Jinxed Universe

For three years I have been putting in for the deer hunt in Southern Utah in hopes of killing something bigger than a raccoon or a skunk.  I came up with this area by using the statistics the DWR puts out on the success rate of the hunters in Utah.  Of all these stats, Mt. Dutton, Utah came up with the best rate of return.  One out of every three hunters come away with a deer.

This year was the year that me and my brothers finally drew out on Southern Utah.  We spent the year planning out what we were going to do and when the day finally came we saw not a single deer!  The following day was Sunday so we attended Church.  Yes, we went to Church!  In talking to one of the local members, he asked if we had seen a deer, or even at least a single doe.  No, no we haven't even seen a single doe.  He told us to take up the problem with the DWR.  In thinking about this and my unsuccessful hunt, I began to do some numbers and some thinking.

So, the DWR is always jacking around with the prices of hunting tags and how you get tags.  Back in the day all you needed to do was drop by your local Kmart and pick up a tag for your choice of game, deer was $45 and elk was $65.  When a drawing was required you could pay $5 per hunt to apply a point towards your chances of drawing out next year. 

Now days you have to buy a $26 hunting license even before you can get a tag.  Everything requires a drawing now!  I had to build up 3 points just to draw out a deer tag, which cost me a grand total of $107 over the three years of points.  To draw out for a Deseret Land and Livestock tag it will take 12 years and $702.  For a Bison it will cost $1671 over 16 years.  Even after forking out all this money, who is to say that I would even get the game I'm looking for?

Now, don't get me wrong, the last two I'm willing to pay up for because they are on private land, but the deer no!  Any general hunt I wouldn't pay for.  The reason being is I believe the DWR is mismanaging the public lands and here is why.

On my first elk hunt, my uncle said that the amount of elk in the area had dropped because the DWR was allowing ranchers to use the land to graze their cattle on.  The cattle eat the grasses shorter than an elk or deer would, so they are moving on to greener pastures.  Every hunt I have been on since then has been riddled with cattle.  I believe that the DWR is making money off the ranchers to let their cattle graze on these lands, so much that the elk and deer are struggling.  Hence why last year the DWR reduced the amount of tags they were offering the public.  They also are raising the prices of tags and using the drawing to weed out the hunters.

Rather than admitting that they have mismanaged the wildlife that they are supposed to manage, they are just trying to sweep the problem under the rug, costing people like me more than our fair share.