04/04© Ronald L. Moody (2004)
All rights reserved.
Reprinted here with permission.

To Own the Future or Rent –
Standing Up For the American Commons

All the best fables and fairy tales start with: “once upon a time . . .”

When American nimrods gather in these dawning years of the 21st Century to talk about their hunting opportunities, their recollections of the past usually start with the same words. Once upon a time fields were open and permission freely given. Horizons were limitless and the frontier was forever.

Truth was, once upon a time, an American hunter need only saddle a horse and ride west to find hunting grounds unclaimed by any other Euro-American. Once upon a time, America, unlike the European Motherland, had not been plowed, lumbered, mined, grazed and fenced into private properties for private profit.

Until recent decades, small-town Americans could expect the field at the edge of town to offer a pheasant or cottontail for sustenance of an American dream. As late as 1953, Robert Ruark could write an American sporting classic about just such a childhood recollection in his book: ‘THE OLD MAN AND THE BOY.’

I’ll break no hot news to my readers by reporting that “once upon a time” has not ended “happily ever after.” Today, in The Land of the Free, freedom ends at the next fence and stepping off the sidewalk onto the wrong grass can get you a criminal record.

(Cultural anthropologist Daniel Justin Herman in his book: HUNTING AND THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION wrote: “It is critical to note that seventeenth – and eighteenth-century colonists, far from remaking themselves in the image of the New World, had remade the New World in the image of themselves. “Well may New-England lay claim to the Name it wears,” proclaimed Cotton Mather in 1700.”)

So that’s the way it is. Now we have to deal with it. What path will best lead to future hunting opportunities for all Americans?

Most of the rural and wilderness landscapes in the U.S. have become private property over the course of our nation’s history. In a unique American twist, however, the American people have retained official title to ownership of the wild animals residing within our borders.

On private lands we find ourselves in the highly visible, and much discussed, paradox dealing with split estate – public wildlife on private lands. The millions of acres of land that remains in public ownership, however, offer a different set of challenges and opportunities. There, we the people own the whole asset; it is public opportunity to control and enjoy the asset that falls under constant attack by competing private interests.

My belief is that American hunters must follow two paths at once to find their way to a future in which their place in American society is founded on a secure base of hunting opportunities. On the first path we must negotiate a sharing of the resource with private landowners. On the other path we must assert a public (read political) will to gain access to our public lands and manage those lands and waters in a manner to benefit wildlife and the majority interest of the American people.

Because Montana is just about the last place on Earth to feel the closing of the frontier, the subject of hunting on private lands is still a hot topic. I don’t know what deal will eventually resolve the issue. I do believe hunters will obtain the best outcome by studying and employing the skills of negotiation so mandatory to success in both commerce and governance. Given the realities of law and political legitimacy attached to the various interests involved, a mutually agreed outcome is more likely to favor the majority of hunters than will the product of raw political combat.

I remain personally loyal to Theodore Roosevelt’s principle that hunting in America should remain a fundamentally democratic institution. Hunting opportunities that are attractive and available should be open to any citizen who will seek them regardless of financial or social status. I also trust the rich hunter to take care of himself.

It is for the benefit of the poor family that I speak when I say that America’s public lands are the best hope that hunting will continue to be democratically available to all people.

I do not denigrate the value of negotiable resource sharing ideas like conservation easements and public corridor programs for private lands. Neither do I criticize the currently popular idea of renting hunting access through programs such as state Block Management or the proposed federal ‘Open Fields’ idea (as long as hunters don’t forget the temporary value that is inherent with renting anything).

The fact is that the only hunting opportunity that I can predict with any certainty will be available to my young grandchildren when they are adult will be the opportunities they actually own – the national forests, BLM lands, national wildlife refuges and state lands. Everything else is, by definition, temporary, contingent, and, thus, uncertain. If the experience of other, older states teaches nothing else to Montanans, it is that money always eventually controls use of private property.

For this reason I believe hunters of today should make control and management of public lands the top priority of their efforts to design a democratic and scientifically valid future for hunting in America.

Hunters have been silent too long as efforts to purchase critical wildlife habitats for public ownership have been blocked by private interest competitors. If we don’t buy and hold those assets when they are available, they will be forever gone to development or privatized hunting in the future. Access to public lands and waters has continued to diminish because hunters have not given adequate force to their political will. A typical result is that our Stream Access Law has survived court challenge but our State Department of Transportation can’t be bothered with providing viable access at public bridge crossings.

The next Legislature will decide whether to re-authorize the only state program available to purchase wildlife habitat – Habitat Montana. This small, hunter-funded program has made highly valuable acquisitions for a future that hunters can call their own. One political idea already voiced is that Montana hunters should let the Habitat Montana fund be taken for use in Block Management to rent hunting access. Only Montana hunters who now own their own home but want to sell it so they can rent a house forever should support that idea.

Hunters also are too silent on public land agency management processes that affect wildlife and recreation such as grazing, ORV abuse, logging and land use planning. Participating in decision-making is a responsibility that comes with ownership of anything. A huge shift of power has taken place during the past four years to give private interests more control over public lands; hunters have done virtually nothing about that.

My vision of a future in which all people have opportunity to share in the Montana hunting tradition is centered on well-managed national forests and BLM lands with generous access to boundaries and well-managed road systems within these federal lands.

A major documented barrier to new and young hunters taking up the sport is the longer distances and higher costs of travel imposed by our current situation. A major expansion of state wildlife management areas could place a larger number of smaller publicly owned hunting areas within short distances of more Montana families. Habitat Montana should receive more funding expressly for the purchase of such areas. (And remember, that state lands purchased through Habitat Montana do not go off local tax rolls; the fund pays property tax to local governments.)

For better or worse, 2004 is the year in which Montana hunters must choose which future they will provide for the next generation of hunters – a future of ownership or a future of renting a place to hunt by the day or season. Much of that decision will be made when hunters cast their votes on election day in November.

Once candidates are sworn into office the die is pretty much cast – something to remember when people start knocking on your door to ask for your vote.

Yr. Ob’t Sv’t Ron Moody

Ron can be reached by email at couleeking@hotmail.com.