By JIM MATTHEWS
www.OutdoorNewsService.
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.

www.OutdoorNewsService.com The annual survey of bighorn sheep in the San Gabriel Mountains will take place on Sunday, March 4, and volunteers are needed to participate in this annual tally that has been done almost every year since 1979. The survey is a joint effort by the Department of Fish and Game, U.S. Forest Service, and the Society of the Conser

vation of Bighorn Sheep to keep tabs on bighorn numbers and population trends within the mountains.

Volunteers are required to attend an orientation meeting beginning 6 p.m., Saturday, March 3, at the new Verdemont Community Center and Library in north San Bernardino just off Interstate 215. Volunteers will conduct ground surveys of bighorn sheep in at least eight different areas in the San Gabriel Mountains. The counts are led by representatives of one of the three sponsoring groups, and the ground surveys are tabulated and compared against helicopter surveys done at the same time DFG and USFS staff.

Volunteers must be at least 16 years old and capable of hiking at least one mile in rugged terrain. This is not your weekend trail hike. The hikes generally involve scrambling up steep ridges to high vantage points where volunteers peer through binoculars and spotting scopes to find, classify, and mark locations of all bighorns spotted. The counts usually last several hours and volunteers should bring binoculars or spotting scopes, snacks, drinks and be prepared for foul weather.

To sign up go to www.sangabrielbighorn.org or call either 626- 574-5287 or 909-382-2870 to have a volunteer packet mailed to you.

The San Gabriel Mountains population was once well over 700 animals, and the largest mountain sheep herd in California. But the population crashed in the 1980s and 90s and dropped to less than 100 sheep in 2000. Last year’s survey placed the population around 400-plus animals, and showed – based on the number of yearling sheep – the population was increasing again.

Last year 158 bighorns were counted from the air in seven regions, and 70 sheep were classified from the ground in four of those same areas by over 100 volunteers. Ground counters also counted 18 bighorns in an area not surveyed by air, the South Fork of Big Rock Creek, because of reports from hikers about seeing bighorns in this area.

Jeff Villepique, a Department of Fish and Game association wildlife biologist, said the current growth in the bighorn population is because of opportune wildfires and weather conditions that created good habitat for the sheep in younger, higher-quality forage.

“If you burn it, they will come,” he said. He noted that on one small burn on the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, they counted 30 animals in 2011.

But he said post-fire benefits wane eight to 10 years after the burn, as the brush grows back up. With the exceptions of a few small fires, the last major fires in sheep habitat were in 1997 and 2003, and the window for those fires benefiting sheep is closing.

www.OutdoorNewsService.com

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – Evolution rather than revolution was the theme of the 2012 Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOW) Show held here last week, stuffing the Sands Convention Center to capacity with the latest products from the shooting industry.

One of the most innovate new hunting products was an interchangeable barreled bolt action rifle from Thompson/Center, allowing a single gun to be used for a wide variety of cartridges from the 223 Remington to the 300 Winchester magnum, changing out only the barrel, bolt and magazine. Called the Dimension rifle, it will allow hunters on a budget to have a single, familiar gun to hunt everything from ground squirrels to elk on a single platform.

T/C pioneered this concept with its break-open Contender and Encore single shot firearms that have been popular with hunters and shooters for decades, but this is really the first affordable interchangeable bolt action rifle ever produced, something that will likely be well-received in this economy. (But it also will be a familiar concept for the new crowd of younger shooters who like AR-type rifle. More on this below.)

Hornady expanded its lineup of new cartridges by introducing an old wildcat, the 17 Hornet for varmint hunters, riding on the huge success of the 17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire (HMR), introduced several years ago. The 17 Hornet pushes a 20 grain bullet at 3,650 feet per second with a trajectory that mirrors the popular .223 with a 55 grain bullet with almost no recoil and modest noise output. The new cartridge will be chambered in bolt action rifles from Savage and Ruger initially.

Outside of some other modest line extensions in the traditional rifle, shotgun and ammunition categories, most of the news was elsewhere at SHOT.

The show has evolved from a hunting and sport shooting show filled with new products for these traditional activities, into an event rapidly being dominated by products for the “black gun” recreational market. The market is following demand. Firearm sales are predominately in the tactical, paramilitary, and home defense product lines, and old-school hunting and sport shooting products aren’t creating the buzz or getting the product development research that is being generated by and for what the Outdoor Channel’s Michael Bane calls the new “gun culture version 2.0.” These are the new, young entrants into the shooting sports who are simply finding out how much fun can be derived from recreational shooting.

Kevin Creighton, of TeamGunBlogger.com, patiently explained to me that the V2.0 crowd is the new generation of shooters who grew up with firearm-based video games, and now they are transitioning their youthful interest into a world of real firearms fun. They like Glocks and Smith & Wesson M&P (Military and Police)-style guns. They like everything AR. (Which really should be sAR for semi-Automatic Rifle to be accurate.) They like, well, Zombies. More on that in a moment.

Those of you who read this column on the Internet probably fall into that version 2.0 category, but those of you who still read it in a newspaper are more like me. We’re gun culture version 0.1, dinosaurs who still like to hunt and shoot traditional trap, or maybe sporting clays if we’re feeling adventurous. So I started with the news about the new T/C rifle and the 17 Hornet for you (and me), the V0.1 crowd.

