Ordinary hunting will never reduce elk numbers to their target levels, Rep. John Winter (R-Thermopolis) opined to fellow members of the Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee.
As an alternative, he suggested commissioning a helicopter crew to remove overpopulated herds that are eating grass, busting fences and generally giving Wyoming ranchers headaches.
“If we’re going to get this job done, we’re going to have to change our whole approach,” Winter said at the committee’s June 6 meeting in Torrington. “I really believe that if you get the right pilot and the right organization, we could take care of this problem in relatively short time.”
Rep. Bob Davis (R-Baggs), a fellow committee member, lofted out another aerial idea: Why not suspend the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s drone prohibition to give hunting guides the upper hand in locating wapiti.
Rep. John Eklund (R-Cheyenne), a committee co-chair, questioned whether elk killed from within inflated herds need to be processed: “Can they just be gunned,” he asked, “and let the coyotes take care of the carcasses?”
The Agriculture Committee’s other chair, Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle), floated another option for handling all the potential meat in places like the Laramie Mountains and Iron Mountain, where elk populations are double to triple the state’s objectives.
“Is there any way you could sell the meat to help recoup some of the costs for the landowners?” she said. “Has any of that been contemplated?”
Craig Smith, the deputy chief of wildlife for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, offered the same answer to each inquisitive legislator’s brainstormed solution to overpopulated elk herds in eastern and central Wyoming. Responding to one suggestion after the next, he told lawmakers their ideas were illegal.
“Can they just be gunned, and let the coyotes take care of the carcasses?”
John Eklund
Smith explained to Eklund, for example, that Wyoming law prohibits wanton waste of game meat.
“It’s just not something that the public is going to stomach,” he said of leaving dead elk to decay. “I personally wouldn’t stomach it.”
The barrage of elk management ideas were not only unconventional vis-a-vis game laws and ethical hunting standards, they also came from a committee that doesn’t often deal with wildlife policy.
In fact, the Wyoming Legislature’s Management Council did not task the Agriculture Committee to address overpopulated elk or help landowners cope with them. But the 15 lawmakers on the committee heard rancher testimony about elk and are drafting bills to address the issue because some of its leadership felt that the normal avenue for elk-related bills — the Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee — was “unable to move policy along to get these numbers down,” Eklund said.
“The problem is you’ve got committees that work with certain agencies and they are trying to not get crosswise with them because they work with them constantly,” he told WyoFile. “The ag committee is a little less concerned with that.”
‘Unable to move policy along’
Not every Agriculture Committee member agreed with the decision to wade into the topic.
“If I was the chairman, we would not have taken this on,” Sen. Larry Hicks (R-Baggs) said. “It wasn’t a topic that was presented to [Management Committee], it wasn’t presented by anybody and it’s kind of TRW’s purview. I’m not the chairman, but I think we should exercise better discretion.”
At the Torrington meeting, longtime livestock industry lobbyist Jim Magagna and several cattle ranchers spoke about their frustrations with elk before Game and Fish’s Smith presented data, the agency’s perspective and what’s been attempted so far.
Charlie Farthing, who ranches in the Iron Mountain Herd’s range, told lawmakers that, although they’re a native species, elk were absent on his family’s rangeland until the mid-1970s, when the state transplanted animals from the Yellowstone region.
“When these elk were put in, nobody said anything to us,” Farthing testified.
The elk expanded beyond the reintroduction area, he said, “kind of like when they put the wolves in Yellowstone.”
Wheatland-area rancher Juan Reyes charged that Game and Fish was “depriving landowners the opportunity of profitability.”
“That’s a taking,” the Cuban-born Reyes said. “And I came to this country because of socialism.”
Another Wheatland-area rancher, Don Willis, was less aggressive in his criticism of the state agency. “I’m not an expert, I don’t know all the details of Game and Fish,” he said. “But we live with it every day. I mean, we have elk-damaged fences 50 yards from the house. We are in the thick of it.”
