It's Just Nice to Be Out in Nature

This is what people say when they get skunked, "Well, it's just nice to be out in nature." That's crap. I mean yes, I definitely appreciate getting out in nature and hiking around and being present...blah, blah, blah. But I'm out here to hunt and at least feel like I've got a chance, and the last couple years; the elk hunting during rifle season, has been rough. I spent 18 days during this year's rifle season getting out in nature and would estimate I hiked about 75 miles, and trust me, those 75 miles weren't like walking on a track. Much of it was brutal up and down and side-hilling and crawling over dead-falls. I also put around 2,000 miles on my truck and I literally only saw one elk while I was hunting and that was a huge bull in an area where I could only shoot spikes or cows. I saw plenty of elk on private land, however, while driving to and from the public land. 

In the area I hunt, objectives for elk, meaning the number of elk FWP would like to have in that area, have been over the projections for a number of years now. However, the success rates for harvesting elk have been way down. The solution was to open up the final two weeks of the gun season to antlerless elk on a general license. FWP also issued a ton of B-tags for the area, which is only good for antlerless elk. The problem is, regardless of how many tags are issued, if you can't get to the elk, there's no point. 

I feel three major factors have contributed to the lack of elk in accessible areas. And listen, I'm not a road hunter. I get out and I hike and up until recently, I've been pretty damn successful. But I feel the deck is stacked against the public land hunter and it's just getting worse. Here's the problem the way I see it; it comes down to climate, pressure, and elk sanctuaries. And you'll notice, I didn't mention predators on purpose because it ain't the damn wolves. We have plenty of elk as I noted during the archery season and the FWP surveys also support this. Regardless of how skeptical you are, FWP numbers don't lie. We just either can't find them or can't access them.

If you look at the picture above, it was taken right after one of the few snow falls, we saw during the rifle season this year. It wasn't "good" snow, however. It was a sheet of ice. It rained first and then snowed on top of it, which is virtually impossible to hunt. Your best bet is to find a spot to sit and hopefully, someone pushes elk past you. You're not going to sneak up on anything though.

The last time we had good snow during the hunting season on my side of the Divide was two years ago. The snow drove the elk down from the high country and I wound up shooting a bull that was bedded down with about 30 other elk in a park (out here, a park is a big open meadow on the side of the mountain.) I still had to work for it. I hiked about 2 miles into the park before spotting them and then had to pack the bull out. But it was doable. All the other elk I've taken with a rifle were in similar circumstances where a cold front would bring snow, and the elk would move down. We're not getting the snow, and the elk are free to roam wherever they want. 

The traffic in the mountains has also changed. I wouldn't be surprised to see stop signs and lights popping up soon. Some days it feels like I'm back in the Twin Cities waiting for the light to change so that I can merge into traffic on I-94. At the trailhead I have been hunting for years, a Forest Service lease just opened up for the cabin at the access point to National Forest. Reservations for the cabin have been booked up for months. Every day I walked past the cabin, 2 or 3 trucks were parked there with at least 4 to 6 hunters staying at the cabin. A hunter I talked to later in the season, said there were 20 rigs at the parking area on opening day. That wasn't even including the trucks parked at the cabin. That's insane! There's no room for all those hunters and as soon as elk start seeing the traffic, they disappear. Where do they go? Well, anywhere hunters can't.

Elk aren't dumb. They have figured out where the safe places are and as soon as traffic ramps up, they head for the safe zones if they aren't there already. Some elk go up high, miles from any access until the snow flies, but even that is becoming less and less the issue. More people are moving out buying up more property from ranchers that used to allow access. What's happening is those ranches are becoming elk sanctuaries. Some of that is on purpose as the landowners feel like it's their duty to protect the animals. Some of it is landowners securing property for their own access, to which they only let friends and family hunt or paying customers. Either way, there isn't enough pressure to push the elk onto public lands where the pressure has gotten ridiculous. 

This is a big problem out here. Landowners bitch about too many elk busting down fences and eating up profits but then they don't let folks hunt. Or for the ones that do, elk just cross their fences and hang out 20 yards off on the neighbor's property where they are safe. Once the traffic goes down, the elk move back to where the better food and water is. And opening up more tags for more antlerless elk just means more pressure on public lands but doesn't do anything for pushing elk off the sanctuaries. 

A lot of competing groups are coming together to complicate the problem and to make solutions for FWP impossible. Objectives for elk numbers are tricky, which is where we start. Those objectives aren't created by scientific methods of determining healthy elk populations given the food resources alone. Elk compete with ranchers for food and space. Many ranchers I've talked to would rather we didn't have any elk because it costs them time and money. Hunters would love to have more elk and newcomers to the state love to see the wildlife and have no idea the damage they are doing by "saving" those animals. Then you add into the equation the millions of dollars of revenue the state makes off of giant bulls harvested be millionaires and now, billionaires and you can see how complicated it can get. FWP gets caught in the middle and the objectives are really just a sort of balance they try to achieve taking all the competing parties into account. 

But it's not the numbers of elk that's the problem. In fact, we have so many elk, we have to have damage hunts out here that often start in mid-August and go through February. But again, those damage hunts only knock down a small percentage of the elk herd because you still have to find access and again, the elk know where they are safe. And every year we still are over the objectives and landowner still bitch that there are too many elk, and I still see more and more rigs driving up and down the mountains. 

What will make the problem even worse is when our public lands get sold to the billionaires moving out here and everything goes to a model of private stewardship/management. I understand that might sound hyperbolic, but the reality is, that our elected officials have expressed the policy objectives to make this happen. Our governor, Greg Gianforte, and newly elected senator, Tim Sheehy, have both expressed the desire to sell off public lands, which easily could create huge ranches that only the rich can access. As long as there's money to be made, right? And you know they ain't going to share with us common folk.

 And I know, you might point out that I'm a fishing outfitter, who also makes money off of an increasingly scarcer resource. The difference is, is us fishing guides put the fish back and we do a lot to bring resources to help preserve our fisheries and we are more than happy to share. Hunting outfitters and landowners aren't usually so generous until it's January and they feel like they can sell off a few of the cows on their property via the damage hunt. (By the way, our State Constitution is in complete opposition to this idea of ownership over the animals. Landowners do not own the animals.) And that seems like an incredible abuse of the system in the form of double dipping by charging thousands to shoot a trophy during the general season, not letting resident hunters to access, and then making a few hundred dollars on every cow after the general season concludes. It's a mess and the next thing coming to Montana, given the fact that it seems everything is greed driven now, is high fences. Wouldn't that be fun? 

Sorry about the rant but I'm sure I'm not alone. Thanks for listening.

Keep 'em where they live...