Private Equity
Opportunities to hunt private land through managed access programs are wide, varied and more accessible than you might imagine.
PHOTO: Michael Clingan, Montana Outdoor Imagery
by Andrew McKean
For her first successful elk hunt, DeAnna Bublitz couldn’t have asked for better conditions, or company.
One of about 100 hunters invited to hunt a large ranch in Montana’s Paradise Valley north of Yellowstone National Park as part of AMB West’s formal wildlife-management program, Bublitz arrived carrying expectations shaped by her experiences as a public-land hunter.
“You know, crushing 20 miles on foot and bringing your game out in pieces, if you get it at all,” says the Missoula, Montana, hunter. “But this was entirely different. We were met by ranch employees, driven around the ranch, elk were visible, and then we were given permission to make stalks that didn’t have the all-or-nothing feel of a public-land stalk.”
Bublitz’s second approach was successful, resulting in a 300-yard shot at a cow. Her companion also killed a cow. And, when she met up with the other two hunters in her group, she learned they had also killed elk.
“My two friends hiked much farther up into the snow and got on a herd,” says Bublitz. “It was a cool hunt. Because each of us had fairly high expectations of success, it took some of the uncertainty out of the equation, but it wasn’t like shooting fish in a barrel. You needed to be able to stalk.”
Ranch employees were there to help with shot selection, and then with field dressing and getting the elk out of the field. Bublitz’s friend got an elk out whole, a rare outcome on a public-land hunt.
The unexpected opportunity was provided by AMB West, a constellation of properties owned by Arthur Blank, who founded The Home Depot and owns the Atlanta Falcons NFL team—and allows some hunting access to his Montana properties through a lottery.
Not all ranch hunts are the same.
“Sometimes it’s a real elk hunt and sometimes it’s a harvest,” says Terance Eichhorn, AMB director of land, livestock and conservation. Depending on the location of elk on the ranch, the hiking requirements could be anywhere from 300 yards to six miles.
Laura Farron, another Missoula hunter, drew an opportunity to hunt the AMB several years ago and stresses that hers wasn’t a conventional hunting experience.
PHOTO: Dawn Y. Wilson
“It was a harvest,” says Farron. “We’re conditioned to use the term ‘hunting’ for these opportunities, but honestly it was a harvest in every way. I was there to harvest an elk on private land that has ‘too many elk’ for the ranch to sustain.”
During the 2021-2022 season, the second year of the program, AMB West properties hosted a total of 323 public hunts, and public hunters killed 273 elk throughout Montana’s elk season. Last season (2023/2024), the AMB West Hunting Program hosted 249 hunters and killed 203 elk.
“Hunters have always been a part of wildlife management,” says Eichhorn. “This hunt is really focused on utilizing hunters to help us with that management. Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) is not going to give us 200 landowner tags, and we don’t expect that. I mean, we have a need, and these hunters have a need, so it just makes sense.”
Although AMB West coordinates with FWP game wardens and with the area biologist to provide data for CWD and brucellosis testing, AMB’s hunting program is managed independently, without active assistance from Montana’s state wildlife agency. In that way it differs from other private access programs brokered by agencies, which are increasingly important tools to manage big-game populations, mitigate wildlife damage on private lands and boost access for public hunters.
Eichhorn acknowledges that the AMB West model doesn’t work for every landowner because it requires a lot of resources to independently run the program, but he hopes that parts of it can be adopted by other landowners. “If we can show that you can build that relationship with hunters, and that they can be respectful of land, then that’s at least a step in how we tell that story.”
Programs brokered by agencies and ones like that on the AMB West properties are proliferating around the West, contrary to the common narrative that private land is increasingly closed to public hunting.
The goals of AMB West are shared by stockgrowers in Arizona, vineyards in California, and rural communities from Craig, Colorado, to Kentucky’s coal country: to use public hunters to reduce or disperse populations of wildlife that have overstayed their welcome or exceeded the forage capacity of local habitat.
These private-land opportunities can also provide an important counterweight to public-land hunting seasons, which are often high in opportunity but low in success. By carefully assigning hunters to specific pastures or herds, landowners and agencies can use free, public hunting as highly effective (not to mention cost-effective) wildlife management tools. Hunters get special access to private land, and in many cases, beginning hunters get special preferences for these managed opportunities. Landowners get help reducing problematic herds, and sometimes partner with state wildlife agencies on private-land habitat improvements and conservation easements that can help to grow and manage herds over a much larger area than a single property.
