More Trouble Brewing

[muskrat]

From bowsite.com

 

July 15, 2004 and addressed to "Duane Shroufe Director Arizona Game & Fish Department".

"Dear Mr. Shroufe:

 

My clents have developed an impression that the Arizona Game & Fish Department is not receptive or sensitive to concerns relating to property damage caused by wildlife and/or inconsiderate hunters. After much thought and discussion, the following ranches have, or are seriously considering, denying any and all public access for any purpose on their private land:

 

Aztec Land and Cattle Comapny

 

Becker Land and Cattle Company

 

LO Ranch

 

7-Up Ranch

 

Goldtrap Ranch

 

Willaha Ranch

 

McCauley Ranch

 

X-one Ranch

 

Rock Art Ranch

 

Aja Sheep Company

 

Freeman Ranch

 

Carlock Ranch

 

Diamond A's (Cholla Livestock)

 

K-4 Ranch

 

Las Vegas Ranch

 

Dobson and Dobson Livestock Company

 

Dobson Estate

 

Vernon 825, LLC

 

Sheep Springs Sheep Company, LLC

 

Timberline Cattle Company

 

Wagon Bow Ranch

 

Lazy YE

 

Red Wing Ranch

 

Cowan Ranch

 

Yolo Ranch

 

ORO Ranch

 

Seibert Cattle Company

 

As you are aware, these ranches control access to large parcels of privately owned real property and/or access to large parcels of public property in bothe northern and southern Arizona.Hunters currently enjoy free and unfettered use of many of these private parcels. The current mismanagement of wildlife has caused a detrimental impact on the ability of these ranchers to maintain viable cattle operations. Thus far, management of wildlife has been one =sided. Hunters and the AG&FD enjoy the benefit of water, range and access improvements maintained at the sole expense of these ranchers. The ranchers are recieving little or nothing in return Their only recourse at this point is to deny any type of access.

 

In the event your department is interested in discussing a fair resolution of ongoing concerns relating to ranching and wildlife management, please have your legal counsel contact this office. Otherwise the above- referenced ranches will be closed to public access. Moreover, we will continue to seek every available remedy, including political, public and legal alternatives, to force your department to recognize the significant economic loss the mismangament of wildlife is causing to my clients.

 

Thank you for your prompt attention in this regard."

[az4life]

I am not saying it is true or false, but taken on face value I have afew observations.

 

I glanced at the Bowsite page but saw nothing about this.

Interesting it does not refer to who the letter is from.

It seems unlikely that all of these ranches would have the same "no name" representative.

I do not see any effective date of the alleged closures.

No legal description of the subject property(s).

 

Several obvious misspellings also.

 

If it is true, I hope the AZGFD works out the details. Lots of state land here but being landlocked by private ranches would make it better for the USO groups to fly in and hunt.

[muskrat]

From Bowsite:

 

It is from, "Thomas K. Kelly,P.C. Attorneys at law", dated July 15, 2004 and addressed to "Duane Shroufe Director Arizona Game & Fish Department".

 

 

He also stated that he didn't know how to copy and paste from his source, so he hand-typed it.

 

A taxidermist friend of mine told me about this (or a similar) letter a week ago.

 

M R over at AZUHO said they received an advanced copy.

 

Other than that, that's all I know.....

[Rembrant]

Oh boy, range wars.

A friend of mine who is a rancher started to tell me about this. I didn't know what he was talking about and we didn't have time to talk.

I think it's real.

I don't know where all these ranches are but I do know that Goldtrap, and Aja Sheep Co are in unit 10. Willaha is up towards the Grand Canyon in 9 and/or 10.

I think the mis-management they must be refering to would be the expansion of the elk herds. This drought is putting a lot of pressure on the ranchers.

I suppose they expect the Dept to crumble under this pressure. What do you suppose the demand would be? Kill all the elk? Seems a bit illogical to keep the hunters off the land if they want the elk dead. Will they shoot elk themselves, or will they charge money to allow access and/or blackmale the Dept into costly range improvements - stock tanks etc.

You know they can make good their threat. Look at all the ranches that deny access to public lands in the southern part of the state (unit 32 being a prime example), just because the road goes through a even a small piece of private.

Ranchers do have legitimate gripes: drought, elk, and there will always be butt-head hunters shooting up some property 'cause they can't hunt right. But I think a power move like this is wrong. Once again the average guy will be hurt because of special interest groups (money).

If the Dept and the sportsmen take this lying down - again - the ranchers will dictate closers, more tags, fees and other benefits.

Or, the cattlemen may have just shot themselves in the foot.

Mike

[az4life]

Muskrat

Thanks for the information! It is a good heads up to what could happen before long if things go wrong for the state sportsmen. I hunted in Wyo last year and it was terrible for figuring out where you can hunt, whose land it was, getting permission to cross the land and get to state land. In one case we could not even get to state land due to private ranches land locking the average hunters. Funny thing is these Ranches were owned in large part by corporations that jointly land lock the state land and give the hunting priviliges to big cat executives and theri friends and co-horts. Corporate Names Like Dupont and Coca Cola to name 2.

 

Hate to see AZ head that way, and if it is incompetence on the AZGFD board, we need a change. 2 of these sort of legal things in a short time? Gotta Wonder?

