Do private landowners offering UW landowner tags in NM have to allow the recipient access to hunt their land (as they do in Colorado)? If not, they should be required to imo.
Privatization kills both Resident and Nonresident DIY hunting opportunity
- Thread starter abqbw
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Do private landowners offering UW landowner tags in NM have to allow the recipient access to hunt their land (as they do in Colorado)? If not, they should be required to imo.
My place is Ranch Only & only 140 ac, in Small Contributing Ranch program. A lottery.
Boy, talk about a gamble.
Funny no resident hunters have asked?
I did trade 2 bull tags to guys that rolled the trusses and roofed my barn.
IF I get bow tags this year 2 brothers from MT will help me roof my porches and maybe I'll get some bison meat.
IF ...only I made big $ I would not have a hard time dealing with cancer now. I would have started work on riparian habitat on my place. To get a maybe extra tag.
Maybe your not a dick and ask to hunt here.
IF a ranch is in the program and enrolls for Unit Wide tags, then any public land draw tag hunter can hunt the ranch along with any other holder of a unit wide tag for the unit.
NMGuy
Well-known member
From NMGF website:
"Landowners who selected the unit-wide hunting option on their EPLUS agreement and received a unit-wide authorization(s) for the current license year agree to allow public elk hunting access on their private ranch. Hunters who possess a public draw elk license or a private-land unit-wide elk license may access these private unit-wide ranches, any legally accessible public lands, and other private land with written permission within the same GMU."
"Landowners who selected the unit-wide hunting option on their EPLUS agreement and received a unit-wide authorization(s) for the current license year agree to allow public elk hunting access on their private ranch. Hunters who possess a public draw elk license or a private-land unit-wide elk license may access these private unit-wide ranches, any legally accessible public lands, and other private land with written permission within the same GMU."
Nick87
Well-known member
Are there private land only vouchers as well?
NMGuy
Well-known member
Elk Private Lands - EPLUS - New Mexico Department of Game & Fish
EPLUS Program The EPLUS program was created in recognition of the important benefits that private lands make to the elk populations and hunting opportunities in New Mexico. The program gives hunters and landowners a way to work together to effectively manage and hunt elk
www.wildlife.state.nm.us
For anyone who wants to know more about the program and how it works, or at least how it's supposed to work.
I have no idea what others do anymore in my unit. A bunch are pissed I give the tags away, it seems.
Local cattle guys love the elk coming here instead of going to their cattle land all night.
I do know a bunch are living month by month. I do know why they are UW and sell them for what ever the market will bear.
I do not know many of the big ranch owners any more. Most don't even live in NM it seems. Cattle ranches are a big tax write off.........whatever the market will bare. ROI.
I was not looking for a tax write off nor big $ when I bought this place. LOL, it is the most remote and poor county in NM,also the largest, least populated.
Like I said make the LO tags resident only and ranch only and lets see the generous NM residents step up.
Get rid of the outfitter welfare pool.
There fixed it....oh your a NR, good luck in the draw.
I hope I draw again. There is no garuntee I will get any LO tags this year.
bulldawg10
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I didn't say you could hunt Hank's land....I said you can hunt Unit Wide Land.
It sounds like maybe you don't understand the difference in unitwide and Ranch Only and how the public can use Unit wide properties.
The land owner choses if they want to register as unitwide or ranch only.
If the Landowner chose Unit Wide, no other permissions is needed. They granted the public permission by signing the EPLUS Unitwide contract....and the public that holds a valid tag for that unit can freely hunt it.
Hank can say, but I think he is Ranch Only. So it would be trespassing to go on his land without permission.
If he was unit wide, he already granted you permission by signing the EPLUS Unit wide contract, and you having a tag.
I do think it's wild that unitwide tags are attacked instead to trying to encourage more ranches to become unit wide
I am enrolled in E-plus as a Small Contributing Ranch and opt for Ranch Only program. The vouchers I get are for my place Only.
Again, so I do not have to open my property to the publick land hunters or other ranches.
Sorry.
I have been a Public Lands hunter for close to 50 years and have seen the damage done. I was a Park Ranger for 22 years and know what the publicks do.
There are no OverTheCounter tags for elk in NM.
Nick87
Well-known member
Nameless Range
Well-known member
I am no expert on Eplus, but unless New Mexico and her wildlife are just levels above everyone else, all these arguments of incentivization kind of fall flat to me given their neighbor, Arizona, doesn't privatize and they seem to be doing fine. The arguments I hear in defense of ePlus sound very similar to the arguments for privatization in MT, which would hose the working man in favor of the landowner.
Basically, it's all anecdote, which isn't nothing, but I have a feeling if NM abandoned privatization and went to a tag allocation similar to AZ, wildlife populations would not plummet. Habitats would mostly retain. I suspect the current situation is chiefly windfall for landowners, not an incentivization to meaningfully do things they wouldn't do otherwise. I could be wrong.
Basically, it's all anecdote, which isn't nothing, but I have a feeling if NM abandoned privatization and went to a tag allocation similar to AZ, wildlife populations would not plummet. Habitats would mostly retain. I suspect the current situation is chiefly windfall for landowners, not an incentivization to meaningfully do things they wouldn't do otherwise. I could be wrong.
bulldawg10
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Not to in the Primary Zone
The LO tags are not tags. They are VOUCHERS to be used by hunters to be redeemed for a tag. Only good in the unit ranch is in and or only on said ranch.
Nick87
Well-known member
Yah I know I just thought that was a random bit of info. Wasn't sure where you were going with that.
Again, there are hundreds of ranches in AZ that are not open to the public land hunter. Yet somehow there are hunters there every year.
Do folks lease these ranches and just hope they draw the ever so easy to draw AZ elk tag ?
How does that work out for you MT hunters? I have no idea. Have not hunted MT since 1978. It was OTC tags I used.
Elk numbers in NM are not plummeting. They are growing.
Everything else is plummeting tho.
bulldawg10
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Because elk have value, and landowners are incentizived to do projects to support them. Elk have value worth tolerating them, of course there are more elk today.
Sure there would be elk still without landowner incentives but less elk. Their ranges in NM would be more limited and less tags would exist.
So many people are so ate up with a landowner making a little money off an elk and so misled by these organizations making you think opportunities have been stolen, that you can't see that the reality is more opportunities actually exist. Especially in a place like NM with very limited water resources for them.
Many many landowners are doing this just because the program for elk creates value enough that it's worth doing!
And that's the point.
Nick87
Well-known member
I know two guys locally who bought 20 acre tracts in NM strictly for landowner vouchers. They don't get a tag every year but they get one a lot more frequent then you would in the draw. Thank God they have 20 acre tracts with cabins on them. Those elk probably wouldn't make it without those cabins there for the elk.
I'm out. LOL
I'm going to the store, while I can.
Jeezus. They should in no way be in the program unless a creek runs through it. And probably not even then.
They would not get vouchers or excepted in program in my unit.
Have fun you high rollers.