When Game and Fish’s Smith fielded lawmakers’ questions, he faced scorn for his agency’s failure to hunt down elk numbers in a region where private property dominates and where savvy elk have learned to take refuge on parcels where hunting isn’t allowed.
“People that I consider experts — you — are just waiting at the train station waiting to get run over by this situation,” Sen. John Kolb (R-Rock Springs) told Smith. “Do you realize that something has to be done? What are we going to do?”
Game and Fish probably got unfairly beat up in the meeting, Eklund told WyoFile. The lawmakers, he said, were dealing with a new topic they knew little about before the ranchers’ testimony.
“The ag committee is a pretty new committee, and we have a lot of freshmen,” Eklund said. “A lot of what we’re doing constantly is education. Through that education you might throw out some ideas that have been tried before or are illegal.”
Made it through
A couple of potential elk-policy changes are poised to emerge from the Agriculture Committee.
One Hicks-led bill draft proposes some reform to Wyoming’s landowner license system. That’s a type of near-guaranteed license, sometimes subject to abuse, that the governor-appointed Wyoming Wildlife Taskforce couldn’t come to agreement on altering in 2022.
Hicks’ proposal would make landowner elk licenses transferable to other people in areas where elk populations are more than 120% of the state’s objective for three consecutive years. One provision he’s kicked around would necessitate that 50% of the transferred licenses end up with Wyoming residents. He’s not looking to increase the number of licenses eligible property owners can receive, currently two per species.
“We need something that people can support that’s pretty simple,” Hicks said.
Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, proposed the other piece of legislation the Agriculture Committee voted to pursue. He’d like lawmakers to amend wildlife-damage laws to make landowners automatically eligible for payments in areas where elk or other big game species are more numerous than the state’s goal.
Those payments would be based on estimations of the amount of grass over-objective elk and other big game species consume, and how much land individual stockgrowers graze. To be eligible, stockgrowers would have to “be willing to negotiate” with Game and Fish about “reasonable hunter access.”
The proposed elk-eaten grass reimbursement wouldn’t be limited to private property.
“I’m including leased state lands,” Magagna told the committee.
The reason, he explained, is that grazing leases on state lands are based on the estimated amount of forage available — not the number of livestock.
“If the elk are taking that forage,” Magagna said, “you’re suffering the same loss there as you are on your private land.”
Magagna told WyoFile he’s not intending to seek reimbursement for grass that elk and other wildlife are eating on national forest, Bureau of Land Management property and other federal land.
“On federal lands, no matter what my permit says,” he said, “I only pay for the number of [domestic] animals that actually graze each year.”
Status quo solution?
Game and Fish, meanwhile, is ramping up its own efforts to try to drive down elk numbers in the most overpopulated areas.
Last summer the state agency acted on another proposal emanating from the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, rebranding and updating its seldom-used depredation hunts as “auxiliary management” hunts.
Those hunts are devised completely outside of the agency’s normal season-setting process and geared toward addressing private-land-dwelling herds. The state hadn’t held a depredation hunt since 2004, but last winter wildlife managers authorized a “handful” of them. One example, Game and Fish Chief Warden Rick King said, was on four ranches south of Laramie, where 32 hunters killed 39 elk during the month of February.
“We look forward to implementing that more as we move forward,” he testified.
King spoke to the Travel, Recreation, Wildlife and Cultural Resources Committee, which met in Evanston and discussed overpopulated elk the week after their counterparts on the Agriculture Committee did so.
Winter, who sits on both committees, reiterated his view that the status quo will never achieve population goals in the most elk-crowded areas.
“We have to do something to help these ranchers,” he said. “They can’t stay in business when they’re trying to deal with all these elk.”
King, however, spoke optimistically about achieving the state’s elk objectives without having to radically realign management. Although the Iron Mountain Herd is roughly triple its 1,800-animal population goal, hunters could trim numbers toward the desired size by killing 800 or 900 cows and calves a year — about a doubling of the current take.
