Why Are Whitetail Hunters So Eager to Follow the West’s Strategy of Screwing Nonresidents?

By fellow hunters, I mean nonresidents, of course. He led off by saying it was pretty much impossible to kill a deer on public land, which leads to the natural conclusion that fewer people out there will bend those odds in his favor. And which people are the easiest to boot? The greedy hunters who don’t pay any of the taxes in his state and don’t have any real voice.

Before we try to unravel that line of thinking, it’s best to dive into the mind of the average whitetail hunter.

When we start with a conclusion, which is human nature, we tend to try to find information that reinforces that conclusion. If you believe the earth is flat, then all of the evidence it isn’t is just conspiracy theory fodder. It must be that every space agency on earth is in on it, and while we can see other planets and moons and see they share a distinct non-disc-like shape, earth is different. The edge is out there being guarded by some military force, and an ice wall.

When we believe the hunting is too hard for us personally, it can’t be because we aren’t very good at it. It must be because some other hunters are responsible for our lack of success. It’s not that we don’t scout very hard, or work at hunting in a way that will lead to a few filled tags. It has to be those slob Tennessee and Illinois hunters who tromp all over spooking all of the deer onto private land.

This idea has permeated the West, and when the collective voice says it’s time for a change, the change happens. If you try to buy an elk tag and you can’t see Rocky Mountains from your porch, you know what I mean. At least with elk, muleys, and antelope, there is a credible argument to be made that tightening up license allocations is good for the resource. With whitetails in many places, that’s not the case. The whitetail is doing just fine in most places. Instead, it’s all about the perceived quality of the experience.

Last year, I drove down to Oklahoma to whitetail hunt some public land that I spent a few days on in 2018. While scouting, I walked out into a dirt field and looked across it. Instantly my eyes were drawn to a shiny black object poking out of the yellow grass 200 yards away. It was a crossbow hunter who couldn’t have stood out more if he tried.

I’d just found another setup, which consisted of a camp chair surrounded by camo netting, and butted up to a tree. There wasn’t an ounce of extra cover, and the woods were open from one end to another. I found several ground blinds and treestands throughout the various parcels of public land that were all pretty much low-effort deals.

Those hunters have the same voice as you and I, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they complained about the lack of deer on public land. It also wouldn’t surprise me if they cheered on the recent increase in license prices down in the Sooner State, where your buy-in is about the price of an Iowa nonresident license, all for an experience that is about 10% as good.

Will that cut down on nonresidents hunting there? Probably. Will that make most residents more successful? Probably not.

Let’s say hypothetically, you could wave a magic wand and kick out all of the nonresident whitetail hunters from your state. Forgot the economic impact, or the reality that that would kill most outfitting businesses. What would it lead to for most hunters?

Well, less crowded woods. That’s the goal, but it also wouldn’t make most hunters work harder. It would do the opposite, and the success rates would probably remain mostly unchanged. That means that the hunters who weren’t killing before, mostly aren’t killing after. So who’s to blame, then?

There will be someone. It might be resident hunters from some other part of the state. Or it could be those if-it’s-brown-it’s-down rifle hunters. Maybe it’s all of the crossbow hunters who get six weeks to hunt before the orange army gets its chance? It’ll be someone, and the goalposts will move from nonresidents, to the bad, not-like-me, undeserving residents.

We can’t help ourselves. But the whitetails in most places are doing just fine, thank you. The populations are solid in so many areas. The opportunities are consistent. It’s just not a resource issue, and it won’t be resolved by lobbying to take away hunting opportunities from the 5-10% of the hunters who don’t have home-field advantage.

What this reminds me of is all of the hate for the Baby Boomers. Young folks are struggling financially, which has been consistent for a long, long time. If you don’t have enough money, you must be a victim, and there must be a victimizer. It’s easy to stereotype a whole generation, a whole class of people, to explain why you have problems. It’s much harder to accept reality, recognize our own autonomy in the system, and try to better ourselves. Where’s the fun in that?

Maybe that’s too harsh for some folks who just want easier hunting, but it’s not an innocent move to take away opportunities from our fellow hunters. When you do that, you’re no different from other hunters than an anti-hunter working to end hound hunting, or mountain lion hunting, or whatever. Lost opportunities don’t come back, and we should know better because most of us have been hunting long enough to know this.

The course is set in the West. In the coming year it’s going to be a diminishing number of residents, and a higher number of well-heeled folks who get a chance at those critters. As long as the demand keeps bringing in enough money, that won’t change.

Whitetail hunting is different, though.

We have the chance now to say we aren’t going to follow that path, which, in the long run, will take opportunities away from a lot more people than just the folks who live across state lines. That might not be the quick-fix answer to your deer problems now, but it’ll be a real problem for the next generation of hunters–many of whom will live in your state, pay taxes, and never once think about traveling to find some deer adventure somewhere new and different.

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