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Speaker 1: E dot com. Hey, everybody, welcome to Our governor Tags.
Speaker 1: Our Governor's tags on American reducts? Is that the right right?
Speaker 1: You used to reducts? Remember they did apocalypse now and
Speaker 1: they recut it and call it reducts.
Speaker 3: I don't know to redo do over?
Speaker 2: Well, where we are sells are are in the hot seat.
Speaker 1: We did an episode Our Governor's Tags on American and
Speaker 1: and you know the the the episode was phrased as
Speaker 1: though it was a question. But I think there was
Speaker 1: an overriding There was an overriding sentiment in the room
Speaker 1: about you know, it's.
Speaker 2: It's hyperbolic language.
Speaker 1: Overriding sentiment in the room of I would say a
Speaker 1: tipping a the Governor's tags. The sentiment in the room
Speaker 1: is that governor's tags tipped on American We were called
Speaker 1: out on this by Gray Thornton from the Wild Sheep Foundation,
Speaker 1: which is the pre eminent wild cheap conservation organization in America,
Speaker 1: and in all fairness, does more than any entity in
Speaker 1: putting wild sheep back on the mountain, keeping wild sheep
Speaker 1: on the mountain. So we had to hear him out,
Speaker 1: and he's here today to tell us where we went wrong.
Speaker 1: In his opinion, Gray, I want to keep the I
Speaker 1: want to keep it. I want to keep all this fair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I want to who gets to who gets to
Speaker 1: say just to bring people up to speed? Who gets
Speaker 1: to say who gets to describe what a governor's tag is.
Speaker 3: I'm happy to give it a shot.
Speaker 2: Give it a shot, and then if you do it
Speaker 2: and I don't like it, I'll give you.
Speaker 3: I'll give your thumbs down. You know, here's a good thing,
Speaker 3: is Stephen? This is your show. Yeah, So I'm just
Speaker 3: honored to be here. No, I don't. I don't know
Speaker 3: if I called it out. We just wanted to point
Speaker 3: out some things that we would have liked, at least
Speaker 3: at least had stated.
Speaker 1: So I get criticized about something or another every day,
Speaker 1: okay and I both now most of them I kind
Speaker 1: of like laugh them off. But your criticism of some
Speaker 1: of the comments that were made on that episode struck
Speaker 1: me so much that I emailed you within seconds of
Speaker 1: reading them.
Speaker 2: So like you know, when you.
Speaker 1: Get you know, if you get called out in a
Speaker 1: way where you're like, okay, all right, you know I
Speaker 1: get a mean email every day from my friend Doug,
Speaker 1: and you know you asked him, I'll usually reply by
Speaker 1: I asked them, if you've seen any turkeys around? How's
Speaker 1: the turkey's looking in other news? But no, no, I yeah,
Speaker 1: tell everybody what a governor's tag is. So well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about what it is before we talk about.
Speaker 3: What it was. It mean.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, where did they come from?
Speaker 3: And so the first governor's tag was actually given to
Speaker 3: what was then the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep
Speaker 3: now Wild Chief Foundation in nineteen eighty by Governor Ed
Speaker 3: Herschler from Wyoming and a lot different than they are today.
Speaker 3: But the idea from Ed's perspective was, hey, we have
Speaker 3: these highly coveted tags opportunities. We've got this fairly new organization,
Speaker 3: Foundation of North American Wild Chief was founded in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy seven. So three years later, what if we gave
Speaker 3: one of these tags, they sold it at auction and
Speaker 3: we just mandate that they dedicate all the funds to
Speaker 3: Wild Chief Conservation in Wyoming. So that's how the whole
Speaker 3: process started. And so back then, yeah, it's it was
Speaker 3: a governor's tag and so.
Speaker 1: Because the state wasn't able to the state didn't have
Speaker 1: the mechanism to sell it themselves.
Speaker 3: No, so they kind of look at a you know,
Speaker 3: at an NGO as you know, we're the ones that
Speaker 3: can put on the party, put on the show, and
Speaker 3: there's there's a number of us out there that are
Speaker 3: doing it. But it was kind of a changing point
Speaker 3: for wild Chief conservation funding, bottom line finase or you know,
Speaker 3: now wild Chief foundations in is in existence because sheep
Speaker 3: weren't a priority. They didn't pay their way. Too few
Speaker 3: and unlike elk, unlike meal deer, and like white tails,
Speaker 3: unlike you know, even turkeys, not enough of them to
Speaker 3: fund their conservation. So for many agencies, they really weren't
Speaker 3: a priority.
Speaker 1: You might explain them what that means by not enough
Speaker 1: to fund the conservation.
Speaker 2: You know, for example, let's let's look at Montana.
Speaker 3: We'll look at twenty twenty three data, twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: data six hundred and fifty eight, six hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: six tags made available five hundred and fifty eight to
Speaker 3: residents that brought in And this is this is twenty
Speaker 3: twenty three data sixty nine, seven hundred and fifty bucks.
Speaker 4: You're talking sheep, now, sheep.
Speaker 3: Bighorn sheep tags. Ninety eight non resident tags brought in
Speaker 3: a little over one hundred and twenty two thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: So one hundred and ninety eight thousand dollars total for
Speaker 3: bighorn cheap conservation from the sale of.
Speaker 2: Tags, from the sale of six hundred tags.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not a lot of money. You know. I started
Speaker 3: really looking at this ten years prior, back in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: and looked and thought, because I was, I was fortunate
Speaker 3: up to take a big horn in our unlimited area
Speaker 3: in twenty fourteen, I paid regulations. Oh crazy, you know,
Speaker 3: I was. I was a non resident hunter. I paid
Speaker 3: seven hundred and fifty bucks. Coincidentally, that year at our show,
Speaker 3: the Montana tag sold for four hundred and eighty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars twenty thirteen, so I was looking at the funding model, going,
Speaker 3: this is kind of interesting. You know, how relevant are
Speaker 3: these tags to Wild Chief conservation? How relevant is Wild
Speaker 3: Chief Foundation to the Wild Chief economy because we're one
Speaker 3: of the organizations that sells the most. So I did
Speaker 3: kind of a deep dive and I had a couple
Speaker 3: of our biologists look at WAFWA data, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think at back in twenty fourteen, it hasn't changed
Speaker 3: too much. I think it was about one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty thousand dollars came to the state on the non
Speaker 3: auction or raffle tech. Well, hell you can't. You can't
Speaker 3: buy a pickup truck and fund a biologist for that.
Speaker 3: So how the hell are we going to fund wild
Speaker 3: cheap conservation? And that's really what Ed Hirschler was looking
Speaker 3: at back in nineteen eighty is that they don't pay
Speaker 3: their way. They're just there's so few of them, and
Speaker 3: the revenues so stream is so small. From the whether
Speaker 3: they're l EH tags or not, that there's l EH
Speaker 3: limited entry hunting. You know what most of us in
Speaker 3: North America see is well, we got to apply for
Speaker 3: a sheep tag. You know, we're blessed in Montana the
Speaker 3: only Lower forty eight state that you can in effect
Speaker 3: buying over the counter sheep tag. Pretty fricking cool. We've
Speaker 3: got to protect that. Alaska obviously you can buy over
Speaker 3: counter dolls tag, although now that's every third year for
Speaker 3: a non resident. Canada's where you can you know, just
Speaker 3: buy over the counter. For Canadian residents, you know, we
Speaker 3: obviously have to have an outfitter. So it was a
Speaker 3: unique funding model, and it's it's certainly grown, you know,
Speaker 3: in Wild Chief Foundation. Quite frankly, it has been you know,
Speaker 3: kind of the premier governor's tag, and now we like
Speaker 3: to call them conservation permits because that's really what they are,
Speaker 3: because they're not only governors. British Columbia has a minister's license.
Speaker 3: Alberta has a minister's license. Tribal tags we sell. We
Speaker 3: sell tags for the Taus Pueblo, for the Navajo Nation,
Speaker 3: We've sold them for the Wala Pie, We've sold them
Speaker 3: for the Kwani First Nation up in up in Northwest,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, in Yukon. So it's you know, we we
Speaker 3: we glump them into a little i think more descriptive
Speaker 3: definition called a conservation permit, which I think really identifies
Speaker 3: what they are. And Stephen back in twenty fourteen, when
Speaker 3: I ask our conservation guys to do this deep dive,
Speaker 3: they used Western Association of Fishing wildliche Agency data WAFFWA
Speaker 3: data and found that seventy three percent of all wild
Speaker 3: sheep agency funding came from either a auction tag, conservation permit,
Speaker 3: or a raffle tag, with the majority of the money
Speaker 3: coming in from an auction tag. Fast forward ten years later,
Speaker 3: we're still still quantifying the data. Right now, it's about
Speaker 3: eighty three percent in the United States of sheep sheep
Speaker 3: conservation funding at the agency level come from either an
Speaker 3: off auction or raffle tech.
Speaker 4: So is it like when one of these tags, conservation permit,
Speaker 4: government tag, whatever you want to call them, get sold,
Speaker 4: is it mandated that that money goes is too wild
Speaker 4: cheap conservation?
Speaker 3: Or is it diluted? It all roady? That's that's the
Speaker 3: million dollar question. The easy answer is yes. Now it's
Speaker 3: you know, the proofs in the pudding and in the implementation.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the misnomers is you know, I
Speaker 3: mean we just we just had our convention in Reno.
Speaker 3: We sold thirty tags. We're going to direct about six
Speaker 3: point eight million dollars to state, provincial, tribal, territorial, and
Speaker 3: federal agencies to the sale of those thirty tags. By statute,
Speaker 3: Wild Sheep Foundation has to direct those moneies to the agency.
Speaker 3: What the agencies do for it a little deeper dive,
Speaker 3: and I'd like to jump into that, but a misnomer is,
Speaker 3: oh my god, weld Chief Foundation got all this money.
Speaker 3: No Arizona one hundred percent of the proceeds from the
Speaker 3: sale of any any special tag conservation permit that we
Speaker 3: go back to the state Arizona Game and Fish Nevada
Speaker 3: one goes back to Nevada Department of Wildlife. The average
Speaker 3: that we would retain is about ten percent. If you
Speaker 3: look at look at all the agencies. If you look
Speaker 3: at just this last two weeks ago at our sheep show,
Speaker 3: seven point three some odd million, we're going to keep
Speaker 3: six hundred and some odd thousand. It's eight point nine
Speaker 3: percent coming back to the Wild Chief Foundation from the
Speaker 3: sale of those tags. Again, some of them are one
Speaker 3: hundred percent of the agencies, most of them are around ten.
Speaker 3: British Columbia is fifteen percent that we can retain. Alaska,
Speaker 3: interesting enough, has a different kind of a rule. But
Speaker 3: the moneys have to go back to an Alaska NGO.
Speaker 3: So we we sell the conservation permit, one goes back
Speaker 3: to our Alaska chapter. I think they keep fifteen percent
Speaker 3: and then they direct the rest to State of Alaska.
Speaker 3: So I can certainly show you where Wild Chief Foundation
Speaker 3: directs our monies. I mean, this year we're budgeting about
Speaker 3: two point seven two point eight in grant eight going
Speaker 3: out of a three point seven million that will fund education, conservation,
Speaker 3: you know, education, youth education, engaging women disease research. But
Speaker 3: so much of what we do is grant neate out.