“It’s not unreasonable,” King said. “It’s going to take a lot of collaboration among landowners and it’ll take the full use of tools that we have.”
Another one of those tools is paying hunters to kill elk.
That’s a legal approach via Game and Fish regulations. Ordinarily those permits are distributed to agency personnel themselves, but last winter Game and Fish debuted contracting elk hunters to thin the Iron Mountain Herd. At a cost of roughly $20,600, two hired hands managed to kill 129 elk — penciling out to $160 per animal. The meat from all but one of them, which tested positive for chronic wasting disease, was salvaged and distributed via the Food from the Field program.
King’s confident he can scale that hired hunter system up and make progress.
“In terms of compensation for damage and in terms of addressing populations,” he said, “I think the commission, department and private landowners can make significant headway.”
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify details regarding John Winter’s proposed use of helicopters. —Ed.
It’s cheaper for me to go on a safari in South Africa (up to ten antelope type animals) than a guided elk hunt in Wyoming.
I would love to hunt cow calf in the over populated areas. Greg Brill, WI. What would it cost me for license.
Why would you pay contract hunters when many hunters are begging for more opportunities to put good healthy meat onto their tables to feed their families. I’m from CO and would be happy to hunt in any WY gaming unit I am directed to, especially if private access was offered. Hunters want more opportunities, WGFD just needs to create them. I would enjoy being given access to a large private ranch to have a rarely offered hunting opportunity. If the landowner can benefit from this monetarily, wonderful!!! They should be compensated for offering access, especially if it fixes a problem. Finding a good hunting experience is way too hard in CO (this may be better in WY), access is the key missing component. Have these private ranchers list certain areas of their large ranches on OnX as “Walk-In Access”, offer affordable tags to hunters in the specific areas where herds need to be thinned and pay the Ranchers that offered private land a percentage of the profit based upon the amount of acres they provided (or how many Elk were harvested on their property) there are many solutions, just pick one…. Hunters would highly appreciate being part of the solution. Tags need to be offered in the safehavens where the Elk have been pressured to, how else would you accomplish this unless it was beneficial to the landowner.
I am from MN you do not want any wolves. The pack grows and grows.
I hunt CO over 35 years. We look for elk1 to 8 in a herd. WY. And the Laramie mtns was my 1st hunt. We came out 2 times. Complete disaster, many locals are mad I learned.. put cattle on public land, so the elk go on there private land. Buy 1000 acres so now no one can hunt the public 8000 acres. Because now it is private land locked
They can now hunt 9000 acres when they only bought 1000. Couldn’t anyone stop that land purchase. ALSO PUT ME ON THE NON RESIDENT LIST. For coming out to shoot an elk, off anyone’s land, at any time. (Just not summer)
let local hunters on to hunt
I believe hunting access is the biggest factor. We are right in I the middle of hunting season and I’ve been out for a total now 15 days. The rifle I have reaches out to just over 450 yeard’s not much by most standards these days. Yes I should get something better. This adds to hunters access all public lands. Theres a lot of closed roads logging road, older forest roads that are closed and or gated. Open them up that not only will allow more acres to be hunted but those that can’t shoot fare enough or have the ability to physically hike in five miles and pack an elk out, in this case may not have to with a bit more roads opened. Right now your bottle necked in on just main roads with every hunter and their grandma. Which then in turn limits tags being filled. That’s all I have notice this year out in the field. Yes more and more hunters would prefer less work in packouts this is true. However the more access to hard to reach areas the better odds for everyone, and may result in more manageable packouts.
As for private lands if your going to have an outfitter it seems to me your making bank on guided hunts. Your making plenty from that to pay for lose in grazing to need government subsidies. I don’t think you need to be double dipping. You want more grazing lands and better grass let people out to hunt the elk. My house hold of 7 lives of elk and at the end of the season we need the freezers full. As for me access is key, I’ll kill a couple elk to help you with lose of grass. I cant pay to get access on a ranch and don’t won’t to, not when their getting money any way. If the rancher is worried about letting people on their property and tarring up their property, then access it without motorized vehicles. They get there land owner coupons, the hunter gets their elk, and the elk move somewhere else for a few weeks. Seems to me a win win on both sides and it didn’t cost anyone anything but the effort to back out the game.
