All that said, who here is writing letters, watching committee meetings, attending game commission meetings, leaning on residents, etc. in other states to lobby to get your NR percentage bumped up? Buzz made the point, it's fair, and nobody answered. Why are WY residents selfish bastards for even considering a bill that puts it in line with other state splits -- even though there is still no net loss of elk tags and you still get a boat load of antelope tags after the initial draw. I bet not many of the loudest negative voices on this have ever attended WY legislative session or commission meeting, maybe I'm wrong.
Part of the reason this is such a big hubbub, and probably had a faster post rate than any HT thread in history, is the deal for NR's here has been so good. The hunting has been good, the prices were a particularly good value for a long time, and nobody likes having the rug pulled out. I get it to the extent I can.
I've spent half the last day thinking I am way too selfish, half not selfish enough, and am trending toward "we're all screwed in the long run either way". Maybe my bar is too low, but I don't expect my legislators to vote based on garnering national support for hunting and conservation by remaining the most relatively generous (in % tags and value) in the country. It's about two degrees removed from their political reality, and not remotely on the radar of most of their constituents. You could argue it should be, but it's not the world they live in. I don't know whose fault that is supposed to be, probably no one group in particular.
I can tell you what annoys me enough to consider contacting the committee in support of this: Getting an unsolicited e-mail from SNS/Sy Gilliland about killing the bill with zero actual information in it (and how do they have my personal e-mail address), and the victim complex of the squeakiest wheels on here. Like the one hound guy that blew up the MT/hound/bear thread, the aggressiveness make you and your fellow NR's hunters look bad. I'm not talking about those expressing alternative arguments, concerns about impacts, or frustration, those make total sense.