I ran some calculations on the 2011 buck deer draw. NR's make up about 10% of the LE applicants and draw about 8.3% of the tags now. The area they routinely draw less than their 10% maximum is on hunts with less than 20 tags and on hunts where they make up less than 10% of the applicants. I'm not sure it is justifiable to guaranty 10% of the tags in draws where they don't make at least that proportion of the pool. Therefore the impact to residents for allowing a 10% allotment on hunts where they make up at least that % of the applicants, would not make a large impact at all to residents.
This is clearly the biggest complaint I hear from NR's. BTW, look at every single state, including Colo, Wyo, Utah, Ariz, and NM, sites and you will see them all complaining vehemently about how the quality has deteriorated. Colo and Wyo especially have been nailed by winter kills the past few years.
If allowing a NR draw, leaving the resident draw the same, will make Idaho a good place to apply and not just be a last chance OTC option, then I think that is the best of all worlds for us residents. 1. We get improved revenue, which no matter how you slice it helps. 2. We don't have to pimp out our amazing OTC system and get the NR's as a last resort. 3. I would implement NR's system like Wyo, and limit "access" hunts to second draw opportunities, and I would put reasonable caps in units like 32, 39, and 73 so we can start to get some limit on the amount of people crawling in those woods every oct and give the herds a chance to start to build back up.
The NR's get their point, and at least the same or better draw opportunity as they have now. They provide better funding which would hopefully help with quality. They have just as much opportunity as most other western states if they don't get a LE draw and get "something" each year they don't draw.
PS the amount of lost revenue, per fish and game is about $6MM this last year based on 2008 peak NR tag/lic sales. I figured that if we just raised our resident deer/elk tag prices to the ave for the western states, even excluding Calif, we would make up that shortfall alone. So for any greedy residents that don't want to give up the few dozen LE tags, then we could just increase your fee. I would do this anyway as we are simply too cheap now, with only Washington less expensive and only by a few bucks.
