NDOW turning hunting into a rich man’s game
June 29th, 2005 by Administrator
NDOW turning hunting into a rich man’s game - Nevada’s gaming industry doesn’t have a thing on the Nevada Department of Wildlife (NDOW), the state agency that doles out big game hunting tags to sportsmen every year.
NDOW just completed its annual lottery for deer, antelope, elk, bighorn sheep, and mountain goat tags. Tens of thousands of hunters from across the country sent in from $13 to $20 per big game species for a chance to buy a hunting tag in the fall. Mind you these fees are not for the tags themselves, which can cost up to $1,200 for a nonresident elk tag. The fees only give applicants the right to purchase a tag at these exorbitant prices if their names are drawn. If you are successful, you can buy an expensive hunting tag. If not, you not only don’t get to buy a tag but must surrender your “nonrefundable application fees.” At $13 to $20 a pop, it’s pretty easy to spend upward of $100 just to get into the drawing.
This has to be the best state-sponsored racket since Megabucks … with comparable odds.
Now NDOW is reminding the thousands of hunters who failed to get a tag in the first drawing that they have a second chance to get in on this year’s hunting seasons. Why another chance? Because more than 900 big game tags that were reserved for out-of-state hunters were not drawn the first time around. You better read the fine print before you ante up for round two, though, because more than half of those tags Ð 541 to be exact Ð are reserved for “junior hunters,” kids between the ages of 12 and 17. That leaves another 331 tags for archery hunters, 18 tags for muzzleloaders and 132 tags for the garden-variety hunter who uses a conventional center-fire rifle. That means the odds of drawing a tag in round two are somewhere between getting struck by lightning and seeing Halley’s Comet Ð in other words, not very likely.
One of the criticisms of 21st Century hunting is that what started out as a subsistence activity is fast evolving into a rich man’s game. A hundred dollars in nonrefundable application fees may not seem like much to some people, but to others it may be a barrier. It’s hard to imagine that it costs NDOW $20 to enter a hunter’s name in a computerized drawing and notify the participants of the results. This situation is analogous to airline companies that overbook flights and hotels that overbook rooms Ð in effect, the state is selling more product than it has, and gouging its clientele in the process. To then charge those who were unsuccessful in the first round another application fee for a “second chance” is akin to double jeopardy Ð applicants who have already paid to participate in a drawing shouldn’t have to pay twice.
If NDOW is going to act like a casino and charge more than a nominal amount in nonrefundable application fees, on top of already expensive licenses and tags, then maybe the agency should be subject to the same kind of rigorous oversight as casinos to make sure it is not filling its coffers by playing with a stacked deck