Financial Returns To Industry From The Federal Aid - Wildlife and ...

The program creatively used the antlered (bull and buck) and antlerless tags the UDWR
was issuing as incentives for private landowners to open up their land for public hunting.
Prior to the creation of the CWMU program, the agency was having difficulty meeting its
big-game population objectives in many game-management units that were
predominantly private lands.
The CWMU program permitted the UDWR to allow qualified landowners to sell biggame
tag vouchers directly to hunters at whatever price the market would support. The
vouchers were redeemable at the UDWR for big-game tags.
In return for this important economic incentive, the private landowners had to agree to
allow the public access to their land. In addition, a certain percentage of both antlered
and antlerless tags were reserved for public drawings at their face value. In 2009, 2,700
bull and buck tags and 1,500 antlerless tags were issued through the program.
The precise allocation of the tags varies with the wildlife-management option that
individual landholders select. However, approximately 80 % of the bull tags are sold
through the cooperating landowners to resident and non-resident hunters, and
approximately 80% of the antlerless tags are available to resident hunters via public
drawings. The demand for these tags remains high, and in many of the popular units it
may take several years to draw a tag. The tag vouchers sold by cooperating landowners
can be purchased annually and are available based on market conditions.
To qualify to participate in the CWMU program, landowners had to meet minimum
acreages and have a wildlife-management plan. The minimum land holding needed to
participate in the deer and antelope program is 5,000 acres. This increases to 10,000
acres for participation in the elk and moose program. In many situations, adjacent
landowners pool their lands in order to qualify. In 2009, approximately 2.1 million acres
of private land was enrolled in the program and opened to public hunting.
The wildlife-management plans were cooperatively developed between the UDWR and
the landowners. They included population goals, permit numbers and allocations, as
well as habitat-improvement programs. Each plan is updated annually. The program is
working so well that many landowners are now including wildlife in their ranching
operational plans.
UDWR's investment has averaged approximately, $150,000 of Wildlife Restoration
funds matched with $50,000 of state funding each year since 1993 14 . This investment
consists largely of the staff time biologists devote to developing and updating the
wildlife-management plans.
As a result, in 2009, approximately 11,655 hunter-days were generated by bull and buck
tag holders and 7,500 hunter-days were generated by antlerless tag holders. In years
past, Utah has issued up to at least 3,500 bull and buck tags as well as 3,000 antlerless
14 It is important to note that, as part of a larger comprehensive management project, Utah’s CWMU programmatic
tracking of investments provides only an estimate of funds invested.
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