Three bills before the Legislature this year would expand one of big-game hunting’s most controversial practices: selling tags to hunt Idaho wildlife to the highest bidder.
Senate Bills 1282 and 1283 would allow the sale of tags held by landowners for whatever price they could bring.
Senate Bill 1256 would allow the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to provide tags to be auctioned for big-game hunts.
SELLING TAGS
Idaho hunters have historically opposed landowners being able to sell tags, because that’s seen as privatizing the public’s wildlife.
SB 1282, sponsored by Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, a rancher, would allow landowners to sell tags set aside for them, in exchange for granting public access to or through their property for hunting.
Senate Bill 1283 would allow the landowners to sell the tags without providing public access. It is sponsored by Sen. Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, a rancher and former Fish and Game commissioner. He’s the owner of Juniper Mountain Ranch, a private operation where hunters pay to hunt domestic elk.
The current Landowner Appreciation Program sets aside deer, elk and pronghorn tags in a separate pool for people who own at least 640 acres in an area where hunters must enter a lottery for a tag.
Today, landowners can transfer these tags to other hunters but cannot charge them for it.
The program is designed to reward landowners for providing wildlife habitat and give them a better chance at drawing a big-game tag, without which they would be unable to hunt on their own property.
When the landowner program started, participants had to offer public hunting access to their land. That provision was dropped in 2002 at the request of landowners.
Idaho Fish and Game commissioners support SB 1282 and oppose SB 1283.
AUCTIONING TAGS
SB 1256 would expand the auction of big-game tags, which is currently limited to a single bighorn sheep tag auctioned every year.
Under the bill sponsored by Sen. Steve Bair, R-Blackfoot, and Rep. Mike Moyle, R-Star, Fish and Game commissioners would be authorized to designate one moose; one wild sheep; one mountain goat; and up to three elk, deer and antelope tags for auction each year.
Revenue from auction tags would go to Fish and Game to pay for hunter access, big-game management and habitat-management projects.
The tags would count as part of the nonresident quota, which limits out-of-state hunters to 10 percent of the available tags for big-game controlled hunts.
Fish and Game considered a similar proposal to auction big-game tags in 2006 when it established its Access Yes program that paid private landowners to allow public hunting and fishing. That proposal was dropped as too controversial in favor of a Super Hunt lottery where elk, deer, pronghorn and moose tags are set aside for a special drawing as an alternative to auctions.
Idaho Fish and Game commissioners are taking a neutral position on the auction bill.
Hunters are divided on this approach to raising money for Fish and Game. Some say it provides a revenue boost in exchange for a relatively small number of tags, while others argue it allows wealthy hunters access to some of the best hunting tags that become unaffordable to the average hunter.

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Thanks for the public press.