The Colorado Division of Wildlife’s current road tour of public meetings regarding the allocation of big-game hunting licenses is being touted as some sort of wondrous bargain in which everyone gives and gets in the spirit of true compromise.
If you believe that, I know a rancher with a 10-point bull elk for sale. Cheap.
As the recommendations of the Big Game License Allocation Working Group now stand, score a big one for the landowners and outfitters. Again.
Actually, this result from a committee stacked from the start in favor of the high-dollar commercial elements that increasingly dominate Colorado hunting to the detriment of elemental fairness shouldn’t be much of a shock.
The proposal – achieved after a series of meetings in which landowners and their lackeys increasingly gained the upper hand – gives ranchers an even larger slice of the most desirable deer, elk and antelope licenses. None of which should surprise anyone who has watched the recent trend in Colorado wildlife management as it relates to commercialization in general and landowner preference in particular.
Every time the Colorado Division of Wildlife organizes some high-sounding committee to decide how the pie is sliced, the result is as predictable as hot in July. Like hungry wolves circling a lost calf, those elements that stand to benefit monetarily from hunting keep nipping away until the other side loses resolve and goes belly up.
Unless someone has the fortitude to stand firm, to fight back, the predators win.
Unfortunately, that resolve seldom comes from inside the 6060 Broadway headquarters of DOW. Buffeted by political winds real and imagined, the agency always seems vulnerable to being bowled over by whichever side blows loudest and longest.
When ranchers made noises last autumn about increasing their percentage of preference licenses – that 15 percent of tags skimmed straight off the top of coveted draw licenses for bucks and bulls – ordinary sportsmen screamed to high heaven.
Already upset over the fairness issue of rich hunters buying their way into the best trophies without having to participate in the same computer draw, public hunters raised such a howl that preference proponents backpedaled before the blast.
So what happened next?
DOW formed a committee, the new favorite way of making decisions while ducking most of the heat. Trouble is, this working group was ill-starred from the start. Upon closer examination, we find that outfitters – who typically buy preference vouchers from landowners and are neck-deep in wildlife commerce – are disguised on the program as sportsmen.
Little wonder that, after weeks of harangue, we end up with the sorry suggestions mapped elsewhere on this page. Under the committee recommendation currently being run up the flagpole, landowners stand to gain more licenses across the board – prime tags that you and I no longer can touch.
These coveted licenses, often sold for thousands of dollars, give high rollers the right to hunt anywhere in a game management unit, public or private. The landowners who sell them don’t even have to let the buyer set foot on their own property.
By jimmying the system, a single landowner was able to obtain 90 preference tags. Another got more than 70.
Taking us all for fools, the commercial boys have the audacity to claim that, in return for giving up our best permits, Colorado hunters will receive a larger share of licenses overall at the expense of nonresidents.
But this is an apples-and-oranges argument by which landowners get but never give.
“It’s a whole different issue. Landowners don’t control that or surrender anything. It’s hard to describe this as a compromise,” said Walt Graul, a director of the Colorado Wildlife Federation, which has emerged as the leading public proponent in the debate.
“CWF feels strongly there’s no justification for an increase in landowner vouchers,” said Graul, a retired DOW official. “Anything that increases the landowner’s ability to control who hunts on public lands makes no sense.”
Public hunters again can beat back this latest attack by shouting out at the remaining five meetings, including a Wednesday session in Denver, and before subsequent sessions of the Colorado Wildlife Commission, the body that will make the ultimate decision.
If ordinary hunters remain silent, they’ll find themselves thrown to the wolves.
Public meetings
Five dates remain in the continuing series of meetings to elicit public comment on Colorado big-game license allocation, including a Wednesday meeting in Denver:
Tuesday: Monte Vista Coop, 1901 East U.S. 160
Wednesday: Denver, Division of Wildlife Hunter Education Building, 6060 Broadway
Aug. 2: Montrose, County Fairgrounds Fellowship Hall, 1001 N. Second St.
Aug. 3: Grand Junction, Doubletree Hotel, 743 Horizon Drive
Aug. 4: Craig, Shadow Mountain Village, 1055 County Road 7.
All meetings begin at 7 p.m.
Listen to Charlie Meyers at 9 a.m. each Saturday on “The Fan Outdoors,” radio KKFN 950 AM. He can be reached at 303-820-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com.
