FWP proposal would reduce public hunting opportunity

FWP proposal would reduce public hunting opportunity by Joe Perry

February 6, 2016

Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the press and the governor have promoted elk shoulder seasons as successful. By what metric? If it’s just killing public trust elk, it begs the question: If the same level of access were available during the general season, would it not have achieved the same results or better?

It’s disingenuous to call this success without any data regarding the original objectives and performance measures. Most of us were led to believe it was a package deal. Obviously, we were misled.

Shoulder seasons, by definition, are any season outside of the regular five-week general hunting season. We’ve had shoulder seasons for many years. The differences are the shoulder seasons now proposed are for entire hunt districts, not just localized areas within hunt districts. Up till now, in order to have a shoulder season or any other game damage or management season action, a landowner must meet qualification criteria that incorporates access during the five-week season into any management action. The newly proposed shoulder seasons by contrast ignore landowner qualification criteria. The only requirement is that the hunt district be over objective. This is wholly unacceptable.

This dynamic allows outfitters to sell public trust bull elk without allowing any public access to properties during the archery and general seasons. So elk congregate on these lands and from surrounding lands hunted by the public. The public is denied an opportunity to harvest these critters and elk congregate in large bunches, increasing danger of easy disease transmission. Because outfitters harvest almost entirely bulls, the antlerless animals tend to become over objective.

There are instances of elk not being present during the general season, only to show up later. Those folks need some help. But it seems a huge part of the driving force is from private lands outfitted during the general with little or no public hunting access.

In proposing to jump from five pilot projects to 44 hunt districts, has FWP done the homework with the landowners as required? Is there buy-in from landowners who know the original goals and objectives? Have we changed the rules on the metrics used to evaluate shoulder seasons? What happened to the measurable objectives decided upon earlier?

What is the cause of these over objective numbers? Elk hunting interest, being what it is in Montana, it's difficult to understand hunt districts being 200 percent to 300 percent over objective and growing at 15 percent per year. This screams harboring, plain and simple.

Would local businesses not flourish during the regular season if access weren’t an issue?

We think it is only fair to let the public know if rules are changed. Let's slow down, stop the rhetoric, stay the course, stick to the original rules, collect the data and present it honestly and factually. Last but not least, why are some wanting to treat our public elk as a private commodity during hunting season and pregnant varmints after the season? We find this very distasteful.

Joe Perry of Brady writes for the Montana Sportsman's Alliance. He was appointed this month by Gov. Steve Bullock to the Montana Private Land Public Wildlife Advisory Council.