Sen. Wylie Galt, R-Martinsdale, is at it again. This time, he’s cosponsoring SB 270, a bill that would lift the reasonable cap of three elk per hunter per year, and allow an unlimited number of elk to be shot by one person, his latest attempt to privatize elk and diminish public access programs.
The Galt family is the third largest landowner in the state, owning more than 250,000 acres. Wylie is a founding board member of the Montana Conservation Society, a newly formed landowner and outfitter group, whose lobbyist wrote SB 270. The junque files make this clear.
What’s also clear is that roughly 81.8 percent of licensed elk hunters in Montana end the season with no elk. 16 percent harvest one. Some 2 percent get two elk. Yet, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), only .2 percent shoot the maximum allowed three elk in a license year.
This isn’t surprising. Elk are big. A cow elk averages around 170 pounds of boneless meat – and bulls are even larger. So, who would want – or need – to shoot more than three elk – or 500 pounds of meat – per year?
The reality is, it’s not about the meat. It’s about wanting to own a public resource and not having to deal with peasant hunters. It’s about control. It’s about money. It’s about power.
Despite the fact that four out of five elk hunters in Montana don’t harvest an elk, and that shoulder seasons allow elk to be hunted six months a year, Sen. Galt and some landowners like him would rather hoard elk and sell outfitted hunts, and then cull them by the hundreds when they become a nuisance, rather than participating in one of the many programs that FWP already offers – tools like the Hunt Roster Damage Hunts, or Block Management, or the Elk Hunting Access Agreements.
In fact, in 2019, House Bill 497 increased the cap from two elk per person per year to three. Guess who sponsored that bill? Wylie Galt. And did it have the desired effect? Nope, because elk abundance isn’t a license problem; it’s an access problem.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because a lawsuit recently challenged all this in court. FWP – along with a handful of intervening sportsmen groups – successfully defended the case. A judge ruled that landowners have plenty of tools to address problematic concentrations of elk, but if landowners choose not to use those, and not to participate in elk management efforts, then they can’t demand additional recourse. And yet, that’s exactly what SB 270 is attempting to do.
If the bill passes and Wylie Galt and the Montana Conservation Society get their way, it will remove the need to use the other tools that FWP offers, the ones that provide public access and opportunity. Elk would be gunned down like vermin, and the public would be left out.
Surely, we can do better.
Sen. Denley Loge, R-St. Regis, the main sponsor of this bill, doesn’t have to look far for other management approaches. One of Loge’s other bills, SB 106, does exactly that by allowing FWP’s drones to be used in more instances to haze elk off of private lands where they’re unwelcome; yet another tool offered to landowners.
Instead of encouraging a small few to slaughter an ungodly number of elk, we should be focusing on how to get more hunters more opportunities to harvest a public resource and fill their freezers. This bill is self-serving and wasteful, and a bad look for all hunters.
Ask your state senator to halt Galt’s SB 270.
Greg Munther is a lifelong elk hunter. He lives in Missoula.