Harvest ejective in Utah!

[mojo]

What has happend to the sport of being a houndsmen? I thought it was about the hounds not the money! The DWR opened the four manti units to split harvest objective with in the first day on the south western unit one tag was opened and two cats were killed. How are you going to make your bills when you kill all of your game? Have some morals and teach are kids to respect what we have not kill it off!

[fairchase01]

ya i know what you mean and it was not two try six cats from sat to mon

[Yard Dog]

I thought it was about the hounds not the money!

Its been about the money for along time... I would not even consider putting in for a tag on a split unit. You will burn 5+ years of points just to draw a tag and then when you do you cannot be to selective on the quality of cat you want to take due to an arbitrary date when your tag is open to anyone with a harvest objective permit. But then again Utah has not about quality for a long time, its about selling permits and killing cats so they can get those high dollar sheep hunts going... And if you think that by either not putting in for one of these tags or not taking a sub-par cat if you do have a tag you are doing your part, your not. You are only making the guides happy...JMO

[toptom]

My son the Sportsmen cougar tag for this year and we have treed over 30 lion and have still not taken a cat yet!! Have treed a few decent toms but a real trophy. Would like to know an area where there is a chance to chase a good tom?

[houndnem]

your lucky that they just barely opened your four units. our units down south here have been getting overkilled for a long time. some of the guides down here will let clients shoot a fifty pound cat with spots just to get paid. I even seen them run onto a bitch and two subadult 60 pounders and fill three tags. wtf? it's so picked over down here it's sad.I wish they would make it so a female = 2 or three cats for the objective. also they need more efficient call in method. 48 hrs is too long. I've seen them over kill beaver mountain every year by a shit load of cats. I was so tickled to close it down this year before it even opened. maybe if enough of us get together and attend the rack meeting we can open their eyes. I personally don't think they give a shit about the cats. it's just easy money for them.

[bawlinhound]

Ya alot of these guides dont see cats in the trees they see a pay check and they dont care about the rest of us who do this for fun

[mojo]

Yes it would be great to get enough of the houndsmen in the state to attend the rack meetings. I'm starting to think that the DWR is going with the money talks program, so the houndsmen need to get something together to stop the B.S.

[Ike]

Ya alot of these guides dont see cats in the trees they see a pay check and they dont care about the rest of us who do this for fun

Back in the 90s and in to about 2002 or 03 a guide could book lion hunters and fill them up with a tom in most cases. After the Harvest Objective system came along lots of the hounddoggers had the chance to take a nice tom, and too many of them decided to take a lion for their buddies--problem is too many people have too many buddies.

Everybody I met or talk to in the hunting world says they would like to go kill a lion with me. And being a licensed guide, I suppose I could take their money huh? But the truth is the quality isn't there anymore and the outfitter I work with and I know it, and therefore refuse to put in the days it takes to fill a hunter with a tom lion. And that's pretty sad for a guy that use to make his living off lion hunters in the eighties and nineties (not me but the outfitter).

I hear people saying that guides are the problem, and that may be so in different parts of Utah but it isn't around here. With over the counter tags, and all the oilfield road access, there are hundreds of eyes watching for a track on fresh snow. And if a tom or bitch lion show their paw tracks on a well traveled road it's gonna get a hound on it.....end of story.

Many of the ranges I hunt only have an occasional tom to harvest--meaning there may only be a couple pop out and get slammed each year. The odds of that lion getting away are slim with cutters out on every snow, and in fact the only way they survive is those open winters with little snow. The people I'm talking about do not have guide or outfitter licenses, but are instead hunting for fun and killing for friends or work associates, so blaming the guide sis not always accurate in every situation.........

If houndsmen of today don't find worth or a value in a tom lion, then that tom lion will find it NO place else. Like I said, if each of us with hounds take every buddy we have along to kill any lion that crosses we'll never have a decent lion population again in this state. It comes back to the houndsmen and not DWR. If you want more lions don't take buddies along to kill cause they want to, and don't sell a trained hound to a man that has NO respect for those tom lions, cause he'll kill off everything he can with his buddies....

ike

[Yard Dog]

You make some good points Ike, and yes alot of these cats are getting taken by somones buddy, but I believe that no matter what the sport or activity when you put money in the mix it only compounds the problem. I would have to say that Utah has and is getting more about the money all the time. JMO.....

