Non-Resident Tags Are About to get 100% More Expensive in Utah 💸

I’m currently at the “it’s Thursday already?” phase of the workweek and am unsure as to whether or not that is a good thing as of yet. For those of you who have also made it through, a pat on the back is deserved.

With that in mind, let’s all take a minute to grab a coffee or whiskey (no judgement) and get this Thursday morning dispatch out the door.

Here's what's worth reading about today:

• Mo’ money - Utah is giving non-res tags a big pricing lift 💸

• Cornered - Corner-crossing legalized across six states 🪜

• Shamefully killed - A pair of Alaskan teens slowly (and illegally) take out a moose with a .22 🔫

• Stagged - Watch as influencer gets handled by a big ol’ stag 🤳 

MO’ MONEY, MO’ NO PROBLEMS
NON-RESIDENT TAGS ARE ABOUT TO GET 100% MORE EXPENSIVE IN UTAH

When it comes to hunting the American west as a non-resident, you’d better have a good job and bring your checkbook with you. In a trend that has exploded over the past decade or so, most, if not all, western states have gone on a price-hike frenzy and the state of Utah is looking like the next one to follow suit.

Despite having raised prices for both residents and non-residents many times over the past five-or-so years, the state is now eyeing one of  its biggest increases yet. Sticking with the more popular option of targeting non-resident licenses, the Utah Department of Wildlife Resources, which remains 92% self-funded, has introduced a new appropriations bill entitled Senate Bill 8.

The nearly 300-page proposal outlines the potential increases to all non-resident hunting and fishing licenses while stating that the current pricing for resident hunting and fishing licenses will be left alone for the time being…

🪜 Corner-crossing is now legal across six states. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Western U.S. ruled that corner-crossing - or accessing public land at a common corner with private land - is now legal and protected by federal law. The decision now legalizes corner crossing between sections of federal land in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming.

The case originated from a group of Missouri hunters who crossed a corner shared by private and BLM land in 2020 and 2021. A ranch owner pressed criminal and civil trespass charges, citing that the hunters were trespassing during their momentary presence in the airspace above the private land while using a ladder to cross the corner. Despite the rulings in favor of the hunters, the property owners appealed the U.S. District court's dismissal of the civil case and the Wyoming Carbon County court's 2022 decision to find the four hunters innocent of criminal trespass charges. 

This week’s Appeals Court ruling reaffirmed the public's right to corner-cross, citing the Unlawful Inclosures Act of 1885. The court emphasized that the hunters never made contact with the private land's surface and didn't damage any property while they were doing it. The court then concluded that, “any inclosure of public lands is prohibited, and no one may completely prevent or obstruct another from peacefully entering or freely passing over or through public lands.”

🚔 Two Alaska teens charged for illegally shooting a moose a dozen times using a 22. A pair of 16-year-old boys from Akiachak, a lower Kuskokwim River community in western Alaska, are now facing multiple misdemeanor charges for violating fish and game laws. Alaska Wildlife Troopers allege that Brycen Lupie and Cupi Nose shot and killed a bull moose out of season near the community's airport earlier this month.

Responding to a community tip on March 5, Wildlife Troopers found a dead moose and recovered over a dozen .22 caliber bullet casings at the scene that later matched ammunition found in the boys' residences.

Despite being teenagers, Lupie and Nose are charged as adults under a specific Alaska statute. They face misdemeanor charges for wanton waste of big game, taking moose in a closed season, and using unlawful methods (a rimfire rifle). The arraignment is scheduled for April 10 in Bethel District Court.

🦌  If I’m that stag, I’d want a do-over.  In this edition of idiots getting waaaay too close to wildlife, we seem to be a European version given the ticked off stag. Getting a little too close, the stag gives her a nice little warning - but like I said, I’m not sure I’d have been that nice.

🗺️ Selous Gets Lost: He would eventually become one of the most famous and accomplished hunters of his time and a man of many distinctions, but in 1872 Frederick Courteney Selous was only nineteen years old and had just recently arrived in South Africa. It was his first visit to the continent he had read and dreamed about while growing up in England, and his first venture into the “far interior,” which was largely unmapped and roadless except for a few rutted wagon-track paths.

Young Fred’s plan was to explore with three new-met friends, hunt as much as possible, and make money shooting and trading for ivory, which at that time was still considered a legitimate–and sometimes profitable–profession. Read the full story.

👴 Dad’s Browning: When I was growing up in the late 1960s, my father had a gun cabinet in the living room. In the days before steel vaults, it was considered a centerpiece of décor. In the cabinet were the guns one would expect of a man who, to make ends meet, laid brick, painted houses and washed windows on his days off.

There was a Marlin bolt action .22, a Winchester Model 42 shotgun that his father has won on a punch board in the ’30s, a Winchester Model 88 (post 1964), a Remington pump .22, and a worn-out Winchester Model 97 purchased at a Western Auto store. But one piece stood out among the other working-class guns: a Belgium-made Browning Superposed 12 gauge.  Read the full story.

🫎 Fifty Inch Minimum:  The range is famous for its moose, and the Alaska game department decrees that any bull taken must be a minimum 50- inch spread. That’s four feet two inches wide. The particular subspecies here is the Alaska-Yukon, largest of the various moose that occur in North America, from Newfoundland in the east, across Canada, south into Idaho, and northwest onto the Alaska Peninsula.

Size is all relative. In Newfoundland, a 50-inch moose is huge, a hopeless dream; in Ontario, it’s an extremely fine trophy. But in the Alaska Range, it’s merely the legal minimum.

The game department backs up its dictum with severe penalties. Shoot an undersized bull, and they fine hunter and guide $3,500 each, as well as confiscate the animal. Needless to say, the subject of trophy estimation gets a good workout around the table in the cook tent. Back in camp, we had a half-dozen heads taken by clients this year, ranging in size from the low 50s to the mid-60s. The widest was a 64-incher taken the week before I arrived. Read the full story.

Oh, and one more thing…