New Mexico Proposal to Elminate NR tags
Wild Sheep
New Mexico is entertaining a proposal to eliminate all non-resident sheep tags. The Wild Sheep Foundation and the Boone & Crocket have opposed it. Crickets from Pope & Young so far....
The liberals in new mexico are behind this i bet!
KHNC I bet the good conservative folks in NM want those licenses for their residents, just the liberal NRs think they should be entitled to them.
Isn't that what WY pretty much did?
At least they aren't having NR's buy $150 and $7 preference points for 22 years before eliminating the tags?
Just curious, I thought I read it was only for sheep tags?
bg, you did just read it. In Mad Trapper's opening post.
Or banning NR’s from hunting on federal “Wilderness area” land without a guide
states need to reciprocate accordingly ... NM residents banned from getting non-res sheep tags in other states
fair is fair
This is where I see it heading. Pretty soon, you will only be able to hunt in your home state. I guess that will make many people happy.
In round numbers.....8000 resident applicants for about 50 ram tags. Meaning odds to draw for a resident right now (they get 43 of the 50 ram tags) is roughly about 5/10ths of 1%. Odds to draw if all tags went to residents becomes roughly 6/10ths of 1%. Is it really worth crapping on NR's to gain a 0.1 tenth of a percent odds improvement? And why isolate this to only sheep licenses? What about Elk, Deer, Oryx, etc? Perhaps with the knowledge that the battle would involve WAY more people and a WAY bigger loss of NR money. Baby steps.
Jethro,
Thanks, I missed he mentioned that and thought he meant all species.
Thanks
Don't have enough opinion on the matter yet. Moved to NM last July. It is a pretty big change living in a state where the vast majority of hunting is by draw for the residents, and you have less than a fifty percent chance of drawing an elk tag on an annual basis. I would guess that most of the NR applicants at least have the ability to hunt in their own state without drawing for tags. Perhaps not for sheep. Like I said. Don't have firm opinion on the topic yet.
^^ The democratic state of New Mexico will gladly let a resident or a non-resident hunt every single year now. Says so on the Mandatory "Hunting" license i have to buy every time i want to apply to hunt. Just would be better if it wasnt just squirrels and rabbits.
You could always drive up with the thousands of other New Mexicans and hunt OTC elk every year here in Colorado. I can't wait to see all the crying when that gets eliminated.
There is no formal proposal to eliminate nr sheep hunting in NM although the results may be the same.
Residents want the regulation followed and their take is that a game unit for sheep is no different than a unit for elk or deer. The matter has been sent to the attorney general for clarification.
Orion, I was told that hunting in Southern Colorado now is by draw for elk, but that was only by word of mouth. No matter. I do miss being able to hunt year round for hogs in Oklahoma.
I'm a NM resident and on the P&Y Board and this is the first I've heard about this. A link to the article would be helpful.
Yes, all of southern Colorado is now a draw. Soon residents will be drawing archery tags every other year or every two years.
The back story can be found on the nm wildlife fed news page.
For sheep the odds were almost zero already. The biggest revenue loss would be the auction, but they should still get decent money even if it's only residents. If the trend continues far enough, all the hunting channels are going to have to stop showing hunts out west. Noone back east would be allowed to do it.
pdk certain units are for archery still OTC for 2nd and 3rd rifle for all units down here. Also they are a guaranteed draw for archery tags as the CPW basically allocated a ridiculous amount of tags.
"It would most likely be a Constitutional violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause..."
No, it wouldn't.
"It would most likely be a Constitutional violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause..."
Most likely NOT. Once again azasshntr you have no idea what you're talking about. Does it not get old for you?
Reply "It would most likely be a Constitutional violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause..."
If that were the case then SD, ND and Nebraska would already be violating it.
Soooo, if you're hunting Federal lands, and your a U.S. citizen, why aren't you already a resident?
JusPassin so are you suggesting we move wildlife management to the federal level? You think we're getting screwed now let the feds get a hold of it, think wolves and grizzly, that would be a really bad idea.
JSW,
https://www.gohunt.com/new-mexico-could-eliminate-nonresident-sheep-tags?fbclid=IwAR19tOPWTS59IS1bhHBFhYlNLgfIJiL205uWkpLGvAvyCZrC9ZoOOrhQP-o
https://nmwildlife.org/new-mexico-game-commission-looks-for-legal-advice-on-bighorn-tag-allocation/
Look up Public Law 109-13 section 6036 And some light reading on the subject: https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1055&context=mulr
Go down to paper pages 367-371
Wow. I had no idea that nonresidents got 15 out of 16 tags in 2012. I read about sheep habitat being maintained in large part because of auction tags. I wonder if they would get similar funds using auctions for Residents, and how much of a change it would be. Always difficult to know the right thing, with everyone pushing narratives that are in their own favor, particularly the guide association.
