Based on you current level of understanding and your general lack of people skills, I wouldn't hire you either. There's a funny thing about people in some aspects of conservation in Montana where they think that if you make a living in the conservation world, you must be corrupt. That is really why so many of the good and competent staff of those organizations are gone now - when the people you seek to serve think you should work for free, you don't stick around long and you end up with trust-funders and trophy spouses who can afford to be pure. Sad, but I guess that's where some of the conservation movement is now - which is inherently funny when you consider the 6 figure salaries those ED's make.
I didn't make the statement about 1,00's of elk, but yes, 1,000's of elk. I know of one ranch that had over 350 taken this year alone from free cow hunters (this is the 5th or 6th year of this level of harvest), another that's over 200. With thousands of ranches in MT offering some kind of free access outside of an FWP access program, it's tough to know how many are harvested so we've asked ranches to keep better records so we can show skeptics what these ranches are offering for access.
Other ranches are starting their access programs because they've either changed hands recently or they've had negative experiences in the past (the ranch with 200 cows taken pulled out of block mgt due to trespass issues and lack of ethics from hunters) or they were never in an access program and just focused on friends and family. We're even working with ranches across the state to bring them in to the access discussion by starting slow and showing them that access is a great tool for their operations. Others still are setting up enhanced hunter education courses with us, and hosting both kid classes and adult classes which also come with the opportunity to hunt on those properties while also getting you into the list for opportunities as they arise (all Master Hunter Grads are on this list as well). We started that pilot program this year, with 4 Master Hunters taking 5 cows on a ranch north of Helena. Based on their feedback and the feedback of the ranch manager, we're looking at expanding that and we now have about 10-15 ranches looking at us as a way to develop access programs.
So, there's that.
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