New Mexico Privatization. Nuthin like it

[seeth07]

but the point and fact remains the that east is in a state of dropping hunter numbers with the number one reason being cited is a lack of places to hunt, is that not true?

I'm not exactly sure where eastern states play out as the number one reason. In WI, the number one reason is lack of a mentor or someone to go with. We however do have ample public lands and private lands opening to hunting in this state. It doesn't take a significant amount of effort to find good places to enjoy a hunt. We also have full open water law where if your feet are wet, your on public water. Interest in hunting is dying as urban and suburban areas continue to expand and destroy habitat. Youth are being brought up with year round club sports and school events that occupy almost their entire lives leaving no room anymore for weekend family camping trips and enjoying the outdoors. Club sports alone around here is killing hunting and fishing.

 

[TOGIE]

I'm not exactly sure where eastern states play out as the number one reason. In WI, the number one reason is lack of a mentor or someone to go with. We however do have ample public lands and private lands opening to hunting in this state. It doesn't take a significant amount of effort to find good places to enjoy a hunt. Interest in hunting is dying as urban and suburban areas continue to expand and destroy habitat. Youth are being brought up with year round club sports and school events that occupy almost their entire lives leaving no room anymore for weekend family camping trips and enjoying the outdoors. Club sports alone around here is killing hunting and fishing.

i mean it's a different topic, but a worthwhile one. and in an honest attempt at discussion, did dad go full throttle on club sports because he lost his passion for hunting? you'd think if dad had the passion for hunting he'd make time for his kids to go hunting.

why did dad quit? did his dad quit?

 

[seeth07]

i mean it's a different topic, but a worthwhile one. and in an honest attempt at discussion, did dad go full throttle on club sports because he lost his passion for hunting? you'd think if dad had the passion for hunting he'd make time for his kids to go hunting.

why did dad quit? did his dad quit?

I don't know, that is a great deep question. I don't have kids so I'm probably not qualified to answer it. I can only observe on how my brother, cousins, buddies and coworkers who I used to go out fishing and hunting with all now have this excuse that they are doing something or traveling somewhere with their kids every weekend I ask them to do something.

We used to have a group of 20 plus people that went on a 4th of July fishing trip to the Northwoods that contained family and friends. It is down to really just 5 people now due to the rest having kids and "too many things to do".

 

[TOGIE]

I don't know, that is a great deep question. I don't have kids so I'm probably not qualified to answer it. I can only observe on how my brother, cousins, buddies and coworkers who I used to go out fishing and hunting with all now have this excuse that they are doing something or traveling somewhere with their kids every weekend I ask them to do something.

We used to have a group of 20 plus people that went on a 4th of July fishing trip to the Northwoods that contained family and friends. It is down to really just 5 people now due to the rest having kids and "too many things to do".

i mean like everything it's priorities.

i'm still in shock at how much kids change things. when you're in college, the guy you see every day is your best friend, when you get married and a have a full time job the guy you see once or twice a week is your best friend, when you have kids the guy you see once a month is your best friend.

if my kids take to hunting all my time will be devoted to teaching them how to hunt and hunting with them and i'll scrape together some spare time to hunt for myself in between if i can, which means guys hunting trips will fall low on the totem pole. very low. if my kids don't want to hunt, i'll still hunt, but i gotta remember my wife and kids are my priority and i'll probably hunt less for a period of my life because of it.

at the end of the day, if dudes were halfhearted hunters before kids, kids will squash their hunting faster than anything on this planet could, including transferable landowner tags

 

[WildWill]

why has western hunting become so gawddamn popular with easterner and midwesterners?

is it because you've continually found yourselves locked out of places to hunt? landowners controlling the rules of game you want to play? overrun small parcels of public with scarce game?

so you look west and see that you can just draw a tag for a few hundred dollars and hunt game rich public land without having to pay people to access the animals?

and now y'all want the west to start mirroring what has caused so many hunters to quit or look west? FFS

Most guys hunting out west still hunt at home regularly pay leases, crappy public land, maybe family land if they're lucky. It's not like they traded hunting at home for hunting the west they do both. Personally being locked out had nothing to do with my hunting out west. For me it was finding shows like meateater and Randy's then finding the draw info basically being spoon fed in the internet. Blame the information age it's truly what exploded western hunting. Now that the genie is outta the bottle it's not going back in.

i should clarify.

i'm not so much arguing the merits of eplus. i'm speaking in generalities.

i sense a belief in this thread that things like eplus are "the answer", "the future", "the way hunting should operate"; that transferable tags should be the norm.

maybe that's not a belief in this thread and i'm projecting. but if so, in short, it's bullshit - nothing will lead to the demise of everyday man western public hunting faster than a push for such systems to become the norm.

