Flatlander

I live in Queen Creek, AZ but my job has me all over the Phoenix area.

I feel like given recent events I need to clarify that this is purely hunting related and no other type of packing will occur.

At least then I’d have someone to go check it out with. Did you put in for Oryx?

Worst part of it is that it was all sitting in my cart ready to go. Now I am really annoyed with the AZ situation.

I am an idiot and forgot about daylight savings time.

That’s quite the humble brag 🤣 In life I have found that being generous never hurts. I usually do tip for quality taxidermy work. I also tip workers who come to my home. And my barber at Christmas.

Stud buck man.

Awesome. The mount is incredible as well. Definitely a bucket list for me.

You can question my motives or morality all you want, I’ll sleep fine. There are many choices others make that I would not, no big deal, they have that right. You’ve been around here long enough to know that we apply for and hunt a lot of non “primo” tags. So to say that’s my only concern is comical. I do want my children to experience hunting as much as possible. I will do my part to make sure they get the opportunities afforded to them by the laws and rules that are in place. I would support deleting bonus points to simplify the system and reduce the games that are played to gain an advantage. It’s interesting to see how many people are opposed to rules governing trail cameras because of “government” interference and then how many support further regulation of the permitting process. I also think it is bad for the future of hunting to create barriers to entry. Someone who just learned about hunting late in life should have the same opportunities afforded to the rest of us. Eventually, hunters will have to hand together or we will slowly lose these opportunities. If new hunters don’t see opportunities out there, they won’t care what happens when an apex predator needs to be deregulated or land needs to be conserved. Just my opinion. I won’t venture a guess as to what the motives were when AZGFD allowed parents/grandparents to sign over tags, I wasn’t there when that happened. But it seems unlikely that they couldn’t have seen the possibility of a non hunting grandparent to apply. Regardless, I dont have to guess, they wrote the rule and we comply with it. After all this I will sign off. This argument is going nowhere. But I must say it’s a bit odd that you would be so concerned about something that has so little impact on the overall draw process. It seems the much larger issue are the number of point mule applicants being added to the system for averaging party apps. This is much more prevalent and impacts many times more potential applicants than grandmas giving a tag to a kid.

I don’t see any conundrum and I am not benefiting from anything. My son does. If a permit that has been legally point guarded is offered to him, I will continue to ask him if he is interested in going on the hunt. This doesn’t keep me awake at night, as it’s the system that the state has established. I will also continue to apply grandma for tags that can be signed over. It’s the system AZGFD has setup, that tag has already been donated and it’s not going back into the pool. I’m not going to let my kids miss out on opportunities because I don’t agree with the system. I don’t the BP system, but that doesn’t mean I tell AZGFD that I want my app to have zero. We just have to work with what the system is. What I won’t do is obtain tags through impropriety or compromise my ethics. Designating any group as more deserving than any other is a very slippery slope. Although I am grateful for the opportunities it has afforded my son, I also recognize that opportunity comes at the expense of someone else. As long as we are designating one group more deserving than another whether it be via donation, bonus points, preference points, outfitter allocations, auctions, raffles etc. There will be disagreement about how those designations are made and where the lines are drawn. The more we regulate the process the more opportunity there is for taking advantage of the system.

I cannot think of a way to arrive at defining who deserves and who doesn’t that doesn’t appear self serving. I am grateful that my boy has had the chance to hunt while he can. Because in all likelihood his days of hiking, hunting and packing are numbered. But drawing those lines is dicey and creates opportunity for exactly what you have described. From what I have seen of the system, there are a couple orgs that do it right. I do to ow about the rest.

No question my son has had some awesome experiences with tags that were donated. There is also no question that point guard has increased the opportunity for people to game the system. No one person deserves a tag more than another. Right now, our system of awarding tags has become ripe for abuse.

Point guard and party applications are the biggest culprit. Averaging points for party applications means people aren’t just applying grandma and grandpa to sign over a tag (parents and grandparents are the only people who can sign over a tag), they literally are using every possible acquaintance to build points to average a party app. There are people out there selling these points for party applications for thousands of dollars. The more we regulate the system and try to manipulate it to benefit one group or another, whether it’s youth or new hunters or people who have applied for 20+ years, the more ripe it becomes for these games. The only parties that benefit from this are AZGFD who takes in a bunch of extra app and license fees from the point mules and people with the time and money to run all the extra apps. There are a couple solutions: Don’t average party apps, assign the application the lowest number of bonus points of any applicant. Or just get rid of points. Period. Gone.

Oh...the bucks you hunt for 6 weeks in the rut?

Go ahead and apply for cow hunts.

Oh, so all those max point holders aren’t old dudes then?

Typical. You claim to be entitled to tags cause you are older than someone else then spin it. Sorry man, everyone doesn’t get a participation trophy in hunting.

They paid for a chance to draw the tag. They had the chance and they didn’t draw. The world owes them nothing.

I don’t see why anyone deserves a better chance at drawing a tag just cause they were born first or their dad started them out hunting at 12 instead of finding it on their own at 30.

Why does anyone else deserve a high value hunt?

No thanks. It’s already tough enough for for a new hunter to ever have a shot at these high value hunts. Why would we want to make it more difficult for them? I’m not for making rules to further tilt the scales for old dudes who already have way more opportunity in their rear view that most kids will ever achieve in their lives.

And you didn’t even say hi? And I thought we were friends.

What are those questions?

Here is the qty of resident and NR otc archery deer tags for those who haven’t seen it recently. (If viewing from phone turn sideways) 2018  2019 2020 Dealer sales- RES 20,832 19,890 21,125 Dept sales- RES 4,807 5,120 5,371 Dealer Sales-NRS 1,789 2,188 2,591 Dept sales- NRS 313 395 502

Gotta blame someone.