Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game "Governor's" Permits & Similar in the West

We'll see.

I agree! Let's hope they do away with that awful BGAP program!

If anyone thinks that the Parks and Wildlife budget is frozen and that they are cutting $10 million per year from it each and every year for the next five years probably they need to make me an offer for my ocean front property in AZ.

It reminds me of proposing a cut to food stamps and the whack nuts start saying it is going to make 20 million Americans starve to death. If the BGAP program goes away as a result of no auction tags, so be it. Not a fan of the 1% getting first crack at a public resource just because they can pay $200,000 for a sheep tag.

I would go along with raffle tags for additional fund raising capped at 10 tickets each. I imagine that would raise plenty of funds and would not grant privilege based on huge wealth.

Heckuva mule deer buck pic you posted by the way. Really nice.

Kurt, I will make the first offer on your AZ beach front home, and offer up my private access Marco Polo hunting lease in Eagle as trade bait.

Tanner

If you let me shoot a cull Polo, I can get you a nice suite on the non ocean side. Think about it and let me know.

There are already gov raffle tags available for all the species that a auction tag is given for. Max of 25 tickets per raffle. Sheep, goat, elk, deer, moose, lope.

Drop the price of those raffle coupons and you would sell more.

Oh please, U can afford the $25

One ticket is a waste of time. Your max is 25. Once again the big money guys have the best odds. I cannot afford $625 to gamble on raffle tags.

The funny part is, the rich guys like the higher prices because it keeps the sales volume down which increases their odds. Sell those babies for $5 and you would sell 100x more tickets.

You're talking out your ass, most ticket orders I process are for 2 tickets, either one sheep and one goat or 2 sheep. There maybe 10 total orders all year for max sheep tickets. We sell a lot of tickets, a lot of people have a chance.

Auction tags or no auction tags, BGAP needs to just go away. It is nothing more than an entitlement program for hunters and will never be able to sustain itself. It will always bleed money that could be better used in other areas

Says the guide and outfitter! Scared of the leasing competition?

I've never seen anything that indicates any raffle or auction money has ever gone to BGAP.

Dogcatcher- I think you are wrong that one ticket is not a waste of time. No tickets and compalining when you don't win is a waste of time. I know several folks have won these raffles on only one chance. I've won several raffles and have never purchased max tickets in any of them. If money was not an issue I always buy max just to donate and have a chance at an awesome hunt.

Buying max tickets does help ones odds but really not that much when you are talking about the sheep raffle

Baseed on estimated ticket sales of bighorn this year of 2500.
25 tickets your odds are 1.0%
10 tickets odds decrease to .4%
1 ticket odds are.04%

In the most recent past (10 or so years) I am only aware of 7 or 8 people a year who purchased max tickets for either sheep or mt goat or both raffles each year.

I can think of only 1 person who bought the max of 25 tickets that has won the Colorado sheep raffle. I think the same is true for the mt goat tag.

FYI - The 25 ticket max is set by state law. It has less of an impact on sheep but a guy could by 25 antelope tickets and have a less than 1 in 10 chance at winning.

Years ago I purchased a bunch of tickets for poorly advertised (non Rocky Mountain Bighorn Society run raffle) for statewide tag. I had 1/4 of all the tickets in the bin and I still didn't win.

Bottomline it all goes to a good cause so more tickets sold means more money for the animals.

If the price was lowered to $5 per ticket I think they would sell more tickets but the money raised would be about the same. I think most people want a chance at drawing and have budget of X dollars, so if tickets are $5 each the guy spending $25 still spends $25 and he gets 5 tickets. The guy currently buying 4 tickets for $100 now gets 20. I doubt we'd get a 100x more people buying tickets because the $25 ticket price is a limiting factor in purchasing one ticket.


Sandrew

I'm not scared of leasing competition, I'm completely against wasteful government spending. If somebody wants to come lease ground then get after it, I have no issue with that whatsoever.

I am a conservative at heart and I maintain those values across the board. I am all for less government and I can't stand to see needless entitlement programs drain the accounts. I find it absurd to try and create "opportunity" when the opportunity is there for anybody willing to knock on doors and make phone calls. I find it absurd that they need to create "opportunity" in a state with so much public ground and over the counter tags and I find it absurd that they would overspend using dollars generated by us for a program that loses so much money yet provides so little. If a guy is not lazy and is willing to work he could hunt the plains every year, it's not up to a government agency to provide that.

The program absolutely sucks on about every level. Is the "guide and outfitter" argument the very best you can come up with? Please tell me that's not all you've got.

As for what money funds BGAP, it doesn't really matter to me. I brought it up specifically because exbiologist mentioned that there were some substantial cuts for the coming years and I stated that I hope that was one of them

Access yes/Walk in/BM has been pretty successful in Wyoming,Idaho,Kansas,Montana and Utah even tho the outfitters whine and snivel about it.Lets do away with all NFS/BLM while we're at it..thats a pretty damn big government ran hunter welfare program there..Just think of the new outfitter lease opportunities for you Drum!

Isnt BGAP the same thing under a different name? Wyoming does a really good job at running theirs, and there is a donation box for it when you apply,something I dont see in other states with similar programs,HUGE mistake IMO. I've donated a pretty good sum over the years to Wyoming program,and have killed some nice critters on the properties as well.

HAHA! I didn't know I should be ashamed of the 3 critters I shot in Wyoming thanks to Walk in Areas or HMAs! Disgraceful that I should be on the government dole, always walking around with my hand out!

