Flatlander

The plan for education is to follow a model similar to what Colorado and Michigan have done. TV, radio and print ads illustrating the cash flow from sportsmen to the wildlife and highlighting the science based management that AZGFD employs to conserve our herds. I agree that it is undoubtedly needed. At some point HSUS is going to flood us with a campaign to take away something vulnerable and we will be fighting a losing battle.

Not to be contrarian, but why is it the depts responsibility to educate the public? Why can we point at them and say You made this problem? This is OUR problem, and we ALL must contribute to the solution or else we ALL have a lot to lose. This isnt just AZGFDs problem, it is shared by everyone who participates in hunting and fishing and it is the problem of every person who enjoys seeing wildlife and having healthy diverse populations whether they realize it or not. We cant point the finger at anyone else, this is on us to solve because we are the ones that stand to lose if it changes.

Dude thats awesome.

I want to do more to educate the public and I think we have enough ideas to raise the money to do so.

I think you are misunderstanding my statement. I do not think you are a liar, or infiltrator or anything of the sort, I just pointed out that you are here to support the CAPAZ cause. And I prefer to have my discussions with the folks I know. Thats it. Twigsnapper and AZKiller are both long time members of this site and so engaging them for this conversation has more meaning than engaging a stranger. I am sure the same is true for the CAPAZ folks which is why they havent given my input much standing. So I have taken my message to those who will listen. Thats the beauty of the commissions plan to form a committee. If it is populated with a diverse group, it will force everyone to listen to each others ideas and come up with a proposal. But if its stacked with supporters of any pre-existing plan they will just steam roll everyone else and it wont produce the best idea, just the one that had the most voice.

Ok, well you are entitled to that opinion. And sincerely thank you for doing what you think is right for the sportsmen of this state. We dont agree, I told you that at the Bass Pro meeting, but just as I said at the very beginning of that meeting and all others I have attended, I appreciate the efforts of those who are trying to help.

Yup, like Blake. Because we put our personal differences aside and collaborated on something that would help the common good.

IF raffle tags are used, and that's still an IF, a new program similar to the Big Game Super Raffle would be created. The current Big Game Super Raffle is mandated by legislation to disperse its funds to HPC. This one would be similar except funds would be Game and Fish. No outside organization would get any money. Who get's the HPC money? I am pretty sure its the critter groups and they guys that run the critter are the same people on CPAZ. In the above, I'm pretty positive ALL of the money from any auction/raffle tags is returned to the AGFD by law. That money is earmarked as HPC funds per species accordingly and is meted out for projects as determined by dept. and critter group committees for each game species. In short, the critter groups reap no financial benefit from any of it. The groups gain their owm operating revenue from dues, banquets and the other items that are auctioned or raffled during the year. And while we're at it, there appears to be a bit of misinformation that has pervaded this threads on the subject. It has to do with the "Utah model." Over the years I have followed most of the threads at MM on that topic. The set-up in Utah is quite different than the proposal here. Off the top of my head, I can't recall the percentage, but Peay's group keeps a large percentage of the money it raises from the raffles/auctions and offers little in the way of accounting for what his organization does with that money other than enrich the administrators. It's pretty much a mess. In contrast, the proposal here is for AGFD to receive and control 100% of the funds from any raffle/auction tags for the purpose of "educating the publc," akin to how it is now with HPC. And if that comes to pass, funds to battle the antis supposedly would come from other "sources" as was done this year with the lion initiative. Now, I'm guessing here, but other sources might include some sort of expo, banquets and private donors. In any case, it seems to be quite different than Peay's mess. Of course, a concrete proposal needs to be thoroughly put forth because the "devil in in the details." The references to the Utah Model are stemming from Petes comments on the podcast and at other meetings. He referred to it explicitly in several of the podcasts. And in the first podcast which was a recording of the CAPAZ kickoff meeting for the initiative he talked about how beautiful Peays system was and how when people raised concerns he shut them down right there on the spot. He discussed the importance of controlling the narrative around the initiative and the importance of having people engaged on all the social media platforms to refute any one who opposed the idea. This is how we came to know Dustin (nefarious red) as a regular poster. Thats the reason folks keep referencing the Utah Model because Pete keeps bringing it up. Flatlander, I haven't heard that particular podcast, but are you trying to say that before Utah got destroyed with these sort of tag grabs that they also got the hunt chat forums infiltrated with tag grabbers to try and control the narrative and silence any other opinions of better ideas? Whether they infiltrated Utah chat forums or not they definitely have infiltrated this hunting forum to try and shut better opinions down on the spot. Some of the more obvious ones to try and control the narrative are like nefarious red, twigsnapper, and maybe azkiller. Another one might be idgaf but who knows. You will notice how nefarious red and twigsnapper are on here constantly to respond immediately to lie, cheat and steal to get their agenda across. It was the very first Jay Scott podcast on the topic. Also, idgaf put a lot of effort into putting another forth another option and presenting it to CAPAZ and then getting it to the commission. And we need to be careful about calling people liars and cheaters. Although I certainly do not agree with AZKiller or Twigsnapper they are long time members here and have been very open about their ideas and for the most part have not jumped into the petulant name calling and mud slinging. I dont agree with their opinions but they certainly arent plants here just to fight Petes cause nor have I seen them state anything untruthful. Now . . . Nefarious Red, well the only reason he came to this site was to carry Petes banner and I have never seen him post anything else on this site. I have spoken to him and he is just here to defend the cause and stir the pot. Its what he thinks is best for hunting in this state but I prefer to have my dialogue with those who I know and trust from their other contributions to this site.