I wouldn't call it the "answer" or even the way it should operate but unfortunately I do think it's the future. Many things are not as they should be in this world and money is at the root of a lot of it I don't see NM elk hunting being immune to it's allure. I've been applying for 9 years always in the diy NR pool (6%) and only drawn 3 3rd choice deer tag (better then a lot of guys). I've never bought a landowner tag before but have every intention of buying at least one pronghorn tag and one elk tag in my life in NM. Would I prefer to do it all DIY and through the draw of course I would. But the truth is I could apply for the rest of my life and not draw both or even one of those tags. Life is to short to get hung up on how things should be all the time sometimes you just gotta roll with how it is.



P.S Oklahoma's hunting license sales and recruitment are not hurting one bit. I'd have to go to the numbers but pretty sure are all time high was just a year or two ago.

 

[TOGIE]

P.S Oklahoma's hunting license sales and recruitment are not hurting one bit. I'd have to go to the numbers but pretty sure are all time high was just a year or two ago.

ps i'll bring the pork butts and whiskey and drive us around if you tell me what to apply for

 

[seeth07]

if my kids take to hunting all my time will be devoted to teaching them how to hunt and hunting with them and i'll scrape together some spare time to hunt for myself in between if i can, which means guys hunting trips will fall low on the totem pole. very low. if my kids don't want to hunt, i'll still hunt, but i gotta remember my wife and kids are my priority and i'll probably hunt less for a period of my life because of it.

I think this is the reason. If kids take to hunting. And its not entirely the parents that are influencing it, its school. There isn't hunters ed in the schools around here as far as I'm aware of like when I was a kid and you could do it right at the school. We had archery class in gym which I know at my school is now banned. The kids have friends and their parents that aren't hunters have their kids signed up to all the club sports programs and you want to be with your friends so as a kid you are chosing to do it too and asking daddy to pay for it. Dad wants to hunt, wants to take the kid hunting and fishing but the kid wants to play club soccer with his best friend. Only so much you can do as a parent during those years when its peer pressure that is influencing them the most.

 

[WildWill]

ps i'll bring the pork butts and whiskey and drive us around if you tell me what to apply for

In OK or NM? If here at home no need to bring a pork butt just kill one. I've got a few groups figured out. How are you in a kayak? Also no applying hell if just pigs depending on the time of year you don't even need a license on private.

 

[TOGIE]

In OK or NM? If here at home no need to bring a pork butt just kill one. I've got a few groups figured out. How are you in a kayak? Also no applying hell if just pigs depending on the time of year you don't even need a license on private.View attachment 326967View attachment 326968

OK man!

i avoid the aristocracy states

 

[YoungGun]

Ok, here is the legwork/math I was able to work up since you seem to think it amounts to nothing.

I'm assuming that the landowner is filling for individual income taxes and is over the 12k/24k/16k threshold which puts them at 4.7%. If it is a corporate ranch filing taxes, the amount paid in taxes would likely be higher.
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The single voucher they have sells for 6k. NM tax = $282. This I would assume goes into the general state funds and allocations for all NM citizens alike. The resident applying in the draw for an elk license pays $126 (90+7+15+10+4) to the NMF&G of which I'm not sure how the money is allocated but I'm guessing a good portion if not all of it states within that department and therefore not necessarily benefiting all citizens of NM.

I don't think it amount to nothing, just that it's likely less than if that same tag was drawn. I do appreciate you actually pulling the numbers to give it context. Based on your math, It would seem a couple people applying for that same tag and paying even the resident fees is equal to, or greater than, the funds received by the state through taxes. Throw in Non-Residents and their increased tag fees alone when they draw, and that number seems to only increase in favor of public tags and draws.

