This is exactly how I see it.
GG vetos Sheep and Moose Lottery Option
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cgasner1
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Great point right here thanks
Would a raffle tag be transferable? I know the statewide raffle in New Mexico is, which results in the winner rarely being the hunter. Everybody wants to hunt sheep until a $150,000 payday is staring them in the eyes.
Yes
No kidding. If I were the lucky raffle winner, I'd turn that MT tag into 3-4 different sheep hunts in no time.
Forkyfinder
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I looked for legislation that proved its transferable. I couldnt find anything about that.
I did see this though.
2025 Montana Governors Mountain Goat Tag RAFFLE
2025 Montana Governors Mountain Goat Tag RAFFLE - Safari Club International - Great Falls Chapter
If the only change to the law was to add the words “or lottery” it would be transferable.I looked for legislation that proved its transferable. I couldnt find anything about that.
View attachment 372479
I did see this though. View attachment 372478
2025 Montana Governors Mountain Goat Tag RAFFLE
2025 Montana Governors Mountain Goat Tag RAFFLE - Safari Club International - Great Falls Chapterwww.onlinehuntingauctions.com
The tag is currently transferable
Hilarious you can transfer it but they bold illegal for a sale. What a generous gift that is to just give it to someone out of the goodness of your heartI looked for legislation that proved its transferable. I couldnt find anything about that.
View attachment 372479
I did see this though. View attachment 372478
2025 Montana Governors Mountain Goat Tag RAFFLE
2025 Montana Governors Mountain Goat Tag RAFFLE - Safari Club International - Great Falls Chapter
Forkyfinder
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Ah well. A person can give it away. Why debate the merits of granting the wildlife commission more freedom to fundraise for wildlife - when you can sidetrack with the semantics of transferring something that you cant sell.
Forkyfinder
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Have some follow up thoughts, here Ty. First - i wanna say I appreciate everything you and WSF do for sheep. Itd be insane to say the odds i have of me hunting sheep in life time havent been improved by you and wsf efforts. However - i dont agree with your assessmemt and i think it clear that leaving the choice with the comission is the best choice.
The "raffle" you are comparing to isnt a raffle (notably without any gear and not much for advertised). Its an annual supertag. The funding goes to fwp and not specifically to projects benefitting the lispecies, different motivations to buy it from my POV. But for the sake of assuming its correct - why do you want to hurt moose funding if you believe those numbers to be true? Moose auction this year went for 66k, and from what i can tell - there was 26130 $(130,650) moose sold by june 4 2024 (fwps FB page) with many days remaining to purchase.
As to your assertion that social justice has no place in wildlife funding. I agree. Neither does anti-market protectionism. Id also like to point out - if an auction is so much less work than a raffle - it seems like the 10% is a lot - considering other orgs took nothing on a raffle.
We can run hypothetical scenarios all day - but the facts are far from clear that GG veto preserved any funding for sheep - and by your own example made moose funding worse. In every situation ive ever heard of regarding finances - the amount of options for income have only positive impacts on results.
I hope that you can reconsider - based on the trustee of a resource making the most capitalistic choice for the benefit of the resource and beneficiaries.
cgasner1
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The big problem with this entire thread is a bunch of guys came out swinging on the wsf or at least it felt that way to me. Your 100% right on the moose being effected also. But I’m sure even @Elky Welky would agree ty is entitled to his own opinion on the matter. Just because he is the president of an organization doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve that. Let me ask you this while you took the time to look up all these numbers and put that post together did you take the time to write the guy that actually veto the thing? Seemed like everyone here jumped on the wsf back about this which is kinda bullshit for them expressing their opinion on it. I’d bet the governor had more than a single conversation about this maybe should be looking for a path forward that way.
shootnthebull
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I, as well as the board of MTWSF agree. The opportunity to hunt bighorn sheep are not increasing, in fact in some areas they are decreasing. But we will continue to do everything in our power to help the species. If we did not exist and no one did anything, do you think sheep would be in a better place? There are many things that are out of our control. Loss of habitat, disease, weather. But things like predators, development (in some cases) and HWY's we can have a direct impact on. And we are actively working on them.
