Montana - Ballot Initiative would allow Montana Landowners to Hunt Without Permits
- Thread starter JMG
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MThuntr
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I-193 to exempt MT Landowners from elk/deer/bear regs
I'm on the road for a while, but a friend sent this EQC meeting agenda item to me. If you're a Montana hunter, this should get your attention. It is a proposed ballot initiative that will exempt landowners from hunting regulations during elk, deer, and black bear season. Link here -...
www.hunttalk.com
elevatorman
Active member
They should be able to. It's ridiculous they can't currently. Virginia you can hunt on your own land or direct kin's land with no hunting licenses. It just has to be the actual hunting season.
FI460
Well-known member
It's like 7 strawpennies for a hunting license in Montana. They can shell it out like us landless chumps.
No reason to make the Montana licensing and harvest data worse.
Straight Arrow
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No, it's ridiculous that they would be allowed to harvest wild game that belongs to the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia or the state of Montana ... NOT to the landowners of habitat where the wildlife just happens to live, short term or long term. If you want to kill a bull elk on your Montana ranch, then you need the permission provided by a Montana hunting license which is legislated by democratic representation of the people, by the people, and for the people who are the state's citizens who "own" the state's wildlife.
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brocksw
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Move to europe
devon deer
Well-known member
Buyer beware if you are looking at Montana properties.
Edit: I think it should be a requirement for the people selling properties to nonresidents to inform them that tags do not and hopefully never will come with the property. Get in line.
Gerald Martin
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This initiative has nothing to do with hunting your own property without a hunting license. This was intended to ensure that private landowners within the boundaries of a Tribal Reservation can hunt big game on their own land.
Not only does Montana lack jurisdiction over determining wildlife management policy on sovereign reservation and this law won’t withstand a legal challenge to implement it on reservations an unintended consequence of it could be that FWP would no longer manage for special permit areas on private lands.
Imagine how giddy private land outfitters would be to have general regulations on all the Missouri Breaks Units or the Bitterroot for mule deer. Permits would only apply to public lands.
Not only does Montana lack jurisdiction over determining wildlife management policy on sovereign reservation and this law won’t withstand a legal challenge to implement it on reservations an unintended consequence of it could be that FWP would no longer manage for special permit areas on private lands.
Imagine how giddy private land outfitters would be to have general regulations on all the Missouri Breaks Units or the Bitterroot for mule deer. Permits would only apply to public lands.
AlaskaHunter
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cgasner1
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After talking with my guide in New Mexico I believe we do need to revise this land owner tag thing. Down south if the land owner applies for a unit wide tag because they have a ranch like our current land owners get they have to open the land to being hunted by the public. The other option is they can apply for a tag that is only valid on their land and that is all they can hunt
BigHornRam
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Dumb idea going nowhere. 0% chance.
Montana already has programs that can do this.
cgasner1
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Ya this would be more of a force of the land owners hand. If you want your tag to be valid for the entire unit your ranch goes into the bma program. Otherwise your tag is only good for your property
BuzzH
Well-known member
And they would still get to choose their BMA hunters. We would get hosed twice, they get landowner tags, and we get to pay for their friends they let hunt their land with Block funding.
Lose-lose without the MTFWP administering the permission on the BMA.
cgasner1
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Ya this would be more of a force of the land owners hand. If you want your tag to be valid for the entire unit your ranch goes into the bma program. Otherwise your tag is only good for your property
The only programs that require landowners to hunt their own property right now are the 454 & NR Landowner Preference pools (or lands leased for Ag purposes).
While I understand and empathize with the thought that we can force landowners into allowing access, the last 20 years of trying this approach has not produced any measurable result except more conflict. We are better off spending our time working with that community to find paths to increasing hunter access and improving hunter success.
Wyoming does this extremely well. I don't think it's an insurmountable hurdle to get this done in MT and it would help in a lot of ways, especially when you look at getting real numbers relative to hunter days instead of folks who "forgot to sign in."
Here's the link for the EQC broadcast:
cgasner1
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I know a couple that lease out the ground to outfitters. Then draw the tag on the lop pool with much better draw odds and hunt the public due to the land being leased out. Who is that helping?
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