Hunting Wyoming's rarest animals now easier for residents

SHERIDAN — Starting in July, Wyoming hunters will have increased chances to hunt the big five game animals in Wyoming: moose, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, bison and grizzly bears.

During its recently completed session, the Wyoming Legislature passed House Enrolled Act 10, which aims to increase local hunting opportunities for some of Wyoming’s rarest and most coveted animals. It does this through a two-prong plan.

The first prong is to limit big five hunting licenses to once-in-a-lifetime events: once you receive a license for one of these animals, you are unable to apply again.

Currently, hunters who receive a big five license have to wait five years before applying for another one, Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Brian Nesvik said. That five-year waiting period will still apply for those wishing to hunt cow/calf moose and bison and ewe/lamb bighorn sheep, while all other big five animals will conform with the new once-in-a-lifetime rule.

The second prong of the plan is to institute a 90-10 split for big five licenses, with local hunters receiving 90% of the licenses and out-of-state hunters receiving 10%.

Nesvik said the current splits vary per animal. 

Bighorn sheep, mountain goats, grizzly bears and bison have 75-25 splits while moose are split 80-20.

As Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, pointed out during first reading of the bill in the Senate, the change to a 90-10 split will increase licenses available to local sportsmen but not by a lot.

“It will result in more licenses for your resident hunters, but please help them understand this is going to go from being extremely rare…to just very, very rare,” Landen said. “It’s not going to help that much because there’s just not that many of them…I just hope we haven’t raised the expectations too high. I think we’ve done some good here, but there’s still not a lot of these licenses.”

The change will shift 31 moose licenses, 30 bighorn sheep licenses, 11 wild bison licenses, nine mountain goat licenses and six bison cow/calf licenses from nonresident to resident, according to the Legislative Service Office. 

Grizzly bears are currently an endangered species and cannot be hunted. However, the new big five rules would apply if the endangered species designation is ever lifted.

If there are any losers in the changes to license allocations, it’s out-of-state hunters and the local economies they support every year, Rep. John Winter, R-Thermopolis said.

“We’re just throwing these non-resident hunters over a cliff and down into a canyon,” Winter said during the first reading of the bill in the House. “They’ve been so supportive of the state of Wyoming. They bring their families back, and they spend a lot of money in this state, and we just don’t need to rid ourselves of the nonresidents. Those people are pretty irritated, and we need to protect them where we can.”

While the exact economic toll of the change on local economies is unknown, the Legislative Service Office calculates WGFD will lose $198,680 a year from the change.

WGFD charges significantly more for nonresident fees. For example, the nonresident fee for bighorn sheep is $2320 while the resident fee is only $152. For bison, the nonresident fee is $4402 while the resident fee is only $414.

The changes to Big 5 license allocations were drafted by the Wyoming Wildlife Taskforce, comprising 18 members including hunters, legislators and landowners from across the state. The task force, which also included local outfitters and representatives of the tourism industry, approved the change unanimously, and that solidarity ultimately won over some opponents of the change, including Sen. Mike Gierau, D-Jackson.

“When the task force — including outfitters and folks from my own community — unanimously voted for it, what can I say except it’s a good bill,” Gierau said during the first reading of the bill in the Senate.