Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting MT Seeks Public Input on Elk Hunting Seasons

I agree. I also think that we the public owe the land owners nothing. If they think there are too many elk, there are plenty of opportunities to reduce the numbers during the ten week season. I am very much against anything that would give land owners a larger role in game management ( deciding who gets to hunt what and when) than the average guy. It is thier land and they absolutely have the right to grant access to who they want, but they should have no role in deciding what those people are allowed to shoot.

Well put.

I assume you're not talking about a landowner who would let people onto his property to reduce the herd by shooting cows only?

I have two left feet, am blind in one eye and cross-eyed in the other and have kids that are getting to old to hunt, and I don't hunt hunt elk very much, but I have an opportunity to kill an elk most years, but the novelty of packing one of those things out to the road has lost a lot of it's novelty.
I also spend a LOT of time looking for critters that will stand still long enough to let my palsied fingers snap a photo of them. I see a LOT of elk. I see more elk than I do mule deer, usually. Last elk rifle season, I saw somewhere around 500 elk, lots of them on public land that was closed off by private land. I don't know how many more elk the habitat will support, but it seems to my feeble mind that there is no dearth of them as it is. Some places have fewer elk than before- The late season elk hunts in Gardiner are over, much to the sadness of ammo manufacturers, resident buzzards and magpies, but YNP was getting badly overgrazed. I know this because standing beside one of the fenced control areas outside of Gardiner, there was a huge contrast- vegetation inside the control area was knee high, and outside, it barely reached over the soles of my boots. When it began to rain, the run-off from gentle slopes looked like chocolate milk.
If you think elk hunting is tough now, just let the big land owners dictate game management policies.

Not sure if you were replying to my post. Are you saying that a landowner who will let people on his property to shoot cows (or does) only is dictating game management policy?

Smokepole
No, I wasn't referring to your post. You raise an excellent point, and I don't know the answer to that- Haven't thought about it much. What I had in mind when I posted is when landowners have enough power to dictate what seasons are going to be established and demanding that FWP manage elk populations on the landowners property.
I don't know if it's the same landowners or that are involved both ways, but here in Montana where we have landowners complaining about too many elk, yet some landowners do things like close roads that are legally open to prevent hunters from accessing public land, and passing the corner crossing bill to prevent landowners from accessing public land so that the can have exclusive use of that public land, often to outfit on.

Thanks Royce. No easy answers but I hope you guys get it figured out.

It seems to me the epicenter of this thread is landowner complaining, what excess or benefits is this to the general non-land owner public etc. My feelings are focus should be on what is in the best interest of elk management and elk herd health, of which I have heard little. I also believe that the outfitter/landowner locking people out is greatly exaggerated. I like the idea that there are areas that are off limits to the general public. If every square inch of Montana was open to the general public, how long would it be before every trophy bull and buck was in the back of somebody's pickup? Also, it has been said the elk belong to the public, and this is true, and landowners who hoard elk are entitled to nothing, the latter is not true. If the land belongs to somebody, and the elk that are on it belongs to the people, should not the landowner be compensated for caretaking and providing for the states elk? Should not the landowner have some say for the personal resources it takes to sustain an elk herd? Also, is not the general public also responsible for the conduct on private property that causes a lot of gates to be shut to begin with? These are honest questions that require some thought. How many of you, if you owned a big ranch or vast tracks of property would open it up to the general public?

I agree that it should be about the health of the elk, but MT elk "objectives" are set by tolerance/politics, so that's out the window from the start. If a landowner is truly "hoarding" public wildlife, why do they deserve any government assistance? If they want to minimize game "damage", there's this tool called hunting, and being that the resource is valuable, the landowner can profit off it. We have a ten week season. But apparently that's not good enough. And even before the new 7 months of hunting (with the new shoulder seasons) even kick off in MT, they're changing the rules already, this time letting the landowners hand pick the hunters instead of a fair roster.

http://fwp.mt.gov/news/publicNotices/rules/pn_0168.html

FWP has dumped close to 2 Million in the last 5 years on "damage". But I suppose as long as some guys get to get out and smash a couple cows in February, to put some "meat in the freezer" all is good and well.

So what is being argued then, is that the people who are forced to board the publics wildlife can only address their losses by allowing the public to trespass on their property and kill said wildlife, and, they have no say in who those trespassers are? (I use the term trespass is simply somebody on somebody else's property, not in the illegal sense.)

I am no fan of leasing. I lease one property a 200 acre river bottom ranch for my livestock. We also hay the ranch. I know first hand the agitation of watching critters eat away your hay crop. We allowed bow hunting on the lease in 2011, after open gates, truck tracks in the hay field, and broad heads found in the horse pasture where we absolutely forbid shooting, we ended it after one season.

I think the larger problem isn't private ownership of ranches, or of the outfitting, rather, it is the new dynamic of the property buyer. Many people are moving to Montana and buying large parcels that have a different political mindset about hunting the old school Montana rancher.

It seems to me the general public, despite have millions of acres of public land, is constantly complaining about where they can't hunt, instead of enjoying the bounty the Montana offers in the form of public land. Public land in which many have contributed little or nothing in tax dollars to support, but still use right along with those who have paid much more in taxes. That is the beauty in the system. The other beauty is that anybody can buy their own private hunting paradise, as private property affords us that opportunity.

Forced to board? Seriously?
Fence them out.

Shoot more wolves.