Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Non-Resident ELK Prices

DIY elk hunting in Idaho is pretty cheap for residents. A license and elk tag is about $65 (about $30 for us old farts). Then it's what you spend for a camping trip while carrying a weapon.
Non-res is much higher plus all the crap they have to go through to get a tag.

Another resident of an elk hunting state saying “tough luck”. Too many family connections & time/money invested in our place to move to Colorado for me. Besides how many Californians more can CO take we’ve already screwed up your politics. Everyone I know bitches about rising costs of healthy outdoor hobbies & crowded conditions with rude selfish jerks becoming more common every year. You expect skiers & golfers to have a fair share of elitist pricks - but that’s always been rare with hunters. I’ve introduced several young men to elk hunting & more young people to bird & deer hunting but that won’t be possible when they are priced out. $100 youth tags is something CO definitely gets right.

What's the appropriate price range for a general unit NR elk tag, since everyone thinks it needs to go up?

What's your number? Seems to be missing from your post...

The answer to the problem is all over these posts. The problem is " I'm going no matter what it costs". The answer , dont go as often. Go every other year for out of state. As for me, I went out of state one time in my life. I went to Minnesota bear hunting in 2003. Never applied anywhere neither. Another problem may be is there are anti hunters inside the Department of Natural Resourses and fish and Game departments. They may be jacking the prices way up to milk money out of the ones that can afford it, and leaving the less wealthy at home. I can afford it,, no problem. However, I refuse to pay those prices and compete with people that will pay any price . I hunt bear and deer in Wisconsin. A few times a year I fish Upper Michigan and I am happy enough. Contentment with the Lord is great gain, and my treasure is not on this earth. Too many people in America try to buy their treasures ,, boats, big homes, ETC. It might be a relief for many here to say , screw it, I'm not going this year and stay close to home to hunt. You might find it very relaxing and enjoyable. I hunt deer a lot, but as the years go on, I seem to be more interested in just squirrel and grouse hunting. Son wants to duck hunt and we are going to do that... There are many that live out west that are saying " good, dont want you here anyway." Okay, I can move next do to you if I want to though. I'm happy where I am.

ihookem, the outfitters lobby pushed for the Wyoming increases, no anti hunters in our WG&F pushing that.

We still have reduced price cow tags for the meat hunters and they can get 2 if wanted.

We really don't hate on NRs , just their attitudes of entitlement by some.
Come on out and move here, in Wyoming. I would welcome another hunter to our town. We have plenty of older hunters hanging it up every year, our population is not growing much at all.
NRs on the other hand seem to come out of the woodwork every year come app time for hunting tags.

That's nice to hear Wytex, and thanks for the offer. I am not sure How I would go about shooting an elk, but it sounds fun.

I hunt the ranch next to WAM in Colorado's Unit 13, I've been hunting that area (Units 12 &13) since 1992, I've killed a couple of good bucks on those ranches and have seen a whole bunch more killed on them. I ate the last two deer tags I had, I didn't see anything worth shooting. The deer hunting has gone downhill. So has the elk hunting.

In 2002, I saw well over 1000 elk while hunting including a herd of 600. Now I'm lucky to 20, something is going on, not sure what it is. I meet a lot of guys in town that get skunked, at $750 a tag I wonder how long they will be coming out?

Strange,that is a common theme, but CPW keeps adding to elk numbers every year. Supposedly Colorado has 308,901 elk as of the 2022 herd count.

I hunt Unit 12 during muzzle loader season.Ten years ago I could pretty much guarantee a cow, now the are tough to come by.

Up until two years ago, I also hunted Unit 54, north of Gunnison with an OTC tag, 2nd rifle, for close to 40 years on and off. Usually took a bull every year without much trouble until about about 2010. The herd count went from about 6500 to about 3000. I still killed elk, but they came hard.

Should it be $4500? $2500?

Looks like we’ll see how the $2000 special bull tags sell next year in Wyoming

$200 elk tags would also result in Internet forum teeth gnashing because the number of applicants would increase by orders of magnitude. So what is the solution? It’s a limited resource that is going to result in more than not looking in from the outside.

I think one way to increase the odds of hunting success and potentially bring down costs would be to offer tax credits to private land owners that allow hunting. Other states do that in the form of a managed forest law. It's forestry related, but significant tax discount and you have to allow public on your land if you own more than a certain amount of acres.

The elk disappear onto private land immediately after opening morning gun shots. I've watched them do it, and I'm sure others have too. With more huntable land, pressure on public land would go down and animals would congregate less on private safe havens if they were being hunted there too.

I don't know the answer but it makes me sad for the future.

I've been lucky that I've been able to hunt 6 or so different states. I've taken bear, antelope, elk, whitetail, turkey, hogs and small game.

But those days are disappearing. And quickly.

-Jake

Elk success for us in 2nd rifle season has been great the past 2 years, but 2020 was not good for our bunch. 2005-2008 was super, 2009-2010 was a big bust.it seems like we have two or three good years, then it hits the skids for a couple of seasons. I guess changes in weather, routes, etc. impact the elk movement. Always the “ya shoulda been here last year!”

There's no doubt that the G&F commissions if the western states are largely funded by NR hunters. So why not increase it to $3500 or $5000 for a general unit tag for NR?

I guess one could ask why the average G&F department needs to increase their income 5X off the NR that already largely funds them. What good are they going to do with those extra funds? I’m not saying that they wouldn’t do great things with the extra money, they might, but then again they might not. I’m not confident that my home state’s game department wouldn’t squander any extra revenue on stupid stuff. I don’t have direct experience with the G&F departments in states other than my own and CO but I’m always leery of giving any .gov agency extra money and expecting them to do the right thing.

They will do exactly what all Govt. agencies do when given More Money--Grow the agency, buy more pickups, build more buildings, hire more people. Very little will see it's way to wild life programs. Any additional funds derived from additional tag prices must be strictly earmarked for wildlife programs by state legislators or they will be misused!!!
Just because Directors of G&f departments are former biologists doesn't mean they are not politicians. How did they get the the job in the first place?

Careful what you give a politician. What they say and do will likely be very different!
Good Hunting
Lj

I'd bet that everyone will be sold.