Hunting holds steady in Montana

By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer

It started last weekend with shotguns and dogs, camouflage and broadhead arrows.

It won't wrap up until February, with the last of the surplus harvests of elk.

Hunting season lasts a long time in Montana, from the waning days of summer to the dark depths of winter. In this state, a person with enough time and money, skill and energy can fill every freezer on the block.

The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks will offer up to 99 doe deer tags per person this year. Hunters can also buy a handful of antelope tags and an extra elk tag. They can legally kill pheasants and ducks as quickly as they can eat them.

All of this natural bounty is the result of what is arguably the world's most successful system of wildlife conservation: it's called the North American model, and it's based on the spending of hunters and anglers, the license fees and ammunition and equipment taxes that fund conservation projects and government wildlife agencies all over the country.

That money pays for wildlife enhancement, habitat protection and prosecution of the game hogs who exceed the already generous limits. It funds research, enhances access and educates young hunters. It preserves ground for all kinds of creatures, including many that are not hunted.

Hunting, as a social phenomenon, is holding steady in Montana, even as it wanes in many parts of the country.

In 2002, the last year for which complete figures were available, 189,455 Montanans bought a hunting license. That's about 18 percent of the state's population, well ahead of the national average of 11 percent.

But hunting as a tradition also faces challenges.

Between 1988 and 1998, according to FWP surveys, the average age of the Montana elk hunter rose from 36 to 46, which is 10 years older than the statewide average age.

That means essentially the same group of people hunting elk in 1988 were still doing it 10 years later. They just got older.

Montanans also are poorer than most people and hunting can be expensive: weapons, ammunition, vehicles, equipment, gasoline. It all adds up.

Affordability is a key factor in any type of recreation, a 2003 FWP survey found.

"Montana citizens are aging, and wages are low, so accessibility and affordability are important factors," the study found. "Montana's struggling economy and percentage of low-income residents present challenges that must be addressed strategically."

Eroding access

In the United States, wildlife belongs to the people and the not the landowner. It's a legal precedent that was established in 1842, noted Jim Posewitz, a retired FWP biologist who is now a writer and speaker on ethical hunting and conservation.

President Teddy Roosevelt institutionalized the North American conservation model by putting hunters in the forefront and by setting aside 230 million acres of public land.

But the model is based on democratic principles of equal access and equal opportunity, principles that some hunters fear are eroding.

Economics have entered the debate in a large way, and "it's changed the dynamic," said Randy Newberg, a Bozeman accountant and the head of Orion, The Hunter's Institute.

Landowners face increasing pressure to make money on their land, Newberg said, and that has led to increasing numbers of private hunting leases and more No Trespassing signs.

Changing rural land ownership patterns around the state also led to some loss of access. Even public lands are increasingly hard to reach, according to The Public Lands Access Association, Inc.

"It's been an escalating curve as wealthy, nonresidents buy more and more ranchland and impose new cultural values," said PLAAI spokesman Ron Moody, of Lewistown.

Across Montana's 56 counties, Moody said, there are hundreds of roads leading to public land, roads that PLAAI asserts are public, but have been gated and posted.

"Public access to public land is the focal point" to the future of hunting as it is known today, Moody said.

"If you don't have a place to hunt, you can't be a hunter," he said. "And the only place for a poor man to hunt is on public land."

The next generation

Another potential problem is recruitment and retainment of new hunters.

Statewide, about 6,500 people a year, mostly teenagers, take the hunters' education courses mandatory for new hunters born after 1985.

That number is up from the early 1990s, according to Thomas Baumeister, who administers hunter safety courses for FWP, but when considered as a proportion of overall public school students, it's down from 8.5 percent to 6.9 percent.

In the Gallatin Valley, youth enthusiasm for hunting has not waned, according to John Steele, who has taught hunter safety classes in the Manhattan/Three Forks area since 1978.

"The kids we get are pretty excited about this," he said, even though they have increasing demands on their time from sports and other interests.

But the access problem worries him, as well.

"In this valley, the access isn't what it used to be," he said. "Finding places to hunt locally has become harder. It's not a challenge to get them interested. It's a challenge to get them out" in the field.

Recruiting young hunters "is not a youth problem, it's an adult problem," said Moody, who also teachers hunter-safety classes.

Thirty years ago, kids could walk from most Montana towns and hunt. That's harder to do these days.

"Now kids have to have a support system to go shoot a deer," he said.

Recruiting young hunters is critical, and Baumeister said people are more apt to take a lifelong interest in hunting if they start at an early age.

"It becomes part of them," he said. "In some ways, it actually defines them."

Older hunters are the ones who show up at important meetings, the ones with experience and skills to pass along, the ones with the wealth and political savvy to help conservation groups like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Ducks Unlimited and others protect millions of acres of habitat for all sorts of critters.

But most of them started young, eager to get what Baumeister calls "the blood tie."

Texas influence

Newberg said he looks to the future and frets about fewer hunters spending less money and diluting the political voice of remaining hunters.

He also sees a larger focus on trophy hunting and fee hunting, what he calls the "Texification" of hunting. In that state, the focus is on high fences, food supplements, box blinds and private hunting leases.

If that happens nationwide, "if we just become deer farmers," overall public support for hunting could wane, he said.

"I hope I'm wrong," he added.

But if he's right, America will have to rethink how it approaches conservation.

So far, most measures to privatize wildlife in Montana have been beaten back. Big game feedgrounds are illegal in the state , and elk ranches have been essentially shut down.

"I'm glad I live in Montana," Newberg said. "Our hunting heritage and our hunting future is probably brighter than any other state I can think of."

But it's not a sure thing.

"It's fragile, like our democracy is fragile," Posewitz said. "You've got to go out fighting for it every day."

Scott McMillion is at scottm@dailychronicle.com

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