How Much Does "Elk Money" Drive Conservation?

At press time, elk season was a memory with the approach of the new year, and hunters everywhere were gearing up for some elk tag applications and praying for luck as 2024 arrived on the calendar. With the dawn of a new year, the money tied into the elk hunting world is big and getting bigger, so for this edition of Elkology, we decided to go all in on Tom Cruise’s Jerry Maguire character and say, “Show Me the Elk Money!”

When the topic turns to elk hunting, the money that flows is enviable in the sport’s eight main hunting states scattered across the West. But just how big that money actually is often proves difficult to nail down since there are differences in reporting dates, data categories, and there’s no nationwide clearing house or centralized database to gather such information specifically regarding elk hunting.

While the 2022 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation report from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service found that there were 14.4 million people age 16 and older who hunted in the United States that year, and a total of $45.2 billion in total hunting expenditures, we are limited because the report only breaks the numbers down into a big-game hunters subcategory with 11.5 million hunters chasing deer, elk, bear, and wild turkey.

Big Spending

For some sort of ballpark idea of just how big the elk hunting money actually is, start with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s (RMEF) nationwide estimated elk population of somewhere around 1.1 million wapiti (realizing that includes some elk east of the Continental Divide). To go further, it’s worth examining information from other sources like the Wildlife Informer website that narrows statewide elk numbers down a bit more, including Colorado (290,000); Montana (135,000); Idaho (120,000); Wyoming (112,900); New Mexico (80,000); Utah (74,000); Arizona (40,000); and Nevada (17,750). While that’s not license sales data, it does give clues about where the greatest sales of elk hunting tags will be found.

Keep in mind that in addition to the tags themselves, there are also various monies brought into state coffers by things like application prerequisites (small- and big-game license purchases, habitat stamps, application fees, and other things necessary to even apply) and it’s difficult to zero in on exact financial figures. But for the Great 8 elk hunting states noted above, non-resident tag expenditures have looked something like this in recent years: Arizona ($650); Idaho ($651); Wyoming ($707); Colorado ($760); New Mexico ($548 or $773); Utah ($1,050); Montana ($1,055); and Nevada ($1,201).

While total hunter numbers exist for each state thanks to the USFWS, specific elk hunter numbers, or in the absence of such data, the number of elk hunting permits actually sold (which can include one hunter purchasing more than one permit each year), give some clues. Colorado leads the way again with 223,000, followed by Montana (114,000); Idaho (88,551); Wyoming (57,000); Utah (53,178); New Mexico (38,024); Arizona (23,070); and Nevada (4,126).

With the average tag price from above being approximately $856 to hunt a bull elk alone as a non-resident, the final number for total elk license revenue from the eight main states is massive and then some.

Other States' Elk Money

As with western states that generate good portions of their income from elk hunting, it’s tough to accurately gauge what’s coming into state coffers for states in the Great Plains, the Midwest, even back East where Rocky Mountain elk have been reintroduced over the years to help bring back herds extirpated in the 1700s and 1800s. Elk herds are much smaller in those states, barely a blip on the radar compared to the West. Most state herds number in the hundreds, with a few numbering into the thousands. With small herds and limited tags, a number of these states offer fledgling hunts with precious few tags given out. A few other have more robust elk numbers, greater tag allocations, and more money generated by the endeavor, primarily through thousands of application fees being processed.

Take Virginia, for instance, which celebrated 10 years of elk restoration with its first elk-hunting license lottery in 2022. To have a chance at one of the five tags available meant a $15 application fee for residents and a $20 fee for non-residents. Altogether, more than 30,000 applications were received, generating $513,000 last year, including the sale of the tags for $40 to four residents and $400 for one non-resident. That doesn’t include a Conservation License given to RMEF for a raffle, which generated another $93,000 to be used in the Commonwealth’s Buchanan County.

Kentucky, the source of Virginia’s reintroduced elk, has a sustainable population built from 1,541 elk translocated from western states from 1997 through 2002. The Bluegrass State elk hunting program is one of the most robust in the East, awarding 594 tags in 2022 for a hunt that dates back to 2001. State officials indicate that there are more than 10,000 elk in the state, the highest of any state east of the Mississippi.