There are 2 major issues related to this case.
#1. It is probable that the NMG&F is breaking the law in how they allocated NR sheep tags. It makes little difference what B&C, Wild Sheep or P&Y thinks about this issue. If the Commission is advised by their attorneys that what they are doing is not allowed by law then the Commission will likely reverse their 8 year policy and put it back on the legislature to come up with a fix. Good luck with that. The law says one thing and the G&F created a new policy to get around the part of the law that they didn't like in order to facilitate NR sheep hunting.
#2. NM no longer has qualified immunity for state employees and volunteers. The idiots in control wanted to punish the evil and racist police so, 2 years ago, they passed a law removing qualified immunity. This basically allows anyone to sue any government employee or volunteer, ie the game commission, for anything that hurts their feelings. This is why we no longer have a full 7 person game commission. Good people resign before they have to spend their own money on law suits. That and good people are fired by the Governor for not ruling the way her donors would like.
#3. I forgot the the biggest reason of all. This is what you get when you have one party in complete conrol of the legislature, judicial system and the entirety of the bureaucracy for 50+ years. NM is an effed up state and will continue to be for a long time. The only thing that get us up to 49th now and then instead of 50th all the time is having a Republican Governor off and on to straighten things out for a while.
I have been told from a reliable source that the primary backer of this effort is a NM resident who has drawn sheep tags in Montana, Wyoming, and Arizona...
This is going to put significant additional pressure on other hunts elsewhere like Connecticut whitetail.
The only thing NM has going for it is a draw system that repeats the same results, a few happy and a lot of disappointed each year.
The outfitter welfare program is what really screws things up. That's one program that needs to permanently go away...
Here's an idea.....raffle off all 50 ram licenses over the course Feb-July each year, open to anyone who wants to buy tickets, with no limits on ticket sales. Residents can buy as many tickets as they want, and would then be eligible for every single license.
The benefit for NM wildlife is that the net proceeds would be well into the millions, compared to a tiny fraction of that amount which these licenses haul in now.
Yeah, do an unlimited raffle on all the sheep tags, so the Jimmy John's of the world can buy up millions of tickets and virtually assure themselves of a tag every year. Then we can all sit around and complain about how money and greed has ruined hunting for the average Joe. Great idea.
Matt
Negative. They would just continue to buy Governor's tags, not mess around with raffles.
Do you honestly think an unlimited raffle wouldn't result in the winners being mostly guys with the deepest pockets who bought the most tickets? I seem to recall an ex-Bowsite member who tried to do just that.
Matt
You think the "Jimmy John's" of the world buy thousands of Powerball tickets?
I think there are Jimmy John's of the world that would buy 10s of thousands of sheep raffle tickets every year without a blink of an eye. Especially if it was promoted as a "conservation" fund raiser. Sure, occasionally a regular Joe, who only bought a few tickets, would get lucky and win, but they would be an exception to the rule. You're fooling yourself, if you think otherwise, IMO.
Matt
^^^ naw, JJ's would just go to banquets and buy the tags at auction. That way they can strut their stuff around the banquet floor when everyone applauds their "victory"...
I'd be cool with them giving the outfitter tags directly to non res honestly.
Hell you could split the outfitter pool between the residents and non-residents. That would raise resident odds more than giving them all the NR DIY tags although odds would still be terrible. Hell give the resident all the outfitter pool that would help the odds the best and is much more preferable then the outfitter pool existing IMO.
If you guys have access to the GoHunt site, check out their story on it. The most interesting part is the comment after by one of the guys involved in the game commission discussion. He gives a lot more detail about what happened and why going way back to the USO lawsuit that prevented NM from having different quotas for NR vs Res for a while.
You mean the commentary below the write up?
Yep. Here's his comment...
This article is misleading and inaccurate. First, nonresidents will absolutely not be impacted in any way in the bighorn raffles and auctions. The only impact would be to draw permits that are subject to the existing draw quota law. Auctions and raffles are not subject to the quota statute in any way shape or form. It’s seems that either WSF is feeding GoHunt a line of BS or GoHunt is not doing a very good job of reporting. Probably both….
I was at the game commission meeting and was a part of the referenced “push-pull” debate. There is no “proposal” to make the change to the the bighorn rule. However the state game commission during the meeting made a request for an attorney general opinion if the commission has been breaking the law since 2014 when it bastardized the definition of a hunt code in order to artificially generate nonresident and outfitter bighorn permits that would not be possible under the then and still current quota statute. Most people and organizations are happy when government decides to at least try to follow the law. Apparently Wild Sheep Foundation and Boone and Crockett in this instance are not?
