hate getting the gov't involved in anything, often turns into a soup sandwich
but this matter is an exception.
game is finite, only so much game areas will support. I believe the change in weather may indeed be having an impact on sheep along with the loss of alpine habitat.
not picking on the guides, they perform a valuable service to those wanting to hunt here from outside.
but imo, the number of guides needs to be limited by concessions available.
ime, the family tree from the guiding industry has too many branches.
I came from the tree via Sandy Jameson, even though I never worked for Sandy, I worked for guys that had worked for him. They each went on to create their own guide/outfitting businesses and each of them do well. One I believe is a board member now, he has a long history in this biz, he's a good guy, runs a respectable biz and provides a good service.
During the time I worked for them, they each had guys strike out on their own.
pretty typical of majority of biz owners to want to grow their biz by multiplication, you hire folks so you can service more customers.
1 master guide begets a couple of registered guides that strike out on their own, they each hire ass't guides to run more clients through their biz.
always admired both outfitters I worked for in their self imposed conservation limits to the areas they hunt.
some guides don't practice those conservation principles in areas they hunt.
imo the state needs concessions similar to what the Feds employ
if you have a concession you can take your registered guide license and run a biz, if no concession is available, well you get to work for someone else or wait till one of the guides that has a concession is willing to sell his biz.
but even in those concessions harvests to NR's should be limited and monitored, pretty easy with the sealing requirements now in place.
know of one area that 3 guides kinda overlapped each other, and they each ran it professionally even though they bumped into one another on occasion. One of them branched out and found a new area by scouting it via airplane, I did the first season they worked that valley.
the next year another guide came in with cubs and shot the crap out of sheep in that valley, heard 15 rams were taken by him.
it was a great area with a natural mineral lick
imo that's too many sheep out of that valley for one year
but the temptation is too great for many outfitters to self impose harvest limits
figure a sheep hunt for 10-15K and he stood to gain 150 to 225K just in a 20 day season.
now we have weather factors and other factors leading to a declining sheep population.
it could get ugly fast imo.
our state F&G needs to move and move fast.
hard thing to tell a guy that's counting on X number of dollars his biz will be restricted in upcoming years, but may in fact be necessary.
I agree with kscowboy that science needs to rule the decisions, but also feel strongly that even a minority of guides that won't practice self imposed limits can ruin things fast for the vast majority of guides that do.
there's also the temptation of guides that have practiced good management in their areas to approach the end of their career and let some of those practices slip to gain another 30-50 K in their final years.
I'm ok with residents having to participate in restrictions to allow sheep pops to rebound as well.
but think between lack of predator control, changing weather conditions and loss of habitat, along with some guides trying to kill everything that walks to fill tags that the latter is the area the F&G could implement that would have the greatest short term impact.
what we have is an increased number of guides trying to make a living off declining populations.
that can't end well without some intervention on behalf of the sheep populations.