That's cool that you're a member of AES. They do a lot of good work for wildlife. You should speak with the President of the Arizona Elk Society and get his thoughts on Conserve and Protect Arizona. Rich and I have spoken. We are well acquainted with one anothers positons. I think he knows I want whats best for sportsmen.

License / tag increase is off the table for the committee. Davis motion took that off the table.

I doubt that I would ever be selected by the commission knowing that many of them already have allegiances and ties to groups and although I am an AES member I am not necessarily endorsed by them. But by all means, feel free to let them know you support the idea. It cant hurt.

Maybe you and AZKiller should email the commissioners and tell them that. Andrew Gillett

Still raining in Flagstaff. Only thing that smells better than creosote in the rain is Pine trees in the rain.

Well first off please stop equating raffle/auction tags with the only way to protect hunting. This is a false equation and In no way accurately reflects the current condition of our state. This is precisely the line of thinking that Pete puts forth as fact and wants everyone to buy into. But it simply is not true. There are a number of ways that education can be funded however only one is being proposed by CAPAZ to the commission. Now to explain what I personally have done (following which I would encourage you to similarly note your your personal contributions to the issue). I am not sure who you mean by the commits or the coming. But here are the three main groups that it could refer to: - The board of CAPAZ. I have attended two of their town hall meetings, emailed them a list of more than a dozen suggestions, emailed privately and discussed privately with several my thoughts and ideas. These town hall meetings were billed as open forums where they wanted to share their ideas and gather any additional ideas of how the money could be raised. I gladly provided my input and suggestions. Because Pete and CAPAZ have the commissions eat it would have been best for all of us if their intention truly was to share ALL ideas presented. Instead, when they had the opportunity to present to the commission at the Kingman workshop they took the opportunity to advance their tag agenda. This is the basis for my concerns about CAPAZ. Once seeing that these efforts were futile I decided to engage in other avenues. But of course you know this because you were at one of those meetings. - The G&F commission made up of 5 commissioners. I have emailed each of them multiple times myself with a number of ideas and concerns about what has been proposed by others. We provided the commission with the same presentation that we shared with CAPAZ, it was prepared by another sportsmen with input by a couple more, I cannot take credit for that work. I attended the commission meeting last Friday and spoke to voice my concerns about the issue and shared my thoughts on a good path forward. - The committee that the commissioners voted to create last Friday who will study the options and provide a recommendation on the best option. This committee I believe is to be made up of 7 members, one appointed by each commissioner or one from the area that each commissioners represent (which of these was not totally clear to me) and two at large members. Of course I cannot engage this committee yet because it does not exist yet. But you better believe when that committee is appointed (I believe this is to happen July 1) I will be sharing my thoughts with them. I have already been in touch with the commissioners to make recommendations who I believe would be good representatives for that committee and have emailed many of my fellow sportsmen encouraging them to do the same. So kindly, please refrain from implying that I am an entitled do-nothing crying about what others do or do not say, speak or propose. I have been engaged in this effort daily for weeks and will continue to do so until final action is taken. I have also emailed Jay Scott to find out why no opposing view points have been presented on his podcast. He was polite but I am sure everyone can imagine the response.

