Land locked property

[mdcrossbow]

I was wondering if in your adventures this subject may be dealt with? Takem from another forum.

On another subject or the Checkerboard above, the land owners found a Federal judge to say it's illegal to cross corners to reach the hundreds of thousands of landlocked BLM land in the western states. The checkerboard pattern was adopted to allow the railroad to have land where they could cut wood for their steam engines. It runs ten miles or so back from any main line tracks that were in existence in the west during this area and remains to this day, largely intact. By crossing the corners on this checkerboard pattern you could access this "so-called, public" land. As it stand now the ranchers get to lease it at a tax payer, subsidized rate and yet keep those self same tax payers from getting any use of it. That's just one instance of the Slimy politics mentioned above. The BLM could inact rules that disallowed the rancher's lease options unless he agreed to public access. The BLM in concert with other Fed agencies could enact rules that would allow light aircraft drop hunts on land locked parcels but in all cases these land locked, checkerboard parcels and other land locked parcels in effect belong to the rancher!

 

[duckhead59]

Interesting info mdcrossbow...I wasn't aware of these laws. This doesn't seem fair to the taxpayer (but what is?) do you know where I can read additional info or what the program is called?
Maybe we can start a large movement thru hunting sites to get the rules changed?
Just a thought.

 

[Layin_It_Down]

Keep in mind, the ranchers pay a lease on the land so they can graze their cattle on it. They pay to use it. The reason most landowners don't let the public cross their property to access public land is because 9 times out of 10, hunters don't make it to the public land. They shoot stuff off of private land. That's what makes the landowners pissed.

If you want to lease the property, anybody can lease the property. BLM and State leases are open to the public. Instead of everybody bashing the landowners, people should try to build a relationship with them. Most all ranchers let people hunt, but they can't let everybody and their dog hunt. They have to manage it to some extent.

There's obviously extremes to every side. From the landowner to the general public. This is a very complicated subject. But nobody talks to the guys who have built a long standing relationship with a local rancher so they have a place to hunt. A honey hole, so to speak.

A long story short: A friend of mine was talking to a landowner in the Flathead area. She gave a guy and his buddy permission to hunt elk on her place over a weekend in 2008. The next morning 6 trucks filled with about 20 guys pulled into her driveway to shoot elk. She obviously ran them off and was probably called a bitch for doing so. Examples like this, is why most ranchers limit hunting on their property or access through their property to public land.

 

[mdcrossbow]

For access of public land the method I have seen that works best is 1st come 1st server. A hunter calls in on a date and if that date is open then he can subscribe to the that date.

There are a number of ways to set up for hunters to access pubic land with out the farmer blocking the land off to rightful tax payers.
We have this and similar provisions set up here for hunters to use.

The publisher of this article has been invited to discus the issue and I look forward to him addressing some of your questions.

 

[mtmiller]

Keep in mind, the ranchers pay a lease on the land so they can graze their cattle on it.

It is not leased, they have a permit to graze. Some guy pointed that out to me once.

They pay to use it. The reason most landowners don't let the public cross their property to access public land is because 9 times out of 10, hunters don't make it to the public land. They shoot stuff off of private land. That's what makes the landowners pissed.

I will dispute those numbers. While I doubt that is true in Roundup, I know it is not the case in my neck of the woods. If you find blocks of “yellow” land that are locked by private, in nearly every case, it is outfitted or is only available to family and friends. I have never heard the claim access is denied based on poaching on private land.

If you want to lease the property, anybody can lease the property. BLM and State leases are open to the public.

TAYLOR GRAZING ACT
Preference shall be given in the issuance of grazing permits to those within or near a district who are landowners engaged in the livestock business, bona fide occupants or settlers, or owners of water or water rights, as may be necessary to permit the proper use of lands, water or water rights owned, occupied, or leased by them.

 

[Dinkshooter]

If you want to lease the property, anybody can lease the property. BLM and State leases are open to the public.

Yeah I have never heard of a non-grazer able to snatch up a grazing allotment just to hunt. Besides you still couldn't get to it if you had to cross deeded land to get there. We don't need to lease the ground to hunt it, we just need access to it. And that is the point of the thread, access to landlocked public ground.

