I can certainly understand and respect this (bolded above)!

And I've always found that knowing the local GW and building a solid relationship with them can be very helpful if and when you need him/her.

My point exactly, it’s not that I have a problem paying for anything but it’s the fact they never seem to end a way to stop taking your money. This year it’s $300 and in 5 years when it goes to $2500 the same guys that seem to love the idea of another way of them taking your money will be on here screaming it’s unfair... Where the hell is the other over half a billion dollars we pump into the TP&W as it was? The $300 a head is going to make all the difference I guess.

Hey Ol Thumper, where did you find that hunting and fishing license sales brings in 500,000,000? From what I've been able to find it looks like that number in TX is about 1/10 of that at around $50,000,000.

Though I do agree with you guys that it seems that taxes and fees do always tend to get out of hand, I still think that if you want to be on MLD $300.00 is not an unreasonable fee at all. The state does have cost involved for it without a doubt.

Whether he made it up or read it somewhere, he's completely wrong. TPWD will have 2021 estimated revenue of $201.9mm, of which 55.0% comes from the sale of licenses and stamps. That comes out to $111mm. Source is the Texas Comptroller's Biennial Revenue Estimate.

We dropped out of the program.

It’s open information, they haven’t listed their 2021 budget yet but yea it’s slightly more than 200m,,

Seems like pay to play, which is okay, tpwd is essentially already using their funding to facilitate a conservation program which benefits are well worth 300 dollars to a hunting or ramch operation. Hopefully the monies generated through this new pay system will further the capacity of TPWD to facilitate the MLDP program

What benefits? When we were participating, I made numerous phone calls and numerous emails and never got one response from game biologist.

I was against the fee due to the fact that I've received NO biologist help. In fact, before TP&W 'self-printing' of the tags, they cost me time and money tracking down the tags that they messed up...multiple times. Add to that all the time spent submitting data over 20 years, then they changed the requirements to a fraction of the data they used to collect. When I inquired why, I was told that the data wasn't used or trusted. I understand that they don't have enough workers to handle the load, but the people that use the services should pay for it. Just as if you hired a lawyer, or a...biologist.

I don't intend to sound anti-TP&W, far from it. I'm just against yet another tax for something I don't use. At least it (hopefully) goes to maintain a robust TP&W department, which I'm in favor of.

23% operating expense seems high to me.

So am I reading this right that from 2018 to 2020 this agencies budget basically doubled?

Paid my 30.00 for the Harvest Option and got my tags. They increased my buck tags and doe tags by one each from last year. I'm fine with that.

Our biologist has always been responsive the few times I've contacted him. Not what I'd call a "real go-getter", but at least he communicates. What I'd call "over achievers" are as rare as hen's teeth, in any profession, in the area our property is in. Some county extension agents are pretty impressive and helpful. I attended a seminar this past week and saw who ours is. He would not fall in that category.

If I get my own property I will try to get on this program

Right on.