As for leaving the choice up to the commission, it's not the commission I'm worried about. It's the social justice warriors. It's still to be determined how Arizona will turn out but those who invoked that change made it clear they don't care about the money. It's more important that it's "fair" for the hunter. I call this the me, me, me, me, me, me syndrome. My prediction is that the raffle will fall short of the auction by a considerable amount. But I hope I'm wrong for the sake of conservation dollars in AZ. And it was just a few short months ago the commission made a decision on bears that has MANY in the conservation community in an uproar. Do they make the right decision every time? Do they always know the nuances and facts on everything the are asked to make a decision on? It takes years to learn all of the interworking of wildlife conservation. I'm not sure the requirements for a commission position sets them up for success on every topic.
WSF, the organization auctioning the tag has given back far more to bighorn sheep conservation in MT than the 10% they "keep". To date they've funded $342,000 in bighorn conservation here in MT. Not included in that number is their contribution of $45,000 of the $100,000 we have raised to help FWP purchase the East Cliffs addition to the Blue Eyed Nellie WMA. Important wintering and lambing grounds that will certainly be developed if not bought and protected. Which is the exact same way the Blue Eyed Nellie came to be. MTWSF president at the time headed off a developer before they could subdivide the piece of real estate that is critical to bighorn sheep.
If you are truly curious where MTWSF puts its conservation $ you can see some of our projects here - https://montanawsf.org/work/ we are rebuilding the website so it is not 100% current but you'll get a solid snap shot.
The super tag lottery is a raffle just the same.
Raffle means a form of lottery in which each participant pays valuable consideration for a ticket to become eligible to win a prize. Winners must be determined by a random selection process approved by department rule.
Lottery means a means of raising money by selling numbered tickets and giving prizes to the holders of numbers drawn at random.
Raffle, lottery, sweepstake, it's all the same. The difference between an organization raffling a tag and FWP selling tickets for the super tag lottery is FWP has a captive target audience of 300,000+ to sell to. An organization has to spend a lot of resources and time marketing to the list they happen to have. FWP's 300,000 plus lists of hunters vs a list of 25,000 or less in this case. Marketing is expensive and time consuming.
Lastly, I asked the bill sponsor to take sheep out of the bill and we would support it. The request was denied. The fact is, moose, deer, elk and goat will, in most cases, make more money as a raffle. Its simple economics, supply and demand. Those buying auction tags aren't willing to spend as much on those species as they are on Sheep. Sheep are the hardest animal to get a tag for. Therefore they hold the highest point of monetary value. Guys who have the money are willing to part with it for a chance to hunt a ram.
I might ask, since I'm not a frequent flyer on Hunt Talk, to whom am I conversing with?
Elky Welky
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Hi all, I've been taking a break from HT after I found out about this veto last week--while at the exact same time a few people on this forum started attacking my character because they didn't have anything useful to say and didn't like what I had to say. I don't care about the trolls, but I do care about the mission of the org I volunteer for and how our volunteers are treated.
Which ties to the next point, in that I also agree that the hardworking members of conservation orgs, like BHA and WSF, do not deserve to be thrown under the bus. The veto of this bill was ultimately the governor's decision.
The merits of the bill were pretty clear to our legislature, as it passed the house 100-0 and the Senate also passed it in a bipartisan vote. It was never a threat to sheep funding because I don't see any org making a presentation better than the model WSF has already created, so WSF would get to continue their auctions until someone, or even WSF, could come up with something different to help raise more money. All the fear about it having any negative effect on their bottom line is false; or at the very least extremely unlikely. It takes a pretty far stretch of the imagination to think anyone could bring a plan to the commission to raise more money for sheep than WSF will under their current model. Allowing for raffle or auction only gives the option to raise more money, not less. If you all recall, RMEF also realized that this bill wasn't actually a threat, and they had the wisdom to back off and take a neutral position.
Ultimately, the choice the governor had to make was either 1.) to keep the status quo without the potential to raise more money for moose, or 2.) keep the status quo while also adding the potential to raise more money for moose and maybe even sheep. I think that answer should be pretty obvious to everyone here, the same as it was to our legislature, and I am saddened the governor didn't see the logic in that. It is also worth noting that he did sign the bill to allow raffles of the swan and antelope tag, so now the only tags in Montana that cannot potentially be raffled are sheep and moose.
I've attached the letter I sent to the governor about this bill prior to his veto.
Which ties to the next point, in that I also agree that the hardworking members of conservation orgs, like BHA and WSF, do not deserve to be thrown under the bus. The veto of this bill was ultimately the governor's decision.
