Pay to Play

[shootbrownelk]

Kat---The Cheney incident didn't result in a fatality. He was dove hunting and put some bird shot into one of the guys he was hunting with when he fired in an area he shouldn't have.

In Cheney's defense, the guy he shot was a lawyer.

 

[antlerradar]

The increase in places like the N Bar has some to do with I 161. Before I 161 an out of state owner had to find an outfitter that would sponsor them if they wanted to hunt every year. I am sure that was not cheap. (This was never the intent of the outfitter sponsor tags and needed to be fixed.) Now that Nonresident tags are almost over the counter the problem of not getting tags every year has been removed and the nonresident can by pass the outfitter .
I am sure hunting is not the only reason out of state people want a piece of Montana but I 161 did make it easier if you want a hunting property. The two big things that are keeping Montana from becoming Texas North are the amount of public land and the availability of nonresident tags. I 161 effectively removed the last.
Montana FWP also has a macro management philosophy. This is great for the individual hunter as it gives them lots of flexibility to hunt as they please. Macro management by FWP also gives a landowner like me or the Wilks the flexibility to micro manage as we see fit.

 

[Flatland Crusoe]

I think maintaining the west's public lands are a key defining feature and I'm personally a big believer in the state leasing hunting rights from private land owners. An excellent example would be Kansas and Nebraska who by percentage have almost no public land by percentage yet have become quite productive destination hunts.

Looking at where I live in the Midwest, leasing hunting rights hasn't really changed the opportunities afforded to hunters that already hunting private land, its just meant most guys paid to keep their land access. There is a huge discrepancy between the guys that kept land access by paying for it and those buying it on the open market from a broker or add or what not. That is its almost as hard to find ground to lease as it is to get free permission. Lots of leases get hunted harder because people have an urgency to get something for what they paid for even if the same hunters were involved before hand. I think its funny that people try to buy stability in their hunting by leasing. I honestly think that's what 95% of guys want, a tag and a place to go every year. A great example is how SE Iowa deer leases are pretty cheap compared to Illinois just across the river because a non resident will get a tag only once in a few years. The funny thing is once money gets involved it becomes a constant bidding war over the years and things inevitably get ugly because money is involved. It probably doesn't help that landowner kids seem to be almost exclusively idiots eyeing their parents estate.

I personally don't really buy the safety argument as a reasonable means to shell out 4 figure sums of money every year. Hypothermia and falling from treestands is what kills hunters to a statistically significant number, not freak events of getting shot. There is an order of magnitude chance you get in a car accident on your way to hunt than getting killed while hunting and that doesn't change leasing vs hunting public.

I really don't think leases get truly beneficial until you spend a lot of money to get exclusive rights to the right piece of ground and put the time an effort into managing it and hunting it hard. At that point I still think its crazy to invest that effort in one piece of ground you ultimately don't control.

 

[katqanna]

In the old days the cattle barons knew that if they controlled the water they could also control the grazing on the nearby public land. With the current Montana season if the landowner controls the land were a large number of the does live he can also control the bucks that spend most of there lives on the near by public. Many of the ranches that have a hunting operation will not shoot any does for this reason. Yet FWP issues lots of doe tags and the doe herd on the public gets hammered. This is not helping. The migration of the bucks to the doe herds in the alfalfa fields is a direct transfer of wealth from the public to the landowner.

In the intro to the FWP Statewide Elk Management plan it states, "The lack of good forage conditions on public lands in some areas causes elk to use private lands more frequently during winter and spring."

"Wildlife, including elk, are a product of the land, a renewable resource that depends on healthy habitat, including the basics of soil, water and vegetation. Thus, although the primary responsibility of FWP regarding elk is managing populations through designing and enforcing hunting regulations, WE CANNOT IGNORE ISSUES DEALING WITH THE HABITAT THAT SUPPORTS AND PERPETUATES ELK POPULATIONS." (pg. 43)... "1.) preserving important wildlife habitats and maintaining/ENHANCING the basic productivity of the land - soil, water and vegetation." (pg. 44)

Two of the objectives stated in the EMP (pg. 57), "Statewide Elk Population Management Object: Maintain elk population numbers at levels producing a healthy and productive condition of elk, vegetation, soil, and water and that also reduces elk conflicts on private and public lands. Statewide Elk Habitat Objective: Promote conservation and improvement of habitats that support the state's elk populations."
The Elk Brucellosis also has an objective of improving habitat as a means of reducing commingling conflicts, drawing the elk to the public lands. Yet, in all the years of this program, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on it, habitat enhancement, which the elk brucellosis members kept emphasizing and asking about, was never attempted by FWP with our sportsmens dollars.

