BRI
Well-known member
like I said, I get it.
Montana 2025 Legislative Session
- Thread starter Nameless Range
- Start date
Schaaf
Well-known member
I take that back....we're up to 4 cow tags each now. Awesome!!
Forkyfinder
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2023
- Messages
- 3,224
Why open BM to deal with your elk? Now you, your family, workers, and friends can all blast the hell out of them. 
Southern Elk
Well-known member
I know a lady who is a vegetarian and travels all over the world hunting. Kills a ton of animals every year and brags about it.
MTelkHuntress
Well-known member
SB 270 passed Senate Fish and Game Committee 8-3.
Look at those heavy mass forkies!!!!!
cgasner1
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2016
- Messages
- 3,595
Tradition
cgasner1
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2016
- Messages
- 3,595
I just got a phone call back and had a great conversation keep hammering them guys.
Forkyfinder
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2023
- Messages
- 3,224
Bill Explorer
Explore, track, and stay informed on legislative bills in Montana with the Montana Legislature Bill Explorer application. Access detailed information, monitor bill progress, and engage with the legislative process easily from your desktop or mobile device.
bills.legmt.gov
Be interesting to see what happens to this one.
bills.legmt.gov
Bill Explorer
Explore, track, and stay informed on legislative bills in Montana with the Montana Legislature Bill Explorer application. Access detailed information, monitor bill progress, and engage with the legislative process easily from your desktop or mobile device.
bills.legmt.gov
Nameless Range
Well-known member
Be interesting to see what happens to this one.
Bill Explorer
Explore, track, and stay informed on legislative bills in Montana with the Montana Legislature Bill Explorer application. Access detailed information, monitor bill progress, and engage with the legislative process easily from your desktop or mobile device.
Same as a scientific paper, Legislative Bills should have abstracts - a short paragraph about what the sponsor's intent is with a bill. Would both inform the public and help sponsor's align their bills with feedback they receive.
Flynarrow
Well-known member
SB 270 passed out of Committee 8-3.
Halt Galt’s Latest Attempt to Privatize Elk
Sen. Wylie Galt is at it again. This time, he’s cosponsoring SB 270, a bill that would lift the reasonable cap of three elk per hunter per year, and allow an unlimited number of elk to be shot by one person, his latest attempt to privatize elk and diminish public access programs.
The Galt family is the third largest landowner in the state, owning more than 250,000 acres. Wylie is a founding board member of the Montana Conservation Society, a newly formed landowner and outfitter group, whose lobbyist wrote SB 270. The junque files make this clear.
What’s also clear is that roughly 81.8 percent of licensed elk hunters in Montana end the season with no elk. 16 percent harvest one. Some 2 percent get two elk. Yet, according to FWP, only .2 percent shoot the maximum allowed three elk in a license year.
This isn’t surprising. Elk are big. A cow elk averages around 170 pounds of boneless meat - and bulls are even larger. So who would want - or need - to shoot more than three elk - or 500 pounds of meat - per year?
The reality is, it’s not about the meat. It’s about wanting to own a public resource and not having to deal with peasant hunters. It’s about control. It’s about money. It’s about power.
Despite the fact that 4 out of 5 elk hunters in Montana don’t harvest an elk, and that shoulder seasons allow elk to be hunted six months a year, Sen. Galt and some landowners like him would rather hoard elk and sell outfitted hunts, and then cull them by the hundreds when they become a nuisance, rather than participating in one of the many programs that FWP already offers - tools like the Hunt Roster Damage Hunts, or Block Management, or the Elk Hunting Access Agreements.
In fact, in 2019, House Bill 497 increased the cap from two elk per person per year to three. Guess who sponsored that bill? Wylie Galt. And did it have the desired effect? Nope, because elk abundance isn’t a license problem; it’s an access problem.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because a lawsuit recently challenged all this in court. FWP - along with a handful of intervening sportsmen groups - successfully defended the case. A judge ruled that landowners have plenty of tools to address problematic concentrations of elk, but if landowners choose not to use those, and not to participate in elk management efforts, then they can't demand additional recourse. And yet, that’s exactly what SB 270 is attempting to do.
If the bill passes and Wylie Galt and the Montana Conservation Society get their way, it will remove the need to use the other tools that FWP offers, the ones that provide public access and opportunity. Elk would be gunned down like vermin, and the public would be left out.
Surely we can do better.
Sen. Loge, the main sponsor of this bill, doesn’t have to look far for other management approaches. One of Loge’s other bills, SB 106, does exactly that by allowing FWP’s drones to be used in more instances to haze elk off of private lands where they’re unwelcome; yet another tool offered to landowners.