 

[npaden]

I’m out of pocket and on my phone so wasn’t able to check this.

I’m curious how many elk tags were available in the public draw in New Mexico in 2018 before E Plus took all the tags out of the draw compared to how many elk tags are available in the public draw now?

I’m guessing the same or maybe even more public tags available now than pre EPlus.

EDIT - saw that seeth07 has already done this. There are more tags available in the public draw by about 2,000 now than there were in 2018 when EPlus was implemented. What a crappy deal.

Also want to point out that there are many ways that EPlus can be improved.

 

[hank4elk]

I’m out of pocket and on my phone so wasn’t able to check this.

I’m curious how many elk tags were available in the public draw in New Mexico in 2018 before E Plus took all the tags out of the draw compared to how many elk tags are available in the public draw now?

I’m guessing the same or maybe even more public tags available now than pre EPlus.

EDIT - saw that seeth07 has already done this. There are more tags available in the public draw by about 2,000 now than there were in 2018 when EPlus was implemented. What a crappy deal.

Also want to point out that there are many ways that EPlus can be improved.

I've been in the program for 15 years.
It was re-evaluated and worked over in 2018.
I get less tags now and I could not give a tag away the 1st few years.
No elks here they think. The public,the residents.
It's not the Gila ,nor the Caldera. But there are more elk.

E-plus never took tags out of the draws. They added the hunts,NMG&F.
But the program has increased the herds and there are more draw tags. And more land to access.

 

[Khunter]

E-plus never took tags out of the draws. They added the hunts,NMG&F.
But the program has increased the herds and there are more draw tags. And more land to access.

Respectfully this is false. E-Plus does take tags that would be public draw and makes them private and subject to the whims of landowners including selling to the highest bidder. How could it NOT take away from what would otherwise be public draw tags.

NMGFD FIRST determines how many tags are appropriate for a given unit and then determines how many will be private tags using the Elk Rule, based on percent public/private land regardless of existing elk habitat percent.

Only then do they use the Eplus Rule to determine how to divvy up the already praxiteles designated tags among landowners.

So it is pretty obvious, if Eplus went away, all those private tags would instead have to be doled out via the public draw. Benefitting average resident hunters significantly given the res/nonres quotas for draw tags.

Here is a painfully clear fact to demonstrate how poorly NM is managing tag allocations for their residents. Of the 8 intermountain west states, NM has about 7% of all elk tags but gives out 70+ percent of all private transferable elk tags among the 8 states. FULL STOP, Think about how upside down that is. How anybody who believes or supports wildlife are to held by the state in trust for its residents primary benefit can be OK with this is beyond me.

I am a nonresident and see what a total scam it is on New Mexican resident hunters.

 

[hank4elk]

Respectfully this is false. E-Plus does take tags that would be public draw and makes them private and subject to the whims of landowners including selling to the highest bidder. How could it NOT take away from what would otherwise be public draw tags.

NMGFD FIRST determines how many tags are appropriate for a given unit and then determines how many will be private tags using the Elk Rule, based on percent public/private land regardless of existing elk habitat percent.

Only then do they use the Eplus Rule to determine how to divvy up the already praxiteles designated tags among landowners.

So it is pretty obvious, if Eplus went away, all those private tags would instead have to be doled out via the public draw. Benefitting average resident hunters significantly given the res/nonres quotas for draw tags.

Here is a painfully clear fact to demonstrate how poorly NM is managing tag allocations for their residents. Of the 8 intermountain west states, NM has about 7% of all elk tags but gives out 70+ percent of all private transferable elk tags among the 8 states. FULL STOP, Think about how upside down that is. How anybody who believes or supports wildlife are to held by the state in trust for its residents primary benefit can be OK with this is beyond me.

I am a nonresident and see what a total scam it is on New Mexican resident hunters.

LO vouchers were added in addition to the draw tags. They did not come out of the draw. From what I understand.
The number of tags for each unit is determined by the herd population, G&F says.