In that way, managed hunting can build durable relationships between landowners and hunters, two groups that seem to be increasingly at odds across the West.
“I was surprised to draw the [AMB West] tag,” says Farron, “but I was happy, since I was pregnant and couldn’t hunt as hard as I otherwise would want, and also because I was going to be in the area for Thanksgiving with my family. I also felt obligated to the landowner, who I felt was doing it the right way by opening up the opportunity to everyone through the lottery.”
Bublitz felt the same deep appreciation.
“This was as close to a guided hunt as I’m likely to ever participate in,” she says. “But it was such a good experience, and the fact that I was successful made it even more special. Ostensibly my hunting companions and I were helping put a small dent in the elk population of a valley that has too many elk for many landowners to tolerate. The meat was especially delicious.”
AMB West requires its hunting guests to shoot lead-free bullets, to be accompanied by a ranch employee, and in some seasons, to hold special state-issued permits.
State-run programs handle both the details and the scale of these private-land hunts differently.
Without trying to cover every state’s program, here’s a small selection showing the breadth and variety of access brokered on private land across the country.
In Utah, wildlife managers created Cooperative Wildlife Management Units (CWMUs) to provide special private-land hunting seasons. The units allow landowners to qualify for a defined number of hunting permits, which they can then sell or broker. In return, they are required to provide some public hunting opportunities, which generally equate to about 10% of the tags issued to the landowner.
Brett Bateman manages a couple Utah ranches that participate in the CWMU program, and feels it strikes a fair balance between providing public opportunity and incentivizing wildlife management on large working ranches.
“It’s a full-circle benefit,” says Bateman. “First, it allows a certain number of Utah residents a chance to hunt all this private land that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. Second, it gives the landowner an incentive to be a steward for wildlife. The hunting operation gives the landowner an additional revenue stream that keeps these big ranches from being subdivided and losing wildlife habitat.”
At least 10% of antlerless elk and deer tags good for hunting CWMU ranches are reserved for public hunters and are distributed in the state’s big-game lottery. The remainder, including trophy buck and bull permits, are reserved by landowners and are often managed by outfitters, who are granted longer, more liberal seasons than the state standards. Public hunters can avail themselves of these longer seasons, but only if landowners allow it, and the landowner also controls which areas public hunters can access. Many hunters have criticized the programs as overly generous to landowners, a commercialization of wildlife resources and contrary to America’s tradition of equitable access to wildlife. But Bateman notes that the ranches he manages give all their antlerless elk tags along with more than half of their moose tags to the state to distribute in the public draw.
“You have to realize that, without the CWMU model, the public wouldn’t have access to these properties,” he says. “The operative word for the program, to my mind, is ‘opportunity.’ It’s a way to create hunting opportunities on private land that otherwise wouldn’t exist. And I’ve noticed in recent years, as it’s harder to draw public-land permits, that we’re getting a lot more interest from local hunters about our buck and bull permits, too.”
The Silver State’s Elk Incentive Tag Program was designed to increase landowner tolerance for crop-eating herds of elk; a similar program addresses mule deer and pronghorn numbers in areas where animals are more abundant than desired. The idea is to reward landowners who provide public access to those depredating herds with a number of tags proportional to the number of animals using their property.
More than 400 Cowboy State landowners have enrolled 716,000 acres as Walk-in Hunting Areas, part of the state’s Access Yes! program, which enables public hunting on individual ranches. Nearly twice the private acreage is accessible through Hunter Management Areas, which are typically multi-ranch agreements designed to focus public hunting on a specific wildlife-management goal.
Some tags-for-access programs can seem transactional, but Arizona’s Adopt-a-Ranch Program focuses more on the relationship between landowners and the volunteers who commit thousands of hours annually to building fences, constructing water projects or otherwise improving private ranchland. Participating landowners agree to open their land to hunters and hikers in exchange for volunteer labor and habitat enhancements on their land, and in the process, this program improves relations between landowners and recreationists.
One of the newest states to host a huntable elk population, Virginia recently adopted its Elk Landowner License Program, a mechanism that allows landowners within the state’s Elk Management Zone to qualify for an elk permit providing they allow public access to hunt elk on their property.
In an effort to incentivize public access to the state’s relatively new elk herds, Kentucky’s Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources allows landowners inside the elk restoration zone to receive a point for each elk a public hunter harvests on their property, and they can also accrue points by property size. Landowners get one point for every 5,000 acres of private land they enroll. Once a landowner participating in the Voucher Cooperator Elk Permit Program has accrued 10 points, the landowner will receive an either-sex elk permit that can be used on their property.
