A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, THE WYOMING GAME AND FISH Department arranged the slaughter of 129 cow elk on a ranch in southeastern Wyoming. The rancher, with backing from influential political interests, had pressured the department to bring in professional shooters because, he said, the elk were eating grass his cattle needed to get through the winter.
It was another installment in the long-running confrontation between a few private landholders and the biologists charged with the management of Wyoming’s big game, arguably one of the most valuable natural resources in the state, and it led to the introduction of a bill in the last session of the legislature that would have guaranteed payment to “any landowner, lessee, or agent . . . for loss of forage . . . to any big game species on private land.”
In Wyoming, hunters already pay landholders for any hay elk might eat out of a haystack, any fences they might damage, even “extraordinary damage to grass.” This bill would have gone further, paying ranchers whenever elk ate more than 15 percent of available forage. One version would have paid 150 percent of the estimated value of that grass.[i] In order to qualify for the damage payment, the bill would have required a rancher to allow “reasonable hunting” on his property. The bill didn’t offer a definition of “reasonable,” but past experience with similar provisions suggests that it would fall far short of serious public access and wouldn’t disperse a herd of elk for more than a few days, if that.
The bill didn’t pass— this time— but in the aftermath of the legislative debate, Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, took the Game and Fish Department to task for not being “more aggressive” in its efforts to keep elk and other big game off privately owned rangeland. Magagna expressed his approval of the elk slaughter and thought Game and Fish should issue up to twenty permits to any landholder that would allow him, or anyone he chooses, to kill elk on his property.[ii]
It all sounds so sensible. The downtrodden rancher struggling with an elk herd state officials refuse to control. Who couldn’t sympathize?
Well, I can’t, and I suspect I speak for the vast majority of hunters and other citizens of the state who value our wild heritage. As is so often the case in such matters, the devil is in the details.
First, it’s important to recognize that the only cost-effective way to control elk numbers is to kill some of the females that would otherwise bear calves. Selling licenses that allow hunters to do the job actually raises money for wildlife conservation, but, in order for hunters to kill elk, said hunters have to get within a couple hundred yards of their quarry. And that’s where the problem starts. Many of Wyoming’s elk spend much of the fall and all winter behind locked gates, far out of reach of the most motivated hunter.
The Game and Fish Department has bent over backward trying to unlock those gates. Its AccessYes program pays landholders to allow public hunting, tailoring different kinds of access to fit the tastes of landholders. A rancher or farmer who is willing to allow anybody to hunt can sign up for the walk-in program— the department posts the property and includes it in an atlas of available access areas. If the landholder wants to limit access, he can enroll his land in the hunter management program— the department issues a limited number of access permits, posts the property, includes it in the access atlas, and keeps an eye on the place to make sure no unauthorized hunters trespass. If the landholder prefers to deal with potential hunters by himself, he can sign up for the Hunter/Landowner Assistance Program— the department advertises the landholder’s contact information so that hunters can get in touch.
Last year, landholders were paid $979,000 for their participation in these programs.[iii] They’re strictly voluntary, and a rancher is free to opt out of them if he prefers, but when that same rancher complains he has too many elk on his pastures, it’s hard for the average hunter to have much sympathy.
What many of these landholders seem to prefer is getting big game permits they can distribute on their own, giving them the power to issue the licenses outside the official application procedure. Magagna points out that state law already allows the Game and Fish Department to issue up to twenty licenses to a landholder who says he has problems with elk. These licenses can be given to anyone the rancher chooses. Magagna says the landholder can give them to “friends and family” but “they can’t make money off of them.”[iv]
That may be what the regulation says— like many other observers, I’m deeply skeptical that it would ever be enforced. If the landholder doesn’t sell the license itself, he can still charge an “access fee,” and, if he or a business partner happens to be an outfitter, he can make even more money by selling guiding services as part of a package that circumvents the state’s random drawings for big game permits. And, even if he sells the license outright in violation of the law, I can’t imagine how the state could catch the transaction or prosecute.
