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HB 505: A Lack of Thought On The Road To Commercialization of Our Wildlife

This is impressive work Nameless. The legislation coming out of Montana this session is absolutely insane, and I’m grateful there are people like you with the skills dedication to put stuff like this together.

How people can’t see that the monetization of wildlife is a long-term losing game is beyond me.
 
Let me preface this by saying I'm against this bill and anything that resembles commercialization of wildlife. With that said, I was reading the bill and pasted Section 1.2 below. I may have missed it somewhere, but it sounds like either-sex tags are only applicable in units at objective, any over/under objective units don't qualify. Then, in section 1.3, it says there's an antlerless option in over-objective units (plus 5 bonus points if you go this route).

IF that's the case, it'd eliminate a lot of units. Personally, I don't like the thought or precedent of having any Ranching for Wildlife here, no matter the unit, but want to understand it correctly and know for sure what we're up against.

"(2) A landowner may sponsor up to 10 license applicants pursuant to this section if the landowner owns 640 or more contiguous acres within a hunting district where the sustainable population number for elk, as calculated pursuant to 87-1-323, is at objective as determined by the department's most recent elk survey count. If the most recent elk survey count is above or below the sustainable population number, a landowner does not qualify."

 
Sioux33 said:
Let me preface this by saying I'm against this bill and anything that resembles commercialization of wildlife. With that said, I was reading the bill and pasted Section 1.2 below. I may have missed it somewhere, but it sounds like either-sex tags are only applicable in units at objective, any over/under objective units don't qualify. Then, in section 1.3, it says there's an antlerless option in over-objective units (plus 5 bonus points if you go this route).

IF that's the case, it'd eliminate a lot of units. Personally, I don't like the thought or precedent of having any Ranching for Wildlife here, no matter the unit, but want to understand it correctly and know for sure what we're up against.

"(2) A landowner may sponsor up to 10 license applicants pursuant to this section if the landowner owns 640 or more contiguous acres within a hunting district where the sustainable population number for elk, as calculated pursuant to 87-1-323, is at objective as determined by the department's most recent elk survey count. If the most recent elk survey count is above or below the sustainable population number, a landowner does not qualify."

Click to expand...
Above OR below? So they only qualify if their winter count is exactly the same as the objective? Makes no sense.
 
Sioux33 said:
Let me preface this by saying I'm against this bill and anything that resembles commercialization of wildlife. With that said, I was reading the bill and pasted Section 1.2 below. I may have missed it somewhere, but it sounds like either-sex tags are only applicable in units at objective, any over/under objective units don't qualify. Then, in section 1.3, it says there's an antlerless option in over-objective units (plus 5 bonus points if you go this route).

IF that's the case, it'd eliminate a lot of units. Personally, I don't like the thought or precedent of having any Ranching for Wildlife here, no matter the unit, but want to understand it correctly and know for sure what we're up against.

"(2) A landowner may sponsor up to 10 license applicants pursuant to this section if the landowner owns 640 or more contiguous acres within a hunting district where the sustainable population number for elk, as calculated pursuant to 87-1-323, is at objective as determined by the department's most recent elk survey count. If the most recent elk survey count is above or below the sustainable population number, a landowner does not qualify."

Click to expand...

Good catch. Now I am confused by this.
 
bigsky2 said:
Above OR below? So they only qualify if their winter count is exactly the same as the objective? Makes no sense.
Click to expand...
I'm wondering if it means within the objective range? Hoping someone that understands this stuff better than me can clarify, because I'm confused on it, too.
 
Very good work. Honestly i do understand owning the land aspect. I can see giving them 1 tag if they own 640 plus acres plus. With that it should be nonsellable tag. So a family member would have to use that tag. But u hit the nail on the head with different names but the same ranch.
 
Thanks for sharing info of this sort, @Nameless Range . It's able to be absorbed more-so than everyone individually interpreting the collective actions sought from a (this) Bill.

It is interesting about "Sustainable population for elk as calculated... at objective" as pointed out by @Sioux33 .
 
Wow, buddy, you must be tired. Thank you for putting in this effort, my eyes glazed over just trying to read that one query you posted. I'm literally amazed a the array of knowledge and expertise forum members bring to these discussions. You, and esp. Ben Lamb's explanation of the legislative process, and Gevock's recent posts explaining things, not to mention the Forum owner, who seems to be everywhere right now, trying to educate us all. Humbling.
 
I'll have to ask the rancher my family has known in SE MT his thoughts on this. He is 100% for getting a few landowner tags for personal/ family use but I think his head would explode if all the neighboring ranches that are leased out to big outfits started getting 10 bull tags each to sell to hunters.
 
So what is the Reader’s Digest version of this? Landowners are going to be given elk tags they can sell or redistribute at their discretion?
 
This bill is now HB 505.


Further thought has made me think that whether an HD is currently under, at, or over objective is irrelevant to proving the insanity of this bill, as those things can change. The point I want to explore is the amount of distinct landowners owning over 640 acres in any and every HD, as that is a number that could hypothetically arise in any given season if the HD meets the strange criteria of this bill, which is not above or over objective, but at objective.

I plan on creating that data soon.
 
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Just food for thought as you are analyzing this. Could there be additional landowners who might qualify but are not ferreted out in the data? It says "640 contiguous acres" in the bill. I don't *think* that means it needs to be one parcel. I don't know how you could pull out landowners who own smaller, contiguous acreage, of which the deeded parcels each are less than 640 acres, but in aggregate meet that 640 contiguous acreage requirement.

I realize I'm in the weeds, and don't know if that is common up there or not. But it seems to be pretty common around here.
 
Is there a specific definition in MT statute for “landowner”. I would assume that most 640 acre plus parcels would be technically owned by some type of corporate entity (S-Corp, C-Corp, LLC, Trust, etc) vs an individual owner. Given the difficulties of establishing beneficial ownership of those entities, I would think it nearly impossible to tie things back to individual people or families. And as was mentioned earlier, if ownership is defined as the entity listed on the deed, then there’s nothing to stop someone who owns 6400 acres from creating 10 different LLC’s and subdividing that 6400 acres into 10 640 acre parcels each with a different “owner” LLC, and thus get themselves 100 tags to sell. It’d only cost a couple hundred dollars each to setup those LLC’s and file quit-claim deeds to change the owner name. Insanity!
 
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