Here is the complete and accurate story for anyone that is interested. When the current quota statute was passed there was a federal injunction preventing nonresident quotas on bighorn sheep (and ibex and oryx). As such, the NM quota law did not account for the generation of nonresident permits out of the statewide pool of permits for a extremely limited opportunity species like bighorn. Most states have separate quota provisions and implementation procedures for bighorn, moose, goat, bison permits to spread a nonresident portion (typically 10% max) for this reason. During 2014 the injunction preventing quotas on bighorn, Ibex, and oryx in NM was vacated. Instantly the quota statute applied to these species. But the maximum number of desert or Rocky Mountain bighorn permits in any hunt code precludes any nonresident or outfitted permits. At the time many residents, including me, unsuccessfully implored the game commission not to likely break the law and kick the can down the road and do what they did, lump all the desert ram and rocky ram hunt codes and permits into single hunt codes each to artificially produce nonresident and outfitted bighorn permits. We said allow the legislature take up the issue during the 2015 session and modify the quota law to make nonresident and outfitted permits available in an orderly, durable, legal manner. At most there would be a year or two of resident only permits. Part of our argument to wait was the fact that the game commission had already thrown resident would-be bighorn hunters under the bus by not filing to vacate the bighorn quota injunction for 8 straight years. A filing made possible by a 2005 change in federal law prompted by a lawsuit by a New Mexican outfitter challenging Arizona’s quota law. During this period I calculated that NM unnecessarily granted 63 bighorn permits to nonresident hunters. Culminating in nonresidents drawing 15 out of 16 desert bighorn permits during 2013. The first year desert bighorns were removed from our state threatened species list and our draw desert bighorn permits increased from 1 to 16 statewide. Ironically, I believe that one of the owners of GoHunt drew one of these 15 out 16 nonresident desert bighorn permits. I argued during 2014. look resident have been drawing the minority of bighorn permits in NM for several decades now. And 63 fewer than possible over just the prior 8 years because of commission inaction on the injunction, would it really be “unfair” if residents drew all the bighorn permits for a year or two while the legislature gets the quota law properly sorted for bighorn? So this is where we are. Still trying to get things sorted 8 years later than it should have been done. BTW, even under the bastardized hunt code bighorn rule since 2014 by our game commission NM residents have not been made “whole” for the bighorn permits lost to us because our commission couldn’t be bothered for 8 years to simply ask the federal court to vacate bighorn quota injunction.
If you take an objective look at what the NM Game Commission has done to NM resident hunters since 2005 it is NM residents, not nonresidents that have been thrown under the bus. If you live in a state with sheep permits how would you feel if the shoe was on the other foot and your game commission bent over backwards at every turn for nonresident bighorn hunters instead of you as a resident? What is in your state nonresidents drew 93% of desert sheep permits one year and two years later all your commission could think about is making sure nonresidents don’t miss out on bighorn permits for a year or two?
Maybe NM residents should be prohibited from drawing any bighorn sheep tags in other states while the NM Legislature "gets the quota law properly sorted for bighorns"?
Maybe NM residents should be prohibited from drawing any bighorn sheep tags in other states while the NM Legislature "gets the quota law properly sorted for bighorns"?
Mad Trapper does this even make sense to you?
never mind I'm not following you down that rabbit hole
^^^ all banning NM residents from applying in any other states would do is to legitimize an actual lawsuit because that discrimination isn't applied to all the other nonresidents in other states.
That rabbit hole was only about 1 foot deep...
Would it not be simple enough for any state adopt language which imposes reciprocity when determining NR big game tags allocations? You shut us out...we shut you out. Seems more than fair to me...as I peer out of this rabbit hole.
Most western states that issue sheep tags to NR's have the same "math issue" as the one under discussion for NM. Meaning that their low NR percentage quotas, if applied per-unit, would not allow a NR license to be issued for most of their hunt units. And therefore those states calculate the ceiling quota number for NR licenses based on the total statewide quota. This is how Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Montana, California, Oregon and others can issue sheep tags to NR's for hunts having single-digit quotas. This has been the normal way of business in those states for decades.
"all banning NM residents from applying in any other states would do is to legitimize an actual lawsuit because that discrimination isn't applied to all the other nonresidents in other states"
HDE I don't think you are looking at the same rabbit hole. The one you are looking at has a diamondback in it...lol
So, those that want to ban NM residents from other states want to punish everyone for a few knucklehead’s decisions? That makes about as much sense as banning NR’s from NM!
NM doesn't offer any public draw cow tags to any NR. If ID didn't want NM to have access to any NR cow tag, it would have to apply to the other 48 states and 2 territories as well.
Same goes for sheep tags...
pav , Wyoming does that with trapping, or furbearing, licenses. You can only trap in Wyoming what your home state allows NR to trap I believe is the regulation.
