Moose Sheep Goat MT HB390 tabled

[2lbScout]

Montana's House Bill 390 ........to make Moose/Sheep/Goat once-in-a-lifetime in Montana was just tabled by the House Fish and Game committee yesterday (March 14th). I personally think there are some issues with the bill.... mainly the exclusion of youth. Any strong positions one way or another?

 

[bobr1]

It will be interesting to see what happens. It doesn't say how they would deal with people that already have points and have previously harvested. I doubt they would grand father them in so they will probably have to loose the points and I'm sure there will be a lot of push back because of that. I think realistically though especially for sheep it is already really a once in a lifetime. Even if you could draw twice and you were lucky enough to draw at 10 years each time it would still be 27 years between tags. It has the potential to put more pressure on the unlimited units since that will be the only option for people that have already harvested in a limited unit. Also, with the amount of people moving to Montana now there does need to be something done to help with the increasing numbers of applications. But whether this will really do anything to fix the problem in a significant way I doubt it, other than making it slightly more fair I guess.
As for the youth application I think their reasoning is that a lot of times the parent is just putting in for their kids so they increase their chances of drawing a tag and then harvesting the animal themselves and saying the kid shot it. Not everyone is like that obviously but I can see how the system can get abused. Also, eliminating the youth tags means more tags for the older people that want to draw tags and also are the ones that put the bonus system in place and then the squaring of the points to give themselves a theoretical increased chance of getting a tag.

 

[Legend]

Glad to see we tabled this one. No one really needs a chance at 2 rams but not allowing my kids to even dream about a chance iat the tag s not cool. Not to mention when yoj have 25000 people apply and only 100ish tags you do not make a dent in the draw ods by removing people.

What we need to do imo to keep kids in the game is get rid of all bonus point systems. Unless you REMOVE your top point holders every year bonus pointsystems are not sustainable. I have built models to prove this and my prediction is thatbonus points systems will eliminate new hunters, kids. Think 50 years from now.

 

[Schaaf]

I spoke with the chair of the House Fish Wildlife and Parks about this bill and received assurances that if this were to see floor time again, that the exclusion of youth would be removed from the bill.