Originally Posted by
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But that isn't how it works everywhere. In MT, WY, ID, UT, CO, AZ, NM, ID etc... many outfitters lease the hunting rights from the Forest Service or BLM. That lease gives them exclusive rights to outfit in that area but it does not give them exclusive rights to all the hunting. I or any other legally licensed hunter can legally hunt those areas without hiring the outfitter. Many outfitters don't like that and try to run off the regular hunters so they can "reserve" the game for their paying clients.
Point in fact, I once had an outfitter try to run me and my brother off of National Forest land south of Silt, CO. He didn't like the fact that we had 2 of "his elk" hanging from our game pole and his paying clients had been skunked. Bottom line, we had us a talk with the Sheriff of Garfield County and the local Forest Service office and they told the outfitter to back off because we were legally hunting ON PUBLIC LAND!
Used to be an outfitter had the right to make limited, non permanent, improvements on BLM land and had some limited motorized access to areas that are designated as wilderness areas and normally closed to motorized traffic. Other than that they had no more right to the game than anybody did. But I've been out of the loop for awhile and things do change.
I'v never had any run ins with them anyway. The cattle or sheep ranchers were my main headache. Some guy would come driving up really fast, jump out of his pickup truck, ranting and raving about me hunting on private property and threatening to call the Sheriff.
Most of these guys were all bombast and bluster, but a few were downright mean. I'd pull out my map and ask where his property began and ended. My map says I'm on BLM land.
Most of the time when I was sited by a Cop, he was waiting by my truck, likely called by the rancher who thought he owned the BLM land. Where have you been? That is private property you know. Same thing, I'd dig out my map and say show me. The Cops who could read a map usually agreed with me. The ones who couldn't, usually sited me and advised me to bring my map to court. I'd always ask them to make an X on the map, where we were at and initial it, they always refused.