How about when hunting season is over and the elk have settled into their winter ranges. There is no management on the herds, ranchers loss grass. Hunters aren’t going to fix anything at this point.
So if you have to apply in an area that is overpopulated give the tag holder an extra cow tag. If it’s a general area loto out an extra tag per every handful of bought tags. Give the man wanting to hunt elk a chance to do so and some. I don’t care much for the antlers as much as it is a trophy to have a nice set. Right now my trophy is feeding my family. An extra tag and better access, would be helpful.
Far be it for Wyoming to “let nature take its course,” and stop killing wolves, which would help trim the elk, starting with those infected with chronic wasting disease. In 2021, Montana had 141,785 elk, 1,150 wolves, 5,000 cougars, 15,000 black bears, 1,054 grizzly bears, and 1.5 million humans. Based on 60 years of study, Dr. John A. Vucetich wrote, in his 2021 book, RESTORING THE BALANCE, “The health of ecosystems inhabited by large herbivores depends on the cascading trophic effects of predation.” Human well-being depends on healthy forests and grasslands that can be degraded by over browsing and overgrazing. Aldo Leopold, father of game management in America, knew that. He shot a wolf, and over the course of his career, rued it, writing: “Since then (as wolves and mountain lions were annihilated) I have lived to see…every edible bush and seedling browsed…to death.”
I thought wolves were going to eat all the elk. This does not seem to be happening.
Figure out how many elk you need to get rid of. Instead of pay money to someone, charge the would be hunters money to come in and hunt elk…it’s a win win situation
The ranchers are helped and the hunters get to hunt elk. The state can collect the funds.
The ranchers are already receiving a payout from the federal government for subsidies and dirt cheap grazing leases of public land. The idolization of ranchers who know nothing about fiscal responsibility has to stop.
If your career can’t survive without federal handouts, you need to rethink your future.
Listen Chuck … ranchers provide food for the entire country and if they didn’t get subsidized meat prices would skyrocket…
the State put these Elk there it’s their responsibility to manage the herds… and charging out-of-state residents 700 bucks when they have an obvious problem is rediculous. Lower the cost of hunting them…
the rest of the USA would like to eat and dont mind ranchers using federal land if the animals get to be happy and we are happily eating them at a reasonable price.
the socialist ranchers want all the grass for themselves at taxpayers exspense
If these ranchers would let hunters on their land the without charging an arm and a lag to hunt the problem would go away.
Hey, I have an idea. How about antlerless only elk seasons until the population is reduced to the agreed upon objective for the herd unit?
Then only hunt antlered elk every three years. Allow free market capitalism to determine the privilege of hunting access. Landowners leasing their lands should require their outfitter to provide for the harvest of antlerless elk at a level that keeps the population stable once the population objective is reached Say, 20 cows per bull killed or whatever is necessary. You are the boss, not the outfitter.
Antlerless hunts could be marketed to those mentioned in prior posts. Youth, Veterans, seniors, those with mobility issues, etc.. Maybe even allow party hunting for antlerless elk in herd units that are over objective.
We need to seek common ground here folks. We need an honorable and fair solution. Only a person suffering from depraved indifference would suggest aerial gunning and leaving animals spoiling on the landscape.
