You did not include the following milestone (Nov. 5 Beacon: “150 Years of Montana”): November 2000, Montana takes away the rights of elk farmers.
Elk farmers, after investing labor/capital funds and satisfying regulations/statements are ordered to stop selling elk for hunting. It didn’t matter that they were not interfering with the rights or property or livelihoods of others. Rather, the special interest groups convinced Montanans with clever well-financed media ads that elk should only be hunted/killed in the wild where they can escape.
It should be criminal to take away a person’s business for no good reason other than for the approval of the negative elk ads. Too many Montanans did not care about the accuracy of these claims or the effects of putting the elk farmers out of business.
When an elk is maimed or wounded it can escape into the wild to a slow and painful death. Unlike “farm elk,” which were provided to hunters in an enclosed wooded area (say 40 acres) and were shot and killed in the shortest time.
The opponents of elk farmers were never interested in treating the elk in a better humane manner, but only killing them in the wild. The farmer treated the elk better – not only by allowing the shot elk to die in the shortest time but in helping to protect the genetic quality of the wild elk by reducing the number of trophy herd bulls killed.
The Montana Supreme Court upheld the new law and more than half the farmers have since gone out of business. The hunters continue killing the best breeding bulls that they can find in the wild.
James Weber
Marion