Spyro-I figured you were on Taulman's mailing list. Write or call George and ask him about the facts behind his letter. He has done a great harm to hunting in the short term but I will say he has wakened the sleeping giant. I have never seen more web activity and high attendance at wildlife meetings. The states will not allow the 9th circuit ruling to stand. I think the congress will clarify the issue. The bad thing is the knee jerk reaction in states with good hunting by raising fees substantially. We will never see a rollback after this as the government doesn't give anything back. That is the true result from USO and you don't see that in George's letter. He has lost all of his sponsors except for that weenie Jackie Bushman. Crooked Horn did withdraw so I hope we support their products.

Now USO is pushing ranchers to lobby for private tags. Is that a good thing? It is if you desire to be able to hunt any state at any time but the cost is dear. New Mexico generates 30 million dollars a year to landowners for private tags. A very high incentive for other states ranchers and outfitters. With our ballot initiative process I can see that ranchers may someday lose their businesses from a forced open bidding process for leases. Enviro groups already got our supreme court to rule to open the process and have unsuccessfully tried to buy leases. This will go to court again and it will be opened up. At $2.11 per cow per year it is easy to see massive amounts of state leases being bought up. The problem is that hunters will lose due to the huggers being against hunting. Is that a good thing that USO has helped with?

I would ask that all of us think about our kids and grandkids in this process. They may never see the ability to hunt big game like we grew up with. Maybe some people just don't care about protecting and passing on the tradition. We are a dying breed anyway in todays world.