Colorado big game hunters- at least the vast majority who prefers not to pay extra for their licenses on public land – will find a big hole in their stockings for the holiday season.
What’s missing from the sock is any legislation or much meaningful action of any kind toward reform of the current, nettlesome landowner voucher system that allows wealthy hunters to obtain the most sought-after licenses to hunt the public’s game.
“It’s an injustice, where someone with money can pay to hunt in a desirable unit while the public has to wait in line,” said Walt Graul, retired assistant director of the Colorado Division of Wildlife and now a spokesman for the Colorado Wildlife Federation.
But don’t expect the Colorado General Assembly or the administration of Gov. Bill Ritter to do anything about it — certainly not in the upcoming legislative session, perhaps never.
Vouchers, a 1980 initiative giving ranchers 15 percent of limited licenses, got bastardized two decades later to allow their use outside the ranches to which they are issued. Voucher hunters now compete for game on public lands in an increasingly commercial system in which tags sometimes sell for five figures.
By an overwhelming majority, respondents in every poll favor a rollback to the original legislation, whereby landowners who actually play host to deer and elk get rewarded proportionately.
But the voucher issue is a hot potato. Always has been, always will be. Despite a direct request for corrective legislation more than a year ago from the Colorado Wildlife Commission, the Ritter administration has been strangely reluctant to act.
“We want to give the new director an opportunity to craft a solution that the commission can buy into,” said Mike King, assistant director of the Department of Natural Resources, neatly bouncing the potato back into a different corner. “It’s something Tom Remington and the commission needs to wrestle with and get in front of the legislature in 2009.”
For his part, Remington said, “We’ll have to address it in the near future.”
Whether the General Assembly ever will take action at all remains a matter of conjecture. Under a convoluted arrangement orchestrated by the agriculture lobby, Colorado’s wildlife matters are funneled through the respective Agriculture, Livestock and Natural Resource committees. Starting with the committee chairmen, rancher interests dominate throughout, making it unlikely anything favorable to public hunters ever sees the light of day.
Meanwhile, sportsmen and landowner representatives argue endlessly through various meetings in which dialogue and opinion never changes.
The Colorado Wildlife Federation, often the most rational voice in such affairs, has produced a three-part resolution for what it feels the only workable answer to this most divisive problem.
* Make the voucher license applicable only to the private land for which it was issued.
* Limit to six the number of vouchers available to any individual landowner.
* Return unredeemed vouchers to a pool for public drawing, correcting an ill that in 2005 left 2,200 prized licenses unclaimed — lost opportunity to the public and lost revenue to the Division of Wildlife.
If anyone ever gets around to actually drafting legislation, this seems a good place to start.
Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or cmeyers@denverpost.com
