Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Sheep and no elk

The Dow does not pay pasture grazing fees for the publics wild life on private land,and certainly nothing like the rancher pays for grazing rights on "public" land. Yes grazing leases on "public" land seem cheap in comparison to private, but when you start adding up the additional expense to the permittee on "public" land the actual cost gets fairly comparable to private.
Besides all that I suspect in a few days when things quited down the elk would drift back into their usual routine, unless they kept getting pushed further in mass on slaught they go thru due to Colorados hunting season structure.

Chapped lips thats one of the finest posts I've ever read concerning public land grazing.
Thanks.

Quote "Besides all that I suspect in a few days when things quietd down the elk would drift back into their usual routine"

That is all well and good, but when the season ends in 4 days, that don't help much.

Multi use means just that and the lowly hunter has as much right to use the land as the leasee without expecting his use to be undermined by other users.

In this particualr area,there are no drift fences,no dirt tanks built and no land improvements as some allotments required.The only expense to the rancher is paying the Mexican to do a job, setting out some loose salt of which all the bags were left at the salt site or scatter around.
We always hear about all the additional expense the rancher goes thru ,but no one can ever fess up to what they are.

Only thing I have ever seen is a drift fence in a few local areas and if the leasee wants water,they have to improve on that.

Around here, grazing goes for +$25 per acre. Darn sure more expensive that the $2.50 per animal or pair that the forest service of BLM gets ( It is actually lower than that.)


The DOW does pay grazing fees for the wildlife.It's called crop damage payments. Around here,it's the same landowners who put in for and recieve some pretty healthy sums that also refuse to let the public get access across thier land to public land, or they get landowner vouchers for crop damage hunts and then charge $500 even for cow elk permits for the public to hunt. Then to boot,the DOW will not give out names of who gets the vouchers and the public has to hunt down the recipients themselves, only to find out they have to pay a hefty trespass fees to kill the elk that the state is paying the landowner from hunter license fees for when they eat thier crops.

These are the same landowners that do not permit hunters on thier property and yet laugh all the way to the bank when the elk move onto the private land sanctuaries and they can then lease out thier protected herds to outfitters.

Nobody in the livestock business is paying the 25$ per acre you quote for grazing. 25 $ a pair maybe, but at that price the only thing the stockgrower needs to do is turn the stock loose, fences , water, mineral etal are taken care of.
If there's no "improovements" made in that allotment, it's not thru the fault of the permittee, those are usually dictated by the range manager at the local office.
You don't see the additional cost to the permittee as you don't see the wear on the stock being trailed to the allotment, you don't see the shrink on them as they are gathered and brought down off the mtn and trailed home or to the nearest set of corrals for shipping home. That shrink adds up especially coming out in the fall, if you shrink a calf 50-75 lbs on the way out, thats that many lbs less at the sale barn. So using 1$ a lb on calves/yearlings that's 75 $ less per head that's coming to the public land permittee than someone that's leasing private. Same for sheep. Not to mention the added predator losses to both sheep and cattle grazing on "public" land.
Yes mulitple use is the proper thing to do, but when folks start bitchin about how cheap it is for the rancher to graze "public" land I can't help but think maybe the hunter/fisherman should pay an appropriate amount to hunt/fish the "public" land as they would pay to do the same on private...
4 days left to hunt, and things get blown out that's a bad deal, but I've had the same valley clearing affect by a bunch of twits with their gettoblasters and subwoofers cranked up well enough you could hear them from a mile away at 1 in the morning,,, apparently elk don't care much for rap music....I know I don't

So what you're saying is we don't need motel rooms or campgrounds next time we're in your neighborhood, why those motels charge such an absorbanate fee, we can just come on into your house and make ourselves to home. Park the camper out back and never mind where those pickuptracks cut up the petunia's after all it's right off a public street....

Infrastructure maintainence and sometimes construction is the biggest cost to the public lands grazer. Very little to zero federal dollars are available for maintainance of range improvements. If you add in those costs, which is often to the tune of $10-20 per animal unit month to the fed's fee, which I think was $1.35/AUM for this year, it isn't all that much cheaper than leasing private pasture in No. UT/SW WY.