Speaker 3: An agency or a chapter applies for a grant, we
Speaker 3: give that money away. We keep six hundred and some
Speaker 3: one thousand dollars from these permits we're giving away three
Speaker 3: point seven. You know, it's not a it's not a
Speaker 3: money maker for us, but it is a hell of
Speaker 3: a money maker for the agencies. And that's that's what
Speaker 3: we're trying to focus on. And you know, if there's
Speaker 3: a better way to do it, we're all ears because
Speaker 3: our focus is that ram you or lamb on the
Speaker 3: ridge line, and how do we put money into the
Speaker 3: agency to affect their conservation, their enhancement, their repatriation, the
Speaker 3: restoration habitat and all that. Uh so did I did
Speaker 3: I pass? Did we call it conservation permit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm happy with the definition of conservation permit.
Speaker 1: Uh one of the things. So this is something I said.
Speaker 1: If you look at our thing, krinn was a quote,
Speaker 1: they made an extra tag.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you were, you were. I think you were trying
Speaker 5: to figure out.
Speaker 4: Like I think what you were saying is it wasn't
Speaker 4: coming out of the same pool that people drop.
Speaker 2: Whose side was I on when I said that.
Speaker 3: There, I think it got you on the right side,
Speaker 3: because that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 5: Okay, you qualified that you were like undecided and split
Speaker 5: down the middle.
Speaker 2: What I said, this is one of the two things.
Speaker 1: No, I remember, I said, this is one of the
Speaker 1: few things in life I don't have an opinion about.
Speaker 3: I'm too torn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we can.
Speaker 5: We can bring in some of Cow's arguments later. I
Speaker 5: think that's that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's let's let's dive into one of the
Speaker 1: let's let's dive into one of these these aspects of
Speaker 1: governor's tags. It gets people riled up, right, Sorry, conservation permits.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call them governor's tags, okay, just because that's well, no,
Speaker 1: I'll try to I say governor's tags. Other guys know
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. If I say conservation tag, They're
Speaker 1: not going to know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4: The rebranding is it's kind of like the Golf of
Speaker 4: Mexico and the Gulf of America.
Speaker 2: But then it.
Speaker 5: Doesn't mean that we should stick with.
Speaker 3: Stick with governor's tags. But when we go to when
Speaker 3: we go to b C or permit where we're talking tribal,
Speaker 3: I'll call it a tribal permit.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know there's an outfitter. Uh, there's a guide that.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking about Golf of America.
Speaker 4: I kind of felt like you wouldn't let that just go.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a So sometimes when we spearfish down
Speaker 1: in Louisiana, we stay in this place and next to
Speaker 1: the place is the Golf of America charter.
Speaker 4: You know, Oh, that's the name of their outfitter.
Speaker 1: That was my first because this is years ago, that
Speaker 1: was my first awareness. I just like chuckled about the
Speaker 1: Golf of America.
Speaker 3: He was ahead of the game.
Speaker 1: He's way ahead of so it must have been brewing
Speaker 1: a long time. I got like, I'm totally fine golf.
Speaker 1: I'm totally fine golf of America.
Speaker 2: The Nalely. I feel like that's pretty solidified in Alaskan culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Even the politicians in Alaska like what Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know it was a problem with the name.
Speaker 3: I do remember it being McKinley. Uh.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's one. Here's a governor's tag argument folks make
Speaker 1: when they're arguing about this. Oh you know what, you
Speaker 1: know what made me they want to think about this?
Speaker 1: In all fairness, we have to get into the fact
Speaker 1: that there is a class there's there's a class issue here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that question.
Speaker 1: So the other night, uh, Saturday, two Saturdays ago. I
Speaker 1: didn't watch it, but I watched on YouTube. David Chappelle
Speaker 1: did the opening monologue on Saturday Night Live. And Chappelle
Speaker 1: was talking about the LA fires, and he was talking
Speaker 1: about reading commentary and news articles of people saying, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm glad those rich Californians there's houses are
Speaker 1: getting burned down, and he said, Chappelle says, that's why
Speaker 1: I hate poor people. They can't see beyond their own pain.
Speaker 1: So there there is a there is a class issue
Speaker 1: to this, Like anything to do with wealth access, any
Speaker 1: kind of financial privilege, right, is going to generate animosity.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You hear someone went to Yale, there's a judgment. Like
Speaker 1: if that's not part of your family trajectory, there's a
Speaker 1: judgment if someone has.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter in America, doesn't matter if you're talking
Speaker 4: about sheep or like.
Speaker 3: Real estate or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like there is like he paid blank million for
Speaker 1: that house boom, right, Like there's a judgment, right, and so.
Speaker 2: We need to get there, Like I'd like to get
Speaker 2: there on the.
Speaker 1: Issue of just like a perceived sense in America, like
Speaker 1: I guess globally historically, a perceived sense that there's like
Speaker 1: two playing fields and that the people of wealth have
Speaker 1: access to things that that people don't have, and implied
Speaker 1: and add to some sort of sense that most people
Speaker 1: have wealth don't deserve it. So that's just burning, that's
Speaker 1: simmering underground, and we'll remember to get to it. But
Speaker 1: let's start with another. Let's start with a less philosophical point,
Speaker 1: because this is just like a factual point. Give me
Speaker 1: a how many tags did Montana issue for big horns?
Speaker 3: One one for auction one for raffle.
Speaker 2: No, no, I'm sorry, six hundred. In twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: it was six hundred and fifty six total. Okay, there
Speaker 2: is a perception that right that it would.
Speaker 1: Have been sorry, somebody the number again, six fifty six.
Speaker 1: So through the public draw they issue six hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty six big horn tags. There's a perception that the
Speaker 1: number would have been six hundred and fifty seven.
Speaker 2: Correct, So that one other.
Speaker 3: We should use a state that doesn't have nearly as many,
Speaker 3: because there's so many and it seems like a lot
Speaker 3: of mine.
Speaker 1: What's the state that doesn't have shit for big horn tags?
Speaker 3: Nebraska? I don't want to go that extreme as a
Speaker 3: big horn tag, all right, but yeah, no, I see
Speaker 3: your point.
Speaker 2: There's a perception there it should have been six fifty seven.
Speaker 1: So some lucky guy, some some would be lucky guy
Speaker 1: that would have gone down and did the draw got
Speaker 1: screwed out of his big horn tag. Okay, But they
Speaker 1: auctioned it off to the highest bidder. So we've seen
Speaker 1: a diminishment of the public pool. Now I want you
Speaker 1: to tackle whether that's true or not. But then that's
Speaker 1: gonna bring up a broader question if if they create
Speaker 1: an extra tag to facilitate a conservation tag auction, that
Speaker 1: makes me feel like the number of tags they're issuing
Speaker 1: becomes kind of arbitrary, Like, how do you create an
Speaker 1: extra tag if the the number of tags that are
Speaker 1: being distributed is like a biologically driven reality?
Speaker 2: Meaning if it, how did it go from six fifty
Speaker 2: six to six fifty seven?
Speaker 3: So I got a, I think an answer that you're
Speaker 3: going to appreciate, you know. Again, Well, I'll go back
Speaker 3: to the unlimited area. You know, we've got three to
Speaker 3: four to five kind of depending on the year, unlimited areas.
Speaker 3: You know, our our guru in this state, the biologist
Speaker 3: Sean Stewart. You listen to him talk about the the allocation,
Speaker 3: the quota for those used to be three and some
Speaker 3: now it's pretty much two. We all know there's some
Speaker 3: years that they take three, four, five, sometimes six. You know,
Speaker 3: so you might have a quota of two, but there's
Speaker 3: six taken legally. Yeah, can you explain how that happens?
Speaker 3: Just for that's it? Well, so there's a there's a
Speaker 3: forty eight hour window when the season closes. You know,
Speaker 3: in my particular case, I took a ram i was
Speaker 3: the second ram taken in twenty fourteen in the unit
Speaker 3: I was hunting. Tried to close the season by sending
Speaker 3: an end reach in. They don't accept that, so, you know,
Speaker 3: went through my wife and then called fish Wildife Parks.
Speaker 3: They go, no, Gray's got to call you. Uh, I
Speaker 3: don't know sell signal. I don't. I don't have a
Speaker 3: cell signal. I don't have a SAT phone, so I'm
Speaker 3: using in reach and and you know, long and short.
Speaker 3: Sean finally went, oh, wait a minute, I know who
Speaker 3: that guy is. And oh, by the way, he's with
Speaker 3: Jack Atchison. If there's anyone that knows sheep, it's Jack,
Speaker 3: and uh, yeah, we're going to close the season. But
Speaker 3: in that case, there was another twenty four hour delay
Speaker 3: and another sheep was taken, so three sheep were taken
Speaker 3: legally in the unit on a QUOTEA of two. There's
Speaker 3: been times where you know, five people shoot a sheep
Speaker 3: in one day. You've got to you've got to You've
Speaker 3: got forty eight hours to to report that to either
Speaker 3: a conservation officer or a game board or a biologist.
Speaker 3: So there's that lag period. You listen to Sean Stewart,
Speaker 3: he's he'll tell you it's biologically insignificant, so that that third, fourth, fifth,
Speaker 3: even six sheep is biologically insignificant in the overall scheme
Speaker 3: of the unlimited units that he's responsible for. So we
Speaker 3: take that Stephen go back to you know, the state
Speaker 3: of Montana, and you're you were absolutely correct. It is
Speaker 3: by typically by the legislature, an authorized additional tag to
Speaker 3: what game and fish is going to say, hey, this
Speaker 3: is this is what our off take is going to be.
Speaker 3: The typical off take for bighorn sheep males that's considered
Speaker 3: sustainable is from a from an allocation standpoint is two
Speaker 3: to three percent of males. Sue conservative, Wow, so that's lower, right,
Speaker 3: super conservative. So that's what the state's going to allodate or.
Speaker 1: The orre low because I know this is this is
Speaker 1: really hard to People are going to argue about these
Speaker 1: numbers all the time. Sure, but I've heard with deer
Speaker 1: management thirteen percent not just the males.
Speaker 3: But the hurt right, and and you know, and now
Speaker 3: think of recruitment. You know, to to increase a herd,
Speaker 3: you need recruitment of twenty twenty two to twenty three percent,
Speaker 3: whether it's big orn cheap, whether it's elk, whether it's
Speaker 3: mule deer, whether it's white tail. Well, now we're harvesting
Speaker 3: and if and if you look at the again WAFA data,
Speaker 3: it's like one to three percent is the average male
Speaker 3: off take. So so we're already managing to a super
Speaker 3: conservative harvest. So Montana does. Then the legislature comes through
Speaker 3: and said, hey, we're going to to raise money for
Speaker 3: Montana fish wilife. Part. We're going to authorize one auction tag,
Speaker 3: one ravel tag, and add two. So if we can
Speaker 3: go back to Sean Stewart's presentation where he's saying, hey, look,
Speaker 3: even in the three to four to five unlimited areas
Speaker 3: with a with a quota of two per unit, if
Speaker 3: they go over one year by two or three or four,
Speaker 3: biologically insignificant, I'm not concerned about. So to your point,
Speaker 3: we're already managing super conservatively on bighorn cheap that those
Speaker 3: one to two. Wyoming's got five Nevada, you know, five
Speaker 3: big worn cheap permits they authorize on auction.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 3: They then have you know, they have their commissioner tags,
Speaker 3: but those aren't for big worn cheap. Those are ALC
Speaker 3: mule deer, prong horn moose. I think there's a moose tag,
Speaker 3: not not a commissioner. So you were absolutely correct that
Speaker 3: these are additive. And what's what's amazing is when you
Speaker 3: look at you know, and you we sold you word
Speaker 3: one hundred and ninety two thousand dollars in Montana in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. We sold the tag. We directed two
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty eight thousand dollars on the auction tag
Speaker 3: to fish, Wildlife and Parks. That adds to their one
Speaker 3: ninety two. We did a raffle back then too. It
Speaker 3: was one hundred and twenty five, so one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty five thousand for raffle. We double it, more than
Speaker 3: double it for the auction tag and then add that
Speaker 3: to the resident license. Still not a lot of money.