[Ike]

I hear talk about a guide in this region that books as many hunters as possible and kills everything that crosses Yard Dog. And plenty of the hounddoggers around him have nothing good to say about the guy. My point is a person can't make blanket statements about who the problem is cause it changes from unit to unit. But DWR doesn't run down and kill very many lions--we do! It therefore looks like we have the power to change harvest and just need to be more selective about what we take and who takes it....

keep'em treed!
ike

[Conejos]

As long as politicians set policy you are kidding yourself to think it will ever be about anything other than money. Thats what makes the world go round. If hunting didn't line the pockets of the government they would put a stop to it. Sad but true. I wish they would do away with outfitting on certain species but its never gonna happen. The state governments could care less about resident hunters because thats not where the money is.

[Yard Dog]

Yes it does change from unit to unit, for that matter even year to year. However it is the DWR that makes the rules.

Not so many years ago a guy could go in and buy a pesuit permit for around $20 that was good for lion and bear, then the DWR changed it and you have to buy a seperate permit for both. Not only did it double the cost but also made it so a guy had to keep track of two licenses. I thought this was stupid, so when I whent in to get my permits I asked why they made this change, If they needed more money why did they not just increase the permit fee. It was a pain in the butt for me as well as more paperwork for them? I was told flat out that the reason for the change this was that some guides had been complaining that to many houndsmen in the hills and that by splitting the permits it might help thin them out.

For these and other reasons I draw my opinions, nothing personal.

[Ike]

Well it gets worse, cause now the state mandates a guide license through DOPL and it's more money, tests, and so forth to stay legal. With the crap that was stacked on legal guides in this state by the legislature I don't feel too sorry for anybody else.......I suppose it's about money and control and they have the leash on both!

ike

[houndnem]

I agree Ike, guides are only half the problem the houndsman with no appreciation for a trophy cat is eaqually guilty. I'm guilty myself from time to time. The frustrating part is when you let em go and somebody else just comes and kills them anyway. I treed an 80 pound female and let her go only to find out that somebody turned out and killed her the same day I let her go. I don't think we will ever all get on the same page on that, so that's where a lower female harvest could be very helpfull. if we don't have the selfcontroll maybe dwr could help us out a little. I'm all for tom only or first female that hits the ground it's closed. they still sell their tags and make their money and our cats get a chance to grow. it's a win win right? not to mention they over kill the shit out of all the good units because of their 48 hr check in. Give us 48 hrs that's fine, but make us call in the day we kill so that they keep it updated and avoid overkill.

[mulehound]

Picked up my first BLM permits in 84, guided hunters off and on over twenty years. I averaged four lion hunters each winter for about ten years that become only two a year the last five years I guided. I took a lot more deer and elk hunters, the day to day cost was a lot less, much more bang for the buck. Stopped in 2004. I sent two hunters home without their cats in all those years. The chase and attitude seemed to change somewhere along the line. Finding mature toms was becoming a thing of the past. Colorado started restricting lion and bear hunting, pushed a lot of houndsmen over the border outfitters in particular. A new attitude came along of kill every legal lion it will help the deer herd. A certain outfitter had clients take a large female and two yearlings out of one tree, the youngsters barely made the definition of legal.
I don't know but I think that we have created this image or persona of the outfitter that everyone it striving for. So many want to be Mossback, Extreme,High Desert etc,etc and they want the big money and recognition. They want to be the one at the big sports shows that everyone wants to hunt with. I think this has crept into the sport hunting crowd we all want that attention and be the one that everyone wants to go with.
I am glad I was able to do it when I did. I never went to a show or advertised, relied on word of mouth only. I met some good people that became good friends. I wish everyone had the opportunity to guide as I did, to experience the feeling of hunting with people that hunt for the right reason. For those of you that have I feel that it is something that very few people here out will experience. I wish they all could.
I don't know what caused the change but we have very few lions where I live any more and any that are legal to take are getting killed female or not. We are our own worst enemy.
Mulehound