BRETT FRENCH | bfrench@billingsgazette.com
Interest in a once-controversial program that gives free elk tags to landowners to encourage them to allow public hunting on their property declined last year.
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks recently released its 2025 annual report on Elk Hunting Access Agreements, which includes details on the program’s participation and hunter success rates.
The program peaked with 46 landowners in 2024, falling to 31 landowners last year, a nearly 32% decline. Elk hunting licenses or permits issued to participating landowners or their designee peaked in 2023 at 70, falling to 47 last year.
Why the drop?
Jason Kool, chief of FWP’s Access Bureau, oversees the program. He said there’s a variety of reasons for fluctuations.
“We see landowner enrollment in EHA fluctuates and correlates somewhat with landowner drawing success,” he wrote in an email.
Drawing results for landowners seeking a preference tag are posted in mid-April. The deadline to apply for the EHA program is May 1. So, landowners unsuccessful with the preference drawing have the option to seek a license or permit through the EHA program.
Kevin Farron, conservation director for the Montana Wildlife Federation, said the EHA applications should be “folded into the general deer and elk permit draws.”
“This would 1) prevent FWP from distributing more than the biologist-recommend and Commission-approved permits, and 2) further incentive the program as landowners would have to decide at the draw if they want to allow limited public access for a guaranteed permit or if they want to roll the dice on getting a no-strings-attached permit, then get the guarantee one later if they’re unsuccessful,” he wrote in an email. “Aligning this with the general draw would increase landowner participation, without question.”
Kool said his staff does conduct outreach out to landowners who participated the previous year to remind them to apply
“We do a targeted email to individuals who applied with landowner preference and were unsuccessful to advertise the EHA opportunity,” Kool said. “We also open the application in early January, and we have done multiple press releases.”
A program in motion
Kool said repeated changes to the program have also affected landowner enrollment, partly due to public outcry over what was derisively called “bulls for billionaires.”
“Prior to the 2024 program year, landowners were only required to allow access for antlerless elk hunting in exchange for receiving an either-sex permit,” he said. “In 2023, House Bill 596 required that at least one of the public hunters (selected by the department in consultation with the landowner) have an equivalent opportunity as the landowner or landowner’s designee.”
So, if the landowner is awarded a bull license or permit, one of the public hunters chosen by FWP would also have to have a bull license or permit.
Although the program dates back to 2001, prior to changes made in 2021 the program attracted only about two landowners a year.
Created in 2001
Also known as 454 agreements, for House Bill 454 that created the program, the original bill’s sponsor envisioned the agreements as a way to incentivize landowners to allow public hunting and help resolve differences between landowners and sportsmen.
Beginning in the 2019 Legislature, and every session since then, lawmakers have repeatedly tweaked the program.
“Prior to that it hadn’t changed since 2003,” Kool said.
Sen. Denley Loge, R-St. Regis, who has shepherded some of the elk legislation and has his land enrolled in FWP’s Block Management Program, said he thinks the Elk Hunting Access Agreements are underutilized due to a lack of landowner awareness. He also said some participants have gone beyond the basic requirements of the program by providing expanded public access.
FWP surveys participants in the program to gauge satisfaction or to understand problems. In 2025, only 13 of 31 landowners responded to FWP’s query, with 93% saying they were satisfied or very satisfied with the program and the hunters involved. The majority said they would participate again.
Gauging success
Measuring whether the program has been a success seems problematic. If the goal was to provide some landowners free either-sex elk tags as a thank you for allowing some public hunting, then the program has achieved this basic aim but on a limited basis.
FWP’s own survey results show a range of replies. Depending on the landowner or hunter, the program is either a complete success or a total failure.
“I grew up in this state, know what good hunting is,” one landowner-chosen hunter wrote in response to FWP’s survey. “The barriers around where you could and couldn’t go were huge. All the elk were in a certain area that they held for themselves. I’d recommend not giving these types of tags for landowners that don’t want to provide a sniff of equal opportunity. Another participant that I was camped next to also got frustrated and left.”
