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I just looked at their website. 6 of the 10 members of the Board of Directors are also employed by major outdoor companies (Kimber, Yeti, Field & Stream, petersen's hunting, First Lite, etc). THis is not necessarily bad, but I wonder...for example, with the Bear's ears monument fight, I learned that the pro-monument side was powered by major outdoor companies such as as REI and Patagonia, and there is evidence that these companies may be mostly interested in supporting and expanding the high volume "industrial tourism" that supports their business, with no regard for other concerns. This can lead to hypocrisy and serious conflicts of interest (lots of good articles in the Canyon Country Zephyr about this, for example http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/...hompson-high-country-news-by-jim-stiles/).

I was also a member of BHA from the beginning but dropped out after a representative of the local chapter came down on what seems to me to be the wrong side of the 2nd amendment regarding assault rifles, and then Mr. Tawney proclaimed the acquittal of the Malhuer NWR defendants as a travesty, attack on our public lands, etc, while never even ackowledging that the reason for the acquittals was prosecutorial overreach and misconduct that were great examples of where our federal govenment has lost it's way. I worte Mr. Tawney about this but received no response.

On balance the BHA may actually be a worthwhile organization...I might sing up again but not sure yet. I e mailed them to ask for a financial statement and tax return.

WISC

Tawney is no friend to either hunters or 2A advocates. Another green decoy.

Everything I have seen of these guys is driven by the more wilderness/roadless etc. Ultimately more federal involvement and control driven by and paid for by people who are not backcountry hunters in the least.

When an outfit sets up shop in Montana yet is paid for from out of state (1st red flag), and that location they choose in Missoula (2nd red flag) and that funding comes primarily from the coasts (3rd red flag) and their leaders and donors are staunch supporters of the left (4th red flag), they are no-one and nothing I want any part of and do not support.

Your choice, but I see them far more of an enemy than my friend.

I will answer your question, yes BHA is on the ball and on point.

I cant believe how fast the membership has grown since I joined, how many State Chapters there are, and how much this organization gets done at the State and Federal levels.

While I could speak specifically about each State Chapter, I will only speak specifically to what the Wyoming Chapter has achieved in a relatively short 3.5 years that I've Chaired the State Board.

The first thing we did was find a group of dedicated, hardcore, hunters and anglers to join the board and we're all volunteers, we make nothing for what we do. The board here works tirelessly for public lands, wildlife, habitat, hunting, fishing, trapping, public access, etc.

A list of some of the things we're involved in:

1. We attend most all GF commission meetings.
2. We attend the Legislative sessions every year.
3. We have members/board members on various blue ribbon task forces appointed by our Governor, the WPLI process, etc.
4. Involvement in RMP's, FP's, travel plans, etc.
5. Actively work with the Office of State Lands and Investment on various State land issues (usually access related, land exchanges, improving access, etc.).
6. One of 8 member groups of the Wyoming Sportsmen's Alliance.

Things that we've accomplished in the last 3 years include:

1. Yearly funding to the Wyoming AccessYes program which yields public access to landlocked public as well as private lands for hunting and fishing in Wyoming.
2. Clarified flight/UAV regulations to make it illegal to scout big and trophy game from the air, I would argue the most solid regulations in the U.S. on that issue.
3. Reward program for the conviction of illegal off-road violations.
4. Sign project where we paid for signs to explain seasonal road closures and how they enhance wildlife habitat. We leveraged about 5K in funding for the project.
5. Buck and Rail fencing project to stop illegal off-road use in important wildlife habitat, specifically riparian/wetland areas.
6. Yearly cleanup of Federal Lands near town here where people shoot TV sets, computers, bottles, cans. etc. This land would be closed to shooting if not for our involvement in the yearly clean up.
7. Stopped a horrific state land exchange that would have resulted in a loss of about 5K acres of public access to some of the best elk hunting in the Laramie Range in elk unit 7.
8. Solved an issue with the license draw for Resident hunters here that would have resulted in about 500 Wyoming Hunters not drawing LQ elk tags.
9. Donated money to a reward program and money to directly pay a private land owner that has their land enrolled in the AccessYes program, that suffered vandalism to their summer cabin and equipment. The vandalism occurred during hunting season, but was not done by hunters. A Wyoming Chapter Board members was one of the first to personally donate to the compensation fund, and BHA was also one of the first sportsmens groups to donate money as well. We feel that private landowners that provide public access are absolutely crucial in our partnership to enhance public lands, habitat, access, and also wildlife.
10. Assisted with a mule deer capture/collaring effort to help understand migration corridors in several mule deer herds across the State of Wyoming.

I could go on and on about the things that the WYBHA chapter has done in the last 3 years, and IMO, we're just getting warmed up.

I'm a life member, and if there was a better organization that represented the interests of public lands, wildlife, hunting, fishing, and trapping than BHA...I'd be a member. Fact is, there just isn't.

As far as the green decoy crap, just consider the source...that's all I ask.

Finally, as to our board, I'd put them up against the board of any other wildlife group any day as the most dedicated and serious hunters, fishermen, and trappers found anywhere. They get it done, in the field and off...they represent everything that is right about public lands, public wildlife, habitat, hunting, fishing, trapping, and being engaged citizens in all of it.

Just go to ProPublica. I am inherently queasy about non-profits. Been involved in quite a few in various ways, and no matter how “good” the cause, they all have been flush with money and plenty of profit.

i ain't never heard tell of them, but i don't get out much now like i did in times past.

one thing for sure, habitat is everything. then we can harvest what the habitat produces.

You’d think that a so-called green decoy would at least have the balls to support a trapping ban if they want to further the liberal agenda

https://www.backcountryhunters.org/montana_bha_opposes_i_177

Okay, I'm here. BHA stinketh.

BHA is a Green group, period, funded by the same large foundations that bankroll Greens. It's an outgrowth of a strategic realization by Greens that they had no "hook and bullet" presence at all except a small proportion of "woo woo" hunters who, in the larger arena, would be absolute Fudds when it comes to gun rights, or even a right to hunt. In 2000, the green funders got the Clinton Administration to do what was called the "roadless initiative," which was basically an administrative, not Congressional, move to turn 58 million acres of Forest Service ground into wilderness. But NRA, on behest of its actual members in the West, who not only understand gun rights but public-lands access issues, opposed the roadless rule.
Pew Trust, which is green as grass even though it's oil man Joe Pew's money, took a small part of its billions and analyzed the lack of sportsman support for this 58 million acre travesty, and learned something important. Sportspeople are NOT organized like they should be, in staunch defense of the full spectrum of hunter opportunity. We're species specific (like RMEF, MDF, NAWS) or regional, with the only "national" thing being Safari Club, maybe the North American Hunting Club (which is a marketer, mostly) and, mostly by default, NRA. Most NRA members historically have been hunters who also like guns a lot. But NRA is a default voice, an incidental sort of deal, plus the main threat for so long has been gun rights. Think about what comes after guns have been demonized out of the mainstream -- then, no more single-shot "hunting rifle" or shottie for YOU.
So Pew and Audubon (which got like 10 million from Pew to p1mp for the roadless thing, gave money to TU to create the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Alliance as a TU "project." Membership was free, and the slogan was "Guaranteeing you a place to hunt and fish."
An excellent white lie. Hunting is allowed in wilderness -- and will probably be the last place hunting IS allowed given the animal rights freaks.
But wilderness hunting is hard, not for everyone. Which is fine with me...my Dad and I spent a LOT of time hunting the Bob Marshall out of Schaefer, and a LOT of time dragging our goodies back to civilization -- or at least the airstrip.
Then in about 2001 (it didn't take long), the greens started the "hunter and angler" narrative, as opposed to sportsmen and sportswomen, TRCA was the first. Move on to 2004 and the Outdoor Writers convention in Spokane, where I think Dave Keane criticized the Sierra Club for its support of roadless areas and wilderness. He was blasted by a small number of "woo woo" outdoor writers, plus a number of "usual suspect" blatant Green writers, plus a couple of Green spin houses, but the casualty was Outdoor Writers, which split into two groups, traditionalists, and the New Age types.
