By JIM MATTHEWS
www.OutdoorNewsService.com
This has been simmering for a long time, but here it is: I think state game agencies should completely do away with auction big game tags that go the highest bidder.
It’s prejudicial and there’s no rational reason for the state agencies to do it. Oh, the DFG issued a press release last fall bragging that the 13 special tags auctioned in 2011 netted the agency $402,000 for big game management in the state. These weren’t just any tags either, they were the best tags available to hunters in the state – three tags for bighorn sheep, two or pronghorn antelope, two for elk, and eight for late-season rut hunt deer tags. Most hunters apply for a lifetime for those tags and never receive one in the general draw. How is it acceptable that a wealthy hunter can just buy one?
For example, there were just 24 bighorn tags issued in 2011, and about 10,000 hunters applied for those 24 tags. The odds of getting one aren’t very good. Yet, if you had buckets of money, you could stroll into a fundraising dinner and buy one of the three tags given to auction. I don’t have a problem with people who have a lot of money, I just don’t think they should be able to buy a public hunting permit and take that tag from someone else in the drawing. It’s prejudicial. You put those three sheep tags back into the general drawing, and three more of those 10,000 applicants would get drawn, guys like your or me, or maybe the rich guy. But we’d all have an equal shot at being drawn. We wouldn’t just give the rich guy the tag because he has lots of money.
Is it about the money? If we can raise $400,000 by gifting 13 tags, why not auction off all of the bighorn sheep permits and really make a bundle. Even if the state could just get $25,000 each for the 27 tags, that would be $675,000 – far more than the paltry $85,000 or so the state takes in for application fees and the tag fee paid by those lucky in the drawing. Do the same with tule elk, pronghorn, and late-season buck hunts and we’d be rolling the dough.
Of course it’s not really about more money for game programs, although some people continue argue that point.
With a DFG budget pushing $400 million, the auction tags bring in a veritable drop in the bucket. And while that money, just like with dedicated account funds raised by the Upland Bird Stamp or a recent fee increase to deer tags, is supposed to stay with a specific program, here’s what happens. Funding from the Fish and Game Preservation Fund or state general fund that used to go to these same programs is now diverted to other uses and the “new” money used to back-fill into the void. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Our license and tag fees go up and less money is spent on game and fish programs, more on attorneys and administrators. The only real benefit of an auction tag is to the wealthy hunter who gets to hunt bighorn or pronghorn or tule elk or trophy mule deer.
We could “make” far more money by simply getting rid of all the state’s regional managers, most of the deputy directors, a redirect several layers of middle managers back into the field. Of course, none of that will ever happen.
Most people recognize there is a real DFG budget crisis that needs to be addressed from the perspective of where we are today – not where we were yesterday or where we should be today, but where we are today. That means increasing revenue.
The DFG and state legislators are approaching this equation from the wrong perspective if they really want to raise more money for the wildlife agency. There are primarily two ways the DFG makes money: License and tag sales and allocations of federal excise fees paid on guns, ammunition, and fishing tackle. The federal taxes are allocated back to the states based on a formula that takes in land mass and number of hunting and fishing licenses sold. California gets a pittance of what it could receive from the feds because we sell so few licenses, and we sell fewer and fewer each year.
I recently noted that California sold less than one million annual fishing licenses for the first time in modern history. License sales dropped about 100,000 fishing licenses just between 2010 and 2011. For at least two decades in the 1970s and 1980s, annual fishing license sales were around 2.2 million each year. Hunting license sales peaked at over 800,000 around 1970, and dropped to around 230,000 this past year. That was down 20,000 licenses just from 2010.
The loss in revenue between 2011 and 2010 because of these declines was at least $860,000 for hunting licenses and $4.85 million less for fishing licenses. I say “at least” because you can only hunt rabbits with a general hunting license, and most hunters and fishermen add other stamps and/or tags that kick up the price even higher. And this is just the loss between 2010 and 2011. The DFG and legislative response to this loss in revenue is to raise the cost of hunting and fishing licenses and throw up more participation roadblocks. The downward spiral in license sales continues. (And how much additional money did the DFG lose in federal excise taxes? I’m looking into that.)
Studies have shown that for every fee increase (no matter how small), with every new restrictive regulation, and for every change in a licensing process that makes is more difficult, people drop out. When we hear that three bighorn tags are being auctioned to the wealthy rather than given in the general drawing, some of us get angry and give up. When we read that the DFG is delivering only 70 percent of the trout required by state law to be planted, we decide not to buy a fishing license this year. The Marine Life Protection Act implementation is going to have a major impact on license sales because so many favorite fishing spots have been closed, and closed needlessly.
The DFG and legislature are not providing a few “last straws” for people these days, they are hurling whole bales of straw at us. It’s breaking everyone’s spirit if not the proverbial camel’s back. Yet, the DFG and legislature can’t quite understand why license sales continue to decline when the population is booming in this state. Worse, they don’t see realistic solutions to the problem.
And auction tags are just a symptom of all that’s wrong with what is going on in Sacramento.