Sounds like to me the agency is taking care of it as best as possible. Though that doesn't make it any better for the hunter's that had their trips altered/ruined, it's pretty much impossible, from the sounds of it, for the agency to do more than they have. IME, it'd take a whole lot more than just being one month over on the off date for the agency to justify an impoundment. Whole lots of red tape and therefore time involved, so that wouldn't have changed things for the hunt(s) being discussed.

Did aliens abduct your elk? Just curious...

Pointer, that's right, there are alot of costs that don't show up for the permitee, that really add to the cost of the federal or state fee.
In addition to our deeded land we also lease private,state and blm. The blm is a "bargain" as it only costs 5 $ per year, but the allotment is for 4 head, it's on the side of a mtn with no fence, and no water, and it's steep enough that a cow seldom if ever gets up there.
As I said it was a bad deal for the hunters, and the sheep, about the only thing that can happen now is a revue of the permit for next year, but that doesn't help the blown hunts this year, but then nothing is going to fix those.

I actually enjoy meeting and sometimes helping out the cowhandler. Most of them, are very willing to share where they have seen animals. where there is water on the mountain. In fact the canyon I hunt, the rancher has told me where to turn on the spring and lets me turn the water back into the tanks after he has moved out his cows, if I will turn it off and drain the tanks when I leave.

And if I'm in the area, I have often joined them to help push some cows.

I just called and asked for permission to park on his land again this year. He said, I'm always welcome and gave permission. With out his permission, It would be an extra two miles of riding on the horse. I hunt Forest Service land behind his land. So I go out of my way to make sure, I don't leave any mess, that I help him with any strays, and earn my keep.

Ranch13,
I am confused. How does a cow lose 75 lbs of weight coming off public land and 0 coming off private? Are you speaking of a particular instance of yours where you have to trail a lot longer on public? Also, doesnt infrastructure on private land cost just as much? I would think that ownership does not influence improvement costs. A fence or water on private is just as expensive as public, right? Just trying to understand.

Generally when you rent grazing on private land, the infrastructure is owned by the landowner and therefore the landowner is responsible for its maintenance. Like he said, you pay the fee you turn out your cows, the landowner does the rest.

Except for some limited exceptions, range improvements on public land are not owned by the permittee, but by the administering agency. The permittee is assigned which improvements they are to maintain as a term and condition of his/her grazing permit. If they do not maintain it, they can be prevented from turning out that year or can lose all or part of their permit.

This is a subject that can bring out the worst in people. Around here it is reaching a boiling point when tied to the LO. Elk tags. I am all for public land grazing and have many friends and relatives that graze public land, but many of the arguments used for public land grazing are comparing apples to oranges. It is brought up often like here that the sportsman does not pay to use the land like the lessee does, the sportsman is not using the land for profit. Every one that signs a lease should know and accept all the �hidden� costs of grazing, just like any business. On the other side, too many sportsmen cannot understand that for some this is there source of income and way of life not a hobby like hunting. Most ranchers are great stewards of the land, which in turn benefit wildlife, this can also create competition for water/feed and this is usually where the lines are drawn in the sand. Both sides suffer from the environmentalist but instead of fighting them on a united front we have allowed them to divide and conquer. If the ag. Industry (to include logging) and the sportsmen could ever come to a middle ground and unite instead, we would all gain. To me it all goes back to a little respect on both sides goes a long ways.

How does a cow loose 75 lbs? Same way you would if we got you up off your couch, marched you for two days down off the mtn with no time for eating or drinking...
Same thing goes with going up to the permits, only then it's more the death loss due to the stress of the trail up to the permit. When you turn out on private land there's a pretty good chance you'll be able to find sick/weak stock from the move there, on the "public" permits the stock is generally fairly well scattered and not easily all found to be seen, so if something gets sick on public land, it's for the most part going to have to get over it or feed the scavengers.
As to the improovements on private land , you live in farm country, you see fences, barns, corrals, water tanks etc? The landowner put those in and maintains them. On public permits the permitee general stands a good portion of the cost of installation and all of the maintenance.

