatter.
Another great discussion. Thank you for sharing.
The 200 arent raffled….. they are a draw tag. $5 to apply for each tag. Then the person drew pays the tag fee to DWR. YOUR THROWING SHADE AND ARE CLUELESS ABOUT THESE 200 TAGS
We need funding for conservation. I don't trust the state to spend it correctly and I don't trust private organizations blindly. There are a few that are a lot better at it and more ethical than the others. Whoever they are should get the money. All things being equal a private organization is a lot more efficient than a state agency.
The State of Utah audits the Mule Deer Foundation, RMEF, and Sportmem For Fish and Wildlife. ONCE AGAIN SHADE BEING THROWN. PROOF OF YOUR THROWING SHADE IS WHEN RANDYS SAYS HE DOESNT KNOW ABOUT THEY REPORTING. BECOME EDUCATED AND THEN TALK.
I LIKE YOUR STUFF BUT THIS IS ALL CONJECTURE ON YOUR PART…… THROWING SHADE
As a Utah hunter, I'm pretty sure most of us have NO IDEA what's going on with the Expo. From how the $$ is being spent to the number of tags that go to the auction. No one even thinks of the Expo as optional! I go, and every time come home sick to my stomach
As a Utah Resident, I'm NOT happy with the group manipulation of these "public" tags- neither are many hunting residents, both the auction tags and the bizarre rates that select group members 'draw' the $5 tags. sadly each time it is brought up for transparency and investigation the political powers silence it immediately, too much money is available to buy a blind eye or grease the rails into co-consipirator cooperation.
Good forum commentary. Thanks
I can give you one more example of problems with "raffle tags". In South Dakota we have a very limited number of elk tags, as a matter of fact we only allow residents to apply, and many times it takes 20 years or more to draw a tag. Sheep tags the same way, we only give out two to the public and let the Sheep Foundations raffle one. The money has been spent on a "nest predator" trapping program which has paid roughly one million per year for animal tails, plus the first year our governor gave away one million dollars in free traps! The raffle brought in about 200K the last few years. 90% of the people/sportsmen testified against the program but our governor shoved it down our throats anyway. Several people at GF&P were fired, with no reason given.
Raffle
There are two options for 2023 with four total packages available.
Option One:
One any elk tag
One any deer tag
One any antelope tag
Winners of the package will be eligible to select between two years for when they wish the tag to be valid and may hunt any open season and location for when the license is valid.
Example: A 2023 winner may select to hunt antelope in 2023 and deer and elk in 2024. The winner could hunt with any weapon that is legal and valid for the time period and location.
There will be three packages raffled off. No more than one set of Option One licenses can be issued to a nonresident in a year.
Option Two:
One Custer State Park Trophy Buffalo tag
Winners of the package will be eligible to select between two years for when they wish the tag to be valid.
The Option Two package could be won by either a resident or nonresident and is not dependent on whether a nonresident wins one of the Option One packages.
One of the biggest booths at the expo this year was mossback outfitters, they are almost always the company hired by the people who win/purchase the auction tags. I'm surprised at how little goes back to the state. I've seen the amount of money going to the antelope island hunt and it's crazy to me.
I've spoken with a professional guide who actually guided a hunt for mule deer that a "gentleman" had purchased at auction. The purchaser coordinated with other buyers — as they have done for years — to identify specifically the auctions and species each of them would choose to bid on, which is how they limit the amount of money they would spend. (One guy chose mule deer in Colorado, another elk in Colorado, a third might choose antelope in Arizona, and a fourth elk in Utah, etc.) He had the winning bid for a Colorado Mule Deer tag several years ago, meaning he could hunt at any time during the year, in any spot in the entire state he wanted … no restrictions at all. The guide found a MASSIVE mule deer on their property and, literally, watched it for 48 hours straight while they contacted the "hunter." The hunter left an Alaskan sheep hunt and flew back to Colorado where he "hunted" the mule deer (which meant he drove up to the guide, crawled about 20 feet up the mountain and shot the deer.) It was an absolutely beautiful buck. He and two of his "employees" took about 4 hours of pictures … until the deer was bloated by the sun, then they told the guides to "take care of the deer." And they left the state. The deer was on the cover of a Mule Deer magazine and covered in four pages inside. The guide told the outfitter that was the last time he would ever guide something like that again.
I live in utah and I know the Mormons are a super greedy group of people. Money is what matters! I wish it was different but it's not..
Thanks for this. Utah's privatizing of our public resource's needs to be brought to light. As a Utah resident, I would be happy to come on your show and have a discussion about the mismanagement of Utah's wildlife.
As a Utah resident I would rather see Utah be more like other states and only auction a couple tags.
As a Utah resident I totally agree with you guys! You hit it right on! They’ve made it a rich man’s game here and unfair to lower middle class residents such as myself! Utah does a crumby job with how they manage tags and wildlife! Very sad to see and to think about! I wish they did it like Montana or Arizona or anything would be better than what they do now! They have ruined hunting here in my opinion.
Randy, you are correct. Majority of Utah hunters do not appreciate SFW. There is a lot of shady things happening with the 70% that doesn’t sit well with us. First, these tags have made more than one person a millionaire. That is what bothers me. Public tags make a few people rich.
Second, I have seen, and participated in a few of the “conservation” efforts. One I witnessed was tens of thousands of dollars spent on private property. SFW officials claimed it is helping wildlife that will migrate through that area, and in turn benefits all of us. The land is not the final wintering area. Just a pass through during migration. As I looked into it further, the land is enrolled in the CWMU program. And the landowner also has a relationship with officials at SFW that is more than conservation business. The land owner benefits more than anyone else. There is definitely a lot of corruption. Some of the government officials have close ties and friendships with SFW. I’m not saying anything illegal is going on with government officials, but when SFW pats their back, it’s hard for them to create regulations against the auctions and raffles.
