1ST VICE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE

Hey everyone I hope this finds you all well and that your 2021 season was a great one. 2022 is rolling in like a freight train and January is slipping away fast! As you are all aware there is plenty going on outdoor wise in our great state right now. Some good things, some not so good things, and a whole lot of question marks...

On the bright side we are ramping up for a great convention the weekend of April 1 over at Fairmont Hot Springs and after two years of not being able to have one, I am super excited to see everyone! We’ve got a ton of great raffle items, live and silent auction items, and some incredible seminars. Top it off with a prime rib dinner and a soak in the pools and I’m not sure how you could spend a better weekend unless you were hunting! Get your tickets and reserve your rooms early so you don’t miss out. Whitetails are dropping and some cat quotas are still open so I’ll be sneaking around the woods as much as possible but I am looking forward to some warmer weather and spring bear hunting.

Hope to see as many of you as possible at Convention!

Cheers, Brian Brian Koelzer

As I write this FWP is taking comments on their latest season setting proposals. Proposals that in my estimation will go towards gutting the season structure that has evolved to responsibly manage elk in Montana for the last several decades.

The current FWP Director is advocating these regulation changes in the name of “simplification”. My question to the Director, why cannot FWP wait until the New Elk Management Plan has been released before making such wide scale changes. Who is to say some or many of these changes will not serve the new Elk Management Plan and will have to be changed back? How much elk research data will be lost for future analysis because of all these HD changes?

If you have spent any time in going through these proposed changes you may have concluded, as I have, that this is not simplification, it is simply change for change’s sake. Yes, no doubt some of these changes are needed from a wildlife and hunter management standpoint. But as a Region 3 CAC member I listened to FWP biologists and managers give the reasoning for the proposed hunting regulation changes during a recent Region 3 Zoom meeting. What I came away from that meeting with is that, in large part, many of these tenative changes to season structure and HD boundaries have no real biological or hunter management justifications. It really makes little sense to me.

One of my concerns is the unbundling of the 900-20 limited archery only permits back into 22 separate HDs and making those HDs either general archeryonly season or unlimited archery-only permits. Since these HDs were combined into the 900-20 HDs, we have seen a significant increase in bowhunter interest throughout the nation. Now with unlimited or general season archery there will no longer be a limit on the number of nonresident bowhunters that can hunt in a specific HD. Add to that the harvest of a world record elk in Southeast Montana and you have a recipe for a lot of bowhunting pressure in these newly unbundled HDs. Increases in bowhunting pressure will quite likely lead to the degradation in the bowhunting experience for the Montana hunter.

The Director has stated that some of these changes will help FWP wildlife managers reach elk objective numbers. It seems to me that some of the most contentious regulation changes will do little to mitigate the actual problem, that of elk concentrations on private lands caused by “Harboring” and limited private land access by public hunters.

In the new HD 535, limited permits will be discontinued on private land and a general season will be applied to private lands only. On public lands limited permits will continue with a 50% decrease in those permits.

Now at first blush this may sound like a solution. Put more pressure on private land elk to move them to public lands and at the same time limit pressure on public land to motivate those elk to leave private land.

That could be the case if there were guarantees that this new season structure would mean more public hunters on private land instead of it leading to more commercialization of our resource. NOTE: In the Montana Constitution elk

The problem is that hunting on these private lands are reserved for the wealthy landowners who want to Harbor elk, leased to deep pocket nonresident hunting groups, or leased to private land outfitters. By removing the limited permit structure there will be no controls on the number of nonresident hunters that can purchase a license. This will equate to increased clientele for private land outfitters, more opportunities for nonresidents, and less private land accessible to Montana hunters. Quite likely this type of structure will lead to more private land being leased. The proposed concept is just a bad idea.

In a legislative hearing I heard Senator Galt describe how he manipulates elk on his land during the shoulder season to make sure they stay on his property so he can maximize outfitter revenues. Be assured that private land outfitters and others who lease private land for hunting will work to keep elk on private land for the same reasons that Senator Galt does.

This structure will not work towards lessening concentrations of elk on private lands. It will most likely lead to higher concentrations of elk on private lands.

The FWP has stated that the new elk management program is due to be released sometime in 2023. The elk plan will look at the issues we currently have with elk distribution and population and consider both biological and sociological methods that should be used to lessen the problems of elk concentrations on private lands. Why can’t, or should I say by the time you read this, couldn’t the FWP Director wait for the release of that elk plan? I will let you decide that, but I have my suspicions.

Jerry Davis