 

[Oak]

Landowners may need a grazing permit to graze the landlocked land, but if not grazing, they don't need to pay anything to otherwise use the land just like the public would.

Layin_It_Down, no offense, but I believe things are a little different in most of the rest of the west than they are in the areas where you hunt private property. I'd like to see how successful you would be if you came down to Colorado and tried to build a long term relationship with a rancher. It's one thing to grow up with a rancher's kids and know him your entire life. Quite another to show up on his front step at age 35 and introduce yourself. Montana is slightly behind other states in this regard, but if it hasn't reached your area yet, I guarantee it's on the way.

 

[Lawnboy]

It's rough here in Montana to get permission as well. Just as Laying it Down said they can't let everyone on and so it's seems that I'm always not on the good list.

The one legal way to access that landlocked BLM is by helicopter. Someday I'm going to save enough pennies to hunt that public land. The land owner is going to be mad but it's totally legal.

Laying it Down let me know if you have any openings on that piece you have. Looks like fun.

 

[JoseCuervo]

Keep in mind, the ranchers pay a lease on the land so they can graze their cattle on it. They pay to use it.

Cough, cough, cough, bullshit...... The Welfare Ranchers will pay a $1.35 a month to graze a 900 pound cow and a 300 pound calf, less than the cost to feed your cat. Plus, the lousy $1.35 that the Welfare Rancher pays does not even come close to the costs incurred by the government to manage the grazing activity/damage to My Public Lands.

 

[duckhead59]

JoseCuervo...I'm with you on this...there is a lot of cheap usage of 'our' public' land...which would be ok...if they managed some for wildlife and let us 'the public' owners have access. They have a good deal...useage and word over the land like they own it...but for pennies on the dollar...geez...I wish my farm would have been that cheap!
btw...I am a land owner and cash rent out my farm to a farmer...but I controll the hunting/tresspassing rights...so I'm not an anti farmer/rancher...we all need to work together and get along. I ask permissin many times a yer...sometimes it works...sometimes it doesn't...but I go out before hunting season and that seems to work a lot better.

 

[smalls]

Land locked public land sucks. Checkerboard sucks even more. The technology exists today that allows sportsman to effectively corner hop from checker to checker without infringing upon the adjacent private landowners. As more GIS data becomes commercially available to sportsman (through companies selling GPS mapping data) we can definitively cross at an intersection give or take a couple of feet of GPS accuracy. In fact I just got a preprogrammed chip for my Garmin that displays all state and federal lands throughout MT... heck, it even displays RMEF, DU and Nature Conservancy properties that are open to hunting.

I don't enough about it to make a judgment on the success of the program, but MT has an ongoing effort to sell landlocked state parcels and using the money generated to buy accessible parcels.

 

[mtmiller]

Hey smalls, could you send me some info on the Garmin chip you referred to. We have land status on our Trimbles, but for simple navigation, this would be the cat's meow.

thanks man...

 

[Der Aulte Jaeger]

More Land locked USFS/BLM Lands

Along with the checkerboard BLM fiasco there's another slimy bit of politics going on. This involves road closures of roads that head into USFS lands bordering private ranches. Especially where the ranch has leased to an outfitter. I started noticing this with the massive road closures caused by the so-called "environmentalists," during the Clinton administration. Seems as if roads toward the interior of the USFS land was being left open while roads headed out toward the bordering ranches were closed.

Another thought on road closures: While in a rare, very few instances, they are closed seasonally to protect calving areas, etc the majority are arbitrary with the usual excuses of, "roads are bad for wildlife," or, " we have budget problems," etc" Anyone who has visited several towns around the west, including the beautiful Air Force Academy realize that it's not roads doing the harm. Dozens of trophy deer mixed in with their large herd of Mulies are to be found all over that place and many others. So it troubles me when roads and no wildlife are equated. The same goes for Elk as far as some towns and parks go. With the graying of the USA comes a growing statistical percentage of infirmities that keep many of us from making the long pack trips, hikes, etc. Given a growing population and especially the aging one, it's sheer lunacy to concentrate all traffic and camping along select corridors in the forests as this causes overuse and may other problems. Open old roads, mind poor logging or any use practices and let folks enjoy the forests and wild lands.