I remember reading articles about studies done in the Bitterroot that spoke to elk calf survival being more dependent on forage and this summer news of a study involving east and west areas in the Bitterroot, with forage being responsible for increased winter fat and survival rates. I contacted Mark Hebblewhite for the paper he is the project director on for The Role of Bottom-up Habitat Changes on Elk Calf Survival: A Case Study in the Bitterroot Valley.

Your mention of FWP's "macro management philosophy", which I feel is counter to their objectives of habitat enhancement to reduce conflict and retain the public wildlife availability on public lands.

Interestingly, while trying to find this study, I did find a publication produced by MSU for landowners on Managing Your Land For Wildlife 2008 (most recent) that has a chapter of elk management, basically a recipe for increasing healthy elk on the landscape and what types of forbs and grasses, etc., to plant. I thought it was ironic that this was produced for landowners and we cant get our wildlife department to implement similar practices on our public lands to retain our public herds. I am driving over to MSU to pick up this publication right now.

 

[mtmander]

Pay to hunt seems like it will cater to wealthy people who want to hunt with out others and want animals with large antlers. The landowners will get the money and then complain there are too many elk in their fields.

 

[antlerradar]

I would support most habitat enhancement projects on public land. The problem is even the most successful project will not compete with second or third cutting alfalfa. The public will be offering a better brand of hot dog and the landowner will still be offering prime rib. The amount of deer kept on the public is likely to be minimal. The money would likely be better spent buying access than on habitat enhancement.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Why is it that every negative aspect of every hunting issue is traced back through some convoluted logic to the 2010 Montana voter Initiative 161? Get over it. Move on.

 

[antlerradar]

It would be nice if my conclusion was based on convoluted logic, but unfortunately it is based on my own experience. Form the mid 90's to the passage of I 161 I can not remember a signal inquiry to lease the hunting rights on my family's ranch. Since the passage of I 161 I have had at least a half a dozen inquires by outfitters and individuals looking to lease or buy hunting property. All of the solicitations have been turned down. We have not had a paying hunter on the property in 40 years.

 

[katqanna]

Could requests for hunting leases or sales of hunting lands possibly be attributed to other, or combination of other factors that are simply coincidental with the timing?

For example, your location on your username shows southeast Montana. As a result of the Bakken, there have been a number of changes in eastern MT, not all of them good (increased crime). I got a call a couple weeks ago about a guy hunting Block Management in southeast MT. He has all the maps and printouts, his GPS with him, etc. He pulls up to one ranch to hunt birds and it is closed, a sign that says it is closed for a snipe hunting competition being held by a Texas hunt club. Same thing at two other nearby ranches, yet the block management dates of availability dont show those three block management ranches as being closed during those dates. Alot of the Bakken oil workers and company men are from Texas and other parts of the south's oil industry.

As the Bakken started to pick up steam from 2006-2010 (interesting animated map), it has even affected housing and such, even as far west as Bozeman. We got hit hard, not just with young men commuting back and forth, but whole families. One man with Exxon told me that Exxon moved 300 families, not 300 people, here to the Gallatin Valley (that was in Jan-Feb 2013). That means a whole lot of Texas and southern mentality, expectations, economics, politics, etc., is affecting whole geographic areas and I am sure hunting leases and land purchases for hunt clubs/individuals are part of the ripple effect.

Another factor is climate, with increased heat, drought, fires on the landscape (especially in the southwest), people are having to shift where they do certain recreating.

Then there is the major Montana land purchasing issue, which is shifting where some people previously hunted, either as friends or family of the previous landowners. A number of articles have been written in relation to the Wilks, as an example, when they bought that ranch in SE MT, closed off Block Management and shut the hunting off to people who grew up hunting out there. Same has occurred with people who had previously hunted in central MT. They started major land buying in 2010. Herring wrote an article in 2007 on the increased purchases and hunting.

These are just off the top of my head, nothing happens in a bubble. So there might be some other contributing factors than just I161.

