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Bulls for Billionaires - MT EQC Meeting today 1:30 PM

I have a hard time with some of those 380 tags. An extra 380 bull tag for 3 cow hunters on land that mostly holds elk during archery? And someone who doesn't quite qualify for LO preference getting a bull tag for 3 cow hunters? I just don't see public benefit checking out with the extra bull harvest on that.
There’s some real fishy stinkers in there that stood out to me. Properties that allow a just a few cows in exchange for a bull, as you pointed out. And, properties where FWP can’t confirm that public hunters have any reasonable shot at success.
 
I have a hard time with some of those 380 tags. An extra 380 bull tag for 3 cow hunters on land that mostly holds elk during archery? And someone who doesn't quite qualify for LO preference getting a bull tag for 3 cow hunters? I just don't see public benefit checking out with the extra bull harvest on that.

Last I looked, Landowners in 380 had a 50% chance of drawing a tag that most of us have a 1% chance of drawing annually. Just from landowner preference. In addition, bull numbers in the Elkhorn‘s have been consistently dropping every year for the last four or five. The biologist initially proposed half as many permits for this upcoming season as existed only a few years ago. They settled on 100. That’s the thing about these 454 tags, they will inevitably cut into the public’s limited permits, though they say they don’t on paper, there really aren’t any elk in the Elkhorns that solely exist on private ground.

These 454 tags are a damn cancer that’ll grow.
 
A lot can happen between now and 15 years from now , but think about what this 454 program will morph into in the long term.

Just this year, there are twice as many 454 agreements proposed as the previous. We would be foolish to assume it won’t expand annually. On top of that, As more and more districts in Montana will inevitably have to go to a limited permit model due to our exploding population and an eventually-undeniable tax on the resource, larger and larger portions of the available animals on the landscape will be dedicated to landowners a priori - before the public even has a chance. Montana will look more and more like New Mexico.

It’s a clear precursor to large scale privatization
 

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