My unit has grown in draw tag numbers, as the herd size has grown.
LO vouchers dropped in numbers. It's still 60% private and 40% public. But the ratio is opposite of what the state sets for the rest of the state. 60% goes into the draw...and most of the state is 40% private and 60% public.

Others have become static as the herd size has.
What is not static is the number of applicants. Resident or non resident.

 

[Treeshark]

Of the 8 intermountain west states, NM has about 7% of all elk tags but gives out 70+ percent of all private transferable elk tags among the 8 states. FULL STOP, Think about how upside down that is.

100% agree that NM shouldn’t be doing so much of the heavy lifting.
If (when) Wyoming and Montana enter the game, those numbers will shift quite a bit.

 

[abqbw]

This is the crux of these discussions in my view. Landowners want to complain about elk problems, but won't let public hunters on to help solve the problem. When the landowner wants to sell property, elk (and wildlife) are the first thing he advertises as a selling point to his property. Hell, I've heard of New Mexican landowners including their eplus tags in the advertisement for the property. So, are the elk actually a problem? Or is the landowner just looking for a way to monetize?

It's probably a little of both. No doubt, elk can cause problems that can be quantified in dollars by a landowner. I don't blame them for wanting to make a buck where they can. But, they could at least be honest about the variables that contributed to how they got there. Crying about elk problems while not allowing any public access, makes it hard for me to feel sorry for them, and they conveniently don't want to talk about that when they're at the legislature asking for transferable elk tags. Likewise, putting a pivot or a cornfield in a spot where grass has been for centuries, and then playing victim when elk show up, is a little puzzling to me.

To your question, it's a combination of money and convenience. Letting the public run wild on your property via block management, PLOTS, Walk-in, or Open Gate programs comes with a set of headaches. If they can get multiple bull tags to sell at $20k+ per, without having to give anything back to the public, that is an easier and more profitable pill to swallow. Throw on top of that the guide or ag lobby offering them a shoulder to cry on, who is more than happy to pay a lobbyist to fight for their cause under the "property rights" flag, and it's not hard to see how these efforts manifest themselves.


I would be very curious to know if that relative comparison holds any water. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that simply "rewarding landowners" could triple or quintuple an elk population at that scale (10s of thousands). Rewarding Nevada landowners with a small percentage of transferable tags helped grow their herd from the 3 or 4,000 it was, to the 17k it is now. But that's a far cry from 100k.

My suspicion is that New Mexico just has better and more elk habitat that allows for higher carrying capacity and wider geographic distribution, and not to mention 1/4 of the population of Arizona. Perhaps, what the e-plus system has created is not necessarily habitat driven incentives, but tolerance through monetization of a public resource. Monetization which comes in the form of multiple transferable tags per landowner, unit wide and good on public land in some cases, with little requirement to give anything in return to the public.

Unless I am mistaken, my understanding is that the largest elk herds in NM are in areas that have pretty sizeable, even majority acres in public land. Perhaps I am misinformed? Certainly elk are utilizing private land at different junctures. But it would seem to me that when there are landowners who own 2 acres, or 15 acres, and they're getting elk tags from the eplus system, and there are New Mexican residents waiting multiple years for a tag, this system is not even remotely intended to be a fair distribution of tags for the New Mexican public, and it is geared heavily in favor of the landed gentry. Regardless of other variables.

I do think the conversation is much trickier when we talk about units like 55B, 46, etc. Virtually 0 public land and still elk to be hunted. The public owns the elk but none of the land. The public and the GF agency are unlikely to able to compete with multiple high dollar elk tags, guided hunts, rich clients, etc. But shouldn't the New Mexican public get something in return? Even some type of controlled access? Instead, hunting in those units is basically Europe. If you want to hunt, you have to be able to write a big a check or you don't go.

What confuses me is that so many HTers on this thread support that model and are just willing to let the landowners draw up the contract on whatever terms suit them while getting nothing in return for the public, on a resource the public owns. "Concern" for privatization while supporting the European model, is speaking out of both sides of your mouth and one or the other must be a disingenuous statement...

