I like Randy Newberg (and Remy Warren, and Steve Rinella) a great deal and we're avid viewers in our household. I also like that he encourages exercising of our rights to use "the people's land" aka "YOUR land" to enjoy the outdoors.
What bugs the hell out of me about these guys is the fact they don't disclose their illogic and romance about public lands accurately. Its a romance, not a logical pursuit. The true costs of hunting public land are often as high or higher than hunting private land and the quality of the game hunted is frequently lower. Add to that, the amount of times ON CAMERA that they've had other public land hunters shoot the animal they were about to kill themselves is all too frequent.
I think of Randy and his compadres passion for public land hunting in a similar light to the people that build their own guns. Yes, it's damned cool to exercise your rights and utilize your liberties...but its a lot more expensive often times than just buying a gun or just buying a private land tag.
And when you add up all those costs of getting that public land tag, the true costs, you start to scratch your head because your public land elk hunt probably cost you as much as an African safari or more. Hell, a good elk hunt will cost you equal or more than an elephant hunt these days.
So how does something so cheap as "public land hunting" become so expensive?
-Randy doesn't frequently mention that he spends 500-800 hours a year looking at past draw odds for every species in nearly every unit. He also spends hundreds of hours looking at OnX maps and finding ways to access nearly inaccessible public land. He often takes weeks scouting these lands to figure out if they are any good in the end as well.
-Then he enters drawings. If you're not a resident of a western state, your odds are not the same as Randy's nor are they cheap. Usually, your non-resident "try" for an elk tag is $400-$600 and in most states you have to spend $150-$300 to buy a non-resident hunting license to enter the drawing. Now you're not going to do this in just one place, you're doing it in a dozen states so that year over year, when you lose, you build preference points to hopefully draw the tag 2 years to 20 years later depending on minimum points required. Some states change their point rules making a decade of effort worthless, other states stop doing points altogether nullifying your efforts.
Randy's hunts do work a bit better for bowhunters that can often get over-the-counter tags in western units, but they rarely work well for rifle hunters. And if you have kids, your options for what states they can hunt at different ages make it hard to impossible to bring it altogether, and extra impossible if you're trying to draw tags WITH your kids as a party.
Again, I like Randy and I like his show very much. I like that he is encouraging people to exercise their rights and enjoy America's public lands. I just don't like the gloss over about how miserable, time-consuming, and fraught with costs trying to exercise those rights truly are.
I did the public land thing last year for me and my kid. I spent $21,000 on draw fees (most refunded 6 months later), $4000 on non-reimbursable fees, and then hired a guide to get me the trespass rights to get onto the checker-boarded public land where the game we had a tag for actually lived. All-in, we hunted one animal and it cost me $8000 with gas, room and board, travel, deposits, and about 200 hours to figure out how to get the right odds, units, and dates to draw a tag for my kid. Yes, he shot a record book oryx. Yes he drew a tag that was 1600:1 odds. Yes, he's the youngest kid in America to kill a New Mexico Oryx. The trip is priceless to us. However, I could have flown with my son to Namibia and watched him hunt native oryx for a week all-in for the same price including trophy fees and airfares. <- Just a real-world example.
If you have lots of time and put little value on your time, public land hunting will work fine for you. If you can work more hours or work harder in your day job, private land tags are a bargain compared to the aggravations that are falsely presented as simple on these programs.
The U. S. National Forest Service manages 193 million acres of public lands. The Bureau of Land Management manages 245 million acres. Both of these organizations are under the direction of the Department of Agriculture. These lands have to pay their way. They do this through timber cutting, mining, grazing of cattle, and recreational use. Recreational use includes camping, hiking, hunting, and fishing.
The wildlife found on these public lands are managed primarily by the state wildlife agencies. It is the sale of hunting and fishing licenses that make up a large part of their operating budget.
These public lands are a huge reservoir of wildlife from which the private lands can access the wildlife. The wildlife just has to jump the fence. During the peak of hunting season elk, mule deer, and other game animals move onto private lands to escape the hunting pressure.
If we all hunted only private lands, the hunting opportunities would be very small. If hunters, just hunted on private lands then the large acreages of public lands would only have a value for the timber companies and mining companies.
I do not have a large amount of experience hunting public lands. I have spent most of my career teaching young high school men to tackle the quarterback in Texas. However, last year after retiring from education I did hunt elk in Colorado with a bow. I did see elk. My knowledge and skills were not adequate to get me within bow range of the elk. The cost of the hunt was that of an out of state tag and the cost of traveling to Colorado from Texas. I camped and cooked my own food. The cost may have been$1500. I had a great deal of fun for 14 days.
I have drawn a black bear tag for the Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. That hunt was supposed to take place the first week of June this year. It has been postponed to the spring of 2022. Just a quick look at a fully guided black bear hunt on POW runs about $7500. My source
https://www.northernproguides.com/black-bear
My DIY hunt will run $1575 for a week at Coffman Cove Lodge. For the price they provide 7 night lodging, 3 meals a day, boat, butchering facilities and freezer space. Even with airplane tickets it is still cheaper than the guided hunt.
Coffman Cove Lodge:
https://www.coffmancoveak.com/bear_hunting.html
Randy Newberg spends a great deal of time discussing how to apply for tags across the Western U. S. As a CPA he also puts an emphasis on how to do it economically. Randy hosts a podcast where he shares this information. Yes, he will tell you he spends a great deal of time researching about where to go. All of us spend a great deal of time on the things we think are important.
Elk Talk Podcast:
Ultimately, this video is about chasing your dream. This October I plan to be in Idaho hunting elk. I will be doing this with an over the counter tag. I have hired an outfitter to guide me on this trip. The hunt will take place on public lands. I am using the guide because they provide a knowledge base about hunting elk in the mountains that this 55 year old Texas does not have time to learn. However, it was important to me that the hunt take place on public lands. That is mine dream. If you have a dream to hunt elk on private land, then you need to go chase that dream.
You will run out of time before you run out of money.
The public lands of the United States are our lands let's go use them.