From that point on, Green groups have waved their token rusty Rem 700 beaters around and claimed the "hunter and angler" mantle, or tried to. But even writer Dave Petersen (a complete Wildlands Project green, who hunts regularly) conceded that only 20 percent of sportspeople buy into the "green" purist faction where hunting (only with proper respect and gratitude for Natures (capitalized) bounty) is the highest, best, and preferably only use on public lands besides hiking or primitive recreation. Most other sportspeople understand that managed game and managed habitats can be great experiences, and that other activities like grazing, petroleum, even mining, are necessary and appropriate in our modern society. I mean, even the most ecologically-correct put gas in their Subaru to drive to the trailhead, and need a job to pay for the gas and ammo.
Bottom line is, most members of the NRA "get it" in the larger context of realizing prosperous countries that can afford game management do a better job of providing sustainable game harvests for the long term, that there is a huge difference between conservation and preservation. But because hunting isn't NRA's top priority, there's a chance that BHA, TRCA and whatever could chisel off gullible Fudds to take positions counter to NRA, weakening NRA not only in terms of its admittedly-secondary, "default" position as the voice of sportspeople -- but also weaken NRA in terms of what has become its primary mission....protecting our Bill of Rights from the depredations of the American left wing.
Now we come to BHA. BHA was started by some Trout Unlimited staffers in Oregon, and on the early board of directors was one of the people who attacked Keane in Spokane. a former "environmental" reporter who quit to go to work for Resource Media, which is a "nonprofit" subsidiary or spinoff of Fenton Communications. This matters because Fenton is completely left-wing, got famous for the Alar apple scare which devastated apple producers in the Northwest and elsewhere for a few years, you know, with Meryl Streep freaking out before Congress? Yep, that was Fenton. But Resource Media is a spin-support house for greens, giving them expertise and media-effectiveness support pro bono, funded anonymously by the same big Green outfits that fund Environmentalism, Inc.
Keep in mind that Trout Unlimited has been co-opted for years (remember, they took Pew's money to start TRCP) and is primarily a green group, getting seven figure checks from Big Green every year. Ducks Unlimited is the same way. Getting the same money they have from sportsman members is much more difficult -- and by gosh, no matter who you are, you do what the funders want or you don't get another check. TU and DU say they do it for the trout, or the ducks, but it's trout or ducks uber alles.
It turns out I can probably prove that BHA is almost totally funded by the same multi-billion dollar leftie foundations that fund, for example, the warmunist cultists. I have the documentation I need, I just haven't sat down with it yet. Can't get a fat foundational or corporate grant to do it -- spin pays much better than telling the truth -- that's why, no kidding, there are FOUR public relations staffers for EVERY credentialed reporter in America. But I promise, I will do the math by the end of summer. For now, however, bottom line:
If you're a greenie Fudd or closeted Democrat and think your hunting, or wilderness (either in law or policy) should take precedence over everything, then BHA is for you.

X2...as much as I love tinkering with rifles they are pretty meaningless to me without hunting access and animals to hunt, therefore habitat. I’m an outdoorsman first and foremost, guns are the tools to participate in the dance.

So Land Tawney didn't support the Obama campaign?

Not trying to start a pissing match but you really didn't answer the question. Your example infers the source of money for a non profit is not important so long as the money is spent on the cause you deem vital to your personal interest. So we should assume you wouldn't have a problem with the NRA filling the bulk of their coffers from groups like the kkk, or neo nazis as long as they use the funds for defending a common goal such as gun ownership rights.