The merits of the bill were pretty clear to our legislature, as it passed the house 100-0 and the Senate also passed it in a bipartisan vote. It was never a threat to sheep funding because I don't see any org making a presentation better than the model WSF has already created, so WSF would get to continue their auctions until someone, or even WSF, could come up with something different to help raise more money. All the fear about it having any negative effect on their bottom line is false; or at the very least extremely unlikely. It takes a pretty far stretch of the imagination to think anyone could bring a plan to the commission to raise more money for sheep than WSF will under their current model. Allowing for raffle or auction only gives the option to raise more money, not less. If you all recall, RMEF also realized that this bill wasn't actually a threat, and they had the wisdom to back off and take a neutral position.
Ultimately, the choice the governor had to make was either 1.) to keep the status quo without the potential to raise more money for moose, or 2.) keep the status quo while also adding the potential to raise more money for moose and maybe even sheep. I think that answer should be pretty obvious to everyone here, the same as it was to our legislature, and I am saddened the governor didn't see the logic in that. It is also worth noting that he did sign the bill to allow raffles of the swan and antelope tag, so now the only tags in Montana that cannot potentially be raffled are sheep and moose.
I've attached the letter I sent to the governor about this bill prior to his veto.
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BuzzH
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The big giant dead elephant in the room that is being ignored, is the fact that wildlife is still held in trust for the citizens of the State. Not held in trust for wildlife orgs to raffle, auction, etc., and that is not a me, me attitude, that's a point of law. Hundreds of years of case law to be precise.
If the rightful owners of that wildlife would prefer a raffle over an auction, it should be left up to those that are the holders of the wildlife trust. Its why no matter if there is less money raised in AZ for their sheep tags, its a choice made by the citizens of AZ that they are fully entitled to make. As a matter of fact, if a majority of the citizens of the State decide to do away with all these raffle, governors, commission tags, and get back to the NAM, that's what should happen.
If the rightful owners of that wildlife would prefer a raffle over an auction, it should be left up to those that are the holders of the wildlife trust. Its why no matter if there is less money raised in AZ for their sheep tags, its a choice made by the citizens of AZ that they are fully entitled to make. As a matter of fact, if a majority of the citizens of the State decide to do away with all these raffle, governors, commission tags, and get back to the NAM, that's what should happen.
idelkslayer
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I wasn't around when these auctions started. I like to imagine that it was a publicly supported funding strategy. If so, then it had the weight of the beneficiaries backing to addition of auction tags. At this point however, it seems public opinion is shifting and the beneficiaries no longer support this funding strategy.
I have been vocal in my opposition to auction tags. We can argue all we want about which option brings in more money. There have been times in Idaho when the raffle tag produced more money than the auction tag (7 times in 20 years). We have also not seen how well raffle tags could perform in the absence of auction tags.
I can admit that part of what makes me so very opposed to auction tags is the high and mighty marketing that surrounds them. WSF often heaps praise on the winner of the auction tag as a person who is "putting their money where their mouth is", "contributed to the cause due to their love of wild sheep". Gary Thornton even called it the "backbone of conservation", what a joke. The auction tag buyers could just donate the money or spend an equal amount to buy raffle applications if they truly are doing it for the love of wild sheep. But we all know that's not why they do it. They are doing it for the tag, the hunt, the trophy. It's not that different from the rest of us that want to hunt sheep too. They just have the means to buy their way in and a lobby (WSF) in place to continue providing those tags.
The communication coming from WSF is very condescending. We could easily replace all the dollars that they provide through a combination of raffles and/or license fee increases. There is tremendous buying power in the general hunting population. I once calculated that $1.35 per license holder would be enough in Idaho to replace the revenue from the auction tag and raffle tag. I imagine that other states could do the same for similar low fees.
I reject the argument that the situation would be worse without the work done by WSF. In Idaho at least, we had more sheep before WSF got involved.
I am copying the rest of my comments from a previous post by me on this subject.
Here's a few quotes from WSF CEO Gary Thornton pushing the agenda.
“The fact that a handful of individuals stepped up at these levels to put and keep more wild sheep on the mountain for everyone, and one day put more sheep permits into the public draws, is the definition of paying it forward. That’s the backbone of conservation.”