Game, Fish & Parks’ Elk Hunting Access Program connects hunters with landowners who have overabundant elk on their properties. It’s then up to the hunter and landowner to make the arrangements for access and terms of hunting.
With some 1 million acres of private land enrolled, the Ranching for Wildlife program provides public access, and in some cases highly desirable either-sex licenses, on participating ranches. In 2023, nearly 700 antlerless elk licenses and another 1,500 either-sex elk licenses were allocated to public hunters on RFW properties, many of which are clustered in northwest and south-central Colorado. Tags are in some cases reserved for novice or youth hunters. The landowners of participating ranches, which must be at least 12,000 contiguous acres, are allotted 80-90% of licenses for male animals (deer, elk, pronghorns, moose, turkeys and bighorn sheep) in exchange for providing access to public hunters who draw the remaining tags. Landowners are obligated to provide access to anyone who draws antlerless RFW tags. Both public and landowner-sponsored hunters can hunt special extended seasons but are restricted to the enrolled property.
More than 4 million acres of private timberland is open to public hunting (as well as hiking, foraging and fishing) thanks to the state’s Access & Habitat Program. Oregon’s Fish and Wildlife Department facilitates access while working with landowners on habitat improvements and offering law-enforcement and other administrative assistance.
Through the convenient (if forced) name derived from the Shared Habitat Alliance for Recreational Enhancement, California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s SHARE program brokers public access to private or isolated public land, often targeting overabundant hog and deer populations. The program provides economic incentives and liability protection to participating landowners.
AMB West’s private lottery is a rare exception to the Big Sky State’s main mechanism for connecting hunters with private access and landowners. That’s the Block Management program, which enrolled over 6 million acres of private land this year. Some Block Managment Areas are open through what is called the Type I arrangement; hunters simply sign themselves in at designated entry points and hunt without making any personal contact with landowners. Type II BMAs often require reservations and communication between hunters and landowners, who might direct where and how to hunt certain animals.
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks compensates participating landowners using hunting license funds set aside for access mitigation. It’s proven to be a durable alternative to commercial leasing of these same properties.
Montana also manages other public hunting opportunities on private land through Elk Hunting Access Agreements, aka “454 agreements” in reference to the legislation that first enabled them. These allow non-resident landowners to receive elk permits or licenses to hunt their own land in exchange for allowing a certain amount of public access.
Besides simply managing big-game populations, many of these private-land hunting programs bolster relationships between hunters and landowners well after hunting seasons end. That’s also the goal of conservation organizations like One Montana, a non-profit that, through its Montana Master Hunter program, helps educate newcomers about the realities of owning land.
PHOTO: Speed Creative
“We have a changing landscape across the West, in terms of new landowners who don’t have a history of hunting or an understanding of the importance of hunting in rural communities,” says Sarah Tilt, former executive director of One Montana. “Many of these new landowners are moving here specifically for wildlife values, but they don’t always understand the impact that animals can have on the landscape or on their neighbor’s traditional agricultural operation.
“On the other hand, we have a long history of bad behavior on the part of some hunters,” adds Tilt. “And we have a new group of hunters moving to western states who can be resentful of landowners and the wildlife they don’t allow access to. We’re interested in helping work on these programs that can bring those two groups together over common goals, which often revolve around managing wildlife and thinking creatively about access.”
But Tilt cautions there are no one-size-fits-all solutions.
“Every ranch and every landowner has a different perspective and objective,” she observes, “so it can take years of dialog and trust and experimentation to figure out what works on each individual property.”
Back in Montana’s Paradise Valley, elk harvester Laura Farron says her experience of removing an alfalfa-eating elk from a public-spirited ranch was perfectly timed for the season of bounty.
“I shot that cow the day before Thanksgiving, and we had fresh elk tenderloins as the centerpiece of our holiday feast with our family,” she says. “And we put elk in our freezer that we’ve enjoyed over the past year.”
Even more enduring, just last spring the owner of the 9,600-acre Paradise Valley Ranch, which is the specific AMB property that hosted the managed elk hunt for both Farron and Bublitz, signed a conservation easement that will both permanently protect prime elk habitat while also providing public access for a thousand future Thanksgivings.
Andrew McKean is a longtime writer and journalist whose work has been featured in dozens of publications around the world. He’s the author of How to Hunt Everything and is hunting and conservation editor of Outdoor Life. McKean lives outside Glasgow, Montana.