Speaker 1: So hit me with the hit me with the amount.
Speaker 1: Hit me with the amount that went in the tag
Speaker 1: and license fees for the public draw versus.
Speaker 3: Like the one hundred and ninety two thousand dollars two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty and twenty twenty three for six hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty six tags and then the auction tag. Then
Speaker 3: we add one more auction tag. We added another two
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty eight added one raffle tag one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty five. So so I guess the you know,
Speaker 3: but you're you're so right. I mean, so here's the
Speaker 3: here's the thing that that I guess frustrates us on
Speaker 3: this side. There's not a financial argument that you can
Speaker 3: make to say that it's the wrong thing to do.
Speaker 3: So it really is a social justice argument. And so
Speaker 3: you know, I can show all the statistics that will
Speaker 3: say that look uh, and you know it's additive, it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not you know, I'm a regular guy.
Speaker 3: Am I going to be able to buy one of
Speaker 3: these tags? Not unless I rob a whole hell of
Speaker 3: a lot of liquor stores or win the lottery. But
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what I'm thrilled with, and that is
Speaker 3: that somebody is willing to do that, and because of
Speaker 3: that money, it's offering more opportunity for regular guys and
Speaker 3: regular gals like me. So you know, that's that's the
Speaker 3: crux of the argument. And then I you know, when
Speaker 3: we dive into the social side of it, because there
Speaker 3: is it's a and it's sad. I mean, if you know,
Speaker 3: if I mean, I drive a twenty seventeen Toyta pickup truck.
Speaker 3: You know what, it works, got one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: six thousand miles on it. I drive by somebody who's
Speaker 3: got one of those new GMC at four's, Boy, that
Speaker 3: looks slick. Do I have to have that? Am I?
Speaker 3: You know? Am I envious?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's like, well maybe one of these days.
Speaker 3: But my truck still pulls my trailer. I'm okay. So
Speaker 3: I look at these guys or gals that are buying
Speaker 3: these tags, and I'm I'm grateful because it's wildlife philanthropy.
Speaker 2: Let me hate you with this though, Okay, one good? Okay,
Speaker 2: where is ten good?
Speaker 1: Like like, if it's if it's financial, if it's strictly financial,
Speaker 1: how far would you extend that logic? Like if there's
Speaker 1: six hundred tags, would you start to feel uncomfortable if
Speaker 1: we auctioned five hundred of them?
Speaker 3: You know what you're going to have is law of
Speaker 3: diminishing returns. And we saw that in Alberta where they thought,
Speaker 3: you know, Alberta was you know, that's where the.
Speaker 2: Big sheep were and so like in a very specific
Speaker 2: place too.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, well yeah it was and it was Cataman,
Speaker 3: you know, it was around the Cataman Mine and uh
Speaker 3: and so they're basically you know, park sheep coming out
Speaker 3: if they come out, or they can just hang and
Speaker 3: you could sit there and every guy there's you know,
Speaker 3: there's a specific rock I think it's called Hot Rock
Speaker 3: or something like that that these people would literally be
Speaker 3: lined from the trailhead get to Hot Rock and then
Speaker 3: just wait and see if these big rams would come
Speaker 3: out of the park. And it's Jasper, that's the park,
Speaker 3: and sometimes they would, sometimes they would, but they're big
Speaker 3: sheep man. You know, the the prior hunted world record
Speaker 3: was taken there and so that's where people were chasing
Speaker 3: that tag, and that's where those dollars went. Well, Alberta
Speaker 3: at one point thought hmm, you know, maybe we can
Speaker 3: maybe we can make even more money. So they started
Speaker 3: adding more and more auction tags and even even some
Speaker 3: more L e H tags to that same area, and
Speaker 3: then you had a hunting experience. It wasn't exactly the
Speaker 3: most enjoyable. Everyone's making a bee line for Hot Rock
Speaker 3: and then they're all sitting around the rock waiting, you know,
Speaker 3: for a big sheep to come out of the park.
Speaker 3: So I'm being a little facetious, but that's basically so
Speaker 3: you can have a law of diminishing returns. Really interesting
Speaker 3: this year, Arizona last year chose their commission. That's my
Speaker 3: next question.
Speaker 2: You're you're doing my next question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Arizona shows.
Speaker 2: Did Arizona get rid of Governor's Day? They did, They
Speaker 2: did take it away, They.
Speaker 3: Got rid of Governor's tags and they're going to a raffle.
Speaker 3: So while Chief Foundation was given the last Desert bighorn
Speaker 3: sheep tag to sell an auction unless there's a commission change,
Speaker 3: and you know, I mean it's politics at this point,
Speaker 3: we were also given a pronghorn anallop tag. Last year
Speaker 3: we sold the Arizona tag. I think it was for
Speaker 3: four hundred and twenty four hundred and I think I
Speaker 3: have that data. What did we sell that tag for? Yeah,
Speaker 3: four thirty four hundred and thirty thousand dollars. One hundred
Speaker 3: percent of those dollars go right back to Arizona. Game
Speaker 3: to fish. This year we sold it for five five
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars. Crazy, you want to really go nuts.
Speaker 3: We sold the Arizona prong horn tag in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four for ninety five thousand dollars. A prong horn tag.
Speaker 3: The last one going to be on auction sold for
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. One hundred percent of
Speaker 3: those dollars go right back to Arizona Game Fish. Now
Speaker 3: now it's going to go to raffles. We all know
Speaker 3: that you're not going to make the same amount of money.
Speaker 3: Organizations NGOs in Arizona boked and didn't even apply for
Speaker 3: these tags, while Chief Foundation looked at it and said,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean we could. We could thump our
Speaker 3: chests and go, aren't we great? You know we're selling
Speaker 3: these tags are unbelievable amount of money. You're not doing
Speaker 3: what we want, so we're not going to play your game.
Speaker 3: We didn't. We thought, no, let's have a seat at
Speaker 3: the table. We'd rather be at the table and talking
Speaker 3: and doing something good for wildlife. So we applied for
Speaker 3: their bighorn tag and we're going to raffle that off.
Speaker 3: I think it sold at Arizona Desert Big Worn Sheep Society,
Speaker 3: who we partner with in Arizona on the Desert Big
Speaker 3: Orn tag on the Arizona prong Horn tag. Arizona Desert
Speaker 3: Big Worn Sheep Society sold the big Horn tag last
Speaker 3: year at their their banquet in May, three hundred and fifty,
Speaker 3: three hundred and sixty thousand dollars. We'll probably, through a raffle,
Speaker 3: be able to direct one hundred and twenty five hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty thousand to Arizona game fish versus the three
Speaker 3: fifty or three sixty, and then you compare it to
Speaker 3: the five hundred and then we get into the equity
Speaker 3: of raffles. And that's that's a question I'd love to ask,
Speaker 3: is you know, those that think that raffles are equitable
Speaker 3: need to look a little deeper dive there. A Washington
Speaker 3: resident can't purchase an online raffle outside of his or
Speaker 3: her state because a gambling law gambling.
Speaker 5: Even is this a similar thing that we went through
Speaker 5: and we both purchase we weren't physically in the state
Speaker 5: of Arizona.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that was a gambling law or
Speaker 2: just the rule.
Speaker 3: No, it's so in Washington, it's it's there. It's their
Speaker 3: state Gaming Commission because that is gambling. Yeah, and you know, now,
Speaker 3: if you're in state, you can do an in state,
Speaker 3: but if we're out of state, we can't. We can't sell.
Speaker 3: We've Arizona got burned on this. Arizona has a super
Speaker 3: teche and they've pretty much they used to sell them
Speaker 3: to do it.
Speaker 2: You know, they did exceptionally well on those.
Speaker 3: They were selling them out of state. They got a
Speaker 3: call from the Gaming Commission of Washington State saying, hey,
Speaker 3: you're selling to Washington residence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we sure are.
Speaker 3: You a great opportunity for them. We're raising money for
Speaker 3: profit and they said, you're violating our state gaming laws.
Speaker 3: You got to refund that money. Karine and I were
Speaker 3: talking about the pandemic. Wild Chie Foundation got kind of
Speaker 3: clever during the pandemic. We're all fighting to figure out
Speaker 3: how the hell are we going to raise money. We
Speaker 3: we actually sourced out of DOA a a virtual yes,
Speaker 3: a virtual expo thing rather interesting. We had to change
Speaker 3: all the avatars. There were no blonde people in in
Speaker 3: this uh in this expo, but that's a whole and
Speaker 3: no cowboy hats, a no ball cat so you know, Brodie,
Speaker 3: they you know, we could not find a ball cap
Speaker 3: in this uh this cutter application. But I digress a
Speaker 3: little bit. But what what was really interesting is so
Speaker 3: we said, okay, we're basically selling a ticket to sit
Speaker 3: in front of your MacBook or your PC and watch
Speaker 3: our show our auctions online. Those are easy to do.
Speaker 3: Expo a little more difficult. And you know what. To
Speaker 3: incentivize you to buy this ticket, We'll put you in
Speaker 3: a drawing for a desert big one cheap hunt. Fair enough,
Speaker 3: you know. All you have to do is buy the
Speaker 3: ticket and you're you're in the drawing and somebody is
Speaker 3: going to win a desert big one cheap hunt. I
Speaker 3: get a call from Washington Gaming Commission and they said, hey,
Speaker 3: you're you're conducting a raffle. And I went, We're not
Speaker 3: conducting a row. What you know, what do you I
Speaker 3: finally figured out what. I said, Oh wait a minute,
Speaker 3: are are Yeah, No, you've got some registration thing. You're
Speaker 3: giving away a desert big one cheaphunt. Yeah. Yeah. He said,
Speaker 3: well you can't do that in Washington. You're based in Montana.
Speaker 3: I said, wow, Actually, we're kind of clever. We run
Speaker 3: our programs for a raffles out of Wyoming. But this
Speaker 3: isn't a raffle, so this is just a registration thing.
Speaker 3: He says, you're still breaking our gaming laws. You've been
Speaker 3: there's been a complaint against you. Oh my god. Really,
Speaker 3: we had. We had to refund twenty seven thousand dollars
Speaker 3: in registrations we had to make to make to make
Speaker 3: it at least fair to our Washington folks that wanted
Speaker 3: to participate. We just said, hey, we're refunding your money
Speaker 3: and if you want to attend our virtual convention you
Speaker 3: can do so for free. Well that happened in it
Speaker 3: the band fishing during the pandemic. Yeah, go figure. So
Speaker 3: the laws are so crazy, you know, look at you know,
Speaker 3: Montana is an interesting one. We accept on raffle checks cash,
Speaker 3: debit cards, not credit cards. So if you're conducting a
Speaker 3: raffle in Montana, you got to make sure that your
Speaker 3: system knows that that that visa that somebody just sent
Speaker 3: you was a debit card, not a credit card. And
Speaker 3: we've been stung on that one. Arizona got stung their
Speaker 3: super raffle got stung really really bad by Washington. So
Speaker 3: now and Brody, I think you touched on it. Now
Speaker 3: Arizona is only conducting their I forget what they're calling
Speaker 3: it now, it's not the it's not the super tags
Speaker 3: but in state. So now you have a and Steve,
Speaker 3: you touched on that, you know.
Speaker 2: Now you have me got boned out of one hundred
Speaker 2: bucks apiece?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so raffles are not as equitable as they may.
Speaker 2: So let's back up to Arizona.
Speaker 1: Uh, because really this decision that came out of Arizona
Speaker 1: drove this whole conversation.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean we've definitely, over the years, have touched on it.
Speaker 1: I have always been like, uh, I've always been torn
Speaker 1: by the issue recognizing the money, but then also you know,
Speaker 1: like I recognized the tremendous amount of money that goes
Speaker 1: to conservation, and I also recognized the kind of populous
Speaker 1: rage against like who the hell has four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to buy a sheep tag? And why does he
Speaker 1: get one?
Speaker 3: But I don't.
Speaker 2: I recognize both sides of this. But what really fueled
Speaker 2: this renewed conversation was Arizona's decision, the commission decision, and
Speaker 2: it came to a vote and they said that going
Speaker 2: into the future, we're going to step away from doing
Speaker 2: auction tags, Right, Like, what's your understanding of of that process,
Speaker 2: Like what were the inputs they were looking at? Was
Speaker 2: it primarily social pressure?
Speaker 3: I would say it's social pressure is probably the biggest one.
Speaker 3: The revenue side was certainly expressed. I was actually asked
Speaker 3: to do a video for their commission by the chair.
Speaker 3: We did. We did a six minute version, we did
Speaker 3: cut it down to a three minute version. Talked about,
Speaker 3: you know, how much money is raised for Arizona, you know,
Speaker 3: what will happen to bighorn sheep. But you know, now
Speaker 3: you look at that pronghorn two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: what will happen to pronghorn conservation? What's going to have
Speaker 3: You know, is there anyone in this room that can
Speaker 3: tell me that there's an agency that has too much money?
Speaker 3: From a wildlife agency standpoint, you know, maybe maybe a
Speaker 3: few government agencies we'd like to cut out, but you know,
Speaker 3: from a wildlife agency in the United States, everyone's clamoring
Speaker 3: for more dollars. You know, we need more biologists, we
Speaker 3: need more trucks, we need more uniforms, we need more
Speaker 3: habitat improvement, you know all of that. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: a money thing, it was a it was a there
Speaker 3: was some pressure from some groups that really do think
Speaker 3: the raffle is the way to go because of Steven
Speaker 3: exactly what you said. It's a it's a. It's an
Speaker 3: envy thing. It is a polarize a thing, and we
Speaker 3: see it in all walks of life, whether you know,
Speaker 3: whether it's a guy that's you know, lauding and applauding,
Speaker 3: somebody's home in Pacific Palisades being burned because you know,
Speaker 3: he or she is pursued to be rich and I'm not.
Speaker 3: You know, I I don't buy into that, but I
Speaker 3: recognize it. You know, I recognize there's also and it's
Speaker 3: been said, well, this is you know, this is a
Speaker 3: this is against the North American wildlife conservation model. Shane
Speaker 3: Mahoney and I are really really close friends, and we
Speaker 3: share a stage around the world on giving speeches and
Speaker 3: the like. I used to in my presentations called the
Speaker 3: you know this this auction tag, governor's tag, special permit
Speaker 3: conservation permit. I used to call it a bastardization of
Speaker 3: the North American egalitarian model. He said, ah, you know
Speaker 3: this is, but it raises all this money I had.
Speaker 3: She used to say that. I used to say it,
Speaker 3: and I said, oh, it's a bastardization of.
Speaker 2: The model, but it works.
Speaker 3: How long ago is that Shane and I were in
Speaker 3: my drift boat on the Yellowstone eight years ago. He
Speaker 3: and his wife. He's, you know, say hey, let me
Speaker 3: float you down the Yellowstone. You're such a busy guy.
Speaker 3: Watch a fly fish a little bit, and you know,
Speaker 3: typical typical Shane. He just kind of puts the rod down.
Speaker 3: He's looking around and then in that voice of Moses,
Speaker 3: you know, great, I want to tell you something. You're wrong.
Speaker 3: I went all right wrong a lot every single day.
Speaker 3: What am I wrong? At this time? He goes, you know,
Speaker 3: I've heard you on stage call this Governor's Tag Conservation
Speaker 3: Permit model a bastardization of the North American model, and
Speaker 3: you're wrong. I said, Well, you, being the foremost spokesperson
Speaker 3: for the model, tell me why. And he says, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the pillars of the model is state and
Speaker 3: agency determination of how is the most efficient way for
Speaker 3: them to raise money for wildlife. If a state determines
Speaker 3: that a auction tag or a raffle tag, or come
Speaker 3: up withever, whatever program it is, is the most efficient
Speaker 3: efficient mechanism, well then that's consistent with a model. We
Speaker 3: just did a permit discussion at our sheep show in
Speaker 3: our full curl Cinema had Shane my EVP of Conservation
Speaker 3: Corey Mason, myself doing a Q and A afterwards, and
Speaker 3: Shane said it again. He goes, you know, this is
Speaker 3: consistent with the model. The challenge is the social license
Speaker 3: and Steve, it's what you said, and you cannot discount that.
Speaker 3: You know. I could certainly talk about a way to
Speaker 3: look at it that maybe will sway some views on it,
Speaker 3: but there is just a built in, you know, even
Speaker 3: though it's additive, even though it's driving eighty three percent
Speaker 3: of the conservation dot for wild sheep at the agency
Speaker 3: level in our country, there's still this Well, so what
Speaker 3: I don't care about the money. It's just not fair.
Speaker 3: Somebody is able to buy something that I can't. Well,
Speaker 3: and I guess I look at that, and I mentioned
Speaker 3: the term wildlife philanthropy. You know, you look at a
Speaker 3: high net worth individual and we applaud when there's a
Speaker 3: name on a hospital wing because they donated a potload
Speaker 3: of money to that hospital, or they donated to feeding
Speaker 3: the hungry, or to the welfare of pets, or a
Speaker 3: football stadium or an art museum, and we applaud that philanthropy. Philanthropy, Well, this,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, is wildlife philanthropy. Why don't we applaud.
Speaker 1: That because they're getting, because they would get they would
Speaker 1: get universally applauded if they weren't taking the tag. If
Speaker 1: some guy got up at Sheep at your at your
Speaker 1: convention in Reno, and some guys said, hey, man, no
Speaker 1: strings attached, I don't want ship for it. Here's five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars from Wild Sheep in Arizona one, that'd
Speaker 1: be the that'd be the response. I mean, like, if
Speaker 1: you're actually asking the question, that would be why. And
Speaker 1: it again, it's like.
Speaker 3: Building people, doesn't, doesn't, isn't isn't an accolade too?
Speaker 2: And I get it it is.
Speaker 1: It's a mark, But I don't think like if if
Speaker 1: Verizon underwrites a sports stadium as a marketing play, I
Speaker 1: don't think that Verizon.
Speaker 3: Is applauded, No, the recognized.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like sort of there's a there's a
Speaker 1: quid pro quo to it. It's like, yes, they're underwriting
Speaker 1: the sports stadium, but it's like a marketing expense. So
Speaker 1: if you could somehow get into a guy's head who's
Speaker 1: buying a shep tag for four hundred thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: he was gonna go write the check anyway, because he
Speaker 1: believes that much in wild sheep. But then like as
Speaker 1: a little added perk, got a tag too. I think
Speaker 1: that that would that would diminish some of the social condemnation.
Speaker 1: But I don't think people are looking at it. If
Speaker 1: talking about people who feel burned by governor's tags, I
Speaker 1: don't think they're looking at it that it was a donation.
Speaker 1: I think they're looking at it that it was a purchase.
Speaker 5: I think you're looking at the psychology of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they are.
Speaker 3: They're certainly getting a benefit back even if they don't
Speaker 3: take the sheep, And that certainly happened. I mean, I
Speaker 3: you know a good friend of mine from Texas, you know,
Speaker 3: back in the day in Alberta. I think he I
Speaker 3: think he bought the tag. He bought it two or
Speaker 3: three times and didn't take a sheep once. There was
Speaker 3: another guy that was always chasing I mean since pass
Speaker 3: and I think he he bought it at least three times,
Speaker 3: didn't take a sheep twice. So I see your point,
Speaker 3: and it's and it really had Yeah, it's to say,
Speaker 3: you know, well, you know what you're getting an opportunity. Well,
Speaker 3: you're getting an opportunity with no with no guarantee. And
Speaker 3: I look back, you know, I look back on the
Speaker 3: guy that that ended up buying that that record Montana
Speaker 3: tag in twenty thirteen, because I, you know, I I
Speaker 3: felt that my seven hundred and fifty dollars tag back
Speaker 3: when Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks had one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty dollars in revenue coming in from me, you know
Speaker 3: and others us regular folks, and they got ninety four
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty thousand dollars. That my ability to hunt
Speaker 3: sheep in Montana was because some crazy guy was willing
Speaker 3: to spend that money. And he made an interesting comment
Speaker 3: to me. I you know, I thanked him, and he says, Gray,
Speaker 3: here's the deal. I give to my church, I give
Speaker 3: to he he had another, He had another, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of pet charity he gives to and he goes
Speaker 3: and I give to wild cheap Conservation. Yes. Now does
Speaker 3: he get a spiritual benefit from giving to his church?
Speaker 3: You bet? Does he? You know, it's a little bit
Speaker 3: more than my twenty bucks in the in the tray.
Speaker 3: Does he get a benefit satisfaction out of giving to you?
Speaker 3: Know in this case they were homeless shelters or something
Speaker 3: like that. Sure does he get a benefit from buying
Speaker 3: that cheap tag, Yes he does, But I know I
Speaker 3: did too as the regular guy. I benefited because he
Speaker 3: chose to direct his philanthropy towards conservation, not a football stadium.
Speaker 3: So that's a good point those.
Speaker 2: Dude, let's change let's change course a little bit.
Speaker 1: In conversations with people who who are suspicious of critical
Speaker 1: of auction tags, a common thing people point out is,
Speaker 1: and I've pointed it out myself, is that in some
Speaker 1: cases you get a season that's way longer, you bet,
Speaker 1: like potentially three hundred and sixty five days long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you sit outside of the unit thing. So Joe Blow
Speaker 1: draws a tag and he might have he might have
Speaker 1: an area ten by twenty miles whatever the hell smaller.
Speaker 2: That's his hunt unit.
Speaker 1: The auction tag holder can hunt any unit that's open
Speaker 1: in the whole damn state, right right, And so people
Speaker 1: look and they'll be like, well, why is that why
Speaker 1: this amazing perk to wealth? Like even once we have
Speaker 1: the tags, are like I won mine on the open
Speaker 1: tag allotment.
Speaker 3: He bought his, but his better mind.
Speaker 4: And something to build on what Steve is saying, like,
Speaker 4: I once listen to a conversation at a Rocky Mountain
Speaker 4: Elk Foundation thing in Colorado where someone had drawn a
Speaker 4: big horn ram tag and a unit where there was
Speaker 4: only one tag, and he spent a bunch of time
Speaker 4: scouting and there was a real big.
Speaker 3: One and I was gonna tell the story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he on his on his way in scouting one day,
Speaker 4: kind of a posse of dudes are coming down the
Speaker 4: trail and he's like, hey, you know. They strike up
Speaker 4: a conversation. He's like, I got I drew the tag.
Speaker 4: I'm looking for this ram and they were basically like,
Speaker 4: don't bother. Like we're we're guiding the Governor's tag guy
Speaker 4: and they know when the season opened, and they're like,
Speaker 4: we're going to get that thing before you ever have
Speaker 4: a chance to get it. It wasn't like an impolite conversation,
Speaker 4: but it Yeah.
Speaker 2: Because he had his team of he had his team
Speaker 2: of guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so there's like a social conflict.
Speaker 3: There, you bet, you bet, and and and that, that,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, is the dirty underbelly m hm. And
Speaker 3: and is something that if we are to retain the
Speaker 3: social license to have these. We need to be able
Speaker 3: to answer those, And I would say, right now, we don't. Well,
Speaker 3: why can't you answer it this way? Because well, let me.
Speaker 1: Provide you with a hypothetical answer. Not hypothetical, but I mean,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be if we as hunters are agreeing that
Speaker 1: auctioning off a tag for several hundred thousand dollars creates
Speaker 1: more sheep opportunities for everybody, potential leads to bigger, big
Speaker 1: horn populations, so that there's more tags available in the
Speaker 1: general draw. We got healthier sheep herds, we got healthier
Speaker 1: sheep hunting. If we can make that tag even more
Speaker 1: valuable and it's still only costing us one sheep, why
Speaker 1: not do everything we can do to make it more valuable. Well,
Speaker 1: like if you said, if you action to tag off
Speaker 1: and you go, you got seven days, right, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the price is probably gonna plumb it without question,
Speaker 1: and so so I mean, but I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that that's ultimately the answer, but that's kind
Speaker 1: of how I look at it.
Speaker 3: Would be.
Speaker 1: Well, if we're gonna do it, we're gonna give away
Speaker 1: a sheep tag. I don't get the most money you
Speaker 1: can out of the sum bitch, and if you need
Speaker 1: to make the season.
Speaker 2: Longer and that Jack's it up by one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, and you nailed it. And if you know,
Speaker 3: going back to the prior podcast and the and the
Speaker 3: title you know are Governor's tags on American? Well, no,
Speaker 3: it's a good title. No, you know, these conservation permits
Speaker 3: and these governors tags are absolutely American because it's based
Speaker 3: on subli and de man and a and a and
Speaker 3: an interest in capitalistic process. Now you know that that
Speaker 3: was my argument as well. It's against the egalitarian North
Speaker 3: American model. Shane. Shane corrected me. But Stephen, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: But the the the dirty underbelly is perception. And and
Speaker 3: if you know Arizona is a three hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: five day, you know, being intellectually honest, you know, we
Speaker 3: we like to give breeding populations time off. You know,
Speaker 3: Now Montana hunts during the rut for mule deer, we off,
Speaker 3: you know, we archery hunt in the rut for elk
Speaker 3: and others typically bighorn sheep or not in the rut.
Speaker 3: There's some that seasons that they're there. There could be
Speaker 3: certainly these these conservation permits that either are extended season
Speaker 3: earlier season or any unit opens it up to going
Speaker 3: right back to that social question, social license question on
Speaker 3: well how come it's that much different? Well how why
Speaker 3: is it that much different? Because that's what that's what
Speaker 3: increases the price. Classic example is is Alberta. You know,
Speaker 3: they they made which you know, some could say were
Speaker 3: some mistakes, you know, back in the nineties, and they
Speaker 3: were just offering too many tags. Price started to go down,
Speaker 3: and they're going, jeez, you know, we used to be
Speaker 3: the big dog. Now Montana is uh now New Mexico is,
Speaker 3: Arizona was, I mean, it's you know, it's Colorado was
Speaker 3: last year. I mean it's it's kind of amazing when
Speaker 3: you when you look at you know, where the big
Speaker 3: dollars are coming in on these on these conservation permits.
Speaker 4: But stop you does the dollar does the amount change
Speaker 4: based on where the big ram is that year?
Speaker 3: Without question?
Speaker 2: With that of things which is which is a dirty underbelly?
Speaker 5: I also ask with the fewer of a lower number
Speaker 5: of available tags per state, does the number also go up?
Speaker 3: Probably? I couldn't, I couldn't, you know, what we're seeing
Speaker 3: now is just kind of just you know, you look
Speaker 3: at you look at what what. What's been really interesting is,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of ground zero for disease has been
Speaker 3: in the Tristare area, Idaho, Washington, Oregon. Our chapters in
Speaker 3: the read and the agencies in the region, wild cheap
Speaker 3: foundations pump millions of dollars into disease research, into kind
Speaker 3: of some novel separation policies, in some draconian policies like test,
Speaker 3: test and remove.
Speaker 4: We kind of talking pneumonia, correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Michael, plasma. Pneumonia is a setup agent. It's
Speaker 3: a pathogen and what it what it does is it
Speaker 3: can lead to ammonia. Okay. Pneumonia primarily comes from domestic sheep,
Speaker 3: also domestic goats. It can be within a wild cheap population,
Speaker 3: so it can be endemic once they get it from
Speaker 3: a you know, from a vector a source domestic sheeper, goat. Well,
Speaker 3: we've we've done collectively a pretty damn good job of
Speaker 3: of At one point we eliminated Michael plasmo and pneumonia
Speaker 3: from the Hell's Canyon Complex. Better lamb recruitment, big rams
Speaker 3: uh big, you know, And that's just that's just healthy sheep. Now,
Speaker 3: Oregon tags selling like crazy, Idaho tag selling like new
Speaker 3: state records taking in Oregon, Idaho, Washington. So you know,
Speaker 3: there's just this dynamic.
Speaker 2: But the buyers are like, this is the point.
Speaker 1: I think that it's important to getting because it's important
Speaker 1: to cover, because it's part of what it's part of
Speaker 1: the social conversation being one. When when an auction tag
Speaker 1: comes up, oftentimes the buyer is basically buying an opportunity
Speaker 1: to go get a specific sheet that he has been
Speaker 1: made aware of by his outfitter. Yeah, they're like, look here,
Speaker 1: we got a two hundred inch ram.
Speaker 2: You'll get to get it before the public.
Speaker 1: Here, here's a dossier, here's all the photos of it.
Speaker 1: You buy it, you hire us, I'll guy our guys,
Speaker 1: will keep an eye on it, will put six seven
Speaker 1: guys out and watch it. You show up, boom, it's
Speaker 1: yours because we're already on it. And that burns people's ass, it.
Speaker 3: Does, and that and and I would call you know,
Speaker 3: in that scenario, that is a dirty underbella belly. Now
Speaker 3: now you've got another scenario, and but is that the tag?
Speaker 2: But that but again, is that the tag's fault?
Speaker 3: No, it's not. It's it's it's the it's our fault,
Speaker 3: it's it's the you know, let's let's push the envelope
Speaker 3: on fair chase, which we need to clean up now,
Speaker 3: you know, here's here's the here's a flip side of that.
Speaker 3: And I'll tell you a little bit about the guy
Speaker 3: that that bought the one point three million dollars new
Speaker 3: Mexico tag two weeks ago. One point three So.
Speaker 1: A new Mexico sheep tag went for one point three right?
Speaker 1: It is that a new record, absolute new record? Is
Speaker 1: he gunning for a specific sheep?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's gunning person. But I'm going to tell you
Speaker 3: a story about him. But what he said, so holy yeah,
Speaker 3: one point three million.
Speaker 1: Now at that point getting suspiciously philanthropic, so yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Almost, So there there was a period of time where
Speaker 3: you know, everyone was chasing very very large stone sheep.
Speaker 3: So the BC minister's license, which is kind of a
Speaker 3: unique license because and there is a raffle tag too,
Speaker 3: but there's one, there's a there's a minister's license on auction.
Speaker 3: There's a minister's license on raffle. The minister's license in
Speaker 3: BC you can hunt they've got four you know, subspecies
Speaker 3: if you will, but you know three species. They've got
Speaker 3: doll sheep, stone sheep, bighorn sheep, but a bighorn sheep.
Speaker 3: They've got California big horn and Rocky Mountain big onorn.
Speaker 2: Oh, I got confused, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: And so there's there's a there's a subspe species of
Speaker 3: bighorn sheep called California big horn. Yeah, but who has
Speaker 3: all of them? British Columbia they have those. The only
Speaker 3: thing they don't have is desert. But they have four
Speaker 3: four wild cheap species dolls stone dolls, and it's a
Speaker 3: teeny little area up in the far northwest corner adjacent
Speaker 3: to Alaska, lower part of Alaska. So they have dolls.
Speaker 3: They are you know, the location for stone sheep other
Speaker 3: than fanning up in the Yukon. They have California big horn.
Speaker 3: That's primarily.
Speaker 2: That's what I was unaware of, is that like on
Speaker 2: thet on the west coast in the it's.
Speaker 3: In the Fraser River Valley and then and then bighorn
Speaker 3: sheep around Fernie and the like. So you can buy
Speaker 3: that tag and you can choose, you can choose which
Speaker 3: sheep you want to hunt. So you know, years past
Speaker 3: it used to be the chase a big horn. Now
Speaker 3: it was hey, we're gonna you're gonna be able to
Speaker 3: hunt early and late for stone sheep, and stone sheep
Speaker 3: was the hot item. Uh that that permit went for
Speaker 3: three hundred some one thousand dollars. There was a sheep that,
Speaker 3: you know, a couple of big ones that people were
Speaker 3: you know, knew that we're around. This guy knew that
Speaker 3: they were around. They're all killed in an avalanche. Seriously,
Speaker 3: seal ave. So now let's go back to the really
Speaker 3: go back to the Yeah, it's like a pile of
Speaker 3: four sheep killing an avalanche, all four of the big ones.
Speaker 3: It's like, hey, that ram you are chasing no longer. Congratulations,
Speaker 3: that's philanthropic petition.
Speaker 2: For a refund. You gotta be kidding, no refund?
Speaker 3: Can I? Can I?
Speaker 1: I gotta explain something to folks. I'm trying to keep
Speaker 1: this real one on one. Uh, just to point out
Speaker 1: something obvious. The reason three hundred and sixty five days
Speaker 1: a year is enticing for sheep because they don't shed
Speaker 1: their antlers, which pointed out so like if you're if
Speaker 1: you're hunting Elk. Let's say you're buying a governor's tag
Speaker 1: for Elk, like that. Elk's gonna get maximum size and
Speaker 1: get hard antlered in September, late August, early September, and
Speaker 1: he's gonna drop his antlers down the road in March. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you had three hundred and sixty five days,
Speaker 1: and maybe you do, it doesn't really matter because you're
Speaker 1: chasing a how many months is that September, October, November, December, January, forebr.
Speaker 2: You got half half the year. He's gonna have that.
Speaker 4: And any antlered species could just bust them up.
Speaker 3: That's yep.