You say that as if I owe you an answer, which I don't. I'm not a spokesman for BHA, and I don't know if BHA even has such a thing as an "official position" on 2A. As I said, for 2A issues I support the NRA. Does the NRA have an official position on issues other than 2A that are important to me? I don't know, and I never thought to ask. Mainly because it doesn't matter to me.

As far as funding from the KKK and the like I'm not really interested in hypotheticals. Here's a good hypothetical for you though. If it looked like there were enough votes in congress to implement an "assault weapons" ban and in the middle of a pitched battle over that the KKK donated a lot of money to the NRA and those funds helped defeat the ban, what would you have to say about that? I'd say, I'll keep my AR and keep my distance from the KKK. I don't have a problem separating the two.

I didn't bother to read Skinner's post because I've read it many times before and it's always the same bunch of aspersions and innuendo. My stock answer to his stock schtick is, if a leftist Swiss billionaire wants to donate money that helps keep some short-sighted knucklehead congressmen from giving away our public lands, I don't have a problem with it, and it doesn't mean I agree with his leftist politics. I don't have a problem separating the two.

Look at who's behind the "green decoy" stuff. A Washington shill , er, sorry I meant "lobbyist."

Thanks guys.. After going back and forth in my head I just joined.. I hate giving money to anything that is trying to chip away at the freedoms this country has and all the boats that we as a nation has raised... I don't usually don't.. All I have to hear is one thing and I am out.. So I figure that if one day we as Freedom loving gun nuts start to take pages out of the watermelon/greendecoy play book of Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals just maybe if we join in enough numbers we can take back our internal dialog as a nation..

In Canada, we don't have wilderness preserves like there are in the States and we need that sort of preservation now before we give it all away to corporate interests. I guess I must be one of those "greenies". Habitat loss is the biggest threat to all species. Of course, that habitat loss is mostly attributable to the burgeoning human population.
You know, if one half of the US population died tommorrow, there would still be at least as many people in the US as there were when I was in high school in Idaho. If half of the people in the world died tomorrow, there would still be nearly twice as many people in the world than there were when I was In high school. This is a problem, folks, and we knew it was a problem 60 years ago. Nonetheless, we continue to facilitate increasing population and did so in order to ensure a growing economy. In other words, we did it for the money (and power and self interest).
Habitat preservation is a necessary thing. GD

Way to go, Cigar. You joined an outfit run by a guy who helped put Obama in the White House. Not the best thing for, as you put it, "freedom loving gun nuts." Now, I understand there's not much wilderness in Maryland, except maybe in the Annapolis legislature or Baltimore, so it might sound cool to have "more wilderness." But in practice, wilderness is an economic loser for the most part, and not necessarily the best option environmentally. You've heard of all the fires in the West? Well, last year, Montana burnt more ground (over a million acres, 3/4 forested) than was smoked in the 1910 fires that pretty much galvanized policy for the next 60 years. A lot of these fires burnt out of wilderness, but more important, many fires burnt in areas that USED to have decent road access. The road access is needed to jump on the fire before it gets too big and hot. After that, all you can do is back way off and hope you have time to put in a fireline that won't be overrun.
The net result is, there was a lot of that "habitat" and habitat attributes that went totally up in smoke and won't work for game production for quite some time. That's not a problem if there's similar habitat nearby, but when you burn from horizon to horizon, odds are the good stuff is gone.

Problem is they aren't stopping anyone from "giving away" public lands.

They actively advocate to tie up more land, impose the feds into more management and control, limit more everyday people by promoting more wilderness crap.

Right now they are considering dropping a bunch of WAS that have been in place for years, didn't meet the requirement to be a stand alone wilderness but maintained the wsa designation. Even thouhg the original designation was to drop as soon as an area was deemed not acceptable for the next level of protection.