As far as budget problems go, have you noticed that when they close a road, they often erect a gate, bulldoze a dam across it or use huge logs, moved by a front end loader to close the access? Want to bet they spend as much on these so-called closings as they
would have on doing a bit of maintenance and leaving them open.

Lastly, on the ranchers. I've found many to be considerate, fine folks and not all fall into the profit driven, politics playing ones that so often make the black list of hunters, campers, anglers and others. Same goes for some Outfitters and Guides. We must be careful to not lump the clean wash in with the filthy rags.

Good Hunting
Chuck S

 

[Oak]

Chuck, welcome to Hunttalk.

One factor you have not mentioned in regards to deer and elk living in town: they are not hunted there. Leaving the peripheral roads open in the national forests allows hunters to quickly push deer and elk off the forest and onto those adjacent private lands. Road closures in these areas are often an attempt to keep animals on accessible lands for public hunters. You can bet deer and elk don't hang around roads when gun-toting hunters are cruising them on their ATV's. As an avid hunter, I appreciate any effort to close these peripheral roads, as it makes my hunting better. I can't afford to hunt those private lands where the deer and elk are pushed to after opening morning.

 

[Big Shooter]

Why is it that mtmiller, Layin it Down and Oak never bash on ranchers when it comes to this subject? I think I know why, by lookig at the photos that they have posted in the past, they don't need to try to gain access to that ground as they are fully capable of going where there is gainable access or even right where other people have gone and they still do great. Jose, maybe you should take some lessons from them instead of throwing your "Welfare Rancher" flag all of the time.

Again, we don't run any of our cows on public ground, but I have plenty of friends that do and they have to put up with this nonsense all of the time. They shouldn't have to allow access through their private ground to any one. Unless you hold their hand all of the way through the private, most of them will not be able to control themselves and something will get whacked, plain and simple. I doubt anyone on here would do that, but it happens all of the time. You need to put yourselves in the ranchers shoes sometimes and see it from his perspective. There is a reason why the land-locked public is good, and it is because maybe the rancher has developed some water and ran some pipelines, or maybe he has controled his grazing, or just maybe that old "Welfare Rancher" (you liked that didn't you Jose you whiney little bitch) took care of that game during the winter months and controled the hunting pressure on it to help it thrive.

The rancher is not always the bad guy in this deal and like someone said earlier, if people would try to get along with them the other 46 weeks during the year it might help. A box of frozen oranges only goes so far.

 

[shoots-straight]

Shooter, one part of your post is nonsense. The part where people crossing the ranchers land cant be good, is bogus. Thousands of hunters travel up and down roads all over the state, where it's illegal for them to hunt, with game standing next to it. If you look it up most hunters, in the vast majority, follow rules and behave by not shooting the game. This and the old, "We had a cow shot by hunters the other day" syndrome are old rancher tales.

Shooter, how do you feel about competing with other ranchers that lease federal land for $1.35 a pr.? It's like me building houses and the competition gets there materials at a 1/10 of the price. I'd never be able to compete with that.

 

[Der Aulte Jaeger]

First addressing the roads versus the animals. Out here and that includes hunting from Colorado, through Wyoming and up into the Idaho, Oregon and Washington areas I've noticed that animals pay little attention to the person on the ATV or Tractor as those are exactly what many if not most ranchers, foresters, and range managers,are using these days to work on their ranches and forests/range. Let those animals find you walking though and it's a far different story as they may just leave the country. As for pushing the animals on to the private ranches, that's is just the opposite of what I've encountered over the years I've hunted. I have seen Outfitter/Ranchers hunt the adjacent public lands first and then move back to their private ranch land after their clients have shot the better ones off of the adjacent National Forest. A note also is that the roads weren't closed by the USFS because of the animals but in most cases, according to them, due to budget restraints, enviro pressure and politics. By the way the herd of Mulies here graze in town throughout the winter months and are hunted on adjacent lands during hunting season., same as on the USAF Academy and other such areas. Like all animals deer and elk are very adaptive to any environment that allows them food, bedding, breeding and fawning areas. On this note have you caught the new TV show about hunting in town?

