Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Wyoming resident Fee increases...

If the bureaucracy continues to grow at 14% per year, I don't think they have many alternatives other than raising fees and hoping that the nonresident numbers don't drop off as a result. Unsustainable at the local, state and federal levels, pretty disgusting really.

http://trib.com/news/state-and-regi...98f33af-4c5f-5782-8513-a9a56a221ca8.html

Last sentence is the million dollar comment. If you can't fund it, what option do you have really? And I love all the mention of "cuts". I would strongly suppose that utilizing the baseline budgeting preferred by all gov entities that a 5% "cut" is actually a reduction in the amount of increased spending they budgeted for.

I have only hunted in WY once and it is a great state. I don't mean to pick on them at all. It is just an example of what is going to hit these gov agencies around the country when they finally hit the wall on spending. And hit it they will.

So what happens if this backfires on Wyoming and all the business's that depend on the revenue from NR hunters each year. Do they lower the prices? Or just keep loosing money

They need to make real "cuts" in all things surrounding their bureaucracy and reduce license fees in order to drive more revenue and more hunter related trips.

So in reality you can plan on seeing continually increasing fee hikes and fewer and fewer hunters. And the bureaucracy will continue to grow at 14% plus per year.

Wonder how the fuel costs factor into these expenses.

Evidently fuel costs only affect gov when it's going up! They never seem to needed revenue when fuel costs go down or stag the same.

Gas in Laramie last week was $2.34 per gallon......

$2.34 is pretty good then. Normally we have pretty cheap gas compared to the rest of the country and we are $3.19 or so.

Fuel prices going up 10 cents a gallon thanks to the tax hike the legislature passed.

The G and F has cut budgets by 8% already. That keeps them out of the [bleep] until 2015ish. They hired a consultant to look all the western states prices and that is how they came up with the new increases ( for full price licenses only) that would take place in 2014. I would rather have the increase so we can keep our walk in areas and HMAs, continue task forces on our mule deer winter ranges to keep the big bucks safe and continued habitat projects so that maybe my kids will be able to hunt deer! I wish I was paying for gas what I did in high school but [bleep] has gotten expensive so why wouldn't my hunting licenses have gone up?

Fuel costs go up, vehicle costs go up, health care costs go up. What is the surprise? I don't know any rich WY G&F employees so it ain't like they are becoming fat cats and spending their winters in Hawaii.

Have to keep in mind that not only does the Game and Fish have responsibility to the game animals , birds and fish, but they also have all the nongame species which do take up quite a bit of their efforts. Along with Grizzly,Wolf and ferret recovery etc.
Somewhere along the line "sportsmen" may have to face up to paying for the free crap they get now such as the Walkin and HMA's.
I too would like to see 25cent gas, and do I ever pine for the days when we sent our 15$ in in June for a Moose permit, and got our money back in August just in time to get antelope license, pickup a deer and elk license and send in for the drawing to get a little pink card back said it was ok to shoot a cow elk in area xx.. And the elk and deer license had bear tags on them....
Things change and costs go up, but there comes a time when government agencies need to realize they need to be accountable and live within their means like the people they are supposed to be working for do.

Ranch13, Agree with that comment completely.

I'd be surprised if they took an 8% cut off of their last actual year's expenses. Gov has the ability to forecast a budget with a 20% increase in it, reduce that to a 12% increase and call it a cut. If they did truly reduce their budget by 8%, and I could see it on an annual report, then I would have some sympathy.

Your last sentence sums it up for me nicely.

Yep, a small tax on the oil/gas patches that dot the Wyoming landscape would take care of it. I'd also like to see something that helped foot the bill for non game species, besides hunters dollars.

8% is a drop in the bucket.
We're going to take a bigger hit to our personal budget, just on the gas tax increase, and the other tax increase's this legislature has seen fit.
The increases in license fee's don't amount to much as those are voluntary, you don't have to buy a hunting license..

Roscoe the taxes on those are what pays the big share of the states budget.Any increase in the taxes on the gas and oil or coal, and socker moms around the world start hollering about increased costs...

probably right, but something along the lines of a fraction of a cent per gallon produced in the state would likely take care of the shortfall. Not the only option of course but may be worth looking at by someone smarter than me!

The majority of oil and gas produce here is shipped out of state. If the state raises it's severance taxes, the oil/gas/power companies are just going to pass along that rate increase to their customers.

A couple comments...

Ranch13,

you brought up a couple good points, that the G&F is responsible for the management of some non-game species...management of all kinds is not free.

Oh, and the HMA/WALKIN program is not free...my wife and I have donated just shy of $2,000 to that program since 2001. I do agree with you, that a majority of people using the program are cheap-skates that wrongly think its free. I am also in agreement that we may have to go to a fee based system where you must purchase an additional stamp to hunt on an HMA/Walk-in area.

When you look at the scope of what the WYG&F is responsible for, its not real fair for comments like those made by 30338. From 30338's posts, one would assume all the G&F does in a given day is plot their next license fee increase.

They are responsible for an incredible amount of wildlife related work...from non-game species, to drawing systems, to furbearing animals, fish hatcheries, fish stocking, NEPA requirements, publications, regional offices, vehicle fleets, game damage, enforcement, hunters education, licensing, etc. etc. etc.

The WYG&F is living within its means, when considering the demand the public puts on them.

As to the businesses that are profiting from hunters/fishermen/public wildlife...they need to step up to the plate if they're worried that the fee increases will hurt their businesses. They have cut a fat hog in the a$$ for decades while financially not putting a single cent into the conservation/wildlife pool. Time for hotels, meat cutters, restaurants, gas stations, etc. to pay some of the freight.

The burdens placed on the Game and Fish Agencies has become too much for hunters/fishermen to cover on their own.

Time for those that have taken advantage of both wildlife and Sportsmen, decade after decade, to step up and help fund it.

Big deal...let the out-of-staters pay for the severance taxes. My wildlife habitat is taking a trashing via oil/gas development and we're worried that an oil/gas company might pass the price of severance taxes on to out-of-state consumers? Sorry bud, but I'm not going to lose much sleep over that.

Also, what about the mineral trust? We can fund all sorts of other crap from it...but not wildlife?

How about an 1/8 of cent sales tax directly to wildlife?...that would generate about 95 million a year.