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The Labrador retriever that sleeps on bed and curls up at my feet in my office when I work is a hunting dog. I use that term loosely. In the field, his nose helps me find upland birds, and when I make a lucky shot he’s pretty good at finding the downed game. His retrieving skills leave a little to be desired, but he’s getting better. Then there’s this: he is known to chase the occasional rabbit or bobcat in a half-hearted manner.

Under new legislation introduced into the California Senate last Thursday, my dog would be breaking the law if he chases a bobcat or bear, and a DFG warden could “dispatch” him.

Senate Bill 1221 introduced by Senator Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) is the latest anti-hunting bill to come out of our state legislature. It would ban the use of dogs to pursue black bears and bobcats in California, an activity that has been slowly dying out in this state for the past three decades. The bill is directly out of the Humane Society of the United States’ (HSUS) playbook to ban all hunting, fishing, and meat-eating in this country: chip away at the whole until you get it all. Divide and conquer.

And lie while you do it.

When the animal rights extremists didn’t get their way and win their battle to get Dan Richards fired as president of the California Fish and Game Commission for legally hunting mountain lions in another state, they got red in the face, stamped their feet, and threw a tantrum.

The result was some behind-closed-door meetings with anti-hunting, anti-use politicians and this piece of get-even legislation.

“The time has come for California to abolish this inhumane and unnecessary practice,” Lieu wrote in the press release touting the bill.

In the same press release, Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of HSUS was quoted as saying it was concerns about the hunting with “hounds that prompted California voters in 1990 to outlaw all trophy hunting of mountain lions. The same ethical issues are at work with bear and bobcat hunting.”

There are no ethical issues here. Animals chase other animals, and there’s no more trama when a bobcat is chased by coyotes as when chased by dogs. Little bears run away from big bears. The bottom line is simply this: Lieu and HSUS are against ALL hunting, and this is a way to tug at the heart strings of gullible members of the public to this ignorant and discriminatory legislation and generate donations to HSUS.

It is not about biology. Hunting certainly isn’t threatening populations of either species. In fact, bear numbers have been steadily trending upward in California under the Department of Fish and Game’s stringent hunting quota system. Even with harvests at the quota each year, the bear population has grown so much (doubling in the past 30 years), the DFG is this year suggested to the Fish and Game Commission that the quota be increased. Of course, this has annoyed the HSUS crowd, too. Thus, we have the Lieu legislation.

Lieu is quick to point out the bill is not aimed at my bird hunting dogs, which is more difficult for the anti-hunting crowd to paint as unethical. But those nasty hound hunters who run bears and bobcats up trees and shoot them, they are easy targets.

Interestingly, the use of hounds for the hunting all big game has been falling out of favor with hunters for decades. Using dogs for deer hunting is still legal in California, too, but I have never heard of anyone here using dogs for deer. The number of trained hound packs for the pursuit of bears and bobcats is about five percent of what it was when I first started outdoor writing in the 1970s. But why wait when you can use misrepresentations of facts to generate money for your cause, like the HSUS has done.

The HSUS has been effective in banning hound hunting in other states, including Colorado, where a black bear killed and ate a human after the bear population started expanding by leaps and bounds. Sure that was a fluke event. But would it have happened if hound hunting was still allowed in Colorado? We can’t answer that question. We can speculate that it probably would not have happened. Just like I can speculate that a game warden might shoot my dog or your dog if we are out for a walk and the dog chases a bobcat or bear. The reality? I’m honest enough to tell you the reality is there is zero possibility that will happen. I’m also honest enough to tell you the threat to public safety by a growing bear population is also approaching zero. Just like with problem mountain lions, the DFG will kill the problem bears if this bill passes. But instead of hunters doing the job for free, even making money for the state, the DFG will be tasked with the job, costing the state money.

This isn’t an issue of the humane treatment of dogs used to hunt bears and bobcats, or even the treatment of the bears and bobcats, like Lieu’s press release claims. It’s about an agenda that will eventually come to rest at everyone’s door step who hunts, fishes, or even prefers to eat meat. That is the HSUS agenda.

