Viewpoint: Wrong to give wealthy landowners special tag access

Steve Platt

We are lucky to live in Montana where wildlife is held in trust by the State, for the benefit of all. Unlike in Europe, Montanans do not need to be rich to hunt.

Last session, HB 635 awarded wealthy non-residents owning 2,500 acres of land with guaranteed deer and elk tags. HB 635 violated one of the tenets of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, guaranteeing wealthy non-residents special access to deer and elk tags, while ordinary non-resident hunters and resident hunters got nothing in return.

Proponents argued that HB 635 would solve hunter crowding, publicly stating that it would “reduce non-resident hunting by up to 30,000 hunter days annually” by moving vast numbers of public land hunters to private lands. That is proven to be utterly false, eliminating the sole benefit this bill might have offered to resident sportsmen.

According to FWP, HB 635 had no impact on hunting pressure whatsoever. Landowners with this much land are likely only hunting their own properties. HB 635 really isn’t moving any hunters from public to private.

Only 131 non-resident landowner tags were issued last year, hardly noticeable out of the 17,000 non-resident deer and elk combo tag holders, and nowhere near the 2,550 tags that proponents said would be used by this program. More than 130 hunters looks even smaller when compared to the 85,253 total number of non-residents who hunted Montana in 2024. We were duped.

So, since HB 635 didn’t fix or have any real impact on hunter crowding, what are we left with?

Just a giveaway to large landowners who don’t even live here.

Worse, giving non-residents tags for nothing in return actually disincentivizes Block Management. One of the existing perks for Block Management cooperators, both resident and non, is that they’re given a deer and elk license (in addition to cash from license sales) as a thank you for providing public access. But if non-residents who own chunks of Montana can get these tags (actually 5 tags if they own over 12,500 acres) for providing nothing, what does that do to the existing access incentives? It makes them worthless.

But now, with HB 907, we can right this wrong by repealing the non-resident landowner preference and instead motivate non-resident landowners to enroll in Block Management. Non-resident landowners who provide public access are already given a deer and elk tag. HB 907 would also allow those landowners in permitted districts to buy a 2nd bonus point, increasing their odds of drawing their permits each and every year. That’s fair to all landowners and all hunters.

Providing access would not be forced, just rewarded. It’s not mandatory. If a non-resident landowner doesn’t want to enroll in Block Management, that’s fine. They can enter the drawings just like everyone else, or they can look at the many other customizable public access options that FWP offers as ways to guarantee their tags or permits.

The longer we let this program go without correcting it, the more entitled these wealthy out-of-state landowners will become. And they'll just keep extending their hands asking for more and more, while obligated to provide nothing in return.

Eliminating non-resident handouts and turning these instead into reasonable incentives for public access, as HB 907 would do, is something all Montanans can get on board with. And by the sounds of it, the only ones who disagree are the lobbyists paid by out-of-state interests. It’s time to repeal HB 635 and pass HB 907.

Steve Platt is a retired archaeologist, conservationist, hunter and fisherman. He lives in Helena.