To hunt elk in Kentucky, both residents and non-residents pay an application fee of $10. If drawn, resident licenses range between $30 and $100 (for youth permits, cow permits, bull tags, either sex permits, and a few more special license categories) while non-resident prices range from $200 to $550 for the same. With a total of 94,295 applicants last year — many from out-of-state thanks to Kentucky’s generous 57 non-resident tags offered in 2022 — that’s nearly a million dollars generated just from application monies alone. And with a report indicating that the state’s elk hunting program generated a $3.1 million economic impact last year, Kentucky’s growing fame isn’t just reserved for the Kentucky Derby and bourbon production anymore.

Boutique Opportunities?

What is happening in other states east of the Rockies? For states like South Dakota and its 6,000 elk and Oklahoma and its 5,000 elk, the financial results will be closer to Kentucky’s windfall. For states with smaller herds and hunting programs in their early years, the results will be much closer to Virginia’s example. But elk numbers continue to build back east and the states that have enough wapiti to hunt are likely looking at some increasing revenue in the years ahead.

RMEF Has Financial Clout – As the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2024, there’s little doubt that the elk hunting world has reaped a huge benefit from the vision that four hunters had back in 1984. Founded in Troy, Mont., on May 17 of that year, there were approximately 550,000 elk back then, compared with some 1.1 million or more wapiti today.

With nearly 14,000 conservation and hunting heritage projects now completed, RMEF estimates have seen some 8.6 million acres conserved or enhanced, along with more than 1.5 million acres of public access opened or improved on public land. The RMEF also has more than 225,000 members who go to banquets in more than 500 chapters nationwide.

In 2022, the RMEF Annual Report indicated that the RMEF netted $8.8 million and had a program expenditure of $61 million, marking a record year in event-based fundraising for the organization, as well as a very successful year in donation revenue. To get its work done, RMEF relies on funds generated by banquets, contributions it helps broker for work with various agencies, the leveraging of matching funds and grants, and partnerships with landowners, businesses, and agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, the BLM, and state agencies. As a 501(c)(3) organization, RMEF has a four-star charitable organization rating and received a Charity Navigator rating of 96% for Fiscal Year 2021.

The bottom line is that RMEF has its own significant financial footprint in the elk hunting world, and it leverages its monies for effective work on the ground. And RMEF has more than 12,000 volunteers who do much sweaty work in local projects because they believe in the organization and its mission.

Money Lost to the Howl

Figuring out the financial loss to rural communities as reintroduced wolves wreaked havoc on elk numbers is difficult and depends on whose graphics and pie charts you believe. While some like to tout overall elk herd numbers and met population goals to claim that wolves have little impact, others like former RMEF CEO David Allen disagree, as was the case in an editorial he wrote for an Oregon newspaper to refute claims that wolves aren’t that big of a deal on the elk landscape. “Since the reintroduction of wolves in the mid-1990s, the population of the Northern Yellowstone elk herd is down 80 percent from nearly 20,000 to less than 4,000 today,” Allen wrote in 2017. “In the mid-2000s, some biologists claimed the elk population stabilized in the 6,000-plus range, yet since that time the herd dropped another 30 percent and is now below the 4,000 mark for the first time ever! The story is similar in central Idaho where the elk population dropped 43% since 2002, and there are other pockets with high concentrations of wolves having an effect on elk populations.”

Impacts are severe on local communities that depend in part on dollars spent by hunters to help keep cafes, hotels, small-town grocery and supply stores going strong from year to year. Suffering most of all? Families that depend on outfitting as vast regions became devoid of elk. Little has changed: The ongoing western wolf wars, a sea of litigation, and court rulings like one last year that resulted in the USFWS taking action in November 2023 to restore federal protections of the gray wolf under the ESA.

Animal rights activists continue their push to restore wolves and keep them protected, and that led to the December 2023 wolf reintroduction in Colorado, home to the nation’s biggest elk herd.  Colorado State University published a study a few years back titled “Wolves, Big Game, and Hunting,” which looked at the impacts of wolves on big-game herds and hunting success across the West. It claimed while elk are above management goals in some districts, many are below elk management goals, and “The impact of wolves on elk, deer, and other big game is complicated.”

Unleashing wolves after a winter that decimated herds in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah is a disaster. Current RMEF president Kyle Weaver says there has to be a better way. “Scientists, biologists, and professional wildlife managers agree wolf populations are stable and growing,” said Weaver. “They should remain under the umbrella of state management since state wildlife agencies successfully manage all other wildlife in line with the North American Wildlife Conservation Model through regulated hunting and trapping.” And the cash registers of little, small-town mom-and-pop stores where elk hunting is big business couldn’t agree more.

---