Do we really believe that the backbone of conservation is a "handful of individuals" paying big bucks for tags? Idaho has fewer sheep today than in 1982 when the Idaho WSF was founded, where are the "more sheep" and "sheep permits into the public draws"? Maybe they have had more success in other states? Nevada probably, where else?
"Without auctioning a few special permits each year, some agencies would have no wild sheep programs, and others would be severely limited as to what they could do.”
This is only true for as long as we allow it to continue, instead of creating alternative funding sources. And it is as easy as a couple dollars per hunting license sold.
In the long run, 1 or 2 tags per state makes very little difference in anyone's odds of drawing a tag. The low odds make people apathetic and willing to accept the status quo of auction tags. I just really don't like the disingenuous attitude being pushed that we have no other choice but to continue funding in this way
I have been vocal in my opposition to auction tags. We can argue all we want about which option brings in more money. There have been times in Idaho when the raffle tag produced more money than the auction tag (7 times in 20 years). We have also not seen how well raffle tags could perform in the absence of auction tags.
I can admit that part of what makes me so very opposed to auction tags is the high and mighty marketing that surrounds them. WSF often heaps praise on the winner of the auction tag as a person who is "putting their money where their mouth is", "contributed to the cause due to their love of wild sheep". Gary Thornton even called it the "backbone of conservation", what a joke. The auction tag buyers could just donate the money or spend an equal amount to buy raffle applications if they truly are doing it for the love of wild sheep. But we all know that's not why they do it. They are doing it for the tag, the hunt, the trophy. It's not that different from the rest of us that want to hunt sheep too. They just have the means to buy their way in and a lobby (WSF) in place to continue providing those tags.
The communication coming from WSF is very condescending. We could easily replace all the dollars that they provide through a combination of raffles and/or license fee increases. There is tremendous buying power in the general hunting population. I once calculated that $1.35 per license holder would be enough in Idaho to replace the revenue from the auction tag and raffle tag. I imagine that other states could do the same for similar low fees.
I reject the argument that the situation would be worse without the work done by WSF. In Idaho at least, we had more sheep before WSF got involved.
I am copying the rest of my comments from a previous post by me on this subject.
Here's a few quotes from WSF CEO Gary Thornton pushing the agenda.
“The fact that a handful of individuals stepped up at these levels to put and keep more wild sheep on the mountain for everyone, and one day put more sheep permits into the public draws, is the definition of paying it forward. That’s the backbone of conservation.”
Do we really believe that the backbone of conservation is a "handful of individuals" paying big bucks for tags? Idaho has fewer sheep today than in 1982 when the Idaho WSF was founded, where are the "more sheep" and "sheep permits into the public draws"? Maybe they have had more success in other states? Nevada probably, where else?
"Without auctioning a few special permits each year, some agencies would have no wild sheep programs, and others would be severely limited as to what they could do.”
This is only true for as long as we allow it to continue, instead of creating alternative funding sources. And it is as easy as a couple dollars per hunting license sold.
In the long run, 1 or 2 tags per state makes very little difference in anyone's odds of drawing a tag. The low odds make people apathetic and willing to accept the status quo of auction tags. I just really don't like the disingenuous attitude being pushed that we have no other choice but to continue funding in this way
406dn
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I assume, could be mistaken, that the typical WSF member is relatively affluent. There is nothing inherently bad about that. There is such a simple change they could make that would immediately garner universal respect for the work they do.
It would be the model similar to what churches use. Have a dinner meeting, explaining the need and extolling what has been done. Towards the end of the meeting, you ask for donations as the members see fit, and can afford. Then thank them for their generosity.
I do not know how auction tags game to be. Perhaps it was initiated by Fish and Game Departments. It could well be outside groups approaching F&G, saying we could raise a lot of money, if we had a tag to auction.
I would like to think it wasn't a F&G department choosing to erode the North American model of wildlife management.
Forkyfinder
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Montana SuperTag Lottery | Montana FWP
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is once again offering a SuperTag lottery for hunters to take another shot at the dream.
fwp.mt.gov
49157 (from today) or 245,785 dollars with 3 weeks to go.
This is a "raffle" with no advertisement, no limit on tickets sold, and no gear.
Another point - the "captive audience" is comprised largely of the same audience that has an uproar when you suggest that a deer/elk tag should cost more than a chipolte combo.
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Elky Welky
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Link to ask your legislator to override the veto is up now:
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Forkyfinder
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