Pretty sure the BGAP program was modeled after Montana�s block management system.

http://wildlife.state.co.us/Hunting/BigGame/AccessProgram/Pages/BigGameAccessProgram.aspx

I agree with this. People are only willing to spend a certain amount.

My favorite is the raffle ticket applications with the little old man writing on it and a money order for one sheep ticket, I always secretly hope someone like that will win.

The issueI have with BGAP is that the state is paying insane amounts of money for leases that really don't offer that great of an opportunity. Here are some figures for 2007, 2008 and 2009�.

2007:
Total cost paid by the CDOW = $76,390.56
Total sales generated = $6,950.95
Total Loss = $69,439.61

2008:
Total cost paid by the CDOW = $103,930.02
Total sales generated = $15,975.95
Total Loss = $87,954.07

2009:
Total cost paid by the CDOW = $100,834.83
Total sales generated = $24,527.77
Total Loss = $76,307.06

The figures represent a TOTAL LOSS over 3 years of $233,700.74! That's roughly an average loss of 83% over the first three years of the program and doesn't take into account 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. I guarantee the numbers for those years are dismal as well

CDOW is paying as much as $3.00 per acre and and as little as $1.00 per acre. If we split the difference and go with $2.00 per acre, that's roughly $300,000 per year in annual lease fees as they have almost 150,000 acres in the program now. Now, if the CDOW sells access stamps at $40.00 each, that means they only have to sell 7,500 of them just to break even! But, obviously that isn't happening! With an average loss of 80% - 90% annually, the program is generating $60,000.00 at best. That's only a loss of over $2 million over the next 10 years, if everything stays constant

When I received the figures in the summer of 2010 the figures were not all known yet for that year. However, the CDOW had agreed to pay $98,027.17 in lease payments. This figure DID NOT include signs & equipment costs either and none of these figures account for the man hours our game wardens have into policing the properties. I do not know the figures on the permit sale for 2010 but the fact of the matter is that they simply do not offer enough tags in those eastern plains units to even come close to recouping the money spent on lease fee's

Anybody that has hunted the plains will tell you that while you might have insane amounts of acres to hunt for deer there may be only a small portion of that ground that is really good deer habitat. Hell, you don't need to have hunted the plains to figure this out, just drive from Denver to Burlington and look at how much ground is just flat pasture where you'll never find a deer. What happens is that you will have 80% of the BGAP guys hunting 10-15% of the ground that was leased and it is just flat dangerous at times. I have seen guys surrounding a field and all shooting at deer or antelope that are out in the middle. I have had bullets shot over the top of me. Its just flat scary

Now lets take into account the sloppy accounting that resulted in a miscalculation of more than $30 million at Colorado's Division of Wildlife. They were writing checks and not deducting the money from the books and as a result, the Wildlife Cash Fund Reserve dipped from about $37 million in 2007 to about $6 million by 2011. Is this the fault of BGAP? Certainly not but BGAP is yet another example of fiscal irresponsibility by our DOW and now our Parks and Wildlife department

If these figures don't wakes you up as to the issues I have with BGAP and our Parks and Wildlife department then you aren't paying attention IMO. Instead of focusing on the fact that I guide hunts for a living why don't we discuss the facts of the program. I don't know what is going to happen next year but there are areas of the plains that do not need this kind of pressure. We had a case of EHD in some areas out east and the game warden in that area and I agree that the whitetail population has taken a serious hit.

One last point, over 18 years of hunting the eastern plains I have helped a lot of people find places to hunt and helped them figure out what units they should focus on. I have NEVER asked for a dime to help even though in some instances I literally drove hundred of miles out of my way to look at a piece of property for them so lets leave the "evil guide and outfitter" out of this conversation. If thats the best you can come up with then I believe you are simply too emotional to look at the facts and engage in a constructive debate about them

Why do you not have a problem with this program then? We are paying to be able to hunt state land! None of them near where you guide? I hate seeing the scurvy public when I'm out trying to chase muley bucks

http://wildlife.state.co.us/LandWater/StateTrustLands/Pages/stl_info.aspx

I wonder how much the CDOW spends a year to admininster outfitting related issues?

Huntsonora, I think you're treading on some thin ice looking at wildlife management of any type on a purely economic level.

From the numbers I've seen, in every single state, outfitters themselves contribute about as close to nothing as it gets in regard to DOW/G&F funding. Their CLIENTS contribute just about every penny that the State gets in regard to anything to do with outfitted hunts.

I think its foolish and irresponsible to look at every program from a simple dollar value assigned, just like you did in your post above. While your numbers are accurate, you didnt take into account the benefit of spreading pressure around, giving hunters a place to hunt, and the CDOW getting the management (via access) they need in those areas.

If we're going to look at every program simply from a dollar and cents view, fishing in most every state would be a loser as well. Have you looked at the cost to raise fish, plant fish, etc.? Compare that to the price of a fishing license thats valid for 365 days a year. Big loser economically for most all G&F agencies. Yet, IMO, the net gain in families spending time together, or watching a young kid smiling while holding a dirt-covered trout up for a picture...is worth it to me. Economically, it makes not sense to stock fish, so in your view, that it has to be about economics, we should scrap that program?

The value in wildlife resources is only realized if the public has access to them...both consumptive and non-consumptive access. If the CDOW has to pay to get that access in some cases, so be it.

I think you need to pull away from your tunnel vision and think big-picture.

Also, you can blow smoke all you want, but the days of walking up and knocking on doors and gaining access for free are largely OVER.

The number one reason why people either dont start hunting, or quit hunting, is because they dont have a place to go and/or access. Thats a fact well documented in various USFWS reports conducted nation wide.

Instead of whining about a program, why not try to improve it?