 

[Straight Arrow]

antlerradar, 'not disputing I-161 as a factor, but kat has easily laid out a number of other factors. More importantly, I think we have to accept these factors and determine more successful methods of moving forward. The important rights of landowners such as yourself and others to make decisions based on best use and personal philosophical preferences regarding wildlife and hunting must always be recognized and respected. My opinion is that somehow we have to come up with the right incentives, whether monetary or otherwise, to make Block Management and other hunting and access programs work for landowners and for public lands.

Also to move forward positively, it's critical to put whatever bitterness over I-161 in the rearview mirror, increasing becoming less distinct.

 

[katqanna]

I wonder if an individual or a group could lease all or part of a WMA, not for cattle grazing, but habitat enhancement projects. Kind of like the section of a road litter clean up sponsored by such and such a group with those signs. That way we could promote and act on a variety of scientific measures that would benefit wildlife on our WMA's and help to reduce social conflict.

Hell, what about on other parts of public lands?

I would surely put labor and money into such a project.

 

[antlerradar]

I am sure there could be other factors that have increased the demand of private hunting leases. However the availability of nonresident licences is a big road block to some one looking to form a private "hunting club".
Before I 161 the chance of drawing a nonresident elk/deer combo licences was about 50%, a deer combo had even poorer odds. Very few nonresidents are willing to invest money into a lease or hunting property that you are likely only able to hunt every other year. Every other year was not even a guarantee. If you were unlucky you could go several years with out a license.
One way around the availability of licenses was to find an outfitter that would sponsor your group and with the guaranteed outfitter sponsor licenses. However the outfitter sponsor licenses added another layer of expenses and also there was some restrictions on the use of the licenses.
Another way a nonresident owner could get a guaranteed license was to enroll his property in Block Management. I know of one landowner that enrolled just for that reason. I was worried that once the licence became a guaranteed draw that he would remove the property. Thankfully he stayed enrolled.
After the passage of I 161 and with is the price increase of the combo licenses the quantity of the licenses demanded was cut nearly in half. Nonresidents quickly realized a that now that drawing a combo license is almost guaranteed. The tag availability road block to leasing or owning a hunting property in Montana had been removed.
Other factors like the economy and real a perceived issues of quality of hunting in Montana could have also effected demand for the combo licences negatively. We should however not deceive our selves with alternative explanations. Most likely the the vast majority of the decrease in the quantity of the combo licences demanded is due to the price increase included in I 161.

 

[Straight Arrow]

2010 til now, we all have been monitoring the situation. Points made are trite, old-hat, some factual, some conjecture and speculation. Time moves forward; the vote is in, the initiative passed with the implementation of provisions and the ramifications coming to fruition ... some predictable, some not so much. 'Question is, "Do you want to jump on your bandwagon and rescind it ... or do you want to work on solutions going forward?" The noise sounds like sour grapes, not viable solutions, even though some of the points are certainly valid. Again, the important consideration is what we do about the resultant conditions that appear to be problematic.

 

[Randy11]

Straight Arrow- where in the heck are you getting bitterness and sour grapes from antlerradar's posts? His theory holds a lot of logic and common sense.

 

[1_pointer]

I wonder if an individual or a group could lease all or part of a WMA, not for cattle grazing, but habitat enhancement projects. Kind of like the section of a road litter clean up sponsored by such and such a group with those signs. That way we could promote and act on a variety of scientific measures that would benefit wildlife on our WMA's and help to reduce social conflict.

Hell, what about on other parts of public lands?

I would surely put labor and money into such a project.

You don't have to "lease" BLM land to do a habitat project on it. I imagine the USFS is the same way. Approach them with a good project (still has to meet their LUP), especially one that is fully funded, and you'd likely be off to the races.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Opposition to I-161 has been strongly expressed before and now half a decade later with predictions of ramifications which seem to follow logic and "common sense" with regard to a law already passed, but to what end? Consider the realities and logically determine your own "sense" of it.

1. Pay to Play and hunting leases were ramping up long before the inception of I-161.
2. At the initiative's implementation the economic downturn resulted in not just Montana, but other western states not selling out nonresident licenses available.
3. Still Montana has sold most nonresident licenses and has realized a significant increase in revenues from nonresident license sales.
4. Many nonresident hunters are pleased to pay the license cost in order not to have to pay increased costs to be assured a license sponsored by an outfitter and recently have benefitted from the ability to plan ahead due to availability of licenses. They may still employ outfitter services if desired.
5. The prediction / threat of the demise of the Montana Block Management Program has proven untrue.