You could argue that, but you would be lying to yourself. If 300 tags are given to the raffle and tickets are sold for $10 and a 10 ticket per person limit were imposed then that would mean if someone were to max out on all of the rafffles it would cost him $30k. For his investment he would have 3000x more chance of drawing a tag than someone who bought a single ticket. That is the definition of disparity. Even for a single hunt anyone can purchase 10x more opportunity than another for $90 more investment. This is exactly my concern with these systems. They are built to exploit economic disparity among sportsmen. So will anyone please for crying out loud tell me why it HAS to be tags. Why is that the only option a certain group of people will advocate for? Your math is wrong. That's not how odds work. I thought you were the odds guyMy point isnt that your odds would be better, my point is that offering a chance at a tag for $5 makes it more accessible for some people than having to pay $13. Flatlander keeps arguing that the North American model is at being violated beacuase of the proposed raffle tags but its not. The North American Model doesnt say anything about keeping draw odds at a particular level. Auctioning tags is a different argument but a raffle is no different than a lottery tag through a normal draw system.I was talking about Andrew's mathIf the math is wrong feel free to fix it. I put it right there for everyone to see and understand. If you do it will be the first meaningful contribution you have ever made to this site. Would be a refreshing change from your vague posts and hiding behind someone elses ideas. Don't post drunk.. Let's play nice. Odds are 3% vs .3% you won't be able to buy 3000 tickets. I would have no problem however with someone wanting to put 30k into the g&f for this. Also I don't hate the rich. Now get back on that hog!1. Never been drunk in my life, so guess you will have to take your own advice. 2. If someone buys 10 tickets for 300 different raffles that = 3,000 tickets. Thats 2,999 more than a person who only buys one. 3. The difference between a draw and what is being proposed here a) In a draw each applicant is allowed to purchase one entry. b ) In a draw each applicant is only allowed to select a set number of choices and cannot apply for each hunt separately for an additional fee. This is clearly not a draw and the differences are plain and apparent. If you think its the same you are either unwilling or unable to look at it plainly and rationally. Either way I cannot help you and no one new is reading this so I am done wasting my breath and my math. It seems the point of the of the pro tag crowd is that if people want to spend money on tags just let them. If thats the case lets just auction every tag in the state one at a time. That would certainly raise the most money. I don't want to auction all the tags. I don't want to auction ANY tags. I DO WANT TO CONTINUE TO BE ABLE TO HUNT! This is what the money is going to help continue. The stap idea, tag fee increase, special hunt are all good ideas. The commission has ruled against ANY cost increase. This is what we have. Let's do our best to keep them in check and continue to enjoy our privilege while we can. How did the pitch to the commits go with your generous offer to run a draw odds web page for free? I think that was a fantastic idea. What ever came of that conversation? Not one person from CAPAZ (which is who we pitched it to, when they were asking for ANY AND ALL ideas) ever followed up beyond saying oh that might be a good idea in the room that night. I have moved on to different ideas. This is my frustration. That group ONLY wants to talk about a tag auction or raffle.