The real news is on the AR front. How big and important is this category? Mossberg realized that ARs are so important to the new V2.0 crowd that it has introduced a spiffy version of its bolt-action rifle as a tactical-style varmint/sniping/target rifle that accepts AR-15-style magazines. Naturally, the gun is chambered for the 5.56 NATO round (that’s a .223 Remington for us V0.1 guys).

Young shooters who already have an AR-platform rifle probably also have a couple of “uppers” either chambered in another caliber or with heavier barrels for match shooting (see, the T/C interchangeable concept is nothing innovative to these guys). The idea of being able to add a long-range bolt rifle that uses the same magazines and caliber will make sense and sell guns.

The new AR crowd, besides driving the shooting industry, is also doing something else. Shelby Murdock, a writer for Shooting Sports Retailer magazine, pointed out in the most recent issue of the magazine that for the first time there is greater opposition than support for a ban on semi-automatic firearms in this county (according to Gallup, the new numbers are 53 percent against a ban versus 43 percent supporting a ban). That’s because of these new, young AR shooters flooding into the shooting sports.

While spokespeople within the industry say the absolutely insane sales of these AR-15 styled firearms has finally leveled off a little, it is still the fastest growing part of the shooting industry. It is still growing rapidly because these newer AR shooters are expanding their horizons.

In the past couple of years, there have been a wide range of cartridge developments for AR-style rifles as these younger shooters decide they want to hunt with their beloved ARs. For a long time, these shooters were pretty much restricted to the .223, I mean 5.56 NATO, round. Remington came out with the 6.8 SPC a few years ago (almost ahead of the trend), and this year companies are chambering for an even greater array of new, AR-specialty cartridges — the 30 Remington AR, the 300 AAC Blackout, the 300 Whisper (in Smith and Wesson’s M&P 15 with a hunting configuration with a camouflage stock). These rounds are all really designed for hunting.

Even if it is hunting for Zombies.

While I have been unable to find any listing for Zombie hunting seasons in any state, nor any information on their shoot-on-sight status, apparently the younger members of our hunting and shooting community have a burning passion for Zombie hunting, and you could not walk around on the crowded SHOT Show floor without seeing optic green Zombie branding on everything from ammunition to firearm accessories to clothing and hats. I’m fairly certain Real Tree or Mossy Oak will have a new Zombie camouflage out before long. The dealers who were ordering this stuff were convinced it would fly off their shelves. Really?

Will some of you Gun Culture V2.0 guys please explain this one to me?

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.

Small game and predator hunting will continue in the Mojave National Preserve.

A federal court in Washington D.C. upheld a decision by the National Park Service to reject a petition from PEER, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, to end small game and predator hunting on the Preserve under the guise of protecting endangered desert tortoises. The NPS rejected the PEER petition because there was virtually no scientific evidence to support the claim, and the court backed up the park service scientists on this issue.

It also said the decision did not violation the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) nor the park service’s Administrative Procedure Act, shutting PEER down on all fronts. The National Rifle Association and Safari Club International also joined the park service in fighting the PEER petition.

Anti-hunting environmental groups have been arguing since day one of Preserve’s creation against a wide variety of hunting that takes places in this part of the desert, often coming up with incredibly tortured reasons for hunting to be banned. This petition suggested that the hunting of small game (cottontail and jackrabbits) and predators (gray fox, coyotes and bobcats), which are shot on the ground rather than flying like quail and chukar, endangered desert tortoises.

The astronomical odds of such an occurrence happening borders on the impossible, but these groups were incensed when the NPS simply didn’t predator and small game hunting as they had requested several years ago. Those initial requests were not based on any scientific reasons, they simply didn’t like hunting, and especially the hunting of furbearers. So they started grasping at straws to waste the time of NPS staff in the court system. Out of their fertile little minds came the idea a tortoise could be accidentally shot by a hunter. The fact it made it all the way to a DC court is ludicrous, but at least the decision was correct.

For the record, there is no evidence of tortoises ever being shot by accident by hunters. Or even on purpose. There was a hue and cry when a tortoise researcher found than some old tortoise shells had bullet holes in them, but when someone actually did forensic analysis of those shells, they did not find any shells where the holes were made before the tortoise was long dead. In other words, the bullet holes were all made postmortem, usually years after the tortoise had died.

Don’t think for a minute this issue will go away with this court decision. Groups like PEER and the Humane Society will likely press for federal legislation banning the hunting and trapping of furbearing animals on all federal lands (using wolves, coyotes, and bobcats as the poster children). They’ll do this simply because they are against hunting, not because there is any scientific or biological reason to do so. But you can count of some incredibly contrived reasons to enact such bans.

Here is the really ironic part of the proposed ban on the hunting of coyotes and bobcats under the guise of protecting tortoises: Those two species eat tortoises. Eliminating the hunter harvest means there would be more predators in the desert to eat even more tortoises – and that would undoubtedly mean far more tortoises would be eaten than would ever get killed by a stray hunter’s bullet.

There have been a number of proposals that would have a positive impact on tortoise numbers. Scientists have identified that ravens have the biggest controllable impact on the tortoise population, and a simple way to bring the exploding raven population back in line with its historic numbers would be to have a hunting season, and if that didn’t reduce raven numbers enough, add a bounty on the birds. No one is suggesting wiping out ravens, just reducing the population. But heaven forbid we’d actually do real management.