Mike,

I think you're catching on.

So, the next winning lotto ticket belongs to you and that ranch in Wyoming you dream about is now yours.

Maybe you're not a "rancher" in our sense of the word, but you're probably a bright guy and lease out what you aren't using as your garden and your own private rifle range and what you need for the three or four head of beef you keep, as wellas the hay to feed them,to a couple of guys who run cows and a guy across the fencewho wants the alfalfa crop for the year.

That first fall, we'll be a shrewd businessman again, and an outfitter shows up on your door, ready to shell out big cash to lease out the hunting rights (oh "you'll still be able to fill your one tag and those of your immediate family") for the year.

All is well until your first winter, and suddenly all thoseelk cows and calves and does and fawnsthat weren't "trophy" enough for your outfitter's clients to shoot are congregated on your property. They're discovered by a wandering pack of wolves.In their routine panics to escape being eaten, your fences are trampled.

Of course, the wolvesdiscover one of your beef cattle, and you find a bloody ribcage covered in a gang of crows one morning behind the barn, and a couple other bloodied but alive versions wandering around the water tank.

The wolves aren't the end of their worries though, as the elk and deer have discovered the hay lot and your stock of baled alfalfa, which they reduce to nothing in a matter of weeks. Fortunately, for a hundred bucks a week or so, you can keep feedingyour remaining cattlethrough the winter by buying hay and shipping it in from another state.

The wolves aren't done though, and by the end of the winter, you have one harried beef still standing. You have some fence to fix. And you have some accumulated debt for the hay you had to buy and ship in.

Fortunately, the state can not only pay you partiallyfor the damage the public'sdeer and elk did to your winter feed, they can in most cases help arrange some kind of compensation for the three beef you fed to the public's wolves, too.

Of course, you sold your hunting rights off to the slick outfitter last fall though. You didn't let the public, who "owned" the animals, participate in their management (or MIS-management). Do you think youshould still beentitled to any of those damages?

I think it's pretty simple: If you're a landowner and wish to benefit from such payments, you must FIRST have allowed public hunting. That doesn't necessarily mean free of charge, but it doesn't mean a "trophy" fee for bucks and bulls, either. Nor does it meanthe publicroaming your land at will, but there should be a formula for "hunter days" associated with total acreage. Same goes for habitat improvements - give the state's money to those landowners who are committed to improving the hunting public's access, not those who turn right around anduse those improvements to jack up the lease they charge the outfitters to exclude the public who paid forthem in the first place.

You want the public's money? You let the public hunt.

If you thinkyou can manage things better on your own by charging whatever you want, knock yourself out - just don't come running to the state or feds when things don'tquite work the way you wanted them to. Good thing you won the lottery, eh?!

I fine old gentleman rancherwhose property I hunted as a teenager died a few years ago. I was astonished to see how many people - and many people from out of state -came to his funeral. He'd over the years allowed all of us to hunt free of charge, as long as we left gates the way we found them and stayed away from the winter pasture he kept his cattle in. In the last couple years he ran the place, his son said he'd been approached by a number of outfitters who wanted to lease the hunting rights - to which he flatly refused. I still can't help but admire him.