Take Back Your Elk Report

Who hunts elk in New Mexico? And why do we care?

We've recently become unofficial "experts"' on the topic. Something you might not expect from a marketing agency. But when the New Mexico Wildlife Federation and the New Mexico Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers brought us on board their TakeBackYourElk campaign, we had to take a deep dive into the data to help shed light on the inequalities at play in the hunting sector.

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From dense data to storytelling: NMWF came to us with a dense report, filled with data, on the elk tag distribution in New Mexico. They needed help making the information more digestible and easy to access for everyone. We prepared a reader-friendly report, adding photos and infographics, highlighting important information, and breaking the information up into chunks that could easily convey the big message. (See full report).

This was a highly collaborative project as we worked for weeks with staff at NMWF and other stakeholders to review information, confirm data structures, and finalize the tone and language of this report. We knew we were done when we could ask someone to flip through the report and they could outline the key points of the report after reading:
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1. Elk are the most valuable big game in New Mexico
2. There are quota laws that dictate how elk tags are allocated to licensed hunters. 
3. Though 84% of tags should be allocated to NM residents through the public draw, only 52% are making it to the public draw after the rest are privatized.
4. In this structure, NM residents are missing out on their right to hunt through the public draw as more out of state hunters purchase tags from private landowners for a higher price. 

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We've been thrilled that the report has been shared widely by prominent political figures in the United States as well as important outdoorsman publications, podcasts, news channels, and more.​

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