(Hunters and other sensible people who live in Lieu’s district, which includes the cities of Carson, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Lomita, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach and Torrance, as well as portions of Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Pedro, should take a minute to call his office and tell them how disappointed they are that Lieu has partnered up with the most virulent anti-hunting, anti-meat-eating organization in the world and sponsored SB 1221.)

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Hereís more hypocrisy from the radical environmentalist community.

The usually ultra-liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals actually upheld Congressí power to order wolves removed from Endangered Species Act protection when it added a rider to the budget bill approved in April last year.

Of course, this caused an uproar with the extreme enviros and was challenged repeatedly in court.

All Congress effectively did was mandate what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientists who had been in charge of relocating and monitoring the wolves have said for several years now: the wolves were recovered and management should be turned back over to the states.

But according to the environmental fringe, returning management back over to professional biologists in the states will be the beginning of an assault on wolves that will result in their total destruction. Again.

Does anyone else here in California find this at least mildly amusing?

Most of these same people were shouting for the resignation of Dan Richards, the president of the California Fish and Game Commission, because he legally hunted for a mountain lion in Idaho. Their rationale for his resignation was simple: Hunting lions has been illegal in California since 1972 because of legislative and initiative decrees. The said he was defying ìthe will of the people.

But when ìthe will of the people,î though our elected officials in Washington, D.C., goes against their viewpoint on how wolves should be non-managed, they are outraged. USFWS biologists, Congress, and President Obama are all wrong on wolf management, according to these people. These fringe folks, who are taking over the environmental movement, are really the people who have been defying the will of the general public since their very first lawsuits were filed on how wolves and mountain lions were being managed by wildlife professionals.

To them, this is all about their hatred of hunting and use of hunting as a management tool to maintain wildlife populations at healthy, stable levels.

Itís getting a little tedious for me because they donít even have the best interest of mountain lions or wolves at heart. And they certainly donít care about people or our ìwill.î It is about imposing their world view on the rest of us. And Iím not just talking about hunters here, but all people who really care about wildlife.

I may have pointed out these two facts before, but they are worth repeating.

– During the last two legal hunting seasons for mountain lions in California in 1970 and 1971, there were an average of 59 per cats per year killed. Since 1990, the year Proposition 117 passed banning the hunting of lions in California, an average of 92 cats per year are killed on depredation permits. So how has banning DFG management and sport hunting of cats helped the population? Or saved cats? It hasnít. The only thing it did was ban public hunting and remove a revenue stream (tag sales) used for wildlife work.

– Wolf sport hunting and trapping, as itís done today in Idaho, Montana, and (mostly likely this year) in Wyoming will never put a serious dent in the wolf population. First, the quotas set by the game managers are too low to even hold the population as its current level. According to the USFWS, the wolf population increased by three percent in 2011 to nearly 1,800 wolves in 287 packs with 109 breeding pairs. The USFWS biologists say this is a minimum population, and the actual numbers are probably 15 to 25 percent higher. This population growth is in spite of the removal of 487 wolves from the population, 166 by agencies killing wolves preying on livestock and 321 taken by legal hunters in Idaho and Montana. The number killed is probably an underestimate because so many Westerners believe in the shoot-shovel-shut up wolf management model.

Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said, ìmost of the suitable [wolf] habitat is now occupied and likely at or above long-term carrying capacity. This population has exceeded recovery goals for 10 consecutive years.

ìWolves are a resilient and resourceful species, and weíve worked with the states to ensure that they retain sufficient protections within their core habitat. Theyíve demonstrated a remarkable ability to reproduce and thrive in this habitat despite years of high mortality rates,î wrote Ashe this week in a guest commentary for the Billings Gazette.

Ashe is basically saying two things: First, wolves are having an impact on their prey base because (in some areas) there are too many wolves. This validates what many wildlife enthusiasts and hunters have been saying about elk and moose numbers where wolf numbers are highest: the big predators have reduced the population of these species. Second, heís saying the population will continue to expand its range outside of the greater Yellowstone and central Idaho regions. Wolves are being displaced from those core areas, and they are showing up in Utah, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and even here in California. Those new populations will also grow.