It's just my opinion, but it I find it...funny for the lack of a better word, that the crowd that stands on American values and American exceptionalism, is quite quick to abandoned that when given the opportunity to cash a check.


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[Khunter]

100% agree that NM shouldn’t be doing so much of the heavy lifting.
If (when) Wyoming and Montana enter the game, those numbers will shift quite a bit.

The king’s elk is what you want, apparently. Whatever.

LO vouchers were added in addition to the draw tags. They did not come out of the draw. From what I understand.
The number of tags for each unit is determined by the herd population, G&F says.

That is some magically thinking there, @hank4elk
And contradictory. If the total number of elk tags is determined annually by G&F based on the herd population as you say, which it is, then by definition any of the total tags carved away from the public draw process is taken from what would otherwise be the public draw? Here it is, in black and white but directly from NMGFD website.

“Within Primary Management Zones, the department actively monitors herd productivity and recommends license adjustments to manage elk herds within a range of sustainable population metrics and harvest strategies. The total number of elk licenses issued in each Game Management Unit (GMU) are divided between the public draw and the EPLUS system based on the percent of public vs private land in the Primary Management Zone of each GMU.”

If you cannot derive from the above, that the EPlus tags are taken right off the top and taken away from the otherwise public draw of all tags, then I do not know what to offer. The math and process to take tags out of the public draw to create a private/transferable tag process is clearly and simply described by NMGFD. Alternatively, kindly cite factual information on how NMGFD determines number of tags and then, within it’s management model, tosses in an EXTRA 13,000 tags for EPlus on top of what they determined was the proper number of tags to mange the herd.

If EPLUS went away, what do you say would happen to the 13,000 tags carved out for EPLUS given ? Are you saying they would just go “POOF!!” no longer exist and NMGFD would just sell 13000 fewer tags. If your answer is yes, great, explain how that could be. If the answer is no and public draw tags would increase by the same/similar amount, then tell me again how those tags were not taken from public draw in the first place and how the magical 13,000 EPLUS elk tags came to be without reducing public draw tags.

 

[abqbw]

This is the crux of these discussions in my view. Landowners want to complain about elk problems, but won't let public hunters on to help solve the problem. When the landowner wants to sell property, elk (and wildlife) are the first thing he advertises as a selling point to his property. Hell, I've heard of New Mexican landowners including their eplus tags in the advertisement for the property. So, are the elk actually a problem? Or is the landowner just looking for a way to monetize?

It's probably a little of both. No doubt, elk can cause problems that can be quantified in dollars by a landowner. I don't blame them for wanting to make a buck where they can. But, they could at least be honest about the variables that contributed to how they got there. Crying about elk problems while not allowing any public access, makes it hard for me to feel sorry for them, and they conveniently don't want to talk about that when they're at the legislature asking for transferable elk tags. Likewise, putting a pivot or a cornfield in a spot where grass has been for centuries, and then playing victim when elk show up, is a little puzzling to me.

To your question, it's a combination of money and convenience. Letting the public run wild on your property via block management, PLOTS, Walk-in, or Open Gate programs comes with a set of headaches. If they can get multiple bull tags to sell at $20k+ per, without having to give anything back to the public, that is an easier and more profitable pill to swallow. Throw on top of that the guide or ag lobby offering them a shoulder to cry on, who is more than happy to pay a lobbyist to fight for their cause under the "property rights" flag, and it's not hard to see how these efforts manifest themselves.


I would be very curious to know if that relative comparison holds any water. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that simply "rewarding landowners" could triple or quintuple an elk population at that scale (10s of thousands). Rewarding Nevada landowners with a small percentage of transferable tags helped grow their herd from the 3 or 4,000 it was, to the 17k it is now. But that's a far cry from 100k.

My suspicion is that New Mexico just has better and more elk habitat that allows for higher carrying capacity and wider geographic distribution, and not to mention 1/4 of the population of Arizona. Perhaps, what the e-plus system has created is not necessarily habitat driven incentives, but tolerance through monetization of a public resource. Monetization which comes in the form of multiple transferable tags per landowner, unit wide and good on public land in some cases, with little requirement to give anything in return to the public.