People need to quit saying ranchers have to open up there places. That is no better of an answer than to the gun them down and let them rot. It’s there ground and property they should have the choice what happens with it. Nobody is telling the DIY hunter to go to the border and get a refugee and house them feed them and pay the bill. End of the year the government will give you $16 dollars to help with costs. Fair and free won’t solve this problem. This could be a chance to let some out of state hunters in for the state to make some money to recover and landowners to help off set costs. So the tax payer isn’t paying the bill. Probably going to have to lengthen the hunting season. If your a local and don’t want to pay donate a couple days and go help a rancher brand some calves. Lots of things people can do to gain access. Put a set amount of tags in ranchers hands and let them doll them out to people they trust on there place. Put two tags in each hunters pocket. At the end of the day whether your a rancher or a DIY hunter we are all Wyomingites. We should have each others backs to help preserve all of our god given rights. Working together we will get the best of both worlds.
I don’t disagree that it is the landowners right as to whether or not they allow hunting, however, if a landowner is claiming feed depravation due to wildlife and then being compensated for those losses, but not allowing hunting, then that’s a problem also.
Tell the ranchers to let hunters on their land. Problem solved in short order.
As always, the people responding to this article have far better ideas than our legislators. Too bad the legislators don’t listen to us.
Thanks to wyofile this has been brought to our attention.
Why not pay ranchers the same rate to graze elk that they pay to graze their cattle on BLM , Forest Service and State Lands. Open seasons surrounding these ranches earlier and keep them open later. Allow landowners to continue to manage the hunters allowed on their property and charge whatever fee they deem necessary. This allows them to turn the over abundance of Elk into a revenue stream for their ranch corporations, opens opportunities to elk hunters both on their land and surrounding public lands as the hunting will move elk around similar to what the Wolves have done to the elk herds in NW Wyoming. As for the rich out of state landowners, the over abundance of elk will eventually eat themselves out of house and home and will move to areas to find feed and then can be hunted.
COMPLETE OPPOSITE SITUATION: In the late 1970s early 1980s coal miners at the Black Thunder Mine started to see elk showing up on the Black Thunder Creek bottom. They were privately owned elk belonging to the Reno Ranch in the Rochelle Hills. Game and Fish tried to claim state ownership of the elk but Reno had kept the original receipt for the elk herd he had started dating to about 1948; therefore, Game and Fish wasn’t able to take over management of the herd until Reno died. By then, the expanded herd had occupied habitat extending about 30-50 miles in all directions.
This unusual situation was the exact opposite of the current super elk herd problem discussed in this article since RENO’S PRIVATE ELK WERE GRAZING ON LARGE TRACTS OF BLM LAND – not public elk grazing on private land. It worked itself out and the present day elk in the Rochelle Hills area are now considered publicly owned elk grazing on large tracts of BLM and USFS land including parts of the Thunder Basin National Grasslands including large community pastures.
This unusual situation evolved since Reno could prove he had bought the original elk herd and had kept the receipt. It started out as a small privately owned elk herd which moved out onto public land. amazing.
I guide for “Wyoming Heroes”. Clients are in all stages of disability. Some are visible some are not but they have been 70 to 100% diabled by the VA. Some ranchers have bent over backwards to help us out and others haven’t. We have had amputees and PTSD warriors. Some that were ambulatory and some that were not. We have seen the elk herds on land locked public land and could not get trespass across a few hundred yards of private ground to hunt. Other ranchers have used their own vehicles to enable the the Vetern an opportunity. Most Vets were just looking for a non-trophy elk, antelope or deer. Many had only shot at the enemy never big game and we provided weapons and expertise to give them a better opportunity for success. Many times we could not get a shot or even an opportunity for a shot because of the challenges could not be overcome. All said the experience was unequalled and, though sometime unsuccessful, was one of a lifetime. We volunteer guides also enjoyed real pride and joy.
I say all of this because of our limited experience we found that outfitters were our major obstacle to enable to trespass. Large, absentee, holdings were the biggest obstacle to trespass. There seemed a lack of communication between foreman and whom ever the owner is. 10 sections of public land, 500 elk, inaccessible to all except a few paying non-resident hunters looking for trophies. Season all but finished and dozons or hundreds of cow/calf inaccessible.