Speaker 1: And he could also snap them, yeah, and and and
Speaker 1: a lot of those big bowls, especially in the in
Speaker 1: the desert southwest, do snap them off. So like, but
Speaker 1: a sheep, I mean, by the time he's the kind
Speaker 1: of sheep we're talking about, this sheep is nine years old,
Speaker 1: ten years old, eleven years old.
Speaker 2: But he's got him. He's carrying his racky around.
Speaker 1: You shoot him in April, he's got the same he's got,
Speaker 1: that's right, the same attributes as you shoot him in November.
Speaker 3: Their horns not antlers, so you know they they wear
Speaker 3: their life on their head. So let's let's now go
Speaker 3: to the gentleman that bought you know, which is now
Speaker 3: the record for any any permit one point three million.
Speaker 3: I was visiting with him last week, thanking him. You know, wow, incredible,
Speaker 3: you know, how the heck did that happen? I mean,
Speaker 3: three hundred thousands a lot of money? One point three
Speaker 3: is I like what you said, that's pretty close. Uh
Speaker 3: you want to wing? You want to wing on that hospital?
Speaker 3: And he says, you know, I knew it was going
Speaker 3: to go over a million dollars. I wanted to go
Speaker 3: over a million dollars. I'm happy. You know, season opens
Speaker 3: August first for me. I sure, hope a mountain lion
Speaker 3: doesn't get it, but it is what it is. That's philanthropic.
Speaker 3: That is a guy, and he's done very very well
Speaker 3: obviously in life. And crazy enough. I think there were
Speaker 3: three bidders in it at one point two.
Speaker 2: So at one point those guys like enough is enough?
Speaker 3: Just amazing. I mean you can imagine the energy in
Speaker 3: the room when you see that.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the sheep? Yeah, like, what's the sheep?
Speaker 3: They know?
Speaker 4: Why so much of this year and not after that
Speaker 4: sheep last year?
Speaker 3: There's a you know, two hundred points is kind of
Speaker 3: the holy Rail. And so there's there is a you know,
Speaker 3: there is the thought that the largest big horn in
Speaker 3: North America is in New Mexico is alive right now.
Speaker 2: So there you go, and he's got a price on
Speaker 2: his head.
Speaker 3: And so well, let me is that unseemly Well, I guess.
Speaker 3: But you know, Steve, you pointed out that, hey, if
Speaker 3: the if the goal is to raise the most money
Speaker 3: for the resource, well this is how we're going to
Speaker 3: do it. Now, we just need to make sure that
Speaker 3: it's ethical, you know the view. And Brodie, I think
Speaker 3: you touched on that. If there's ten guys you know,
Speaker 3: out on the out and they're you know, there's camping
Speaker 3: on the sheep, it doesn't smell right and it doesn't
Speaker 3: look right. But it's not illegal. No, it is.
Speaker 1: No, you're never gonna get there. You're never going to
Speaker 1: enforce you're never going to create a you're never going
Speaker 1: to create a secondary set of laws that someone's going
Speaker 1: to have to apply to.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Let me give you for instance, me and Brody go
Speaker 1: home with our little kids. Okay, some of them at
Speaker 1: a certain age that they can shoot before they're like
Speaker 1: terribly helpful, right, They don't know even when we leave
Speaker 1: home a ten year old, they're not even really aware
Speaker 1: of what direction you're Okay, So we're out with our kids.
Speaker 1: So and so sees a buck, he tells another growing up,
Speaker 1: he sees the buck. You know, we tell the kid.
Speaker 1: You know, you drag the kid out of their sleeping bag.
Speaker 1: We gotta start walking. They don't really know, right, and
Speaker 1: eventually you're like there he is, get them right, Okay,
Speaker 1: So would someone goal that's unethical? That kid, That child
Speaker 1: didn't glass, they didn't scout, they didn't glass that buck
Speaker 1: up right, right, So you're never gonna get there where
Speaker 1: you're gonna come in and be that operating within the
Speaker 1: confines of the law, we would expect it to be different.
Speaker 1: Meaning if I apply for twenty five years and I
Speaker 1: draw a big horn tag and all my bodies at
Speaker 1: work and I could see this happening, Oh yeah, all
Speaker 1: my bodies.
Speaker 2: At work are like, oh man, what a riot?
Speaker 1: And three of us go up in jet boats, right,
Speaker 1: and we pour the coals to it glass and for sheep.
Speaker 1: And one of my buddies comes into camp. He's like,
Speaker 1: we found a giant.
Speaker 4: You're not gonna be like I want to find it myself.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna wind up being like raked over the
Speaker 1: coals about it.
Speaker 2: It would be like, no, they went up.
Speaker 1: But there's a thing that happens where it's like there's
Speaker 1: already a finance, it's a bitterness, and then on top
Speaker 1: of that, there's a.
Speaker 2: Added bunch of.
Speaker 1: What seems to be like shortcut taking, right, and it
Speaker 1: tarnishes the thing. But but in people's eyes. But then
Speaker 1: in all fairness, like, are you really going to make
Speaker 1: a separate set of.
Speaker 3: Game laws.
Speaker 1: For an auction tag holder that you wouldn't make for
Speaker 1: a guy that bought a but that that bought an
Speaker 1: elk hunt from an outfitter?
Speaker 4: Well, they do in some cases, they do make a
Speaker 4: separate set.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, they extend, they extend the season like but
Speaker 3: you know, and and and that does it just it
Speaker 3: gets back to this, you know, what is the public
Speaker 3: perception and what's what's you know, what is the real grind?
Speaker 3: And again, I you know there's organizations that are well
Speaker 3: we just have to go to you know, raffle tags
Speaker 3: because that's that's more equitable. Well, so then the person
Speaker 3: wins the raffle tag. Is there also a team team
Speaker 3: of guides that go in and what's you know, what's
Speaker 3: what's the difference there? You know, I you know, and
Speaker 3: there there are crazy things that have happened. I've I've
Speaker 3: heard of the raffle tag winners outfitter calling the conservation
Speaker 3: permit outfitter saying, I'll tell you what, if your guy
Speaker 3: writes my guy a check for X amount of dollars,
Speaker 3: we'll let you go after that guy and we'll go
Speaker 3: after a second. That to me stinks and that's almost
Speaker 3: extortion and and so you know, and it's and this
Speaker 3: gets back to the social thing too. You know, any
Speaker 3: time that you know, a super high prices put on
Speaker 3: a resource, there's going to be challenges to that know,
Speaker 3: and we we know it. So you know, where the
Speaker 3: Wild she Foundation looks at this is, Okay, we're raising
Speaker 3: the most money for a resources resource that's got challenge,
Speaker 3: you know, whether it's disease in the Lower forty eight,
Speaker 3: whether it's drought in the Southwest, whether it's super heavy
Speaker 3: wet snowfalls up in Alaska. In the Yukon and dall
Speaker 3: sheep are starving and in some mountain rangings we've lost
Speaker 3: forty to fifty to sixty percent of the population. How
Speaker 3: do we bring them back? You know, we're always looking
Speaker 3: for Okay, how can we raise the most money to
Speaker 3: do it? How can we put that money on the mountain?
Speaker 3: How you know, how are we going to fund you know,
Speaker 3: disease research? So we see it, we do it. You know,
Speaker 3: a while she foundations directed since you know that first
Speaker 3: governor's tag, you know ed Hirschler's Wyoming Governor's tag. It's
Speaker 3: sold for twenty three thousand dollars in nineteen eighty we
Speaker 3: have put about eighty nine million dollars back into agencies
Speaker 3: for wild cheap conservation just on the sale of conservation permits.
Speaker 3: So it's very very effective. What I think we should
Speaker 3: be instead of us arguing on the well, you know
Speaker 3: that guy or gal gets a privilege that I don't,
Speaker 3: I would like us to do a better job of
Speaker 3: making sure that the dollars that are directed to the
Speaker 3: agencies are going where they should. And Steve, I think
Speaker 3: you asked that question early on and we didn't touch
Speaker 3: on it because there's some agencies that do an exceptionally
Speaker 3: good job and are very transparent of where that money goes.
Speaker 3: And there's some that aren't so. Wyoming Wyoming has the
Speaker 3: Wyoming Governor's Big Game License Coalition. So all the you know,
Speaker 3: the five cheap tags, you know, any of the the
Speaker 3: elk tags, any of the moose tags go into this pool,
Speaker 3: but they're separated out by species and then and then holders.
Speaker 3: You know, wyl mean Wild Chief Foundation has a seat
Speaker 3: on that. Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has a seat on that.
Speaker 3: A mule Deer Foundation has a seat on that. That
Speaker 3: that coalition, the pronghorned guys, you know, all the little
Speaker 3: critter groups have have a seat. They then evaluate projects
Speaker 3: that are that are brought before the Big Game License
Speaker 3: Coalition to say, hey, we want to fund a sage
Speaker 3: brush habitat project that's going to benefit mule deer certainly
Speaker 3: certainly sage ins uh, maybe less so on bighorn sheep. Well,
Speaker 3: sometimes that those stakeholder groups will go, you know, we
Speaker 3: got plenty of money on the bighorn sheep pool. Let's
Speaker 3: pull a little bit out and collectively we agree we're
Speaker 3: gonna fun mule deer Conservation British Columbia does the same
Speaker 3: thing with their Habitat Conservation Trust. You know, the monies
Speaker 3: that we raise for the BC Ministry go into this pool.
Speaker 3: There are a group of stakeholders. Wow, Wild Chief Foundation
Speaker 3: has a seat, but we we have a representative that's
Speaker 3: from BC and they make decisions on where those moneys
Speaker 3: are spent. Oh that's transparent, very transparent. Nevada another one
Speaker 3: that does it really really well. Some of them not
Speaker 3: so well and with all the challenges and can you say,
Speaker 3: can you give an example of a bad one or
Speaker 3: is that? Is that not? Probably not a good thing
Speaker 3: for me to say because we partner with all So
Speaker 3: let me just talk about the good ones. But there's
Speaker 3: some that could do better and the mission we can Yeah,
Speaker 3: we can bleep it maybe, but you know the fact
Speaker 3: of the matter is, you know again I can show
Speaker 3: your Wild Chief Foundation spends our dollars. I mean, we
Speaker 3: do these conservation impact summaries. You know, we're we're absolutely
Speaker 3: transparent agencies not so so that's something that I think,
Speaker 3: you know, we as NGOs, whether it's Wild Chief Foundation,
Speaker 3: whether it's Mule Deer, whether it's ELK, whether it's you know,
Speaker 3: any of the organizations that are selling these conservation permits
Speaker 3: and driving the money back to the agency. We need
Speaker 3: to do a better job of holding our agencies accountable. Going, Okay,
Speaker 3: where is the money, where is it going? And is
Speaker 3: it going to the resource that it should?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's important. Like something you said that
Speaker 4: there's not enough sheep to pay for themselves. I think
Speaker 4: a lot of people don't think about it that way, right,
Speaker 4: but it makes total sense. And you like a state
Speaker 4: like Montana or Colorado, you talk about elk like those
Speaker 4: things pay for themselves and more, Right, Brody.
Speaker 3: I wrote a paper back in the eighties before I
Speaker 3: was in the nonprofit and I was you know, it
Speaker 3: was kind of the economics of Honting and at the time,
Speaker 3: and I don't know what it is now, but at
Speaker 3: the time I was looking at Colorado. I used to
Speaker 3: lived in California, drive out to Colorado to hunt elk
Speaker 3: and at the time, I think non resident Colorado elk
Speaker 3: tags funded like eighty percent of Colorado fishing game back then.