[Guest Lark Hubbard]

i'll tell ya what they want. elk tags. and id bet a coke that uso is behind it. this is how the landowner tags got started in new mexico. the thing is, in Arizona, there isn't very much private land. some of these ranches have substantial deeded land. but nothing like the vast expanses in new mexico. but they also have roads maintained by public funds. they can't keep you off of public land if there is a publicly maintained road going to it. it's been beat in court before. they can lock up the private land for sure. and they can lock up landlocked public land, if there isn't a public road going to it. but they want elk tags, plain and simple. they've been working toward it for many years. they even want elk tags for ranches that are on public land. they want the tags so they can sell them to the highest bidder, who in turn will sell them to the rich dudes they guide. this worries me more than the fiasco of last week. if you look through all the bs, you'll see the image of a skinny jerk wearing a white cowboy hat.

 

i really sympathize with ranchers on a lot of issues. heck, i was raised on a ranch. but these big outfits aren't owned by ranchers. they're owned by corporations. and all they care about is $.

[Rembrant]

One really good thing for sportsmen to lobby for, if this kind of thing happens, would be for new sections of road that bypass the chuncks of private property where the closures would occur. Like Lark said, there ain't that much private property in this state. We just gotta find a way around the closures. That'll take the wind outa their sails.

Mike

[stanley]

At the Boquillas ranch clean-up last month, we had a good fire-side discussion with the G&F Wildlife Manager for that unit. The subject of puplic access (or not...) came up and he said that it was debated on the Boquillas several years ago. At the end of the day, the G&F said that if the public wouldn't be allowed on the ranch, then the G&F would NOT be patrolling it! The ranch backed off the subject very quickly after that.

 

Not saying it will come to that with this latest hubbub, but hopefully these ranchers know that they can't have their cake and eat it to. No public access = no public funded fish cops patrolling!

 

S.

 

[CouesWhitetail]

The letter is real. I received a copy of a scan of it. And yes, it probably is related to the ranchers wanted to privatize elk tags to increase income for their operations.

 

Also, some people from sportsmen's organizations have pointed out that several ranches on this list already do not allow access. The X-1 and Wagon Bow. And also the Cholla Land and Cattle company leases land the Boquillas from the Navajo Nation and I don't think the Navajo nation will support the closure. The Boquillas is one of the ranches where sportsmen have spent time helping to pick up trash in order to help with landowner relations.

 

Amanda

[Arizona Griz]

I think the 7-UP ranch and the Game and Fish have already locked horns quite a few years ago when the rancher poached a bunch of elk. I don't remember what the final result of this was though.

[Guest Lark Hubbard]

i'd forgotten about the infamous 7-up ranch and the elk assasins. seems like he even hired some guys to shoot some or beseached his hired hands to shoot em or some deal. plus he shot some himself. i do remember they were using a mini-14 for some of it. yeah, there was a lot of bs hit the fan over than one. seems like some fairly major fines were imposed before it was over.

 

also, do the navajo's still own the boquillas, or did they sell it to the hopi's? thought i read something about that, but the way my mind wanders, maybe i just dreamed it.

 

last fall i hunted with some pals in u10 on the early rifle hunt. they were hunting on private land that was open under one of the various programs. don't recall the name of the outfit. had to sign in and hang a little red deal from your mirror. don't know know for sure, but i'd imagine it was some of that checkerboarded stuff. anyway, shot some nice bulls. never ran into anyone but a sheepherder. they had some real nasty signs up on some of the place, where you weren't allowed to go. hope they don't close it down.

[stanley]

Must have been dreaming Lark... The Navajos still own the Boquillas. That's who the WM deals with on land access issues, etc. There is a requirement to sign-in when you enter the ranch, but the access is open. He said that the Navajos have been good to work with on access issues, and that considering the shear size of the ranch, he couldn't foresee the hunting access being shut-down.

 

However, shed hunters on ATVs (traveling off road) in the winter appeared to be a thorn in their side....

 

S.

 

[Guest Lark Hubbard]

thanks for the skinny, stan. i tend to dream a lot lately. only i can't remember what i dreamed about. so i basically just make stuff up. it's a horrible existence. anyway, the place we hunted in u10 had a no atv policy. weren't even allowed to have one at all. i see no use for one other than game retrieval anyway. then they're pretty handy sometimes. is the boquillas all private or is it checkerboarded? like so much of the rest of the private stuff? only reason i even know about it at all is because of all the stuff in the paper when the tribe bought it and the subsequent trial that sent some folks to the joint.

[KGAINES]

I think about five of those are in 17a/b, and I think the las vegas ranch, and oro ranch allow you to hunt on their property for a fee, the oro I think for elk only, 7up I don't think allows you to hunt their property at all, it has a deer fence around a lot of it if I am not mistaken after they shot all those elk, I think yolo ranch has fences on the road from campwood to baghdad where you drive through the property, I have never checked into what fee they charge at oro or las vegas, but you would only need to pay if you were hunting antelope or elk, there are plenty of mule deer in there without going onto private land. I agree with Lark in that I don't think they could lock gates and not allow access onto public land if the roads are public maintained.

I wonder how many people actually pay to hunt on these ranches, and if you pay to hunt on them as stated above they make you sign in and out, why would you destroy anything, I don't think that happens as much as they are saying, they want tags allotted to them that they can sell and make a fortune.

 

HUNT ARIZONA ELK, NO DRAW, PRIVATE LAND, GUIDED HUNTS

 

Is this what its coming to.

[Red Rabbit]

ATVs are no longer permitted on the Boquillas. In many ways, I approve of this regulation.

In regards to the Las Vegas Ranch, they generally wanted antelope hunters to donate to the local fire department as an access fee. Same with the Long Meadow Ranch.