Not to diminish the real hunting issues (landowners' rights & concerns, wildlife management, hunting access, and more), I think it better to try to move forward. To dwell on the concerns about a law already passed and implemented is not helpful.

 

[RobG]

Opposition to I-161 has been strongly expressed before and now half a decade later with predictions of ramifications which seem to follow logic and "common sense" with regard to a law already passed, but to what end? Consider the realities and logically determine your own "sense" of it.

1. Pay to Play and hunting leases were ramping up long before the inception of I-161.
2. At the initiative's implementation the economic downturn resulted in not just Montana, but other western states not selling out nonresident licenses available.
3. Still Montana has sold most nonresident licenses and has realized a significant increase in revenues from nonresident license sales.
4. Many nonresident hunters are pleased to pay the license cost in order not to have to pay increased costs to be assured a license sponsored by an outfitter and recently have benefitted from the ability to plan ahead due to availability of licenses. They may still employ outfitter services if desired.
5. The prediction / threat of the demise of the Montana Block Management Program has proven untrue.

Not to diminish the real hunting issues (landowners' rights & concerns, wildlife management, hunting access, and more), I think it better to try to move forward. To dwell on the concerns about a law already passed and implemented is not helpful.

SA - Block management didn't fail because fees were sent through the roof. This priced out the average Joe. My boss wanted to come out and hunt this year, but balked upon seeing the price. I no longer buy my father in law a hunting license. The list goes on.

I-161 accomplished nothing positive, unless you consider giving a price break to those willing to pay to play a good thing. It didn't even hit the bottom line of those hated outfitters, which was the whole point. So it isn't surprising some just want to move on. No, educate the people. If the benefits are so strong you and others can calmly explain them instead of getting uppity every time someone explains the downside. In fact, go ahead and add the benefits to your list, I see they are missing. If people start to realize 161 accomplished nothing good, maybe we can bring something similar back and get the average Joe back here so they can care about the privatization of Montana's wildlife.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Not to be "uppity" but I also have realized the downsides from the beginning, but have at this point chosen to point out "upsides". After all it is in place. My point is, either repeal it or move ahead with ideas to improve ... rather than rehash the downsides.

Specifically, if the elk combo cost is too high, then propose a remedy such as breaking it apart to reduce costs for those not wanting to fish, hunt birds, or pay for other licenses unrelated to deer or elk hunting. It has been pointed out that the nonresident costs are not out of line with those of other states ... albeit they certainly jumped with the change.

 

[shoots-straight]

SA - Block management didn't fail because fees were sent through the roof. This priced out the average Joe. My boss wanted to come out and hunt this year, but balked upon seeing the price. I no longer buy my father in law a hunting license. The list goes on.

I-161 accomplished nothing positive, unless you consider giving a price break to those willing to pay to play a good thing. It didn't even hit the bottom line of those hated outfitters, which was the whole point. So it isn't surprising some just want to move on. No, educate the people. If the benefits are so strong you and others can calmly explain them instead of getting uppity every time someone explains the downside. In fact, go ahead and add the benefits to your list, I see they are missing. If people start to realize 161 accomplished nothing good, maybe we can bring something similar back and get the average Joe back here so they can care about the privatization of Montana's wildlife.

So Rob, did your boss go elsewhere? Maybe he's just a tight wad? I think SA's post pointed out 5 facts very well.

Other "FACTS" came into play on I-161 as to why we wanted it done away with. The outfitters bottom line was never my reason for supporting I-161. Fairness to all NR that came here to hunt. Whatever the price was, or should be is not my concern, it's more a level playing field.

If we were selling tags like the old days, and your boss thought the price was right, he would have been part of the lottery, possibly had not been able to draw a tag. Does that bode well for being concerned about the resource?

 

[RobG]

SS and SA, the 5 facts were just things that didn't happen and conjecture, not benefits. I doubt if the average Joe NRs who had the license fee put on them thought it was fair. I expect even less so if they knew the OSLs were put in place to give them a better chance at drawing a tag (I think in 1998). The pay to play crowd probably thought it was a good deal.

I think not getting something every year, like an elk, increases the concern for the resource. A Montana license, like an LE tag, used to be coveted, yet reasonably easy to get.