The other alternative some ranchers favor is having professional shooters slaughter some or all the offending elk. That’s what Game and Fish arranged in 2023 for the rancher in southeastern Wyoming. The shooters are under strict control; the killing is efficient, and the processed meat can be donated to a worthy cause. Almost like a domestic livestock operation. Who could complain?
I, for one.
From a strictly practical point of view, I decry the substantial loss of income to the state’s conservation coffers. A nonresident bull elk tag currently costs $692. It’s worth noting that shooting bull elk does nothing whatsoever to control an elk population, but if a rancher has carte blanche with the tags Game and Fish gives him, he stands to make a lot more money selling trophy bulls than cows, perhaps even enough to assuage his anguish at losing all that grass. A nonresident cow-calf tag runs $288. A resident bull tag sells for $57. A resident cow-calf tag goes for $43 or less, depending on the type.[v]
Giving free licenses to landholders would put a significant dent in Game and Fish Department revenue. Twenty licenses sold to nonresidents looking for trophies amounts to nearly $14,000; even if the licenses went to resident cow hunters, the street value is nearly a grand, all of which is lost if the permits are given to landholders. The 129 elk shot by the professionals last winter would have brought more than $7,000 if the department had sold the permits to residents, far more if they had gone to out-of-staters.
That’s the dollars-and-cents argument against giving landholders free elk licenses, but, as unsettling as these numbers are, I find the objections based on law and tradition more persuasive.
For centuries, the rulers of medieval Europe laid sole claim to the game in their domains. Until 1299, a common Englishman could be executed for killing one of the “king’s deer” or have his hand or bow fingers cut off; for centuries after that, he might face a year in prison or banishment from the realm. That rankled the common folk. Hence, the legend of Robin Hood, the young commoner who was condemned as an outlaw for shooting one of the royal stags. The roots of that story reach back into the thirteenth century, an expression of the simmering resentment the yeomen of the time cherished against the nobility’s claim on the country’s game.
And, according to the eighteenth-century English barrister William Blackstone, feudal monarchs had other reasons for depriving the yeomanry of the right to hunt:
“All forest and game laws were introduced into Europe at the same time,” Blackstone wrote in 1765, “and by the same policy as gave birth to the feudal system. When a conquering general came to settle a vanquished country, it behooved him to keep the natives in as low a condition as possible, and especially to prohibit them the use of arms. Nothing could do this more effectually than a prohibition of hunting and sporting; and therefore it was the policy of the conqueror to reserve this right to himself, and such on whom he should bestow it; which were only his capital feudatories, or greater barons.”[vi]
When the first English settlers made their way to the American wilderness, they discovered a pantheon of liberties they had hardly dreamt of in the Old World— the freedom to hunt was one they particularly cherished and, with it, the right to bear arms.
In the United States, landowners do not own the wildlife that may spend time on their property. The Supreme Court enshrined this concept in American law nearly 200 years ago, stating that game was held by “the people of each state . . . for the benefit and advantage of the whole community.”[vii]
There are still landholders in Wyoming who see the game on their property in this light. I tip my hat to them and pledge to do whatever I can to help with the burden they bear for the well-being of the public’s wildlife.
As for the landholders who deny public access to the public’s game, I’m still more than willing to look for ways to ease the impact of elk and other wildlife on their livelihood. But they should understand that this is a discussion among neighbors, not a decision they can dictate unilaterally. The farming/ranching community in Wyoming accounts for three percent of the jobs in the state and a little more than one percent of the state’s domestic product.[viii] There are other, larger interests involved in our game management. Last year, nearly 58,000 people hunted elk in Wyoming, and the number who applied for licenses but didn’t draw is significantly higher.
The fact is that the urban majority has done much to support their rural neighbors, in the matter of big game management and many other sectors of farm life, including funding for the roads, power lines, cell towers, and internet that are an irreplaceable part of life in Wyoming, in the country or in town. In return, I don’t think urban hunters are expecting too much when they ask for access to herds of elk, especially when those herds are troubling private landholders.