Slm a pretty good case could be made that 250 lbs of elk meat to feed a family could be considered "profit" or income. After all folks have got to eat and if they don't buy it from the grocery store they get it somewhere else.
So if you figure 250 lbs of store bought meat at 5$ a lb, then you almost have to assign a similar value to that elk carcass, less the license fee maybe...
It's about the same way they figure the rates for grazing fees.

Last time I tried to figure what an elk cost me per pound I just about [bleep].

Ain't that the truth, and that's only considering the cost if you get one, never mind what it costs if you go a few years and come home empty...
I do wish it were possible to get both sides to some sort of agreement, but I'm afraid it's like most class envy type things,it's so engrained that it'll never leave.
Speaking for myself, I am especially grateful to see common sense posts such as your's, Leo's,pointers and others. It does give me hope that not everyone is like the boy with the deep southern drawl that flew into the yard in his big 4x4 pickup nearly demanding that I let him shoot that buck antelope laying on the rocks across the road,, why he'ld be watching that buck for 2 days and he wanted to kill him... I told him he needed to go talk to the guy that owned the land.....Mine is all on the other side of the road....
The twits from Pennsylvania that have such nice descriptive words about my family heritage when I asked them to please keep their pickup on the trails in the state land and not to be parkin the thing 1/2 mile from any established trail in a patch of sandgrass..... Those folks sure ought to make the sporting community proud....

Dang man I'm really sorry to hear that. Normally when I don't get my game animal I can at least know that I had a fantastic time away from people and the signs of civilization.

It sounds like that forest service guy recognized the issues that could arise if two users of the land were in conflict. I'd complain to everyone involved in overseeing that land. There should be fines handed out to avoid a reoccurence.

I hope things go better in the late season!

IMO/E, there's a whole lot of truth in these few sentences. In some areas I things are getting better, but the main reason for that was a better understanding by both sides of their a mutually shared goal/benefit. In CO, a group of folks got together to improve the grazing on a large area by implementing improved management (rotational pasture system). The USFS publishes a map showing where the cows will be and when so that other users know as well and can avoid them if they chose to. Similarly, a project is being kicked off in No. UT where some sportsman's groups are helping pay for the installation/maintainance of range improvement to improve grazing management.

The similar theme in both of these is that ranchers and sportsman are recognizing the mutual benefit of improved conditions on federal land. Now, both are putting their money and effort together to make it happen. IMO, for things to truly get better collaborations such as these will have to be the rule and not the exception. Especially so in areas where one can't exist without the other.


As an side, when either side breaks down to calling into question the amount the other side is paying to use the land you're at an impass. Depending on how you want to make the comparison it is easy to "show" that neither is paying the full "value" for that use. Better to spend the effort to ID the problem/issue and figure out how to fix it and the amount either side pays really isn't the issue.

Very true.

Grazing goes right before the liberal dumbphuck bored [bleep] (try to)take away hunting.


Ain't gonna happen.



grin

Don't count on the grazing continuing. Groups like our local Western Watersheds are having a lot of clout in the courts. WW has lots of money and they're outbidding ranchers for grazing rights. The BLM refused to give them one right where they were the highest bidder on the grounds that grazing was the best use of the land. A judge disagreed, WW got the permit, and ran the cattle off.

Rock Chuck- I think you're a bit confused on your story. The BLM doesn't take bids on grazing permits. I think you are referring to State Lands in Idaho and the grazing permits they offer. I know of one case in your backyard where WWP was the highest bidder, but the permit went to a grazer as the net profit to the state would be greater as the state lands were being managed by the BLM in an exchange of use agreement, which would have been voided if they didn't run any livestock. The state realized their net profits would be less if they had to administer those lands so gave the permit back to the grazer. I do know they are making a big push to outbid folks on the state lands leases in ID and the folks in ID are letting it happen.

Legal, permitted grazing will continue as long as the Taylor Grazing Act is in place. Western Watersheds really only has much clout in ID and that is due in large part to a sympathetic judge and the agencies, often the BLM, shooting themselves in the foot. I don't think we'll ever see a party have the political clout to ever repeal the Taylor Grazing Act. Sure, the rules and regs may be different than they were for gramps, but there will still be grazing on public lands. Heck, I'd argue there would be MORE grazing on public lands if they did away with the permitted grazing.