Wyoming Legislators Attempt To Burn Down Nonresident Hunters!

[bearpaw]

Wyoming Legislators Attempt To Burn Down Nonresident Hunters!

Some legislators in Wyoming introduced what seemed to be a very controversial bill regarding how Wyoming allocates and prices their big game licenses and tags. Senate bill SF0094 outlined a drastic change in license pricing and allocation for the 2022 hunting season.

full story: https://blog.eastmans.com/thumb-in-your-eye/

[dvolmer]

Extreme rises in NR license and tag fees don't surprise me one bit.  Cutting the number of tags is sort of a surprise though.  Especially in a state as big as Wyoming with the population of the entire state way below the million mark.  Will be a bunch of NR torqued off hunters that have been buying points for years.  But the state probably doesn't really care all that much about them or that.  Just the revenue from NR applicants and the quality of hunts for their resident constituents is all they really care about and to be honest, that is what they should care about.  I hate to admit that being a NR hunter myself.

[Machias]

Although this bill did have bipartisan support it was DOA.

[CaNINE]

Fortunately for us NR's and for WYOGA, the Bill failed miserably.  It was a shot over the bow. Residents are frustrated that their hunting opportunities are being limited by the preference point system.  It won't come as a surprise to see continued NR fee increases and perhaps changes to the allocation.

[Stein]

Yeah, the problem is point creep but the blame will fall on NR.  My guess is there will be a quick fix of maxing NR allocations at 10% (or a smaller number than currently) which will help for a couple years and then point creep will again raise it's ugly head.

[meatwhack]

How would this be caused by point creep?

[sagemd]

Wyoming residents don't have a point system foe Elk, Deer and Antelope.

[Stein]

Much of the hoopla is for the other species and if they reduced NR to 10%, many of the tags would go 100% to residents.  Say a moose area has 8 tags now, under the new system, 0 would go to NR and the residents would have them all.  They are starting to realize the odds (helped probably by third party companies like GoHunt that show the reality) and the first thing to pinch will always be NR tags.

[dvolmer]

in my opinion, companies like Go Hunt and Cabelas Tags and so forth have not helped the committed out of state hunter.  It has just made it easier for the guy that doesn't do his homework to put in and it has now flooded the system.  But I cant blame them.  Just another way to get rich.

[meatwhack]

Was the proposal to limit 10% by area or overall like Idaho.