Montana elk

[lunkerslayer]

https://montanafreepress.org/2024/0...unting-groups-in-lawsuit-over-elk-management/
Interesting article that is familiar with Wyoming and their issues with elk population aledgedly being too large.

 

[luvcatchingbass]

I find it interesting that they are not showing any proof of damages, surely there has to be some sort. I am sure there is damage caused to fences and especially in dry years competition on grazing, but if they are unwilling to give any detail to their claims and unwilling to provide evidence and proof of claims then group entities or even individual land owners that cry wolf can go pound sand. This is coming from a landowner.
When I was growing up and we had deer and turkeys causing problems with our winter feed you know what we did? We freaking let a few extra people hunt and tried to come up with our own solutions to protect the feed. I would also be interested to know what the Wildlife agency considers for a healthy number of animals for a given area vs what the land owners consider

 

[Tymurrey]

We talked to a landowner in Wyoming a couple years ago while we were packing out an elk. They had their land enrolled in an HMA where we shot the elk and I witnessed them trying to keep the elk on the public land instead of going to the private. He mentioned that NRCS or an organization like that did a rangeland study on how much forage/grass the elk were eating during the summer and it was surprisingly high. I don't remember the exact number but i can understand why the cattle have to compete. The landowner also mentioned it's a problem with smaller blocks of land being purchased inside the larger open to hunting areas and then those landowners not letting people hunt so the elk hide out during season on the closed private then move to the open ranches that let people hunt during the off season. This was in an area where the elk are definitely over objective and he didn't seem to hate the elk but more so just wanted more hunted and killed and some lower numbers.