You could argue that, but you would be lying to yourself. If 300 tags are given to the raffle and tickets are sold for $10 and a 10 ticket per person limit were imposed then that would mean if someone were to max out on all of the rafffles it would cost him $30k. For his investment he would have 3000x more chance of drawing a tag than someone who bought a single ticket. That is the definition of disparity. Even for a single hunt anyone can purchase 10x more opportunity than another for $90 more investment. This is exactly my concern with these systems. They are built to exploit economic disparity among sportsmen. So will anyone please for crying out loud tell me why it HAS to be tags. Why is that the only option a certain group of people will advocate for? Your math is wrong. That's not how odds work. I thought you were the odds guyMy point isnt that your odds would be better, my point is that offering a chance at a tag for $5 makes it more accessible for some people than having to pay $13. Flatlander keeps arguing that the North American model is at being violated beacuase of the proposed raffle tags but its not. The North American Model doesnt say anything about keeping draw odds at a particular level. Auctioning tags is a different argument but a raffle is no different than a lottery tag through a normal draw system.I was talking about Andrew's mathIf the math is wrong feel free to fix it. I put it right there for everyone to see and understand. If you do it will be the first meaningful contribution you have ever made to this site. Would be a refreshing change from your vague posts and hiding behind someone elses ideas. Don't post drunk.. Let's play nice. Odds are 3% vs .3% you won't be able to buy 3000 tickets. I would have no problem however with someone wanting to put 30k into the g&f for this. Also I don't hate the rich. Now get back on that hog!1. Never been drunk in my life, so guess you will have to take your own advice. 2. If someone buys 10 tickets for 300 different raffles that = 3,000 tickets. Thats 2,999 more than a person who only buys one. 3. The difference between a draw and what is being proposed here a) In a draw each applicant is allowed to purchase one entry. b ) In a draw each applicant is only allowed to select a set number of choices and cannot apply for each hunt separately for an additional fee. This is clearly not a draw and the differences are plain and apparent. If you think its the same you are either unwilling or unable to look at it plainly and rationally. Either way I cannot help you and no one new is reading this so I am done wasting my breath and my math. It seems the point of the of the pro tag crowd is that if people want to spend money on tags just let them. If thats the case lets just auction every tag in the state one at a time. That would certainly raise the most money.

You could argue that, but you would be lying to yourself. If 300 tags are given to the raffle and tickets are sold for $10 and a 10 ticket per person limit were imposed then that would mean if someone were to max out on all of the rafffles it would cost him $30k. For his investment he would have 3000x more chance of drawing a tag than someone who bought a single ticket. That is the definition of disparity. Even for a single hunt anyone can purchase 10x more opportunity than another for $90 more investment. This is exactly my concern with these systems. They are built to exploit economic disparity among sportsmen. So will anyone please for crying out loud tell me why it HAS to be tags. Why is that the only option a certain group of people will advocate for? Your math is wrong. That's not how odds work. I thought you were the odds guyMy point isnt that your odds would be better, my point is that offering a chance at a tag for $5 makes it more accessible for some people than having to pay $13. Flatlander keeps arguing that the North American model is at being violated beacuase of the proposed raffle tags but its not. The North American Model doesnt say anything about keeping draw odds at a particular level. Auctioning tags is a different argument but a raffle is no different than a lottery tag through a normal draw system.I was talking about Andrew's math If the math is wrong feel free to fix it. I put it right there for everyone to see and understand. If you do it will be the first meaningful contribution you have ever made to this site. Would be a refreshing change from your vague posts and hiding behind someone elses ideas.