Utah resident here, also a member of a lot of the conservation organizations that do do great work with the funds they get. Understand that outside the expo these extra tags that they auction off are done at local chapter banquets only to the members in that organization. And then many of those are bought by outfitters who sell them to higher paying customers. So if the state is trying to maximize the dollars they get for these tags they could do two things very easily. One would be allow the draw to be applied by anybody anywhere in the country, or any Utah resident, but they don't do that. Even as a Utah resident you have to actually show up at the show in order for you to enter the drawing (COVID exception was one year only), we are not a small state they could take you 6 hours to get to salt lake if you lived in the southern part of the state. These tags are used to draw attendance to the show as opposed to draw the most money in for the DNR. The second thing they can do is take these extra tags that they give to these sportsman's groups and auction them off in a more open transparent and public way to maximize the dollars and not make you have to become a member of that organization and fund their work.
What you didn't touch on surprisingly with Randy's background as a CPA, is who is paying 725k for a deer tag and why. It's interesting to me to see rich people use the tax shelter and then get a reward of a tag. Some do great things like donate it to a wounded warrior style charity hunt so it can be a win win but still interesting they didn't just donate the money and was the tag really the reason they did or the tax benefit? I used to think these were charity donations when I was younger and that these people are true conservationists but in reality they might still like conservation but they're likely spending $725K to save a million plus in taxes, so they're not pure angels most of the time.
Once a resource ( hunting fishing) becomes commercialized they no longer are wildlife but a commodity to perpetuate the greed, fame and lust for money.
So you guys have about half to 3/4 of the facts, bit you definitely do not have a full grasp of the subject. How bout you get some of the people in charge of this stuff on your show that do know how all this works. You guys are commenting on things you absolutely do not know what you are talking about, and you speculate and cause even more mis information.
And they only did away with the validation for the one year during covid when they could not hold the expo. You still have to show up in person to validate the 5$ tags.
First, it's not hard to draw a tag in Utah. I draw deer every year, since 1988 I have had a deer tag, except 2018, I have an elk tag every year. So that is incorrect. Next I Trust anyone except the UDWR with funding. They don't put much towards wildlife. They mismanage everything they touch. They need to be disbanded just like the ATF. Now with that said SFW aren't any better. So honestly I'm not sure who deserves the money, but I would trust the SFW before the DWR. Also I don't care about the auction tags, it doesn't change me drawing tags yearly. If someone is dumb enough to pay $500,000 for a trophy deer that's on them. Also they are raffle tags, they are draw tags, you have to apply for them through three UDWR not buy a Tahoe ticket and is a lottery draw. It's for anyone to have better draw odds on limited entry units without paying the high cost.
One more point, the amount of that 1 tag (the antelope island tag) is about 1/6 the amount of the total for all tags for deer drawn in 2022. 73,075 antlered tags for deer were given in 2022 at $40 a tag which is just under $3,000,000, 2,923,000 to be exact. There is a $10 fee which actually goes to pay Fallon, Nevada to do our draws, since lottery is not legal in Utah. So in my opinion, even if (I'm guessing here) 60% between all entities (DNR, SFW, and MDF) involved getting the finances, it's a huge sum of money for that particular species. So with my example and guess of actual money amounts, $300,000 of the $500,000 goes to projects. The money gained from tags sold during regular draw doesn't all go to helping the species. In fact the DWR ifa one of our most wasteful money spending entities. Plus they are very anti hunter. Part of the reason Utah had to put am amendment to our state constitution giving Utahn's the right to hunt, and protecting that right. If the DWR had it their way, we wouldn't be allowed to hunt.
I will not argue that the money raised is not significant or that the good doesn't out weigh the bad. What I will say is that I see a difference between auction and raffle tags. A raffle where folks have equal chances and the entry $$$$ is something reasonable I can stomach well as a vehicle, auctions are very difficult. ESPECIALLY given the fact that animals taken with these tags, and the TONS of support can be entered into record books as "fair chase"…..what a laugh.
Hello, this is similar to the deer tag issues, would be interested in what you think of the native rights and tags in today's world. I am Sean Bennett and live in northern Wisconsin. I am a decendiary of the fort peck. My father was a tribal member. Here in Wisconsin the tribes have fishing and hunting rights such as deer, bear tags every year, fish netting and spearing and such. Walleye spawn spearing is a big topic here as they use modern boats with high power lights and such. When elk were reintroduced it was great for the elk and state. But when hunting opened 50% of the tags are going to the tribes. This is still the cheapest elk tag I've seen but at some point for the fish and game we have to just be a people. Not American or tribal,rich or poor. I will likely never get to hunt elk,moose or for sure sheep. But we should all have a fair chance at tags. Just wondering how others see this and I know you have far more knowledge than I do. It just seems wrong that a group of people are more privileged than other groups of people, and I am part native from montana.
Sean
Waiting for your epic videos to come out again.
Common Randy. Don't let Elk 101 show u up😆.
Thank you Michael for sharing great tips and information on winter fishing Great Job Marcus on all the great information today 👍
God's Blessings to you all
Do you guys video these first thing in the morning before any if you are awake or are you videoing these inside a church where a funeral is being held. You guys sound asleep and uninterested with 2 /4 not even participating in the discussion.