Wolves are back in the West to stay. The environmental extremists need to stay out of the picture and leave the management to the professionals at the state and federal wildlife agencies or we could end up with a wolf debacle like the one we have here in California with mountain lions.

Cliff McDonald’s Water-For-Wildlife crew works in the east Mojave Desert in that big triangle of country between Needles, Barstow, and Las Vegas. His work crew typically restores three to six small game drinkers or guzzlers on weekend outings, and the next project is set for March 16-18 in the Old Woman Mountains south of Interstate 40 near Essex. The crew will also be doing projects in this region April 13-15, May 18-20, and June 8-10. For more information contact Cliff McDonald at 928-788-4107 or at bigmc@citlink.net.

Robert Armijo heads up the habitat work for the San Gabriel Chapter of Quail Unlimited. The group repairs guzzlers throughout the San Gabriel Mountains and into the extreme west Mojave Desert. They also recently started work on two “new” guzzlers in Riverside County, a project that had been on hold for lack of funding for over two years, but is now back on track with grants from the Riverside County Parks and Open Space Commission and the Temple City Sportsman. Those guzzlers may need more work in the coming month, but Armijo needs help on a whole list of projects this year. He can be reached at 626-664-6381 or at boutdoors4@yahoo.com.

The High Desert Chapter of Quail Forever has been restoring all of the guzzlers and developed springs in the West Mojave and north slope of the San Bernardino Mountains. On the docket for this year is one major spring restoration and several guzzlers that also require extensive work. Two guzzlers in a popular hunting area in the Ord Mountains are set for work in March. For information on the 2012 slate of work projects, contact club president John Shaver at 760-956-8169 or at josh4264@msn.com.

Democratic lawmakers may attempt to oust California Fish and Game Commission President Daniel Richards as early as next week following outrage over his legal killing of a mountain lion on a recent Idaho hunting trip.
Read more: http://www.kfiam640.com/pages/jk2010.html?article=9839787#ixzz1o0LdnAdA

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Dan Richards, the current president of the California Fish and Game Commission, is being assaulted by animal rights activists and liberal state legislators. They are asking for Richards to resign his unpaid position on the Commission because he legally hunted mountain lions in Idaho earlier this year.

They are saying that since mountain lion hunting is illegal in California, Richards should resign or be removed from his post on the Commission for something he did in Idaho, following all that state’s laws.

Their prejudicial rhetoric reeks of hypocrisy — none worse than those holding elected office in California.

Gavin Newsome, the Lt. Governor, wrote to Richards: “While not in California at the time, your actions call into question whether you can live up to the calling of your office. I do appreciate that you did nothing illegal in Idaho, but it is clear that your actions do not reflect the values of the people of California,” said Newsome asking for him to resign.

Yet, Newsome has vigorously fought Proposition 8, the initiative that banned gay marriage in California, but no one is asking him to resign because he doesn’t believe in this voter-approved mandate. Would he suggest a gay staff member who wed in another state resign his position? Of course not. But his action toward Richards is pure hypocrisy.

Fish and Game Commissioner Michael Sutton works for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which stands to earn millions of dollars doing research in areas closed under the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). In spite of this huge conflict of interest, Sutton repeatedly voted for the most restrictive closures when the Commission was hammering out the MLPA rules. No one in the legislature or the animal rights community asked Sutton to resign on principle. Yet, Richards, who works in real estate and development, has been criticized because he’s been an outspoken opponent of MLPA sportfishing closures on biological grounds and their impacts on the economy.

And now a list of 40 Democratic members of the assembly have signed on to a letter asking Richards to resign over the mountain lion incident. More hypocrisy.

The animal rights loons are even worse — but at least they’re not in public office. They simply don’t understand the facts and let their emotions get tangled up with reality. Here are some of their moronic comments:

On an animal rights blog, one said Richards’ hunt was “canned” and that the animal was wasted, being shot for no reason. The implication was that it simply wasn’t sporting or fair.

