If you think politics are divisive, just listen to how Westerners describe elk.
They’re “terrorists,” says Sy Gilliland. The president of the Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association, Gilliland told the digital news service WyoFile earlier this year that overpopulations of grass-eating elk are “destroying” Wyoming’s traditional ranches. Earlier this month, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission approved a plan to use hunter funds to compensate ranchers for forage eaten by elk.
Hunters are all too eager to help control those over-populations of elk, but some ranchers turn down the free help, citing the carelessness and entitlement of “slob hunters” as reason to deny them access to their pastures.
Hunters, meanwhile, complain that a new generation of “hobby ranchers” is more interested in raising elk than cattle on their estates around the West, and that outfitters are commercializing what has been a perceived birthright of Western hunters: free access to elk. Other hunters suggest that, given the below-market grazing rates that many ranchers pay to run their cattle on public land, these “welfare ranchers” should be forced to provide public hunting access.
Meanwhile, a coalition of landowners sued Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department last year, demanding that the agency cull up to 50,000 elk on private lands. That lawsuit was dismissed in July by a judge who ruled that landowners don’t have “absolute freedom” to kill public elk.
The friction caused by the uneven distribution of elk isn’t limited to Montana and Wyoming. It’s opened rifts between landowners and hunters across the West, including in New Mexico where critics of a landowner-tag program claim the state is “privatizing its elk herd.”
While there are few solutions in sight that will shift elk to public land and reduce problematic populations of elk on working ranches, there are some simple ways to lower the temperature caused by conflict. A short film produced by a coalition of conservation groups suggests that simply listening to moderate voices on both sides of the divide may lead to sustainable solutions.
That’s the theme of “Good Neighbor: Elk Management in Montana,” in which both ranchers and hunters describe their mutual affection for elk but also sources of increasing conflict around elk distribution and access. The film is produced by onX Hunt, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Outdoor Life, and One Montana. (As Outdoor Life’s hunting and conservation editor, I also happened to write and narrate the 16-minute film.)
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The film’s release coincides with not only this month’s elk-hunting season but the Nov. 5 general election. The 2025 Montana Legislature is expected to consider bills that could alter landowner-preference rules, incentivize hunting access to private land, and create a forage-compensation fund similar to the one established in Wyoming.