Speaker 3: Now it's Colorado Parks and Wildlife, you know, I mean
Speaker 3: ELP paid the way and as we all know, you know,
Speaker 3: the non resident tags, you know pay the way primarily
Speaker 3: you know Montana. You know, what was it sixty nine
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, you know, sixty nine thousand dollars comes from
Speaker 3: resident big worn sheep, one hundred and twenty two from
Speaker 3: non resident, So for.
Speaker 2: A much smaller amount of tags, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Almost double. I mean, you know it's it's we pay
Speaker 3: one hundred and what one hundred and twenty five bucks
Speaker 3: for a for a sheep tag, you know, we can
Speaker 3: we can buy an unlimited, you know, so we we
Speaker 3: we can have that tag in our pocket. But if
Speaker 3: you draw in the limited one hundred twenty five bucks,
Speaker 3: it's seventeen hundred and fifty for a non res you know.
Speaker 3: So that gets back to this this social thing and
Speaker 3: Steve I, you know, I love it when you talk
Speaker 3: about it because you know, look at look at what's
Speaker 3: happened to our country. You know, we've we've become so polarized.
Speaker 3: You know, we identify with pretty asinine things. You know,
Speaker 3: we allow the media to fester that polarization even within
Speaker 3: our own community were you know, we we identify but
Speaker 3: by what rifle we use, and we criticize others that don't.
Speaker 3: You know, we we identify what freaking camo we use,
Speaker 3: and we create communities that if you're not a part
Speaker 3: of it and you don't wear my cameo, you're a
Speaker 3: bad guy, boots, you know whatever. We're so basic and
Speaker 3: it's like.
Speaker 5: Had but we have like a name for the guys
Speaker 5: who have six five.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the six need more, you know, and it's
Speaker 3: a great caliber. But I mean it's you know, we've
Speaker 3: taken the around the campfire arguing on whether the thirty
Speaker 3: six is better than the two seventy to this level.
Speaker 3: It's just freaking asinine now. And so you know, we
Speaker 3: fostered and now we're doing you know, we do the
Speaker 3: same thing on the funding, and I guess, you know,
Speaker 3: I would just hope that we could change the narrative,
Speaker 3: you know, and and start, you know, let's deal with facts.
Speaker 3: You know, Okay, the facts are Auction tags bring in
Speaker 3: more money than raffle tags at a far more efficient
Speaker 3: way of I mean, for Wild Chief Foundation is going
Speaker 3: to raffle off an Arizona big Horn Sheep tag. We
Speaker 3: get zero dollars for doing but we're gonna do it.
Speaker 3: We're gonna we're going to pay all that money to
Speaker 3: do it. We're gonna raise one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty thousand dollars directed to Arizona Game and fish. Well,
Speaker 3: we we we held an auction. Now you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's expensive for us, but we're you know, we're four
Speaker 3: nights of auction and we raised five hundred thousand, so
Speaker 3: we know that it's the most cost effective is an
Speaker 3: auction tag. But we still get caught up in this
Speaker 3: social narrative. So what I want to really dive into,
Speaker 3: and that is that how how do we get beyond it?
Speaker 3: How do we get be on criticizing that guy because
Speaker 3: he wears Camo or we don't like his brand, or
Speaker 3: that gal because she's shooting a six or five creed
Speaker 3: More and we don't like that caliber. Uh to, why
Speaker 3: don't we just focus again on that ram lamb or
Speaker 3: you on a ridge line and go what's best for wildlife?
Speaker 4: What would the big horn sheet landscape in North America
Speaker 4: look like without this money?
Speaker 3: Nailed it? Mike Draw?
Speaker 2: Can Mike Draw like?
Speaker 3: We wouldn't have him? Right? Eighty three percent of agency
Speaker 3: funding right now in the US comes from the What
Speaker 3: happens when eighty three comes from an auction tag or
Speaker 3: raffle tag? Most of that? What happens when eighty three
Speaker 3: percent of that funding goes away? Where's it going?
Speaker 5: To come from question, do we have over time, let's say,
Speaker 5: the past ten years, from states that have sheep the
Speaker 5: amount of money, let's say, collectively across these states from
Speaker 5: licenses both in state and out of state, and if
Speaker 5: that has gone up over the past ten years or
Speaker 5: gone down as a sign of general hunter commitment to conservation.
Speaker 3: Of absolutely on Now are you are you saying total?
Speaker 3: You know, because we all know that revenue is generally
Speaker 3: going down because generally hunting numbers are going down. Yes,
Speaker 3: we saw during the pandemic a bump up. Yes we
Speaker 3: see a you know, the largest percentage of new hunters
Speaker 3: or women is you know, is that a significant percentage
Speaker 3: of the current You might be able to argue it,
Speaker 3: but it's significant. But here's the sad fact, and this
Speaker 3: gets back to impact. I can show you a nice
Speaker 3: linear upward trend on dollars going into wild sheep conservation.
Speaker 5: Collectively, cross okay, collectively, But the percentage of that that is.
Speaker 3: Oh, auction tex right, ten percent increase over the last
Speaker 3: ten years. It was seventy three percent in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: eighty three percent in the US. In so a ten
Speaker 3: percent increase in auction tag revenues going.
Speaker 6: To the agency and then and licenses, licenses not so
Speaker 6: and that you know that, you know that you could
Speaker 6: get US Fish and Wildlife Service data and you know,
Speaker 6: again there's been slight increases and then it kind of
Speaker 6: plateaus and then dropped.
Speaker 3: My concern is there's a linear growth in revenue going
Speaker 3: to wild sheep conservation sadly over the last say five
Speaker 3: years or so because of huge die offs in Alaska
Speaker 3: and the Yukon some diofs during disease, you know, from
Speaker 3: in Texas. I mean Texas had eighteen hundred desert big
Speaker 3: horn sheep five six years ago a little over five
Speaker 3: hundred now, all because of disease from odd AD. You know,
Speaker 3: there's forty thousand plus odd AD in the state free ranging.
Speaker 3: I'm not even talking about behind wire and we've gone
Speaker 3: from eighteen hundred desert big horns to less than six hundred.
Speaker 3: That scares the shit out of me. And so you know,
Speaker 3: I the point there is it gets back to impact
Speaker 3: and what are we doing with it? And are we
Speaker 3: holding the agencies accountable we can drive this money to them.
Speaker 3: Are we getting the bang for our buck? And that's
Speaker 3: for all of us to work on to ensure that
Speaker 3: we are and and money isn't everything. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: certainly a driver, but we have to make sure that
Speaker 3: we're doing as much as we possibly can effectively with
Speaker 3: the money. If we know what to do, how are
Speaker 3: we gonna deal with snowload in March April and Alaska?
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know that, I don't know you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it gets back to even some crazy ideas.
Speaker 3: We grow desert big worn sheep. We've done it in Texas.
Speaker 3: We've done it in Arizona. You just by putting water water,
Speaker 3: but we've actually, we actually intensively managed them in Texas
Speaker 3: to bring them from zero to eighteen hundred to two thousand.
Speaker 3: We did the same thing in Arizona.
Speaker 2: I mue like with with release, with using release.
Speaker 3: Sits captive bread and release done in Mexico. Literally grown them.
Speaker 3: We've grown them. Sonora is about fifteen thousand desert bighorn
Speaker 3: sheep in the state of Sonora alone, fifty percent of
Speaker 3: or behind wire. We have an initiative to say, hey, look,
Speaker 3: you know, let's use market forces to incentivize you to
Speaker 3: release them, and not a put in take scenario, but
Speaker 3: release them and create free ranging desert, big worn, cheap
Speaker 3: and suitable habitat. And we've got we've got great examples
Speaker 3: of people doing it. They're doing the same thing in
Speaker 3: cool Wheela, they're doing it in Sierra Leone, they're doing
Speaker 3: it in Chihuahua. So we can do it with desert,
Speaker 3: big worn sheep, with some caveats or some there's some
Speaker 3: challenges to it. You know, this is a you know,
Speaker 3: this isn't you know, raising whitetails in Michigan. But it
Speaker 3: can be done. Is that something that we could do
Speaker 3: in the northern climes. I don't know, but you know,
Speaker 3: you have a forty to fifty percent drop in doll sheep.
Speaker 3: You've got probably a ten to fifteen to twenty percent
Speaker 3: drop in stone sheep populations for a whole variety of reasons.
Speaker 3: It's not over harvest, you know, it's more environmental factors
Speaker 3: or disease. What are we going to do? I'll tell
Speaker 3: you what we need.
Speaker 1: And this is a whole other episode.
Speaker 2: I think if someone came in and proposed in Alaska
Speaker 2: doing like captive breeding.
Speaker 1: Juice to juice doll shoot numbers, I think that that
Speaker 1: would be like, uh, you know, you'd have a bigger
Speaker 1: controversy on your conservation tags and your question like, how
Speaker 1: do you find peace with it? There's a thing with
Speaker 1: There's a thing in rhetoric that I've just that there's
Speaker 1: an observation of mind when it comes to debate and
Speaker 1: rhetoric that I've pointed out a handful of times around
Speaker 1: conversations having to do with with the impacts of a
Speaker 1: of a border wall, okay, between US and Mexico, and
Speaker 1: when there's talk of building an impenetrable barrier between the
Speaker 1: US and Mexico to to try to get a grip
Speaker 1: on illegal immigration. There's this thing you bring up that
Speaker 1: one would bring up. You'd say that would be detrimental,
Speaker 1: that would be detrimental to wildlife. Move so jaguars desert
Speaker 1: big horns, right, Okay, that's like that's a thing to consider.
Speaker 1: Now someone can bring up, Hey, let's consider this.
Speaker 3: And people that.
Speaker 1: Are like vehemently supportive of a wall would be angry
Speaker 1: that you brought it up, right, They'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: you haven't lost your job, okay to an illegal immigrant.
Speaker 1: So they're angry that you're laying out all the facts
Speaker 1: for consideration. But in your own family, if you're proposing like, hey,
Speaker 1: should we go on vacation to spring. In that conversation,
Speaker 1: someone can say, well, you realize if we go on
Speaker 1: vacation this spring, that's going to mean that we are
Speaker 1: going to forego painting our house because it costs money. Now,
Speaker 1: the person that brings that up isn't attacked. It's like
Speaker 1: you're all airing the pros and cons, right, and then
Speaker 1: you come to an agreement. All the pros and cons
Speaker 1: can considered. We come to an agreement even though it's
Speaker 1: going to be detrimental wildlife movement, it is net positive
Speaker 1: to make an impenetrable barrier between the US and Mexico.
Speaker 1: Let's say, or even though we'll fore go painting our house,
Speaker 1: we're determining it's a net positive that we go on
Speaker 1: to family vacation. I think ultimately answer might be arrived
Speaker 1: at similarly around auction permits, it'd be like it's imperfect,
Speaker 1: it's imperfect. One could argue that by auctioning off a tag,
Speaker 1: we're removing a we're hypothetically removing a sheet from the pool.
Speaker 3: That's not perfect.