When it came out that a) Richards has been eating the lion and b) the hunt was long and grueling. The animal rights people still ridiculed him because they simply don’t believe anyone should hunt or eat meat – their real agenda.

(As a side note, I participated in an effort by the DFG using contract houndsmen to recapture a radio-collared mountain lion. It was the most brutal two days I’ve ever spent in the outdoors, following barking dogs up and down steep canyons and ridges, scrambling across rocky hillsides, and crashing through brush. We always knew where the cat was by the radio signal, but we never could capture the cat. It had been through that once before, and wasn’t about to let it happen again. Canned? Easy? You just walk up and shoot them out of a tree? That’s the animal rightists’ view of hound hunting. It’s simply a lie.)

A common thread has been that Richards shouldn’t sit on a Commission entrusted with the state’s wildlife. The reality is that the Fish and Game Commission’s primary responsibility has been to set hunting and fishing regulations based on the DFG’s scientific recommendations — except that they can’t do that now with mountain lions. While the DFG was muzzled during the debate over banning lion hunting, the DFG’s scientists have never suggested a hunting ban was necessary.

A typical comment came from Jennifer Fearing with the Humane Society of the United States’ California office. She said, “Dan Richards’ decision to not only hunt an animal whose protection has twice been approved by California voters… undermines Californians’ confidence in the state’s leadership and commitment to wisely managed natural resources.”

Whoa, there lady, California’s ban on lion hunting had nothing to do with “wisely managed resources.” The ban has effectively removed any sort of management of the species, and it has nearly doubled the number of big cats that are killed each year under these protections.

This is really about the animal rights’ activists thinly-veiled attempt to remove one of the last pro-hunting, pro-fishing Commissioners from the very Commission whose primary job is to set hunting and fishing regulations.

But Richards has vowed to fight for himself and sportsmen. In a letter sent to Assemblyman Ben Hueso, who initiated the request signed by 40 members of the assembly calling for Richards to resign, he said, “there is ZERO chance I would consider resigning my position.”

Richards went on to attack the logic and point out the hypocrisy of their request.

“Under your standards all Californians who enjoy gaming in Nevada are somehow ethically challenged as true Californians and should be removed from any official position. My guess is the legislative chambers might look a little barren should that logic prevail.”

MOUNTAIN LION BACKGROUND
Here are the simple facts about mountain lions and the banning of hunting them in California that has been bypassed in most media reports:

– Since 1972, there has been no sport hunting of the big cats in this state. When the Department of Fish and Game proposed a hunting season again in 1986, after doing surveys of the big cat population, animal rights activists protested to the Fish and Game Commission, stopped the season with political pressure, and then qualified a ballot initiative in 1990 (Proposition 117) that passed by a very narrow margin. Only 40 percent of registered voters participated in that election, and less than 25 percent of those eligible to vote passed judgement on the initiative. It passed with just 52 percent of the vote, meaning 48 percent voted against the legislation.

– During the last two legal hunting seasons for mountain lions in California in 1970 and 1971, there were 4,953 tags issued and just 118 mountain lions were killed, an average of 59 per year.

– In the 22 year period between 1990, when Proposition 117 passed, and 2011, there were 2,020 mountain lion were killed in California on specialy issued depredation permits. These lions were threatening or had killed humans, livestock, or domestic animals. An average of 92 cats per year die now. The number steadily grew from a low of just four permits issued and one lion killed in 1972, when sport hunting was first stopped in the regulatory process, through the peak in 2000, when 148 cats were killed under depredation permits in a single year. The annual average is far more than were taken by legal hunters each season in this state when the DFG was managing the big cats. Now all management options have been removed from the state agency, forcing action only when there’s a serious problem.

– Most interestingly, in the period between 1890 and 1972, when hunting was effectively banned, there were only three verified mountain lion attacks on humans. One was an attack by a rabid lion where both people died from rabies in 1908. A child was also killed in 1890. That means a total of just three attacks in California history before hunting was banned – and there were no attacks for the 76 years between 1908 and 1972. Since 1972, there have been at least 10 attacks, including three fatal attacks, and encounters have been steadily increasing.