Instead of encouraging a small few to slaughter an ungodly number of elk, we should be focusing on how to get more hunters more opportunities to harvest a public resource and fill their freezers. This bill is self-serving and wasteful, and a bad look for all hunters.
Ask your state Senator to Halt Galt’s SB 270.
Greg Munther is a lifelong elk hunter. He lives in Missoula.
Halt Galt’s Latest Attempt to Privatize Elk
Sen. Wylie Galt is at it again. This time, he’s cosponsoring SB 270, a bill that would lift the reasonable cap of three elk per hunter per year, and allow an unlimited number of elk to be shot by one person, his latest attempt to privatize elk and diminish public access programs.
The Galt family is the third largest landowner in the state, owning more than 250,000 acres. Wylie is a founding board member of the Montana Conservation Society, a newly formed landowner and outfitter group, whose lobbyist wrote SB 270. The junque files make this clear.
What’s also clear is that roughly 81.8 percent of licensed elk hunters in Montana end the season with no elk. 16 percent harvest one. Some 2 percent get two elk. Yet, according to FWP, only .2 percent shoot the maximum allowed three elk in a license year.
This isn’t surprising. Elk are big. A cow elk averages around 170 pounds of boneless meat - and bulls are even larger. So who would want - or need - to shoot more than three elk - or 500 pounds of meat - per year?
The reality is, it’s not about the meat. It’s about wanting to own a public resource and not having to deal with peasant hunters. It’s about control. It’s about money. It’s about power.
Despite the fact that 4 out of 5 elk hunters in Montana don’t harvest an elk, and that shoulder seasons allow elk to be hunted six months a year, Sen. Galt and some landowners like him would rather hoard elk and sell outfitted hunts, and then cull them by the hundreds when they become a nuisance, rather than participating in one of the many programs that FWP already offers - tools like the Hunt Roster Damage Hunts, or Block Management, or the Elk Hunting Access Agreements.
In fact, in 2019, House Bill 497 increased the cap from two elk per person per year to three. Guess who sponsored that bill? Wylie Galt. And did it have the desired effect? Nope, because elk abundance isn’t a license problem; it’s an access problem.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because a lawsuit recently challenged all this in court. FWP - along with a handful of intervening sportsmen groups - successfully defended the case. A judge ruled that landowners have plenty of tools to address problematic concentrations of elk, but if landowners choose not to use those, and not to participate in elk management efforts, then they can't demand additional recourse. And yet, that’s exactly what SB 270 is attempting to do.
If the bill passes and Wylie Galt and the Montana Conservation Society get their way, it will remove the need to use the other tools that FWP offers, the ones that provide public access and opportunity. Elk would be gunned down like vermin, and the public would be left out.
Surely we can do better.
Sen. Loge, the main sponsor of this bill, doesn’t have to look far for other management approaches. One of Loge’s other bills, SB 106, does exactly that by allowing FWP’s drones to be used in more instances to haze elk off of private lands where they’re unwelcome; yet another tool offered to landowners.
Instead of encouraging a small few to slaughter an ungodly number of elk, we should be focusing on how to get more hunters more opportunities to harvest a public resource and fill their freezers. This bill is self-serving and wasteful, and a bad look for all hunters.
Ask your state Senator to Halt Galt’s SB 270.
Greg Munther is a lifelong elk hunter. He lives in Missoula.
Forkyfinder
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2023
- Messages
- 3,224
Bill tracking in Montana - LC 1301 (2025 legislative session) - FastDemocracy
Repeal nonresident landowner preference for big game combo licenses
fastdemocracy.com
This is as good as ive found - it provides a summary. Heres the one on mule deer rut hunting.
Bill tracking in Montana - HB 139 (2025 legislative session) - FastDemocracy
Revise laws related to mule deer buck hunting in November
fastdemocracy.com
Hadn’t thought of it that way. Guessing it’d actually be well received by the general public as a better/easier opportunity to kill stuff if it were framed that way.
I personally thought it’d be a bit easier to find critters on the move to lower ground in the late season if they’re more vulnerable after some weather. I assumed people wanted the season to remain at the end because of that.
Anyway, I digress since that’s not the nature of the bill.
cgasner1
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2016
- Messages
- 3,595
I hunt the muzzy season pretty hard I’m not much for a rifle hunting. After 6 weeks of rifle season finding game isn’t as easy as you think
Especially not game you can get within 100 or so yards of. It all maketh more sense now.