There are programs in place that offer help to any rancher who is wintering large numbers of elk, nearly all of which are currently funded by hunters. I support those programs, and I think they should be expanded, preferably with money from the state’s general fund. These subsidies should emphasize the general public’s access to the public’s game on private land. The tools exist to deal with elk numbers on private property, if landholders are willing to use them. Contrary to what Jim Magagna and his supporters may think, the Game and Fish Department has been extremely aggressive in its effort to deal with this issue, but there’s a limit to what can be done without cooperation from affected landholders.
I can’t support giving individual landholders the power to issue hunting licenses. Ranchers already control who can and cannot hunt on their property. They must not be given the authority to decide who is licensed to hunt. That power is reserved to the people through the Game and Fish Department. It is administered fairly, without prejudice, and available to anyone who cares to participate. That can’t be allowed to change. Equality in the hunt has been a cornerstone of American tradition and law since the Pilgrims came ashore at Plymouth Rock. It’s a concept many of us cherish as much as the guarantees in the Bill of Rights.
And I can’t condone the slaughter of game animals by hired guns, except where there is no other safe technique for controlling a game population that threatens human life or property. Wildlife in Wyoming, and across the United States, is a public trust. It should be managed in the public interest, not in the interest of a single property owner. In the case of increasing numbers of elk, a perfectly workable solution is available, if the landowner is willing to apply it— it’s hard to believe those elk would have stayed on that ranch in southeastern Wyoming if it had been opened to public hunting, with more than 100,000 city dwellers living within a fifty-mile radius.
As a modern “yeoman,” a common man who still cherishes the long-standing tradition of democracy in American hunting, I’d have thought the “Freedom Caucus” and Libertarians of the Wyoming legislature would stand up for me. Instead, recent news coverage advises me that they’re standing with a tiny minority of the Wyoming public that claims title to most of the land in the state. Owning the land does not mean they own the wildlife.
I understand that many ranchers are less than enthusiastic about allowing public access, although I suspect the horror stories that have made the rounds over the decades are often exaggerated by people who simply prefer to lock the gate. But, when a landholder is worried about too many elk, the problem comes down to a fairly simple choice: Put up with hunters from town or live with a herd of elk on the pasture. These may not be the alternatives some landholders prefer, but they’re the only ones those of us who own the elk will accept. When you ask a neighbor for help, you have to be willing to meet him halfway.
We left the notion of the “king’s deer” far behind us when we came to the New World. Wyoming’s elk belong to us all. We should all have an equal chance of hunting them.
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[i] Heinz, Mark, 2024. Critics say paying Wyoming ranchers for grass-gobbling elk could break budget. Cowboy State Daily, February 19, 2024.
[ii] Haderlie, Carrie, 2024. A serious rural issue. Wyoming Tribune Eagle, March 13, 2024.
[iii] Wyoming Game and Fish Department, 2023. Access Yes 2023 annual report. WGF&D, Cheyenne, WY. P.8.
https://wgfd.wyo.gov/WGFD/media/content/Public%20Access/2023-Access-Yes-Annual-Report_1.pdf
[iv] Haderlie, Carrie, 2024. Op cit.
[v] Wyoming Game and Fish Department web site: https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Apply-or-Buy/License-Fee-List#elk
[vi] Blackstone, William, 1915. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Bancroft-Whitney Company, San Francisco, CA. pp. 1272-1273. https://archive.org/details/commentariesonl01jonegoog/page/1272/mode/2up?q=hunting
[vii] Taney, Roger, 1842. Majority opinion in the case of Martin v. Waddell. 41 U.S. 367 (1842).
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/41/367/
[viii] Anon, nd. Income, employment, and gross domestic product by industry. Economic Analysis Division, Wyoming Department of Administration and Information. https://ai.wyo.gov/divisions/economic-analysis/economic-data/income-and-employment
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