There is a simple explanation for this, and it has little to do with human population growth: The big cats no longer fear humans. For well over 100 years, mountain lions were hunted as vermin. Throughout the state, houndsmen had trained packs of hounds to run the animals. They were harassed away from populated areas and were terrified by everything human. Hunters took fewer lions than are killed now because most cats had been chased, many treed (and not shot), and the cats avoided all human activity. That is no longer the case. The only thing Proposition 117 has done is put more humans in danger and kill more mountain lions.

The Mountain Lion Foundation and the Human Society of the United States (HSUS) staff and supporters, the primary pushers of the legislation that misled the public into voting for the ban, are animal rights zealots who have human and mountain lion blood on their hands.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a DFG biologist or game management staff member who supported or supports the mountain lion hunting ban that passed in 1990 because the initiative effectively tied the DFG’s hands in how they could manage the big cats in California. Today, the DFG are crisis managers when it comes to lions.

If the management of the big cats was left with the DFG, we would have fewer total mountain lions killed each year, the likelihood of human attacks would be minimal, and the DFG would be generating a significant income from the sale of mountain lion hunting tags.

California is the only state in the West that has banned the hunting of mountain lions, but the self-righteous arrogance of some state legislators and animal rights activists would have you believe all the other states’ models are wrong, even though the facts about biology and public safety would tend to support the other states’ actions.

THE NEXT ROUND
The battle is far from over for Dan Richards and those of us who still hunt and fish in California. The animal rights groups plan to protest and “demand” that Richards step down at the at the next Fish and Game Commission meeting being held beginning 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 7, at the Mission Inn, 3649 Mission Inn Ave., Riverside, in the San Diego Room. Ironically, this is the same meeting where the Commission will receive the DFG’s recommendations for fall mammal hunting regulation changes. I plan to be there as a hunter who supports Richards.

Sponsored by the San Diego Chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation and the City of San Diego Public Utilities Department, this annual event costs $10 and gives each hunter entry into the lottery hunt drawing, access to the complete slate of seminars and vendor booths, and entry into the raffle. Seminars are valuable even for hunters not drawn in the lottery for the Sutherland hunts.

John Massie, the retired DFG biologist responsible for getting turkeys released in San Diego County, will be talking about where birds can be found on public lands throughout the region in his 9 a.m. seminar. There will also be seminars on turkey calling, turkey hunting gear, and a gear drawing.

This year’s spring turkey hunting season runs from March 31 through May 6.

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A proposal that could close two hunting blinds on the Union Tract of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge is drawing fire from avid waterfowl hunters who hunt this area extensively. The proposal calls for the closure of the two blinds just one day (Wednesday) of the three days each week the blinds are currently hunted during the waterfowl season.

The proposal is part of the Comprehensive Conservation Plan (CCP) being drafted now to guide the management of the refuge for the next 15 years, according to Chris Schoneman, the refuge manager and project leader on drafting the new plan.

He said the proposal for the one field was to close it just on Wednesdays, while continuing to allow hunting on Saturday and Sunday. He said the goal was two-fold, first, to hopefully increase goose use of the field during the hunting season and improve hunting opportunity and second to give the geese more places to feed during the hunting season and reduce depredation complaints from nearby farmers who have geese using their fields.

“Obviously, this has met resistance from the hunting public because — and I guess deservedly so — because of limited hunting opportunities [in this region],” said Schoneman.

But some hunters immediately jumped on the proposal as an “anti-hunting” move that reduced hunter opportunity on the federal refuge, but Schoneman said the preferred alternative also calls for an additional blind site added in the Union Tract, giving hunters five blind site options on both weekend shoot days and three on Wednesday, a loss of one blind site on Wednesdays and a gain of one on each weekend day. While it would make the area more crowded on weekends, if the closure on Wednesday has the desired impact, it could improve hunting success.

