To
Step one that would be fair across the board and this could be able to be done without discrimination if done to include both resident and non residents.
Require everyone to have a valid hunting license to enter the draw.
To add to this. The drawn hunt system already requires an APH permit for everyone both nonresident and resident hunters to apply for hunts in the APH category. "Note: you must hold or purchase a season Hunting license to purchase an Annual Public Hunting Permit."
Therefore hunts in that drawn hunt category already require hunting licenses from both resident and non resident alike to be able to enter those draws. A change to requiring a hunting license of everyone in the regular draws should not require legislative action considering it is already required for a portion of drawn hunts already.
Last year there were 292,000 applicants in the drawn hunt system. The 4-7% number is likely made up IMHO because they present it as 4
TO 7 percent rather than giving a definitive number. I would think if the data is there, they should be able to provide the exact number every year. My other beef is that number they give you is presented as an overall average. The more sought after hunts like the Chap are going to be much higher than 4-7% and the lesser ones like Pat Mayse are not likely to have any nonresidents applying. That email response from TPWD assumes we are stupid.
Anyway, so lets use an average of that range, 5%. 5% of the total applicants would be 14,600 nonresident applicants last year.
Oklahoma has a lottery hunt system similar to ours and requires a $209 nonresident small game license to apply.
Colorado requires a nonresident $98.92 small game hunting license to apply for their hunts.
Using those examples it would not be unfair to require the same here. Texas nonresident small game is $132. A nonresident 5 day small game is $48.
$132 X 14,600 nonresident applicants would bring $1,927,200 additional revenue to TPWD.
Note no other states that I am aware of including the two I mentioned allow a 5 day or short term license to enter their draws and doing so here would actually make it more expensive for a resident to apply as we have no short term resident hunting license. But if Texas did allow it, the $48 5 day would still bring in $700,800 in additional revenue.
Common sense tells me it would knock off some less than serious applicants on both the resident and nonresident side initially, but I believe that would pass and actually present an increase in hunting license sales overall. Common sense should tell us that those same ones dropping out because of the license requirement would also reduce the number of no shows. This would be a plus for WMA managers who need hunters to show up for game management purposes. It would also reduce or remove most of the unknown number of anti hunters entering our draws thinking they are saving animals by preventing a hunter from obtaining a permit. And it would reduce or eliminate the unknown number of people who put in non hunting family members each year with no intent of them hunting for adding them to later applications for increasing point averages.
