Clearly this process is inefficient at best and another example of why the federal government can be so painful. That being, assuming a more streamlined permitting process, what do you think a fair fee would be for you to film a week long hunt with your crew?
I have worked with many in DC to get this streamlined. It gets some momentum, but it never makes it high enough up a priority list to get attached to any legislation. I think reform would have been a much better option than losing a case such as this.
I am conditioned to pay large amounts, so the idea of what was proposed by the folks in DC seemed low. The idea was the crews of 5 or less would pay for an annual fee, almost like a hunting license. The fee suggested was $1,000 per year, which seems like the deal of the century.
The idea being that increasing compliance from 10% to 90% would raise a lot more revenue. It would result in less administrative and enforcement costs to the agencies. It would eliminate the complications where you have some BLM lands adjacent to USFS lands and thus two permits is currently needed.
For a current week-long hunt, I pay $150-250 for an application fee, the same for a recovery fee, and the daily rate is $150-250 per day. On the highest end, I have $500 of application and recovery costs and $1,750 for seven days of use. That is a total of $2,250 for a week-long hunt. When we do 12-14 hunts per year, it adds up. On the lower end of the scale is $1,350 per week. I wish I could tell you how some offices charge us the highest rate, some waive the fees, some call us low impact and give us an even lower rate, and some ask us to do videos or provide footage in exchange for have some of the fees waived.
For me, if the fee was $5,000 per year, that is the same fee paid by someone grazing 250+ cow/calf pairs 24/365 for an entire year. I suspect our impact is far less than 250 pairs on the land for an entire year, but I think that would be a fair rate.
I will continue to carry my $3 million of liability insurance currently required for some permits. It protects me if some accident happens out there and we are deemed responsible. I'm willing to keep the USFS and BLM as bound parties on that insurance. That adds another $4K of cost per year. I have no problem with being required to carry insurance. I carry that to cover liabilities I might cause while driving. As a commercial user of someone else's property, it seems reasonable that they require I carry insurance to cover them/me.
I know some who do what I do would disagree with $5K, plus insurance requirement. But you asked for an opinion. That's my opinion.
In the last 13 years of doing this, I've paid over a quarter million dollars in film permit fees and incurred another $35K in liability insurance costs. Just part of being in the gig I have selected. Or, at least a cost to those who feel that following the rules is an expectation, not an exception.
And, through the Freedom of Information Act, most of my older operating plans filed with my film permits have been obtained by a lot of people, with much of that information shared liberally. I know some people who refuse to apply for film permits because they are not willing to share years of scouting and research with the general public who then uses that information as a scouting shortcut.
Fortunately, I have convinced the USFS and BLM that they can no longer give out my maps and other exact details included in my operating plan, as they fall under the "proprietary information" category, a case the USFS lost in court for issuing proprietary information as part of a FOIA request. Yet, I don't always get notified before the information is submitted and often it goes out the door with these operating plans attached.
Example - I have been notified by the USFS of how many FOIA requests have come in for the film permit on the Wyoming mule deer hunt with Beau and Lorenzo this last season. The FOIA officer agrees with my position that the operating plans are proprietary information and so far has only provided the two page application and not the operating plan. I warned the film permit officer the day we got out of the hills to expect a bunch of FOIA requests and that I wanted to be notified of such. She kind of laughed. Within a couple days of airing those episodes she called me to confirm that I was correct.
That FOIA information is a long sidebar that contributes to why some in the hunting space don't want to do film permits. Now that I have most the FOIA officers on notice that my operating plans are proprietary, it is far less of a concern for me, except for those folks who send out information without notifying me that my information has been requested.