There is also a proposal alternative that could open Unit 1 (currently closed to hunting) and increase hunter opportunity even more.

Schoneman outlined the changes on Bono over the last eight years that have benefitted hunters:

– The amount of water used in the wetlands has been tripled to improve habitat and forage conditions for waterfowl, improving hunting opportunities.

– The staff studies soils at the pond to determine why productivity was poor and is now including sypsum and liquid nitrogen fertilizer to make the wetlands grow more feed and cover. “We treat our wetlands like a farm. It is working. Ducks have a lot more food to feed on, small clumps of cover to use, and they don’t feel so exposed that at the first shot they leave the area completely,” said Schoneman.

– The deteriorating fiberglass pit blinds have all been replaced with two-person concrete blinds with adjustable seats and shelving for shells, binoculars, coffee, or other hunting gear.

– A small pond and new blind site for duck hunting was added on the north end of the Hazard Unit, the only new hunting site that has been offered in the last few decades, according to Schoneman.

“The point I’m trying to make is that we are not anti-hunting. I’d really like to get that notion knocked out now. We strive to provide the best public use on refuge lands possible. Our main limitation to hunter opportunity is lack of real estate,” said Schoneman.

He said the current hunt area is just over 460 acres with 22 hunting sites on that acreage. If two hunters use each site, that means there are only about 10 1/2 acres per hunter. On other federal and state wildlife hunting areas there are usually 15 to 20 acres per hunter, according to Schoneman.

Regular refuge hunter Robert Fisher of San Diego points out that Executive order 13443 directs federal agencies to “facilitate and enhance” hunting opportunities whenever possible, and that any closures — especially in Southern California where opportunities for public waterfowl hunting are so limited — is a violation of this rule. Fisher said he supports the addition of another blind site on the Union Tract and adding hunting opportunities in Unit 1.

Schoneman said he was especially interested in hearing from hunters intimately familiar with the area who had ideas about how hunting could be expanded on the refuge or how the quality of the hunt could be improved.

Hunters have until Monday, Feb. 27, to comment on the current planning update, which is available on the refuge’s web site at this direct link: http://www.fws.gov/saltonsea/pdf/Planning%20Update%202.pdf. Comments should be sent to Victoria Touchstone, Refuge Planner, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, PO Box 2358, Chula Vista, CA 91912?2358. They can also be faxed to 619?476?9149 or e-mailed to Victoria_Touchstone@fws.gov. All e-mail comments should include “Sonny Bono Salton Sea NWR CCP comments” in the subject line.

By JIM MATTHEWS
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Do you know someone who has quit hunting or fishing in California in the past decade? We all do. I like to say that fish and wildlife exists today in California in spite of the  department of Fish and Game, not because of its efforts. It all relates to the DFG budget manipulation and mismanagement of funds. The agency’s decline starts and ends with wildlife that support hunting and fishing programs getting an increasingly short end of the budget stick.

How sportsmen fare in the DFG budget: Sportsmen are responsible for about 45 percent of the DFG’s annual budget through the payment of license and tag fees and federal excise taxes, yet only 21 percent of the DFG’s budget is spent on game and fish programs today. Once upon a time, these programs received 100 percent of that money. Even if we include all DFG law enforcement activities in this percentage pie that benefits the wildlife and sportsmen who pay the freight (and wardens should not be completely paid for by license fees), we still only get 35 percent of the total budget. Many in the agency correctly argue that many “other” DFG programs indirectly benefit fish and game programs. But it could just as reasonably be argued that many of these “other” programs are counter-productive and often directly at odds with good game and fish management programs.

How much federal funding does the DFG lose: Of the $71 million received in federal funds by the DFG, the two biggest allocations come from a pair of landmark laws that charge excise taxes on sporting equipment and allocate it back to the states. The state’s allocation of Pittman-Robertson funds (excise taxes on sporting arms and ammunition) is a little over $11 million each year. Based on the allocation system for P-R funds, which is derived from a state’s land mass and population compared to other states, California should be receiving about $36 million annually from this fund.

