TPWD Draw Hunts and Non-residents

[bossbowman]

It doesn't bother me except for New Mexico residents. They are biggest bunch of whiners I have ever seen.

I agree I say give NM the same quota as they give us!

[bossbowman]

They won’t do anything that will cut there revenue. Lol.

You say that but cubing points I guarantee cut application #'s

[simek]

Wyoming has just introduced a Bill to reduce NR tags to 10% and further hike fees and non residents can’t do self guided hunts in federally designated wilderness. It’s not currently 10%, but there are some pretty significant additional costs and significantly less opportunity for NR hunters.

I'm aware of the WY proposal, as well as the one in MT. I've got a pile of WY points, and I'm hoping that things don't change drastically there. I do agree about significantly higher cost/lower opportunity.

[Huggybear]

You say that but cubing points I guarantee cut application #'s

We don’t have the numbers but if it hurt that bad they would have gone back the other way.

[wytex]

That's not true. Take CO, for example.

"Elk and deer tags that required six or more points are limited to 20% to non-residents while tags that took less than 6 points to draw permit up to 35% allocation to non-residents."

Another example is WY...

"Currently, the Wyoming resident receives or buys roughly 80% of the big game licenses .... Nonresident hunters receive approximately 20% of the licenses ..."

Not true. In the pronghorn and deer draws NR get way more than 20% of the licenses. Pronghorn was about 50% for NR last year and in most years. Deer are close to 25% to NR.
Wyoming also allowed over 40 NR to hunt bighorn sheep last year.
NR get the tags not drawn in the resident draw rolled over into their draw for pronghorn and deer. Instead of putting those tags right into the leftover draw NR get to draw them. Cuts down on our extra tags we can draw and gives NR a bigger piece of the pie than residents.
NR get 25% of our sheep tags and about 20% of the moose tags too.

[wytex]

Wyoming has just introduced a Bill to reduce NR tags to 10% and further hike fees and non residents can’t do self guided hunts in federally designated wilderness. It’s not currently 10%, but there are some pretty significant additional costs and significantly less opportunity for NR hunters.


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The wilderness law has been on the books for years and the Outfitters Association pushed that one. Residents are not for it by and large.

Residents are wanting more sheep, moose, and LQ tags and not really in favor of the huge price increase, some blowhards are though.
Elk licenses numbers will not change but where they are will, less LQ tags and more General licenses.

[Army of Dad]

The wilderness law has been on the books for years and the Outfitters Association pushed that one. Residents are not for it by and large.

Residents are wanting more sheep, moose, and LQ tags and not really in favor of the huge price increase, some blowhards are though.
Elk licenses numbers will not change but where they are will, less LQ tags and more General licenses.

I probably should have added some punctuation separating the new Bill and the wilderness part.


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[wytex]

That law is BS and every resident I know does not really like it.

I'm all for the 90/10 split for moose and sheep, bison too. More LQ tags would also be nice but the huge price increase is not cool, imo.

[Texans42]

You forgot the $10k lease fee they'll have to pay in order to find any huntable land in Texas.

In all seriousness, talking about the draw for public land in Texas they'd be buying a license for one species that they draw or put in to draw and it's extremely unrealistic to add up everything on the license to try to compare costs.

I hunt Whitetails, mule deer, and javi’s for WELL under 10k.

I’m just quantifying what you get for what you said below. Many states in west such as NM have OTC deer licenses for private also. Texas should at min require a NR small game licenses

“ The NR Texas hunting license is WAY more than double though, way more.”

[BassMaster13]

The sheep take precedence of MD. They are not going to turn out hunters for 30 days to harass sheep.

I am surprised they give out 16 tags for Black Gap to be honest. More populated deer density around Elephant. Wonder what success rate for these deer hunts are.

70,000 acres, with 16 hunters in the field for lets just give it a conservative 15 days. Come on. I don't think the hunters that are willing to wait and draw this tag are gonna be out there messing with the sheep. I understand a lot of that land is vast but give people an opportunity.

[Bilbo]

Have not drawn anything since they went away from mail in applications. Now that they allow multiple selections in a category makes it even harder to draw. I don’t see them changing NR requirements it but worth a shot. It’s a money maker for them as is.


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[Texans42]

The price does not seem to have any impact on the number of applicants so those tags may be a little undervalued by the game and fish.

why not make it $3500 across the board...non res, res, rez

[Yak blue]

In regards to opening up the west Texas WMAs to any cast of people to go in and shoot aoudad, would probably end in a bad and expensive outcome

The risk to the local big horn population is pretty high. Too great a risk of the average Joe hunter thinking he’s on a group of aoudad and they be big horns. No offense meant to anyone out there, but look at the people who can’t even get restrictions right on the other drawn hunts, (people shooting spikes on doe hunts, mule deer doe on whitetail doe/spike hunts, not seeing the 8th point on a 7 point and under hunt at the chap, etc.)
I would be interested to see the wildlife survey numbers on those vast WMAs and how many acres to the deer out there though.

My survey included the following concerns:

Let the individual purchase the loyalty point for $3 instead of putting in and possibly drawing a hunt. Many times you may not be able to get off work for the few hunts or the dates on the hunts you prefer don’t line up. I’d like the point but don’t want to draw or risk drawing that year. Other states allow this. Would hope to see it implemented here.

[7HF]

I filled out the survey yesterday saying:
1) prices need to be higher for non-residents or it should require a license before applying
2) odds need to be reduced for non-residents
3) tags with only one winner, e.g bighorn, should only go to residents.

Personally, I'd prefer equal (or nearly equal) access/odds for all (resident & non-resident) in Texas public land hunts, but we get screwed by every other western state with low tag allocations and high tag prices to access federal public land that our tax dollars pay for so there needs to be some reciprocity.

[BuckSmasher]

I hunt Whitetails, mule deer, and javi’s for WELL under 10k.

I’m just quantifying what you get for what you said below. Many states in west such as NM have OTC deer licenses for private also. Texas should at min require a NR small game licenses

“ The NR Texas hunting license is WAY more than double though, way more.”

FWIW as a former resident, and with a ton of preference points I will be continuing to apply to two WMA's I really like down there. I don't like them so much I will pay $300 non-refundable license fee much but they are good hunts. I think Texas would lose a lot of application fees if they made non-res buy a license first.

At the end of the day, I am ok if they do. I am opportunistic and always will do a hunt that I know is good on the cheap, but If I have to apply for 10 years, spend 3K in fees for a hunt worth half that, they will lose my and a lot of other nonresidents.

In 19 years of applying I drew TWO, yes TWO, high quality deer hunts... Lack of public land in Texas was major factor in my move.