Wildlife areas: Ranch hunting on public land
They aren't the only destinations for hunters, but the state's Wildlife Management Areas are among the best destinations in Northwest Montana.
"For most hunters, the only ranches they'll ever own are Wildlife Management Areas," said Jim Williams, regional wildlife manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Williams likens them to ranches because the areas tend to be located in lower-elevation, open areas that provide winter range for a variety of big game animals, places that would otherwise be privately owned and far less accessible. Another common characteristic for WMAs: They tend to attract lots of wildlife.
"How many areas in Northwest Montana can you hunt in open bunch-grass winter range rather than closed-canopy forests?" Williams asks. "They are unique."
Williams cites the 1,417-acre Woods Ranch WMA northeast of Eureka as an example of prime bunch-grass terrain that predictably attracts migrations of bighorn sheep from Canada as well as elk from higher elevations.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region One has nine Wildlife Management Areas, all with a variety of characteristics that attract wildlife as well as hunters.
The most popular, Williams said, is the 1,530-acre Ray Kuhns WMA just northeast of Kalispell along the Stillwater River. While it does not provide the open range found at Woods Ranch, it is a timbered valley-bottom winter destination for whitetail deer migrating from the Salish Divide.
Game surveys conducted in and around the Kuhns WMA have detected up to 500 deer per square mile during the fall and winter.
"It's a piece of land that a mother or father can take a young hunter for an afternoon hunt after school," Williams said. "You can be there in 15 minutes."
Access is a major attribute of Wildlife Management Areas, but conservation is another important goal. The Bull River WMA south of Troy was largely acquired two years ago to conserve linkage habitat for grizzly bears, mule deer, sheep and elk between the West and East Cabinet mountain ranges.
And the conservation mission isn't limited to merely acquiring lands; the state pursues management actions to maximize habitat use by wildlife.
At the 4,000-acre Ninepipe WMA - one of few quality upland game bird hunting destinations in Northwest Montana - land is leased for farming to enhance nesting cover, food plots and wetlands development.
At other Wildlife Management Areas such as Woods Ranch, cattle are used as a seasonal tool for "vegetation manipulation" by grazing in certain areas.
Burning also is put to use, often in partnership with other agencies and neighboring landowners, to invigorate browse and grasslands.
The top cost for managing WMAs, however, is noxious weed control, Williams said. Those efforts also are often carried out with neighboring landowners.
Williams concedes that Northwest Montana's Wildlife Management Areas may not be as well-known as those in Eastern Montana that often are surrounded by private lands.
"In Northwest Montana, we tend to take access for granted because Plum Creek is so good at providing access and we have so much national forest lands," Williams said.
The state's first Wildlife Management Area was acquired in 1940 in the Judith River Basin, and more acquisitions followed mainly as a strategy for providing natural winter range habitat as a way to reduce game damage to agricultural lands.
It turned out to be a unique approach, compared to states such as Colorado and Wyoming, where most valuable winter range fell into private ownership. Those states now have expensive winter wildlife feeding programs that tend to lure and concentrate big game in areas where they don't cause damage, Williams said, but concentrating ungulates raises the risk of transmitting disease.
Montana now has 71 Wildlife Management Areas, in addition to 45 state-sponsored conservation easements that ensure long-term hunting access on private lands. The largest is an easement on Plum Creek lands in the Thompson-Fisher river drainages west of Kalispell.
"Some families have built lifetimes of tradition in hunting on WMAs," Williams said. "You look at some areas, and those places are worth their weight in gold."
For more on hunting regulations and other information on all of Montana's Wildlife Management Areas, look under "guides and planners" on the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Web site at:
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com