We lose most of these funds because our state can’t or won’t come up with the mandatory 25 percent matching funds for projects in game programs or game lands because the money is allocated to “other” programs — programs apparently far more important than game programs even through hunters are getting a pittance of their investment back in wildlife research, management, and enhancement.

We are receiving the maximum allocation from in Dingell-Johnson fund (excise taxes on fishing tackle and boats) at just over $20 million each year, but much of that money has been earmarked for salmon and steelhead hatcheries in solid on-going programs for decades. The DFG would have to make a concerted effort to screw this up.

The bottom line is the DFG loses over $35 million a year in lost federal funding because it won’t support game and fish programs to a higher level.

How much has the DFG lost because of declining hunting and fishing license sales: Annual resident fishing license sales dropped below 1 million for the first time in 2011. Annual license sales were around 2.2 million annually in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. If the DFG grossed about $40 million on all fishing license sales in 2011, my simple-minded math tells me we’d have at least $80 million selling the same numbers of licenses today that we sold in the late 1970s.

In the late 1960s and in 1970, we were selling about 700,000 hunting licenses. In 2011, we sold about 240,000 annual licenses. That’s $9.5 million in annual license fees and a total of $21.2 million for all tag, stamp, and application fees paid by those 240,000 hunters. If we still had 700,000 hunters in California, the total revenue would have to be in $60 million range.

These license sale losses have accumulated while the state’s population has skyrocketed. If license sales had grown proportionally with the state’s population since 1970, just imagine what the revenue for the DFG would be like. The bottom line is that DFG has effectively sliced its sporting funding in half through lost license sales. This is what happens when you ignore game and fish programs and sportsmen.

Total lost revenue: What is a conservative estimate on how much money the DFG could – should – be bringing in on hunting and fishing license revenue with a good, aggressive game and fish management program? Licenses, tags, and stamps brought in $61 million in 2011. We should have over $140 million coming in. Federal excise taxes are currently $71 million today. We should receive at least $105 million. So instead of $185 million, the income should be more like $245 million. If there had actually been growth in the number of license holders, growth in concert with the state’s population which has doubled since 1970, the revenue would be in the $500 million range.

A final reminder: The DFG’s total annual budget today is right around $400 million, including all the non-game, vegetation, and invasive species programs, law enforcement staff, oil spill prevention and response teams, and on and on. But remember, game and fish programs are just 21 percent of that current budget.

Is it any wonder more and more hunters and fishermen are giving up on California?

The solution: The reality of the world is different today than four decades ago when the DFG was flush with money and did everything it wanted for sportsmen and more. There was even money left over to do non-game and endangered species work with sporting money back then. Today, the agency has more lawyers and administrators than it does scientist because it spends as much time in court than it does in the field.

It’s time for everyone who enjoys wildlife and wild places to pony up instead of sportsmen paying the lion’s share of the bill. There are two parts to the solution. First, all hunting and fishing license dollars need to be rededicated to only game and fish programs. This would blow a huge hole in other parts of the DFG budget, and those other programs are important and need funding. Second, the DFG needs a new, permanent funding mechanism for its other programs.

There are two valid models that could accomplish that goal. The first alternative is an annual outdoor user fee. Everyone who does anything from bird watching to hiking to mountain biking on any public land would have to have an annual license and the money would go to the DFG which manages those natural resources for those users. Just like hunters and fishermen pay a fee, other outdoor users would also have to pay the fee to enjoy those same resources. The second alternative is an added state sales tax on outdoor gear to fund the DFG’s broad range of conservation programs statewide, paid for by everyone in the state who buys a wide range of wildlife or outdoor-based products, from wild bird seed to binoculars to backpacking and mountain climbing gear. One is a simple user fee, and the other is an excise tax. Your call.

All I know is that hunters and fishermen shouldn’t have to keep funding far more than they receive. We deserve Crowley Lake-style trout management in waters all over the state. We need more tule elk on public lands. We need more desert water sources for wildlife. We need a lot of things for the state’s hunted and fished game species. Instead of being discriminated against each time we dig into our wallets, we need to see a return on our investment instead of excuses for dismal management.

