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Ghost

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Here is part of an interesting article written in/about Montana.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Neil Martin, a retired wildlife manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, watched this change to commercial use of wildlife and the exclusion of the public hunter become more pronounced during his career. He worked for the agency from 1965 to 1998, with the final 28 years in Miles City.

"It all started in Eastern Montana over two-deer seasons in the mid- to late 1970s. A lot of the wildlife managers in the other regions cut back. We didn't do that. We remained with two-deer, either-sex, either-species seasons," Martin said.

"We had no idea that people would take advantage of this as they did, and they really piled in here and that included the nonresidents," he said. "It wasn't so much outfitting at the start - we didn't have that many outfitters in Eastern Montana then - it was that that some landowners could take advantage of those numbers of people, and they could charge fees to hunt. There was some leasing, but that was by nonresidents. Then outfitting caught on. They were guaranteed a license and lots of clients.

"Nonresidents were only supposed to get 10 percent of the special licenses like antelope. There was a time they were getting almost 40 percent of them," Martin said. "That was all associated with paid hunting, whether it was outfitting or the landowner was getting it.

"By sometime in the '80s, access became a real issue, and it has continued. We had a great abundance of animals. We had a huge harvestable supply. But they were just unavailable to the general public.

"When you get big chunks of land like this closed, it takes some pretty drastic measures to get that changed," Martin said. "People have to look at it as bigger than just affecting me and just where I hunt. Access to hunt and manage wildlife owned by the people is all the people's problem."</div></div>
 
This is one of the great challenges facing hunters and game managers across the U.S.. Wildlife is held in the public trust, but of course access to the private land base is not.

I know a warden in the Miles City, MT area and he says the state's Block Management program (where the state leases the ground from a rancher, who then allows limited public hunting) has been popular and reasonably successful. Walk-In programs, such as those used in KS and the Dakotas, are another option. Of course, these are expensive and require continued maintenance.

In my opinion, programs like these, in combination with an aggressive purchase of state and federal lands whenever possible, is the most feasible option for keeping land open to hunters. I feel like there will always be free access to private ground for American hunters, but the opportunities seem to be shrinking every year....
 
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