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Yes, buying a Wyoming RESIDENT fishing or hunting license requires a year’s residency in the state.

When you buy a fishing or hunting license, you are required to certify that you meet the year’s residency requirement, under oath. To meet this requirement, you have to show that you are actually domiciled in the state.

Here is the language from the Fish & Game Department’s circulars on the matter:

“To qualify for a resident game and fish license, a person shall be domiciled and physically reside in Wyoming for one (1) full year immediately preceding the date the person applies for the license. Additionally, the person must not claim residency elsewhere for any purpose during the previous year. Each person must establish his or her residency independently. A person is considered “domiciled” if he/she physically resides in Wyoming, intends on making Wyoming his/her permanent home, is not residing in Wyoming for a special or temporary purpose, has abandoned domicile in all other states and has physically resided in Wyoming for one (1) year immediately preceding the date of application. Neither property ownership nor a Wyoming mailing address is sufficient evidence of domicile. Domicile is established and maintained by the total intent and actions of a person. Residence may be maintained when a person is absent from Wyoming for a temporary or special purpose such as for employment, education, and travel of a short period of time.

A resident is also any active member, the spouse or minor child of any active member of the Armed Forces of the United States who has been stationed in Wyoming for ninety (90) days, so long as the member remains stationed in Wyoming. A Wyoming resident who enters the military from Wyoming maintains resident status if he/she declares Wyoming as his/her home of record, maintains Wyoming voting registration, is on active duty, and does not claim residency elsewhere. Military personnel who establish residency by being domiciled in Wyoming for one year, then change their home of record to Wyoming, retain residency as long as they make no claim of residency for any purpose in any other state except military hunting or fishing privileges that might be allowed in that state.”

Now, a whole bunch of you people from other states are going to huff and puff about how you can buy a tag or fishing license the day you walk into the DMV and get your driver’s license changed over. Well, that’s there. Your state isn’t Wyoming. You don’t have non-residents paying 10’s of thousands of dollars to hunt in your state. You don’t have people paying a quarter-mil+ to buy 40 acres here or there to try to get landowner tags in your state (they should pay closer attention, you need to own 160, minimum). You don’t have the richer-than-thou assholes of Jackson flying in on G-5’s to go hunting in your state, trying to claim “residency” when they’re at their Jackson condo for maybe a whole three weeks a year.

We do. There are people who are trying to live outside Wyoming and “game” their way into resident tags and fishing licenses all the time. People with lots of money and lawyers try to pull these charades.

The year domiciled residency is how we handle it. It’s there for a reason, and that reason is embodied by rich carpetbaggers like Lizzie Cheney flying in here and claiming that they’re residents when they’re not. They try to claim residency to duck income taxes from other states, while not actually living in Wyoming. OK, that’s a tax issue for another state, they’re not breaking any law in Wyoming and we don’t care.

But when a real resident has been putting in for years (like five to 20 years) to accumulate enough points to go on a bull elk hunt in the unit they want, or they’ve been buying bonus points for most of their life to hunt bighorn, I’ve got news for you people who think that you should be able to just waltz in here and buy licenses out of the state resident pool of licenses: You’re going to get your heads handed to you in a paper bag for taking that position.

As for Lizzie Cheney: I heard her interviewed on the local radio station. She phoned in rather than appear in a sit-down interview at the radio station. That was strike one.

Second, she bafflegabbed answers. She wouldn’t answer a question on how long she’d stay in office, which is BS, given that she’s claiming to run against Enzi because Enzi has been office for too long. She claims that the “voters should decide.”

Third, she claims that the problem is that Enzi (and others) have become members of “the club” in DC.

Sheeaaaaa, riiiight. She is a creature of DC already. She’s already a member of the club. She isn’t from Wyoming. She claimed to have been “raised on Wyoming values,” and be a “fourth generation Wyomingite” and so on - but she clearly has no experience in the state. If she really had any experience in Wyoming, she would never have made the mistake with the fishing license, because EVERYONE in Wyoming knows the residency requirement for resident licenses. EVERYONE. It isn’t as tho the G&F department makes it a subtle issue. EVERY time you apply for a license, WY F&G makes sure you know that the year domiciled issue is there. Even now that I meet the requirement for five years now, I am required to certify that I meet the residency requirements, every single time I apply for any license or tag.

I warned people on other threads about Lizzie Cheney that this was going to blow up over the fact that she declared for Senate when she couldn’t even meet the residency requirements for buying a resident fishing/hunting license. The fact that she went and bought a resident license before she had been in her house 90 days (which closed in May, 2012), means that she’s a typical rich jet-set outsider.

Buying a house in the Jackson area? Huge negative. Buying a home in the Jackson area and they buying a resident license when she didn’t meet the requirement? Stick a fork in her, she’s done.

BTW, for those from the east who think you can waltz into any other western state and claim residency for F&G licenses: Nope. Most other states require six months. Wyoming, thanks to having a built-in bunch of jerks in Jackson, jacked it up to a year.