IF raffle tags are used, and that's still an IF, a new program similar to the Big Game Super Raffle would be created. The current Big Game Super Raffle is mandated by legislation to disperse its funds to HPC. This one would be similar except funds would be Game and Fish. No outside organization would get any money. Who get's the HPC money? I am pretty sure its the critter groups and they guys that run the critter are the same people on CPAZ. In the above, I'm pretty positive ALL of the money from any auction/raffle tags is returned to the AGFD by law. That money is earmarked as HPC funds per species accordingly and is meted out for projects as determined by dept. and critter group committees for each game species. In short, the critter groups reap no financial benefit from any of it. The groups gain their owm operating revenue from dues, banquets and the other items that are auctioned or raffled during the year. And while we're at it, there appears to be a bit of misinformation that has pervaded this threads on the subject. It has to do with the "Utah model." Over the years I have followed most of the threads at MM on that topic. The set-up in Utah is quite different than the proposal here. Off the top of my head, I can't recall the percentage, but Peay's group keeps a large percentage of the money it raises from the raffles/auctions and offers little in the way of accounting for what his organization does with that money other than enrich the administrators. It's pretty much a mess. In contrast, the proposal here is for AGFD to receive and control 100% of the funds from any raffle/auction tags for the purpose of "educating the publc," akin to how it is now with HPC. And if that comes to pass, funds to battle the antis supposedly would come from other "sources" as was done this year with the lion initiative. Now, I'm guessing here, but other sources might include some sort of expo, banquets and private donors. In any case, it seems to be quite different than Peay's mess. Of course, a concrete proposal needs to be thoroughly put forth because the "devil in in the details." The references to the Utah Model are stemming from Petes comments on the podcast and at other meetings. He referred to it explicitly in several of the podcasts. And in the first podcast which was a recording of the CAPAZ kickoff meeting for the initiative he talked about how beautiful Peays system was and how when people raised concerns he shut them down right there on the spot. He discussed the importance of controlling the narrative around the initiative and the importance of having people engaged on all the social media platforms to refute any one who opposed the idea. This is how we came to know Dustin (nefarious red) as a regular poster. Thats the reason folks keep referencing the Utah Model because Pete keeps bringing it up.

My main concern about things like additional portal benefits and similar things is that the Department plans upon expanding the portal as it is and making their own money from it. Which is also a concern I have about license fee increases, without legislation the Department could do as they wish with the money. Regardless of what the funding method is, legislation willbe required to designate the use of these funds. Even a raffle would be subject to the same concern you just mentioned. So that argument is equal across all funding types. Legislation will be required to designate the dollars.

Hey Dustin will you please just answer the question, why are the CAPAZ guys so committed to tags? Why? What other options are you in here advocating for? Why is the discussion always tags? Why do you oppose a stamp? License fee increase? Additional portal benefits?

Dude . . .

You could argue that, but you would be lying to yourself. If 300 tags are given to the raffle and tickets are sold for $10 and a 10 ticket per person limit were imposed then that would mean if someone were to max out on all of the rafffles it would cost him $30k. For his investment he would have 3000x more chance of drawing a tag than someone who bought a single ticket. That is the definition of disparity. Even for a single hunt anyone can purchase 10x more opportunity than another for $90 more investment. This is exactly my concern with these systems. They are built to exploit economic disparity among sportsmen. So will anyone please for crying out loud tell me why it HAS to be tags. Why is that the only option a certain group of people will advocate for? I would actually prefer a stamp over raffle tags but selfishly if Im paying $5 or $10 Id rather get a chance at a tag than getting a stamp of no value. Do you disagree with bonus points or preference points? They have similar idea as you just illustrated, creating disparity....And i suppose violating the North American model with your argument of having more chances than others with less points I do not disagree with bonus points because All people have equal opportunity for them. I would be opposed to bonus points if you could simply buy them.

You could argue that, but you would be lying to yourself. If 300 tags are given to the raffle and tickets are sold for $10 and a 10 ticket per person limit were imposed then that would mean if someone were to max out on all of the rafffles it would cost him $30k. For his investment he would have 3000x more chance of drawing a tag than someone who bought a single ticket. That is the definition of disparity. Even for a single hunt anyone can purchase 10x more opportunity than another for $90 more investment. This is exactly my concern with these systems. They are built to exploit economic disparity among sportsmen. So will anyone please for crying out loud tell me why it HAS to be tags. Why is that the only option a certain group of people will advocate for?

Racked

The argument that I have made and heard others express is that we are opposed to creating a system that takes tags that should otherwise be available to everyone at an equal opportunity through the draw process and re-allocating them into a system where the more money you spend the more opportunity you have to get those tags. My point is that this conflicts with the North American model tenants that wildlife is held in public trust and that all have opportunity to participate. By providing additional opportunity, for additional dollars we employ a pay to play system that will eventually price put some classes of sportsmen. This is clearly demonstrated in Utah where tags that would otherwise be distributed through the draw are auctioned off for $10k+ or raffles to people who pay hundreds to buy a raffle ticket for every hunt in the system.