I had an interesting phone call from an old hunter who had been buying hunting licenses and deer tags in California for over 50 years. He asked a simple question: “What does the DFG do for guys like me?” The state offers junior hunter tags all over the place (under the guise of promoting hunting). We have archery hunts, and a few muzzleloader hunts. How about offering some senior tags for the guys who’ve been supporting the game management programs for decades? Initially, I liked the idea. But then I decided I don’t like any tag allocation system that excludes a class of hunters. I hate auction tags, and I’m not a big fan of junior-only tags. Old guys like me can just take our chances in the regular drawings like everyone else. We just need to face it: Getting old sucks.

For the first time, the Department of Fish and Game will be offering a bighorn sheep hunting tag in a raffle – no, that’s not right, excuse me – the tag will be offered in an unlimited random draw. You can buy as many chances, or entries, into this random draw as you want for $5.66 each through license vendors or via the DFG’s on-line licensing and tag application system. It works just like a raffle, but a raffle is illegal under state law because it’s considered a form of gambling, so we call it an unlimited random draw fundraising tag.

The DFG found they made more money on these random draw fundraising tags than they did on the fundraising auction tags which go to the highest bidder. The DFG first offered these unlimited random draw tags last year for a pair of hunts, one for deer and one for elk. The two tags generated more the $130,000 in revenue for DFG big game programs, far more than equivalent auction tags brought in. So for the 2012 seasons, there will be a bighorn tag for the Old Dad/Kelso Peak zone, a pronghorn antelope for any open zone in Northeastern California, an open zone deer tag (valid in any deer hunting zone), and Owens Valley-wide tule elk tag.

PREFERENCE POINT TAGS: While we’re on the subject of big game tags, it is well beyond time for the DFG to revise the preference point system for some big game hunts. If you look at the drawing odds for some of California’s premium hunts – those for bull elk, pronghorn antelope, and even some special trophy-opportunity deer tags – the first thing a new hunter notices is that he or she will never in a lifetime quality for a preference pool tag. And the preference pool represents up to 90 percent of all the tags issued for a hunt or zone.

The preference point system works exceptionally well with some popular, premium deer zones, allowing a hunter to compute that he will be able to get a tag in X12, for example, about once every three or four years by accumulating a point each year he doesn’t draw that tag. In 2010, you needed three preference points to be sure you’d receive one of the 760 tags for X12.

But in hunts with fewer than 50 or so tags that are highly desirable, unless you started applying the very first year the preference point system went into place, you will never qualify for one of the preference pool tags. Hunters with the maximum number of points will receive those tags for probably the next 25 years or more. For example, there were just 35 tags for the coveted late-season Goodale deer hunt in 2010, and 32 of those tags were in the preference pool (that’s nearly 90 percent). The maximum number of points you could have accumulated that year was eight. There were 1,046 hunters who applied for the 32 tags with eight points. That means there were still over 1,000 hunters, now with nine points, who applied in 2011, and there will be at least 950 with 10 points this year. And….

Well, you get the point. Even with people dying or finally applying for other tags, it will be at least 20 years before all the maximum point applicants get drawn for this tag. Then we drop down to the maximum-minus-one pool and wait another 20 years. A new hunter will never crack the nut. He will face astronomical odds for the three tags in the random draw pool, where over 4,000 hunters compete for those three permits each year. He will do that until he dies. The odds are even worse for things like elk, pronghorn and bighorn sheep.

Diligence should have its reward, but not exclusivity. The DFG could make this system fairer, yet still reward those who consistently apply for these coveted tags, by changing the “preference point” system into a “bonus point” point system for hunts with 50 tags or less. Everyone applies equally for all the tags in the bonus point system, but for each point you’ve received for years when you didn’t get drawn, you simply get another entry into the drawing. This increases your odds of getting the tag – but it doesn’t exclude other hunters with fewer points from the opportunity.