The legislatures now suggests shooting them and letting them lay. Gun them down with aircraft? Let the experts do their job. The Wyoming Game and Fish have the best professional scientists that can, with the help of land owners, find a palatable solution without moronic suggestions from the legislature.
John this situation with outfitters will continue primarily because Game and Fish has not devised a compensation program which fairly reimburses ranchers for grazing the public’s elk on private land. Their license coupons are virtually nothing – Game and fish keeps over 95% of the license sales and returns pennies to the ranchers.
Look at the economics. When I lived in Niobrara County the western Wyoming outfitters moved into the area and started offering my neighbors $1,000 for each deer and antelope harvested off their private land. Some of neighbors could expect about $20,000 per year in income without having to guide the hunters. At that time, a rancher might expect to net about $100 after expenses on each calf. In order to generate at equal amount of net income from cattle, the rancher would have to run an extra 200 head of cattle – now thats a huge increase in herd size. So, has Game and Fish ever offered Wyoming ranchers compensation which approaches the $20,000 per year level??? Absolutely not!!!!
The other reason the western outfitters moved east was the lack of exclusive hunting rights on the large tracts of Federal land in western Wyoming. They could bring in high paying customers and their normal hunting area was flooded with hunters. Exclusive hunting rights in eastern Wyoming allowed them to offer their customers high quality hunts without mobs of hunters. And in Niobrara county it is 85% private land – not 85% public land, Its a no brainer for ranchers to go for the offer extended by western Wyoming outfitters. GAME AND FISH ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO DRASTICALLY REVISE THEIR LANDOWNER COMPENSATION SYSTEM OR ACCESS WILL JUST BECOME MORE AND MORE RESTRICTIVE. Game and Fish is causing most of the problems discussed in this article – not the ranchers.
Thanks for guiding our disabled vets. I have 100% combat related disability and truly appreciate the generosity you extend to my brothers, 2 purple hearts and 2 bronze stars here.
In a state with 130000 and 6 million cattle there are too many elk? The enemy here is the commercial cattle industry and their greed. Get cattle off the public land and leave habitat for wildlife Maybe these greed cattle barons could let a few hunters through their gates? I have no sympathy for ranchers
Solutions?
Hmm, there is no problem with elk populations in the parts of Wyoming with large acreages of public land. Perhaps the Ag leaders need to take a look in the mirror.
Interesting how Mr. Juan Reyes is concerned about socialism. Makes me wonder how much public land he leases discounted socialism rates.
So why not increase the licenses available (res and non res) and the landowners allow access for a reasonable fee. IMO, feeding the coyotes is not an option.
Wonderful!
Ballot box biology.
Cmon’ Wyoming
You can do better than that. I hear a little greed filtering in between the bullshoot!
Why does the AG community think they own our public lands? What is wrong with letting elk graze instead of cows. Tourists don’t come to Wyoming to see cows. And tourism brings more money to Wyoming than the AG industry. Besides ranchers have been killing off all the coyotes they can find for years. I guess we will have to import wolves to eat the dead elk.
I mainly hunt snowy range and I would go up deer hunting as it opens about two weeks before elk hunting and I would always have a great chance to get an elk however it was closed. So I would go back two weeks later to elk hunt and by then the elk had moved out on to private land or somewhere and I would end up not getting an elk that year. Hunting very hard for elk on public land I average about one elk in four years. I feel if they would open deer and elk at the same time the hunters would have better success on getting an elk.
With the winter kill of game species this winter and Antelope seasons canceled or reduced along with certain deer zones hunters who have already applied for those areas should be offered a replacement hunt for these overpopulated elk areas at no extra charge and at any time before end of year to harvest 2 animals per hunter. Seems easy enough to do with a memo to hunters in those affected zones that were applied for.
Is it weird that they would allow a helicopter to just fly around indiscriminately killing elk and leaving them to rot all over the landscape but they would not allow a licensed hunter to come in and harvest an animal for their family ??