These have drug on for decades beyond the original timeline. It has closed up huge tracts from common people. Congress is considering dropping the wsa and reverting these to standard public land management. BHA is screaming fro the rooftops that congress is "giving away" millions of acres of land. Losing control and protection bull crap. So these dollars aren't for protection etc. It is all about control by people thousands of miles away from the area to be managed and the people who utilize said areas.

Screw bha

This is borderline ignorance ... or you're not from the west. Out here, what we're seeing is large private companies closing their holdings to public access entirely or moving to a quota-based trespass fee system which locks out the bulk of the public. The only land the public has regular access to is precisely that wilderness.

I'm not sure if I'm for BHA or against, but I am for the truth and YOU are not telling it.

Tom

I assure you I live in Montana and absolutely assure you bha is strongly advocating keeping wsa under that designation even though they were designed to revert to their previous management which was (SPOILER ALERT!!!) public land.

WSAs were a step towards evaluating an area to determine if it needed to be made into a wilderness area. Original guidelines stated if the area didn't meet the requirements to become a full-fledged wilderness area it was to revert to its previous management. So, this crap drug on for decades. Most WSAs are still WSAs never destined to become full fledged wilderness areas. Currently there is a push to revert these back to normal public land management and use. But with money from the coasts and useful idiots who are easily duped into believing the scary guy behind the curtain is going to "give all the public land away" they advocate to maintain these areas, limiting activities that normal public lands allow.

I would love to have you show me where any corporation has blocked you from using public lands? No one can do that. Yes they can block you from trespassing on THEIR land. That is one of the basic tenets of this country, the right to private property. Are you bitching about that? Here where I live, there are nearly 26,000,000 acres of public lands that, if you can legally get to a border of that land, you can access it and use it to you heart's content. I believe there's more because the chart I used doesn't have corps acres incorporated. If you are FROM HERE, you obviously know they have some acreage here too, right? That also doesn't count section 16 and 36 in most all townships across the sate. You were aware of those too because you are FROM HERE, right?

For you to state wilderness areas are the only areas the public has access to is a bald-faced lie. I am looking out my windows and can see thousands of acres of BLM land that you can go roll around on and take a glorious public-lands dirt bath any time you want. I don't get where this crap comes from.

BHA is all about exerting more and more federal control over land under the guise of "protecting and preserving".

I don't think the BHA is all bad.

But, they are certainly controversial. Always have been.

It just seems to me that if an organization with a certain mission statement, when sticking to that statement, would not invoke controversy within the community it proposes to serve.

Buzz,

quite the list of accomplishments.

#3 on your list of things from the last three years is likely to piss off a few folks. Rewards for turning someone in who rides in a closed area. How outrageous.

Geno

PS, I was going to comment more but this whole BHA, DU, TU thing reminds me too much of how during many election cycles I'm just about disenfranchised. Want to support the 2A and pro labor causes ? Good luck in this or a few other states I've lived in. Want to support the 2A and keep large private companies away from public land management (Fee Demo types, let private concessionaires control access to some of our NATIONAL forests, that kind of stuff)? Again, good luck where I have lived. Many times I become a single issue voter and vote "conservative" and hope things I hold near and dear in other respects don't get trampled on.

Not sure how you can come to that conclusion. There are still lots of people who think divesting public lands is a good idea and we haven't heard the last from them. BHA has come out against it pretty vigorously and is at least as influential as any other group. Lots of hunters including me are in alignment with their position.




"Everyday people" are not limited in using wilderness, that's a non-starter. The vast majority of public lands have roads and 4-wheeler access that "everyday people" who don't want to walk a mile or two can access. Screw BHA? I say screw people who think every square mile of public land needs motorized access. It doesn't.

My favorite places to hunt and fish are roadless "wilderness crap" because that's where the best hunting and fishing is. There are lots of others who think the same way and we're not going anywhere. Except hunting and fishing in the "wilderness crap."