I'm glad to see that folks are against allowing outfitters to have an unfair advantage with their high paying customers...make them draw like the rest of us. I also saw that the proposal to create a law that would set aside licenses for outfitters (mainly elk) didn't even make it through the TRW committe.

Elk hunters oppose set asides, survey shows

By JEFF GEARINO
Star-Tribune staff writer




By 2-to-1, more hunters were against a proposal to set aside some elk licenses for nonresident clients of Wyoming outfitters than were for the idea, a new survey shows.

Opposition far exceeded support for the proposal that would change the current licensing allocation to reserve some nonresident elk licenses for hunters who use licensed outfitters while elk hunting.

"It was a simple survey on a simple issue -- do you support or oppose ... --- and without question, the opposition was greater than the support," said Game and Fish Department Wildlife Division Chief Jay Lawson.

"The opposition was based on an equal chance ... People wanted an equal opportunity to draw a license," he said. "There was a philosophical opposition to the question."

Lawson noted the survey also revealed nonresident elk hunters were slightly more likely to support the proposal than were resident elk hunters.

The survey was conducted by Responsive Management Inc. -- under the auspices of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department -- for the Wyoming Legislative Task Force on the Hunting Segment of the Tourism Industry.

Lawson presented the survey results to the task force during a meeting Tuesday in Casper, where, the group declined to support the outfitters' proposal. The survey has a sampling error of plus/minus 3.9 percentage points.

The study entailed a telephone survey of 305 resident elk license holders and 314 nonresident elk license holders. Lawson said the survey was conducted in August.

Lawson said about 58 percent of all those surveyed opposed the set-aside license pool proposal.

But Jackson outfitter Sy Gilliland doubted the veracity of the survey and said it had "glaring problems."

He said the survey was skewed because it only polled a small number of elk hunters who drew licenses in 2004 and discounted the opinions of non-hunting Wyoming residents who might benefit from the industry, such as motel, restaurant and bar owners.

"Less than 10 percent of the population who drew a license had a chance to comment," he said. "And more than 90 percent of Wyoming population -- business owners and the man on the street -- didn't get a chance to talk about the benefits (the industry) brings to the communities."

Gilliland, secretary-treasurer for the Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association, said he was heartened to see that 25 percent of resident elk hunters supported the proposal.

"I think that's a huge number, but 90 percent still didn't get a chance to comment," he said.

Wyoming outfitters have been pushing since the 1980s for some sort of pool of nonresident licenses that could be set aside for their clients in order to give them a better chance of drawing hunting tags.

The latest proposal presented to the task force during a July 13 meeting in Laramie proposed the creation of a "closed license pool" of 2,900 nonresident elk hunting licenses. The pool would be used expressly by nonresident elk hunters who employ licensed Wyoming guides.

Testimony

Creating a closed pool of some elk hunting licenses for nonresident hunters who use Wyoming outfitters would help ease the unpredictability of the business for outfitters such as Sam Coutts of Jackson, Coutts told the task force Tuesday.

Coutts said he is permitted by the U.S. Forest Service for 300 client-days of hunting, which translates roughly into thirty 10-day hunts each season for his business.

"The majority of outfitters like me are limited to what we can do with the resources we deal with, and I can't draw those 30 hunters," he said.

"Why not give us the same opportunity as the boys mining coal and pumping oil and gas?" Coutts said. "We're an economic tool and ... outfitters turn huge amounts of dollars back into Wyoming's economy. It's criminal each year to produce this remarkable resource (of elk) and not take economic advantage of it. These little communities look forward to September and October because it keeps their businesses alive."

Outfitters said a pool of set-aside licenses would allow outfitters to book clients who would have a much better chance of drawing nonresident elk licenses, thus decreasing the chances of the clients canceling their hunts because they didn't draw licenses.

But opponents of set-aside licenses contend a closed license pool favors the wealthy. They worry that nonresident hunters who don't use guide services will get priced out of hunting in Wyoming.

"If you pass this, there's no going back, and it will lead down that slippery slope toward wildlife being a marketplace commodity," Wyoming Wildlife Federation President Mark Winland said.

Longtime outfitter Jim Allen said the industry accounts for more than $100 million in tourism-related benefits for a variety of businesses, including motels, gas stations, liquor stores and restaurants.

Allen said the proposal would also provide much-needed revenues to local communities and actually improve the chances of nonresident hunters who aren't in the closed pool because they won't be competing in the random draw with those clients for the other, available nonresident licenses.

"It's time to bring some stability to this business," he said. "We don't see this as something free for outfitters at all. We see this as a win-win for everybody."

Kim Floyd, executive secretary of the AFL-CIO labor union in Wyoming, said his approximately 18,000 state members constitute the highest number of recreationists under any one organization in the state.

"And my membership is dead set against this set-aside proposal ... It's ironic (set aside licenses) have surfaced again ... We can't seem to get past this issue," Floyd said.

"We hold the outfitting industry in high regard -- it's an honorable (profession) -- but we feel the state doesn't owe the industry a living," he said. "Nonresidents should have the same equal opportunity to draw those licenses and come enjoy the services we have to offer."

Whatever you do in Wyoming DON'T let the outfitting INDUSTRY, and that's exactly what it is, a business pure and simple inspite of all the romanticism, get set-assides.

The access "problem" here in Montana that Block Management (locally know as ranches without enough game to attract an outfitter...) was supposed to solve WOULD NOT EXIST execpt for the "outfitter set-asside" licenses.

No one OWES anyone a living. Besides the secondary spending estimates, motels, restaurants, gift shops, whatever, by hunting clients are grossly over stated, if not outright fabrications.

Fishing outfitting brings in huge amounts of secondary spending per client, especailly compared to hunting, for the simple reason that fishermen stay in town. What kind of secondary spending do you expect from a guy who is picked up at the airport by the outfitter, driven into the wilderness for a week and then driven back to the airport?