Heres the clause @Jock Conyngham is referring to
The Current could do a better job of mentioning it,* but I believe those Viewpoint articles are opinion pieces submitted to the publication, and not editorials written by the publication. The latter of which are typically well informed.
FIFY
bills.legmt.gov
Dipshit minded strategy of blasting all of em sure worked out in central montana.
Its as if no one has bothered referring to this document titled... HABITAT MONTANA REPORT TO THE 69th MONTANA LEGISLATURE...
No mention of the relevant portion.A lot of stuff floating out there around SB 270 doesn't really interpret the bill correctly. Or they ignore the amendments that have been added to respond to the legitimate criticism it had early on.
The bill is here:
Bill Explorer
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In it's current form, here's what SB 270 does:
1.) It caps NR antlerless hunters to no more than 2 cow licenses if they have a big game combination, or 1 if they don't. The fiscal note shows this to be a reduction in NR licenses by around 550 NR elk B licenses, or roughly 10-15% of current NR antlerless opportunity. This is done in order to ensure that we don't end up in a similar situation to deer where there was significant oversubscription to antlerless licenses.
2.) Section 11 is specifically for those areas that are not over objective range, and provides legislative direction to the agency to scale their approach based on actual herd conditions and desired goals. Senator Loge added this to the original concept. In practice, what this would look like is moving back to a more restrictive approach to cow hunting on public lands in order to help keep elk on publicly accessible areas, rather than continue to add hunting pressure where elk are wanted. it also means that areas that have differing objectives (like HD's that have significant overlap due to elk movement) don't overshoot one district while being conservative in a next door district.
3.) It keeps the number of elk licenses the commission can issue the same. While this started out as an attempt to equalize management between deer and elk through commission rule, the concerns raised by organizations and hunters over too many elk tags being issued were listened too, and that piece was removed willingly by the sponsor and the organizations that supported the original form. I would again point to the fiscal note that shows that in it's current form, it would lead to a net reduction in antlerless licenses issued even to some residents. I am hoping that there is an amendment placed on the bill in the house that restores the language relative to page 3, lines 7-8.
As for the need of some folks to attack people instead of ideas, I'll just drop this here:
No more than 2 "except" - what does that "exception" mean - if thats the case?
To scale what exactly (other than quantity of tags per person)? How many b tags there are? They can already do that?
Wheres the exception here?