Speaker 1: The individual might use some hunting methods that aren't available
Speaker 1: to everybody else. That's imperfect, but net net, all things
Speaker 1: weighed in, the money is worth it. Like, that's probably
Speaker 1: the best you're going to do. Like, I don't think
Speaker 1: you're going to get it to where some guy reads
Speaker 1: online that someone bought a tag for one point three million.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're going to get it where one
Speaker 1: hun or one percent of the hunters are. You're never
Speaker 1: gonna get there, Right, it's gonna be that. Like the
Speaker 1: general sentiment is, eh, hate them rich guys, but uh,
Speaker 1: but that's a shitload of money for big horns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and in the.
Speaker 2: Long run, it's probably gonna mean more tags.
Speaker 3: Right, there's one, there's one more net positive impact. And Steve,
Speaker 3: you're right, you're you're absolutely spot on. There is another
Speaker 3: little thing that we have in this country that's not
Speaker 3: in others, which is the Pittman Robinson Act. And these
Speaker 3: these tag purchases are non federal dollars, so they're they're
Speaker 3: subject and eligible for a three to one match with
Speaker 3: p and R Act. So you know, we can we
Speaker 3: can draw you know, we can send one point three million.
Speaker 3: I you know we're gonna we're gonna get ten percent
Speaker 3: of US one hundred and thirty. You know, one point
Speaker 3: three minus one hundred thirty thousand dollars. We send that
Speaker 3: to New Mexico Game and Fish they can apply for
Speaker 3: three to one match from P and R act dollars
Speaker 3: for wildlife frustration and turned that into you know, a
Speaker 3: five million dollar bump. So, yeah, it is imperfect. It works,
Speaker 3: and I guess until we find something that works better,
Speaker 3: well why don't we live with what does work? And
Speaker 3: it has worked really really well from nineteen eighty and
Speaker 3: the dollars are there, and argue over what calibers better
Speaker 3: or what camos do you wear?
Speaker 2: That's a little bit more, you know productive.
Speaker 1: I think one of the one of the final points
Speaker 1: we had arrived at when we had this conversation.
Speaker 3: Was a sense of.
Speaker 1: You know, a sort of a sense of hope or
Speaker 1: a call to action that people would.
Speaker 2: Open their checkbooks.
Speaker 1: Up, open their card balances up to support raffle tags,
Speaker 1: and that you would arrive at a point where these
Speaker 1: raffle tags were netting equal to or more than auction tags.
Speaker 1: And I think you kind of touched on this early.
Speaker 1: But if we you don't think we're there not yet.
Speaker 3: But you know, we during our during the seminary, there
Speaker 3: was a guy adamant on, Well you know are you
Speaker 3: are you working on it? Well, yeah, we are. We
Speaker 3: looked at we looked at our raffles that we do
Speaker 3: at the convention, and you know, we were selling forty
Speaker 3: dollars tickets. Okay, we could not physically sell enough tickets
Speaker 3: in three day of expo to cover the costs and really,
Speaker 3: you know, really really make a profit if you will,
Speaker 3: which our profit goes right back into sheep conservation on
Speaker 3: doing it that way. So we you know, we we
Speaker 3: played the capitalists again. We go, okay, well we're going
Speaker 3: to sell these not for forty dollars, We're going to
Speaker 3: sell a thousand tickets at two hundred dollars, and for
Speaker 3: the stone Sheep, we're going to sell five hundred tickets
Speaker 3: at five hundred dollars. Is that too much? I think
Speaker 3: we figured out that it was. But you know, we
Speaker 3: increased our raffle take. So what I pointed out in
Speaker 3: this in this seminar.
Speaker 2: That helped the raffle take big time, big time, that
Speaker 2: that's five bucks a pop. Isn't getting it?
Speaker 3: Can't you can't process, you can't process enough. And you know,
Speaker 3: forty dollars stuff, We couldn't. We couldn't sell enough physically
Speaker 3: in three days to make it really profitable. You know
Speaker 3: what you want to do is you want a keystoneer.
Speaker 3: You want to double your money on each one of
Speaker 3: these things. Well, you know, very very rare these days
Speaker 3: for anyone to donate. There's a few, but donate a
Speaker 3: sheep hunt. You know you've got stone sheep hunts now
Speaker 3: selling for one hundred thousand dollars, big worn sheep hunts
Speaker 3: selling for one hundred and ten doll sheep used to
Speaker 3: be you're talking about, yeah, forty five thousand dollars. So
Speaker 3: you know, on a doll sheep hunt, we need to sell.
Speaker 3: We need to make you know, we need to sell
Speaker 3: at least one hundred thousand dollars worth of tickets to
Speaker 3: double our money a stone sheep if we're buying it
Speaker 3: at face value, we got to sell two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: So you know, we went to a different way. As
Speaker 3: I said in our seminar, if we can figure out
Speaker 3: a way to do it again, let's be intellectually honest.
Speaker 3: If our goal is to raise the most money, if
Speaker 3: we can find a way to raise the most money
Speaker 3: with a raffle. We'll do it because the objective is
Speaker 3: to raise the most money for the resource and for
Speaker 3: the habitat. Can you can you.
Speaker 1: Humored this question for ment? Yeah, the one that just
Speaker 1: went for one point three million? Right, walk me through?
Speaker 1: What would what would have happened? Walk me through if
Speaker 1: you had done a raffle in your mind the best
Speaker 1: way to do a raffle from your learnings?
Speaker 3: What would have what would that sheep tag have generated? Well,
Speaker 3: that was a big horn. So we we sold a
Speaker 3: big horn in Alberta. We bought the tag for eighty
Speaker 3: eighty thousand eight. It's a hunt, it's not a tag.
Speaker 3: I mean we actually bought an outfit at hunt for
Speaker 3: eighty thousand dollars and our objective was to sell two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand dollars worth of tickets and net one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty. Okay, so you know, if we pay the
Speaker 3: outfit or eighty, we net one hundred and twenty. You know,
Speaker 3: theoretically we could direct one hundred and twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 3: into Big or Chief Conservation. We're you know, we're going
Speaker 3: to direct one point three million dollars. But what if
Speaker 3: you take but just take it I mean, I can't
Speaker 3: figure out how to get a one point three million
Speaker 3: out of a raffle unless it's take a nationwide lotto.
Speaker 1: But take a stab that, not the hunt, not the
Speaker 1: guided hunt, but take a stab that had there been
Speaker 1: a raffle. Just in you're just the best year because
Speaker 1: you're probably more qualified to answer this imperfect question than
Speaker 1: anybody else on the planet. Had that been a raffle,
Speaker 1: that tag, that New Mexico tag, had that been a raffle,
Speaker 1: what would it have brought.
Speaker 3: In to two hundred and fifty thousand things?
Speaker 1: So yeah, yikes, yeah, really yeah, yeah, because you've done
Speaker 1: a bunch of raffles.
Speaker 3: We do a lot of raffles. But you know, I
Speaker 3: mean we could probably two hundred you know, maybe you know,
Speaker 3: if if you if, if you could get people, Hey,
Speaker 3: this is the biggest sheep in North America. This is
Speaker 3: what it's going to be. How long are you going
Speaker 3: to run the raffle? You know? I mean my hip
Speaker 3: pocket is two undred fifty three hundred thousand. Could we
Speaker 3: get a half million?
Speaker 1: Maybe that becomes a little obscure though, Yeah, how many
Speaker 1: notifying raffle buyers about this?
Speaker 3: That's the biggest biggest sheep in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so, yeah, I can see you're getting a
Speaker 1: real call from the Washington Gambling Commission a.
Speaker 3: Point and oh, by the way, Washington residents, Hawaii residents,
Speaker 3: you know, if we were going to draw this is
Speaker 3: a funny one in Nevada, If we were going to
Speaker 3: draw the hunt in Nevada, Nevada residents aren't eligible to
Speaker 3: do it online. They have to buy it there. So
Speaker 3: I mean the laws or Pennsylvania's got crazy laws. I mean,
Speaker 3: everyone's got interesting laws. We run our raffles. When we
Speaker 3: do a raffle, we run it out of Wyoming. We
Speaker 3: have an office in Wyoming. We run our raffles out
Speaker 3: of Wyoming because it's a little bit more generous on
Speaker 3: the our little liberal I guess you could say on
Speaker 3: the on the raffle laws. But we you know, we
Speaker 3: have run a foul on Washington and got called out
Speaker 3: on it. We've run a foul even in Montana, where
Speaker 3: one of my employees was trying to do the right thing.
Speaker 3: She thought by well, shoot, you know, I'll just if
Speaker 3: you want me to run your card right now, I'll
Speaker 3: just run it right now. She didn't know it was
Speaker 3: a credit card, not a debit card. I then got
Speaker 3: a phone call saying, hey, one of your employees. I'm
Speaker 3: with the Montana Department of Revenue. One of your employees
Speaker 3: just did an illegal raffle purchase for me. And I went,
Speaker 3: you know, now, do the right thing. Get burned. But
Speaker 3: you know, those are the things we're up against. But
Speaker 3: there we go. Yeah, it's good talking about this. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is I you know, I appreciate it. I'm honored
Speaker 3: to be on the program. I really appreciate, you know,
Speaker 3: listening looking at the facts. What we have to really
Speaker 3: look at is is the why. You know, why is it?
Speaker 3: Why is it? Deep down inside we're envious of some
Speaker 3: you know, something that somebody else can buy that we can't.
Speaker 3: And that's really what the nut cutting comes down to,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just this, Uh that's human nature. So
Speaker 3: all we can do is provide the facts, do our best,
Speaker 3: focus on the resource, and be open to ideas. Come
Speaker 3: up with a better idea of how to find it.
Speaker 3: We're all ears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I can see that if someone if some
Speaker 1: mathematician came to you and said, uh.
Speaker 2: Gray, that that tag should have brought.
Speaker 3: Three million by my formula.
Speaker 2: You would take.
Speaker 3: The call.
Speaker 1: I would all right, I appreciate you coming on, thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate Joe, thank you. People can uh buy a
Speaker 1: raffle ticket? Perhaps next year you've been reno, you can
Speaker 1: you can buy?
Speaker 3: Uh? Will will you have raffles that we're offering online
Speaker 3: all the time, so are our chapters. We try to
Speaker 3: bay obviously all the laws. But uh, you know, if
Speaker 3: you look at if you look at cheap hunting right
Speaker 3: now and how expensive it is, raffles are the best
Speaker 3: deal going from a from a number standpoint, from an
Speaker 3: odd standpoint, so you know, get in all the raffles
Speaker 3: you possibly can, you know, and then also treat it
Speaker 3: like a portfolio. Put some money away every month to
Speaker 3: buy that cheap hunt someday.
Speaker 1: You know, I forgot to mention you're the CEO of
Speaker 1: Wild Cheap Foundation. Mentioned that, and then and tell people
Speaker 1: real quick if they want to get checked out on Wildsheep.
Speaker 3: What's the best approach? Yeah, come, We're we're based here
Speaker 3: in Bozeman, World Headquarters. But go to Wildheapfoundation dot org,
Speaker 3: Wildcheapfoundation dot org and you can see what we do.
Speaker 3: Last year, we directed eleven point one dollars to programs
Speaker 3: benefiting wild sheep. Pretty impressive for an organization with only
Speaker 3: eleven thousand members. So is that right? Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: we're I like to say that, you know, we we
Speaker 3: may have a relatively small footprint, but we cast one
Speaker 3: hell of a long conservation shadow and we're proud of it.
Speaker 3: Great man, Thanks again, Thanks a lot to David. Appreciate it.