New Mexico Antelope Ranch Rules?

[jims]

My 14 year old son drew a New Mexico rifle antelope tag and was assigned a ranch in NE NMex. I finally got around to phoning the rancher tonight and to tell you the truth am very disappointed.

According to the rancher there will be 20 other hunters on his fairly small ranch. The hunters are distributed throughout the ranch and only allowed to be dropped off and hike to hunt. Every 2 or 3 hours he said they would check back to see how the hunters are doing.

In all of my years of trophy antelope hunting the best method has been to cover as much ground and look over as many bucks as possible.

To cut to the chase I was wondering what exactly are the rules for public draw hunters on private ranches in New Mexico? I think I read somewhere that ranches in the program must allow hunters access to the entire ranch. I was wondering if it is possible for me to legally drive my truck on his ranch as long as I stay on the roads or if I have to abide by him dropping my son off and hunting a small fragment of an area at a time? Right now it sounds like the rancher won't even let me drive my truck anywhere?

I can totally understand how it would be tough to manage hunters on a ranch if everyone was allowed to be cut loose but I'm trying to figure out what exactly the public hunters are entitled to on these hunts? I may be mistaken but I have a sneaking suspician that the pay clients are driven around and allowed to cover a lot more country and likely some of the better spots while unguided hunters are possibly dropped off and only allowed to hunt on foot in limited areas.

If anyone is familiar with the rules for these hunts or has had past experiences on these hunts I'd really like to hear from you! [email protected]

 

[NMRaptor]

jims,
my best advice would be to call up the G&F Dept. and get clarification from them. Let us know they say.
-Raptor

 

[elmore]

You can go and do what you want if its public ground, if its private where the roads and antelope are you might be hosed. Call the area game warden. Good luck.

 

[sagebrush]

I've hunted twice in NM. It's my understanding that the rancher must allow free and unrestricted access to his property. However, he can dictate the rules for driving on the property, and rightfully so. The two ranches I hunted, I was shown the boundaries, access points and roads that I was allowed to travel. If he restricts all the hunters, then you will have to go along with his wishes. Chances are the paying customers will get "dropped off" in the better locations. Good luck to your son, I hope he wacks a good one.

 

[Warren]

Why would you want to ride around and mess up the other hunters? Would you want them riding around? Play by his rules and see how it goes.

 

[jims]

Warren, my biggest concern was the guided hunters would be driven around the ranch and given priority while the nonguided hunters would be dropped off in poor locations and be somewhat stuck. The last thing I wanted to do was mess it up for everyone so we went with the ranch rules.

Unfortunately we were late getting to the ranch the day before the hunt and the next morning were dropped off in a location with very few antelope. When we finally moved and got dropped off in a location where the majority of antelope were located almost all of the larger bucks had been picked through and shot. It appeared to me that the guided hunters had trucks waiting for them after they made short stalks and then moved a lot more often to new spots to look over more bucks. This was more like the way I've hunted antelope rather than hunting for 2 hours at a time before being dropped off. It seemed somewhat unfair to me!

If the ranch would have had 1/2 the number of hunters it would have been a lot better experience and the ranch would likely have a lot better bucks in the years to come. It seemed like just about every mature buck was shot and few survived the opening day hunt.

Overall the rancher and his family were very helpful and we had a great time. I just wish we would have been dropped off in locations earlier with the big'uns.