Wildlife Commission Advances Pronghorn and Bighorn Rules

By Ben Neary/NMWF

Proposed rules for management of New Mexico’s pronghorn, bighorn sheep for the coming four years moved closer to final adoption Thursday at a meeting of the state wildlife commission.

Stewart Liley, chief biologist with the New Mexico Department of Wildlife, presented proposed rule changes to the state wildlife commission. The commission will take final action on these rules and others later in the year.

Liley is recommending that the commission increase regulations on private land hunting for pronghorn and other species in this rule-making cycle. Current regulations have allowed landowners in some areas to sell unlimited authorizations that allow hunters to purchase licenses without going through the public draw.

The game commission started allowing landowners to issue unlimited permit authorizations in 2019. Last year, faced with falling pronghorn numbers in the northeast, the commission set restrictions on private land tags.

For the pending new rules, Liley is recommending that the commission consider imposing caps on private land license sales for pronghorn and deer. He’s also recommending that the commission require registration of ranches that offer pronghorn and deer tags similar to existing registration requirements for ranches that issue elk permit authorizations.

The New Mexico Wildlife Federation and others have called on the commission to require all big game tags to be issued through the public draw. 

In comments to game commissioners Thursday in Socorro, NMWF Executive Director Jesse Deubel stated that it’s the job of game department biologists and the commission to set scientific harvest numbers for big game – not something that should be left to ranchers to decide.

“We’re supportive of the changes to the pronghorn rule, we think they’re a step in the right direction,” Deubel said. 

Deubel told commissioners that the game department used to have staff biologists evaluate individual ranches and set permit numbers. “With this system that we’re going toward, we’re still relying on landowners to make the decision on how many animals to take,” he said. 

Brandon Wynn, an Albuquerque hunter who pushes for increased public hunting opportunity, told commissioners New Mexico gives 65 percent of pronghorn tags to private landowners. “It’s impossible to overstate how unusual that number is and how high it is,” he said. “It’s 20 times higher than any other western state.”

Wynn urged commissioners to make more pronghorn tags available to the general public. “Put these tags in the draw, call it good and act like a normal state,” he said. He emphasized that the game department hasn’t yet specified what the caps on private land hunting would be under the final rule the commission will vote on.

Liley told commissioners that the state reduced the pronghorn buck harvest in the northeast quadrant of the state by almost 800. Statewide, the game department sold just over 6,400 pronghorn licenses in 2024 and just over 5,500 in 2025.

Kerrie Romero, with the New Mexico Council of Outfitters and Guides, told commissioners her group favors the staff proposal to require ranch registration and to cap tag numbers.

On the pending bighorn sheep rule, Deubel noted that 18 New Mexico legislators recently asked AG Raul Torrez for a formal, legal opinion on how the state issues licenses. 

Torrez’s office hasn’t yet responded to the legislator’s request for an opinion on the legality of the commission’s longstanding practice of lumping all desert bighorn hunts together, and lumping all Rocky Mountain bighorn hunts together, under single hunt codes. That action brings the total number of tags high enough in each hunt code to trigger the state law that requires setting aside 10 percent of the tags in the public draw for hunters who contract with registered outfitters. Most such hunters are nonresidents.

The NMWF has protested over the years that the practice of lumping the bighorn tags together violates the state law definition of a hunt code. The AG’s Office stated a few years ago that the bighorn lumping practice was permissible.

Deubel told commissioners that he would challenge them to think of the bighorn tag-lumping issue beyond whether it’s strictly legal. He reminded them that wildlife in the state belongs to state residents and said it’s commissioners’ primary duty to represent them.

The commission will vote on the final rules later this year and they will go into effect for the hunting seasons that start next year.