MT Elk Objectives Mandates- Ensuring Failure as the Measurement of Success.

[Gerald Martin]

John B. Sullivan III: Hollow complaints on elk management

Debby Barrett, former lawmaker from Dillon, is reprimanding Montana FWP for not using more tools to kill more elk in Montana.

mtstandard.com

John B. Sullivan III has written a timely opinion piece about Debbie Barrett’s 2003 bill that mandates FWP manages elk to “objective”.

Debbie Barrett recently wrote an opinion piece ( linked in the article) in which she castigates FWP for not doing enough and voicing support for UPOM’s lawsuit against FWP.

Not coincidentally, her son-in-law is Chuck Denowh, head of UPOM.


I would love to hear more thoughts and ideas surrounding this topic. I find John’s article timely as I had already identified Barrett’s legislation as something I want to focus on when I speak at the elk symposium next weekend.

 

[Nameless Range]

I think John's article makes a great point. "Ensuring failure as the measurement of success" is a great way to put it.

"If Barrett thinks there are too many elk but is unwilling to participate in any one of the numerous tools available — including unlimited cow tags for half the year, or the ability for one hunter to harvest up to three elk per year, or the 15 percent of permits set aside for landowners, or the carefully managed damage hunts, or the 454 agreements which award elk permits to landowners in return for minimal hunter access — then maybe the problem isn't a lack of tools available; maybe the problem is a refusal by some to use them. If Barrett chooses not to participate, her complaints ring hollow."
This portion makes a great point. In addition, my disgust at the 454 agreements really has highlighted something for me.


The idea that landowners can't hunt their own property is largely BS. To those who say so, I ask them to prove it and then compare their opportunity to the average Montanan. Landowners, through the general draw, LO preference, and now the 454 program, get 3 different opportunities for LE permits on their property. In addition, they have all the general opportunity everyone else has. Then, they have game damage, ridiculously long seasons, allowing all the hunters they feel they need and more...And what do you know, many charge $ for access. Anyone who's taken Econ 101 knows that making something expensive reduces its demand. So many of the problems we are trying to solve aren't problems at all. It's just folks with "juice" who bellyache.

Lastly, and this is something I am shouting from the rooftops and saying out loud at the public scoping meetings, is that a district being "over objective" is one of the worst things that can happen to it, and we should do everything we can to prevent it. "Over objective" is a legal status. Once over objective, a district is subject to management in which the biologists have no say. Legislators get their grubby paws on over objective districts. We've seen the plans (HB 505) that the privatizers have for over objective districts. I watched a district be over objective, be given very liberal management, and in one season have more elk killed in one year than were nearly counted there 3 years later. We don't need to open the door for hamfisted management. Such a status is a poison pill for an HD. This fact alone, should prompt sportsmen to push for higher objectives everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, just to put a pad between bad ideas and bad management, and the biologists and management proposals we all get to have input on through the season setting process. I think it was a rep from Helena Hunters and Anglers, who at the Helena scoping meeting, said, "We want the highest possible objectives and the highest number of elk possible given habitat, in our HDs."


I think that is right.

UPOM, and the anti-hunting ideas that spring from their brain trust, should be viewed as antagonistic to people trying to move Montana's management into the 21st century. They are an enemy of hunters and fishermen! And that includes Debbie Barrett.

 

[tjones]

Debbie Barrett has killed more elk in Montana then wolves, lions and bears combined yet all you here from hunters is there are too many predators.

Good work by John Sullivan.

 

[Irrelevant]

Great Op-Ed