In comparison, another hunter wrote, “Cowan & Son Hunting is a Godsend for hunters such as myself! I have hunted their ranch for 19 years and harvested numerous Elk. It is a quality hunt, surpassing most Elk Hunter’s wildest dreams, even when not successful it is an awesome adventure and memory maker.”
Spreading elk out
While survey respondents give insight to hunter and landowner satisfaction, it’s more difficult to measure if the program has helped reduce problem elk congregations on private lands, one of the original goals.
Kool said he couldn’t give a complete accounting of Elk Hunting Access participant harvest because FWP’s survey efforts have fluctuated over the years.
The annual reports vary because some count landowner-reported harvest in late elk or shoulder season while others did not, Kool said. Other reports may leave out archery and only note rifle season.
In addition, not everyone who can participate does.
“In general, our surveys over the years have shown only about 50% of the public hunters who accepted the opportunity actually go hunt — which affects harvest as well,” Kool said.
In the past, some hunters who responded to FWP’s survey as well as a couple Fish and Wildlife Commissioners expressed concern about landowners enrolled in the Elk Hunting Access Agreements and the Block Management Program. Block Management pays them for impacts caused by allowing public hunting.
Some of the landowners do provide access to different lands for EHA program participants, Kool said.
Commissioner Jeff Burrows, who represents Region 2 in west-central Montana, said last June that he participated in the EHA program in 2024 thinking, “Okay, you maybe have something special here, and you show up and it’s just the gates are wide open.”
Last year, out of the 423,901 acres enrolled in the Elk Hunting Access program, 152,963 were also part of the Block Management Program — about one-third of the total acreage. Thirteen of the 31 landowners participated in both FWP programs in 2025.
Three of the 13 landowners who responded to FWP’s 2025 survey, which mostly praised the EHA program, were also enrolled in Block Management.
Farron, of the Montana Wildlife Federation, said it seems unfair to award bull tags to EHA program cooperators and not those enrolled in Block Management.
“In our opinion, a comprehensive look at landowner incentives for both residents and nonresidents is needed,” he wrote in an email.
Hunter success rates
In 2025, 55% of the landowners or their designated hunters responded to a request from FWP as to their success, with half of those (92%) indicating they shot a branch-antlered bull on the enrolled property.
Out of the 13 of 32 landowner-selected hunters who responded to FWP’s survey, nine reported hunting on the land. Six of the nine shot one cow and five branch-antlered bulls.
Out of the 113 FWP selected hunters, 79 responded to the agency’s survey. Of the 79, 58 reported hunting on the enrolled lands killing 13 elk — five cows, one spike bull and seven branch-antlered bulls.
Given the reported harvest, Farron said the program has demonstrated little benefit to wildlife management.
“Perhaps unsurprisingly, landowners and the hunters they selected had significantly higher harvest rates — 52% and 66%, respectively — compared to just 16.5% success rates for public hunters, and that’s just counting the publicly assigned hunters who actually hunted,” Farron said.
Emphasizing the complexity of any FWP program trying to reduce elk numbers is that populations continue to steadily grow as the animals expand from west to east. In 2021, the agency estimated the state’s elk population at 141,785 animals. Last year’s count was 15,500 head more than 2021.
Meanwhile, hunter harvest of elk between 2020 and 2024, the latest numbers available, ranged from a high of more than 28,000 to a low of 19,300. The five-year average was just over 27,400.
Resident elk hunter numbers had dropped by 2,700 since 2014, according to FWP data released last year. In the same period, nonresident elk hunting had grown by more than 3,100.
Ed Beall, who is chair of an FWP-led committee that provides recommendations on hunting access programs, said the Elk Hunting Access Agreements have had some past success providing hunter access and good wildlife management.
But he added that the program’s many layers make it difficult for FWP to measure its accomplishments and it continues to see limited use.
“The feedback from both landowners and hunters underscores the need to continue to improve the program’s communication and oversight,” Farron said. “Clearly, this is becoming a heavy lift for FWP staff, with minimal public hunting or wildlife management benefits. We’re unconvinced that the (return on investment) is worth it.”