Dear FWP and the Elk Management Citizen Advisory Group -

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your ‘Create an A9 Tag Bundle’ proposal.

The Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers supports new and innovative ways to reduce conflicts with problematic elk on private lands. That said, adding tags to over-objective districts has mostly proven to be ineffective.

To increase effectiveness, we suggest acquiring permissions from groups of connecting landowners, or very large private acreage, prior to implementation. Without participation and buy-in from the private landowners, these licenses will just increase pressure on publicly accessible private lands rather than the private lands that are experiencing elk distribution issues. To increase harvest to elk in overpopulated districts, you only need to access them or move them to where they can be accessed.

Additionally, we're concerned with the optics of a three-elk bundle. Processing three elk at once before they spoil (or your own back gives out!) seems unreasonable. If anything, we encourage this to be a two-elk bundle and brand it as a 'combo' license since that verbiage is already used and more likely to be accepted. That said, this entire proposal seems unnecessary and overcomplicated when B tags are already so readily available, and the real issue isn’t how many tags hunters have in their pockets but rather access to inaccessible elk.

Finally, we encourage the advisory group to look at other solutions like giving limited-entry either-sex permit holders an automatic 2nd cow-only license in areas that are substantially over objective. Doing this while concurrently cutting the number of available B licenses for that district could increase harvest where it's needed without increasing undue public lands pressure. FWP has done (and still does in a few places) this for antelope by giving B tags to A tag holders; why not with elk?

Thank you again for the opportunity to comment on your ‘Create an A9 Tag Bundle’ proposal. We appreciate your careful consideration.

-The Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers