Make lotteries unlimited

W

e’ve just witnessed the irresistible lure of taking a chance with lotteries when millions of people played a game for billions of dollars. Some stood freezing in lines for hours to get their tickets, knowing the odds against them were millions to one. 

The players included everyone from the very wealthy to people on welfare so it isn’t just the average person hooked on that sort of game. In the winter of 1986 I wrote a column which contains wonderfully expanded ideas for raising money with drawings. Let us take a second look:

“What was that? Seventy nine thousand dollars? Yes! Alright do I hear eighty thousand? Going once … going twice … last call … sold to the gentleman from Oregon for SEVENTY NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS.”

We’ve all heard the story by now. Art Dubbs of Medford, Oregon planked down $79,000 at the auction in Honolulu, Hawaii last week for the right to come to Montana this fall and try to shoot a trophy bighorn ram. He may hunt in any of the 35 designated wild sheep hunting areas and the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep will furnish the guide, and a taxidermist … if needed. The state of Montana gets $71,100 for bighorn research and development and the Foundation keeps 10 percent for expenses. (The past record high bid for this kind of a money-raising deal was $67,500 paid for a Nevada desert bighorn permit in 1984.)

Some folks in Montana are upset about lettin’ a “furriner” come in here and shoot one of our sheep, especially when they know the odds of them getting their own name drawn for such a permit are about one in a thousand. Frankly, I like the idea. With all that Oregon money maybe we can get some more sheep bands going. In fact, we shouldn’t stop with just auctioning off sheep permits.

This Big Sky Country isn’t called the “Treasure State” for nothin’. We’ve got all sorts of rare and exotic things to auction off to out-of-state folks, workin’ with a larger than average poke. Next year we should try a drawing for a really big Glacier Park grizzly bear. There is a budget crunch for the park, and if some guy from Oregon will pay $79,000 to have a bighorn sheep head over his fireplace, who knows what a giant trophy griz might bring? Maybe a couple hundred thousand.

I can hear the cries of you folks who want more grizzlies, but wait. The big griz auction wouldn’t be limited to those who like to hunt. If the Audubon Society or the Friends for Animals wants to bid, the more the merrier. Should one of them win the drawing they can dart him and take him home, leave him in the Park, or transplant him to an area that needs grizzlies more than we do. The choices here are unlimited, it gives everyone a chance to put their money where their mouth is, and the big bucks roll in for grizzly research, management, and transplant programs.

In some future column I hope to present details on ways and means to auction off multi-purpose dam sites on the lower Flathead River, fishing licenses for the Creston hatchery, bow and arrow hunts on the National Bison Range, or the right to be buried on top of a major Montana peak.

I’m so excited, I might run for the Legislature.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning columnist for Hungry Horse News. He lives in Kalispell.