Tag Archives: Montana bighorn

Craig Boddington: Submit your Hunting Permit Applications Now!

Craig Boddington: Submit your Hunting Permit Applications Now!

Tag Time: Not in the Drawings? Now is the Time! (Craig Boddington)

North American hunters enjoy an amazing bounty of both wildlife and opportunity, but things almost didn’t turn out this way. By 1900, most of our large game species were in serious trouble. Protection and management brought them back, some to incredible plenty, such as our 35 million whitetail deer. Along the winding road to recovery, a unique system of wildlife management developed that we call the North American Model.

Photo: Craig Boddington
My Dad and I with a wonderful Montana bighorn, the first sheep tag I drew. Concerned about disease caused by overpopulation, Montana doubled the tags in this unit after the applications were in. It takes luck, but you must apply! “SUBMIT YOUR HUNTING PERMIT APPLICATIONS NOW!”

The North American Model is said to have seven tenets:

  1. Wildlife as a public trust resource
  2. Elimination of markets for game
  3. Wildlife allocated by law
  4. Taking of wildlife only for legitimate purposes
  5. Wildlife considered an international resource
  6. Science as the proper tool
  7. Democracy of hunting

Implicit in the model is the principle is that hunters and anglers provide the primary funding. The first and the last tenants—which hold that we believe wildlife belongs to everyone, not just private landowners or the government—are almost unheard of elsewhere in the world.

The last tenant, democracy of hunting, holds that all citizens in good standing may hunt—subject to seasons and licensing requirements, of course. Due to scarcer resources, both science and law dictate that not everyone can have a license every season. We have a system that allocates permits by a public drawing, a system that serves as one of the very best examples of the democracy of hunting that we enjoy.

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