Now on to the Ranchers in general. Like I said there are many who are stellar stewards of our game and fish and are more than willing to be good neighbors when it comes to conservation and outdoor recreation. There are also far too many where you can drive down the roads of the rural west and tell the private ranch land from the leased. The private lands are beautiful, green, wll manicured, etc while the leased are over grazed, prairie dogs havens and more. Such obvious inequities delineate the differences between their land and the land they are leasing for far too cheap. On the other hand we do find some that take excellent care of both their holdings and leases. Far too often it's the family ranches that fall into the good guys category while the shareholder/corporate ranches are the offenders. It was and likely is common place for corporations to ruin a good ranch, by running both the private and leased land into the ground and then subdivide it into ranchettes and sell it off.

Thanks for the welcome above and good discussion folks.
Chuck S

 

[Big Shooter]

Shooter, how do you feel about competing with other ranchers that lease federal land for $1.35 a pr.? It's like me building houses and the competition gets there materials at a 1/10 of the price. I'd never be able to compete with that.

It really doesn't bother me due to the fact that we own ours and that means quite a little because at the end of the day no one can come and take our leases away. I also agree with what you said about the rancher whining about his cow getting shot, as that doesn't happen very often any more,(although a good friend of mine had a horse get shot about 4 times right from the county road last fall) but if you allow them to drive across your deeded to get to the public, the cows might be safe but the game animals not so much. Like I stated earlier, it isn't all hunters that will do it but it only takes one, kind of like it only taking one crabby landowner to make them all look bad. There is really no one, good answer to any of it and we all just need to respect each others rights and get along. Group hug time!!

 

[ELKCHSR]

I've got a question that seems to be ignored every time this subject comes up on this board...

If you charge more for cows to graze on public land, the land generally won't get grazed...

If you don't do something to mitigate the grasses to an extent, fires rage over the ground, then people on this board complain about their best hunting spots getting burned over...

Since it seems impossible at the moment to get bison put into these ranges to mitigate the grass and brush as was the norm in the past, something has to do the job, it's the natural order of things...

Question:

What is it that would make any one of you guys who are 100% against cattle in these areas happy?

I'm going to assume nothing will make you happy except to keep everything exactly the way you want it so you can hunt the area...

Might not be anything wrong with it except grazing, mining, and logging were part of the original premise for our National Forests, National Parks meet the designations you guys are always touting

You need to learn the difference between the two

If there are too many cows in an area, that falls directly on the shoulders of the governmental agency who is supposed to be managing the area, not the rancher

I know this topic is "Land locked property", but none of the above really has anything to do with "Land locked property" it's just a guise to have something to complain about...

Gaining "ACCESS" is and jumping the property owner because they don't want to grant access is silly

I'm betting not one of you would allow the general public no matter the reason, to traipse across your yards and flower beds, yet you feel it's your moral rights as an American to do so to someone else

We are all "Welfare" hunters in these short sighted ideals that are always bandied about this board...

No one here owns the amount of ground you hunt on (Me included), and I know for a fact no one here pay's a smidgen of the costs to maintain that ground, so by your own definitions, you are in fact welfare hunters, paying far less than you pay in...

I should be jumping up and down yelling "It just isn't fair you drive the roads and use up all the renewable resources and have everyone else pick up the tab while you as a small minority group utilize the full benefits"

I'm not sure if some of you can really grasp the hypocrisy these topics tend to bring out, fortunatly most do, those who don't will jump on this as a personal attack...

 

[mtmiller]

I've got a question that seems to be ignored every time this subject comes up on this board...

If you charge more for cows to graze on public land, the land generally won't get grazed...

This is as far as I read. What are you high? I can't remember exactly what the average rate is on private land in MT, but I think $16 or $18 an AUM (you can google it). Are you thinking that 2x or 3x or 4x the current Federal rate that land won't be grazed?