The Game and Fish could offer resident priced elk tags to out of state hunters for those areas where there are more elk than the herd objectives. Out of state hunters would flock to the state for that opportunity. Then all the landowner has to do is allow them to hunt.
Why does every solution to the problem keep circling back to the landowner. The bottom line is if they don’t allow people to hunt then they should live with the problem and quit asking the state to solve it for them.
“Why does every solution to the problem keep circling back to the landowner. The bottom line is if they don’t allow people to hunt then they should live with the problem and quit asking the state to solve it for them.”
This exactly, wyoming landowners follow the mantra of “subsidize the costs, privatize the profits”
Game and Fish is financially responsible for animal damages to private property to include predation losses of sheep and cattle but also damage to forage by ungulates such as elk and deer. I researched court cases in Wyoming and found examples of compensation paid for damage to forage and crops.
One of the most important precedence setting court rulings was in Washakie County Distict Court in the 1960s where the judge ruled Game and fish must pay sheep ranchers for mountain lion predation ( I believe several of the Graves ranches were involved ). The judge ruled that the States ownership of wildlife was akin to my ownership of a dog; and, if my dog gets into the neighbors chickens, I must pay damages.
Another interesting court case was from about 1938 in Natrona County where deer had gotton into a high school students 3 acres of lettuce and destroyed the crop – Game and Fish had to pay about $1600 in damages to the youth.
So yes, the State – that is Game and Fish is responsible for damage to forage on private property due to large super herds of elk. Somehow, a method of righting the wrong must be worked out with the ranchers. PLEASE NOTE, THE RANCHERS ARE RUNNING/GRAZING THE PUBLICLY OWNED ELK ON THEIR PRIVATE PROPERTY WITHOUT COMPENSATION. If they were taking yearlings in they could expect over $20-30 per month per yearling. The current rate for outplaced wild horses on private land in Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana is about $60-65 per month per horse via contract with the BLM. In this case – wild horses – the private land owners are being compensated for taking in the PUBLICS HORSES at a reasonable rate. So why must Wyoming ranchers graze the publics elk without compensation?? Clearly, compensation in some form is required and the precedence setting court cases affirm the need to compensate.
Because they can allow elk, deer, antelope, coyote and mountain lion hunting to mitigate the amount of forage loss on their land. But they won’t.
This is not that difficult!! The ranchers need to allow hunters access to their land, and land locked state lands. Hunters pay the state a license fee and the state pays the rancher a fee for each hunter. Everyone wins and the meat is not wasted!
If landowners want elk numbers reduced in these high population areas, access for hunters must be part of the solution.
Aerial gunning is laughable. The last thing Wyoming needs is a raft of videos on the internet showing choppers swooping in to blast frightened wild animals, including young of the year. Cue “Ride of the Valkyrie.”
We could have dealt with that, right, Dan? I hope you’re well.
The Blind Men and the Elephant got nothing on the Wyoming Legislature and the Elk…
Wow, the landowner uses the trespass laws to keep the hunters out, and then when the elk herds grow too big they want to mass shoot the elk and leave them to spoil. Why not allow hunters to harvest the overgrowth? I quit hunting because I couldn’t find anywhere to hunt because outfitters and landowners wouldn’t allow access. Hunters abused the landowner’s rights with trash, shooting livestock, and not getting permission to hunt. Then they can’t figure out why the elk herds grow unchecked.
In the area I hunt, the elk are on private property just a day or two after season opens. The private owner charges $7000 dollars for a hunt. No access, no damage payments period. Another idea is to open private lands to disabled hunters prior to or after the regular season and help them retrieve their kills for free or a modest charge. These landowners like to complain and whine for help but continue to exacerbate their own problems by using guided hunts that no one can afford or just not allowing hunters on their property.
I’m hearing lots of whining about the problem but a refusal to let paying hunters help solve the problem. Out of state hunters will pay 5 times or more than residents for the opportunity and spend much more money in the local economy. Yes I know Wyoming wants to save the hunting for themselves but in so doing they have created this monster.