Unless I am mistaken, my understanding is that the largest elk herds in NM are in areas that have pretty sizeable, even majority acres in public land. Perhaps I am misinformed? Certainly elk are utilizing private land at different junctures. But it would seem to me that when there are landowners who own 2 acres, or 15 acres, and they're getting elk tags from the eplus system, and there are New Mexican residents waiting multiple years for a tag, this system is not even remotely intended to be a fair distribution of tags for the New Mexican public, and it is geared heavily in favor of the landed gentry. Regardless of other variables.

I do think the conversation is much trickier when we talk about units like 55B, 46, etc. Virtually 0 public land and still elk to be hunted. The public owns the elk but none of the land. The public and the GF agency are unlikely to able to compete with multiple high dollar elk tags, guided hunts, rich clients, etc. But shouldn't the New Mexican public get something in return? Even some type of controlled access? Instead, hunting in those units is basically Europe. If you want to hunt, you have to be able to write a big a check or you don't go.

What confuses me is that so many HTers on this thread support that model and are just willing to let the landowners draw up the contract on whatever terms suit them while getting nothing in return for the public, on a resource the public owns. "Concern" for privatization while supporting the European model, is speaking out of both sides of your mouth and one or the other must be a disingenuous statement...

It's just my opinion, but it I find it...funny for the lack of a better word, that the crowd that stands on American values and American exceptionalism, is quite quick to abandoned that when given the opportunity to cash a check.


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Great comment! You have a wonderful understanding of the situation in New Mexico. EPLUS is not a biological construct. It doesn’t even do the one thing it purports to do - incentivize landowners to allow more elk to be on the landscape. Since landowners have received landowner permits at a rate that makes NM the cartel (in old OPEC style market control fashion) of private transferable elk permits in the U.S. for over a generation NM landowners have understandably been conditioned to see elk as either a dollar in their pocket or a nuisance to be gotten rid of. The result is landowners beat down the doors of New Mexico politicians and NMDGF screaming about elk and demanding more private permits. Landowners in NM are trained by the system to pretend they hate wildlife and particularly elk. Some of them probably even believe their bs.

What galls me is that the same ranchers that are allowed to decimate public land habitat, land and water, by a century of livestock overgrazing bitch when elk leave public land to get find a tuft of grass or a drink of water. Landowners, on top of the enormous subsidies of public grass and enormous direct payments that go to Ag from the public coffers have been told by NM that they deserve even more public payment in the form of our actual elk. And through the political donation process NM hands the elk to them.

I’ve hunted all over the west. One thing is certain. There is zero separation between NM and the rest of the intermountain west in the successes and failures of elk, ranching, rural economies, hunting levels of private and public land, and outfitting. The only thing NM has that is unique is the wholesale theft of the public’s elk so landowners and outfitters can cash in while returning nothing to the equation that landowners all across the west don’t also provide without anything close to EPLUS. EPLUS is political grift. Period.

 

[seeth07]

If EPLUS went away, what do you say would happen to the 13,000 tags carved out for EPLUS given ? Are you saying they would just go “POOF!!” no longer exist and NMGFD would just sell 13000 fewer tags. If your answer is yes, great, explain how that could be. If the answer is no and public draw tags would increase by the same/similar amount, then tell me again how those tags were not taken from public draw in the first place and how the magical 13,000 EPLUS elk tags came to be without reducing public draw tags.

In 2016, the NM public draw (including the small outfitter set aside portion) had 16,380 tags available. In 2022 (the last published data NMF&G has released although you could add up from the draw report the tags available yourself for 2023 and 2024) the public draw had 22,369 tags. That is a whooping 36% boost in available tags to the public draw. Is it coincidence that this occurred randomly or because the incentives and program change to EPLUS in 2018 resulted in a significantly higher tolerance of elk on ranches enrolled in EPLUS?

edit: 2024 wasn't available yet but in 2023 the total licenses were 22783 in the public draw so a slight increase from 2022. This includes again the portion of outfitter set aside.

 

[seeth07]

Why not fight so passionately about moving these tags since apparently all EPLUS vouchers go to NR and outfitters anyways? I see almost zero benefit to the NM state as a whole for those 1600 tags.