Grazing Lease Question - Probably Answered It Myself
 

Hi All,

I have hunted several grazing leases in the past few years and this is the first question I have had regarding access.

Currently for my upcoming mule buck hunt I have access on some leases I have hunted before. I was looking to add some extra acreage to hunt by gaining access to a bordering lease. However, when I clicked on the lease through the RA site there were was no contacting information under the "Leaseholder Conditions As Approved by the Minister" section, where you usually find please contact between XX am and XX pm on mon-thur, only 3 hunters per day, please contact X days before, ect...

Currently it only states " please park your vehicle on road allowance and no access if livestock in field".

I interpret this to be different then "No contact required".

I am going to contact the lease holders just in case. just to see if other hunters are out on my planned dates. Just curious if anyone else has seen this written on the conditions before and what they did.

I have seen this before. As it was my first year hunting alone I called F&W who transferred me to land manager's office to confirm you are allowed on the lease but have to follow the standard access conditions (foot access only, no fires, ect.)

Now you may want to call the land manager for confirmation because leases change hands and the information may not be up to date. In my case I requested a letter be written from the land manager stating I had access. While I was hunting the lease holder flew down the fence line on his quad and chewed me out for being there. I eventually asked him to call F&W to report me as he would not believe me when I said I had access. F&W confirmed I had done everything to gain legal access and allowed me to stay as long as there was no contact information on the site. About 3 weeks later the info was updated. To my knowledge no one has been granted access to that lease since the information was updated as that lease holder always says there are too many hunters booked. Yet you never see anyone parked on the access road.

Sounds like you need to contact the range manager again.

Cannot deny access for that reason. Call the land manager and he'll get his ass chewed out instead. Want full control of land? buy private land and deny away.

I've been running into this more and more. Leaseholders denying access because "to many guys already." If I show up to a lease and there is fellows clearly hunting it already because their vehicle is there I have no problem turning around. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is just a bs tactic to keep hunters out. Each and every one of these instances should be reported. In my and my wifes experience the people that manage public lease land are absolutely sympathetic to the public and they do not have much patience for the bs that some leasholders like to pull.

I recently contacted someone about lease land access and was denied, given the same reason stated above; the lease holder responded with "we've already given permission to several hunters and it's a small property".

Being new to this whole thing I wasn't entirely sure what to think of that so I just looked for another place rather than getting into any he said she said sort of situation. Sounds like the lease holder doesn't really have the right to tell me not to go hunting there though? Obviously if I pulled up and saw other hunting traffic in the (relatively) small area I would head elsewhere.

Lease holders cannot deny access for any reason beyond what is outlined in their lease agreement. Ie..cows on the lease, no camping, no vehicle access ect.. Never seen a lease agreement that states how many people/ hunters on it at a time. Remember this is NOT their land they just pay to use it. These lease holders need to be reported.

So I've followed up with a Rangeland Agrologist in the past and they told me unless there is an approved condition on their lease regarding limiting the number of people accessing the land, they are unable to use that as a condition to deny access.

Down south around Bob Creek there are a number of leases that do have a limit set on the numbers of people that can access on their list of approved conditions. I have not seen this listed in the conditions on other leases except down south.