ROSWELL, N.M. -- Southeastern New Mexico's pronghorn antelope have been eating crops and landscaping, and have even been found grazing on soccer fields, a state Game and Fish Department official says.

The department plans to let hunters shoot up to 1,000 pronghorn antelope in the Roswell area in an effort to reduce the herds, the Albuquerque Journal reported Thursday in a copyright story.

The agency later this year will dole out 900 hunting license authorizations to Roswell-area landowners, who then can sell the authorizations to hunters who pay hundreds of dollars for a single tag.

Farmers and ranchers have long complained about antelope destroying their crops and fields.

Robert Saint Louis, a farmer and rancher near Roswell, said he's lost big crops to pronghorns. He said a neighbor refers to his place as "Bob's Cafe."

"When (animals) see lush, tender alfalfa, it's like filet mignon to them," he said.

However, a sportsman's group disagrees with the license authorization plan. Jeremy Vesbach, director of the 7,000-member New Mexico Wildlife Federation, said game reduction hunts shouldn't include a profit motive.

"It's a twisted incentive," he said. "There should not be money changing hands."

Vesbach said public hunters handle reduction hunts in other states, and landowners who believe they have too many animals on their land allow those hunters in for free.

Saint Louis said he spent $40,000 last fall planting a 105-acre alfalfa field the antelope quickly mowed down.

Ranchers "should have the right to recuperate some of those lost profits" from the toll antelope take on their crops, he said.

"They come in every night at sunset and they graze all night, and they leave in the morning," said Saint Louis, who raises alfalfa, hay and oats just north of Roswell.

"How many of these Wildlife Federation people would let people camp in their house ... and eat from their refrigerator?" he asked.

Jay Hollifield, who farms and ranches southwest of Roswell, said antelope herds that need to be cut "have been eating my pasture throughout the course of time. I don't get any kind of compensation for that?"

Hollifield said he's spent more than $15,000 on fences over the past few years to keep the animals out. Otherwise, he said, "antelope would be eating me out of house and home."

There are an estimated 1,300 to 1,600 antelope in the Roswell area, said Mark Madsen, spokesman for the Game and Fish Department's Roswell office. The herd continues to grow because of an abundance of crops.

The department wants to reduce the herd to 500 to 750.

The agency's plan calls for 900 authorizations for landowners and 100 to public land hunters by lottery. Madsen said most of the authorizations go to landowners because most of the land in the area is private.