Positive legislation for hunters and landowners alike is being proposed this legislative session.
Jeff Dibblee, the spokesman for the hunting advocacy group, Milk River Gobblers explains the legislation.
“Probably the newest topic coming up in the current legislation is the access law and the block management topic. Fish and Game are trying to increase the amount of Block Management funding, in other word up the ante. Those that give access to their land to hunt, they want to try to have a higher reward for them.”-Jeff Dibblee
Landowners can enroll in the block management program and allow hunters access to their property. Because they may incur substantial property damage from hunters the landowners are reimbursed. Drew Henry the Havre Region Supervisor for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks explains more.
“Those landowners and cooperators are reimbursed for the impacts that they receive from hunters. Hunters go onto their property and perhaps there are impacts that are involved with that, and thus there is a payment attached with that. One thing that the citizens of Montana are likely to see this session is a proposal to increase the cap, the payment cap to those landowners, to increase that cap to $50,000 to accommodate the amount of use that those landowners are allowing on their property. So, currently those landowners, the amount of money that they receive to offset the impacts of hunter use on their property caps at $25,000, and yet they still incur above and beyond that in hunter day use on their properties.”-Drew Henry
