BRETT FRENCH | bfrench@billingsgazette.com
“Big money” is taking advantage of Montana’s hunting programs to secure coveted nonresident elk tags, the chairman of the Private Land/Public Wildlife Advisory Committee told an interim legislative panel on Tuesday.
Saying that it was his opinion, Ed Beall told the Environmental Quality Council that rich hunters are targeting Eastern Montana because, “I mean, let’s face it, elk hunters will do anything they can to hunt an elk.”
An example he brought to the committee’s attention was the sale of large ranches, such as a 12,000-acre agricultural property, that is then split into 640-acre parcels “for the purpose of getting landowner preference,” Beall said.
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks’ landowner preference program awards a limited number of big game tags to landowners through a drawing as a thank you for providing habitat for wildlife and keeping their land in agricultural production.
The Private Land/Public Wildlife Advisory Committee wrote in its 29-page biennial report to Gov. Greg Gianforte and the Legislature that as a result of wealthy nonresidents taking advantage of Montana’s system, the state “is experiencing traditional agricultural land being divided and marketed with the ability to apply for landowner preference becoming part of what sells the property.”
Ben Lamb, representing the Montana Conservation Society, called the issue “640-acre stacking.”
“This is a very real issue,” Lamb told the Environmental Quality Council. “We’re seeing that happen a lot in Eastern Montana for prime elk tags, and it’s a real-estate marketing tool that people are using.”
Lamb said buyers of “hardpan” that has never “hosted elk” nonetheless qualify for landowner preference.
“If you own submarginal land and you qualify, you get to hunt the whole district right now,” he said.
The committee offered suggestions on how to clean up the landowner preference program, one of five overarching recommendations the group offered for legislative consideration.
One solution would be to establish a waiting period for newly purchased or subdivided land before the landowner can qualify for preference. Another would limit landowners who receive the tag to only hunting their own property.
As another example of how the system is being gamed, the PL/PW report said that last year 57 either-sex elk permits were made available for resident and nonresident landowners. Out of the 57 resident landowner applicants, 40 (70%) were successful. Of the 17 nonresident landowners who applied, all 17 received tags.
PL/PW suggested the rules be changed to favor resident landowners by restricting the number of permits available to nonresidents to 10% of the total. If such a scenario had been in play in 2025, the committee said 12 more resident landowners would have been successful in the drawing.
PL/PW also reported there “appears to be an inequity between resident and nonresident landowner bonus points, favoring nonresident landowners.”
Bonus points are used to increase the odds of a hunter drawing a hard-to-get hunting permit.
Thanks to legislation passed in 2023, nonresidents owning 2,500 acres of contiguous land received a “priority pool” from which they competed for hunting tags.
“Due to the number of licenses available and lack of landowners applying in this landowner priority pool, these landowners receive a nearly guaranteed general elk license or big game combination license (up to 5 for every 2,500 acres) valid only on their private land,” the committee reported.
“Additionally, if these landowners in the priority pool are also enrolled in a department administered hunting access program in the previous license year, they may purchase an additional bonus point for the limited permit drawing of one of the following: elk permit, deer permit, elk B, or deer B.”
The B licenses allow harvest of antlerless deer and elk.
The same opportunity to purchase bonus points isn’t available to resident landowners, the committee noted.
To resolve the inequity, PL/PW recommended the same opportunity be made available to resident landowners.
Beall called the “fair bit of gaming of the program” a complex problem that “requires a significant amount of time to review to understand.”
The Environmental Quality Council’s chairman, Rep. Paul Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, reminded the group that they were just being informed about the report and could take no action to introduce legislation regarding PL/PW’s proposals.
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