Get over it. Sell all land owners in the effected areas licenses, not just the big land holders and instaters. If I own 40 acres and have elk why shouldn’t I be able to harvest one or more. Doesn’t have to be a permanent program and doesn’t have to be state wide. But, hey, you have a problem. Think our side the box. Get out of your comfort zone.
160 animals harvested on 200000 acres will never get the job done.
Wow, and these legislators are supposed to represent us? Aerial gunning of a native species so we can have more invasive species (cattle) on the land?
Elk populations are still much lower than historical numbers. Let them exist.
Make all landowners in those overpopulated areas allow free access to their property for elk hunting. Maybe leave the season open and let anyone hunt those areas without a license. Get the numbers reduced and not waste them. Hunters will take care of the problem if you let them.
How many of the complaining landowners keep their property locked up or charged high fees for access??
Many ranches have islands of public land that have large, inaccessable elk herds. Years ago we put up New Mexico method which involved offering ranchers a number of elk tags with an equal number of public tags. Ranchers could sell their tags or throw them away. Tag numbers set by G-F survey. Tag holders had ranch access with few limits. Ranchers not forced to comply. Of course defeated. Private land elk management will never happen. Magagna only offers the worn out mo money solution
Again the Rancher/Property owners are trying to have it both ways. Don’t allow access by sportsmen but charge fees and gain revenues from outfitters and also cry for damage claims. The wildlife belongs to everyone. Allow access and the problems will be solved. No damage claim or other compensation should be awarded to those who try to have things both ways.
in order to qualify for ANY compensation, a land owner must allow some public access (ie cow hunts)
Gee whiz, most of the hunters I talk to claim that wolves have killed most of Wyoming’s elk (sarcasm intentional). Mass slaughter’s not the answer. Long-term liberalized hunting access is. No, it’s not a quick fix, but over time it would help.
These ranchers shouldn’t have to hire hunters to harvest, hunters should pay them and have the land owner determine how that’s done so you don’t have a bunch of dumbasses chasing them with vehicles and blasting away with long range guns causing them to run through fences and what not . The state has thrown lemons at them they need to figure out how to make lemonade.
Thanks
” savvy Elk have learned to take refuge on parcels where hunting isn’t allowed”.
The answer is almost laughable.
How about simply a year round season. Ranchers either let hunters on or they out of damage reimbursement program.
If a person undertakes an activity that directly impacts their neighbor, in many instances they would be held liable to make amends. In the case of elk, those who don’t allow hunting, are directly impacting their neighbor. The legislature could pass a law that simply stated, if a hunt area were declared a high impact elk area, and a ranch didn’t allow hunting, then they could be held liable for the loss of forage by elk on another nearby ranch. Pretty straightforward law. This would help to compel landowners to co-operate with wildlife officials in bringing down Elk numbers in areas declared high impact. The two fold benefit would be that hunters would also have additional opportunities to access publicly owned Elk. If folks on the Ag Committee don’t support some kind of increased access plan to allow hunters to harvest troublesome Elk, why would the public ever support their wanton slaughter by ariel gunners?
That won’t work. If Ranch A allows hunting, but Ranch B, adjacent to Ranch A, doesn’t. Hunting pressure will cause herds to seek refuge on Ranch B. There needs to be a way for ranchers to get into contact with proficient AND respectful elk hunters to accompany younger/newer hunters on a regular basis on their ranches with giant herds. Ranchers don’t want anything to do with disrespectful hunters. A proficient elk hunter is capable of taking multiple elk from the same herd while keeping the herd from spooking too far, enabling harvest within a few days in the same vicinity. If you really want to thin a herd, you want to be able to harvest from the periphery of the same herd over the course of several days. Most hunters can’t do this.
There needs to be access to the elk herds on private land! I f I could be able to hunt them I would apply for a tag in their area. I would drive from Rock Springs to shoot one!