Hunting access- When farms are sold, new owners, values dictate who gets to hunt

By RON TSCHIDA, Chronicle Staff Writer

GLENDIVE -- In Dawson County, an eastern Montana expanse of rough coulees and sprawling wheat fields along the Yellowstone River, nearly one in five residents is 65 or older. In Daniels and Sheridan counties, in the state's northeast corner, nearly one in four is 65 or older. Many of Montana's rural counties hold an aging population.

While that demographic detail may not seem of much relevance to sportsmen, it has implications that could change the face of Montana hunting.

Already, elderly landowners are putting property up for sale, and the most eager buyers are well-heeled recreation buyers.

When hobby ranchers buy properties for their exclusive playground, resident hunters find themselves locked out of ranches and farms they grew up hunting on, the places that were opened to them with just a knock on the ranch house door.

"I'm seeing farms and ranches where the owners are to the point where they're starting to tip over," says Dawson County rancher Lowell Stevenson, in blunt fashion. "They're dying out. And the land is being sold and it's being bought by out-of-staters."

The new owners aren't particularly worried about paying for the land based on wheat and cattle prices, Stevenson says.

"They don't care what the land sells for," he says. "If it's got hunting on it they'll buy it at any price."

By some estimates, the next decade will bring a watershed change in land ownership in the Rocky Mountain West.

"I would expect somewhere between 50 and 60 percent ownership turnover of land in the next 10 years," says Roy Roath, an associate professor of range science at Colorado State University.

He points to a CSU survey a few years ago that found the average mountain state rancher was in his early 60s.

Low beef and grain prices in recent years coupled with a drought entering its fifth year in parts of the West are also taking a toll.

"It's tougher and tougher to be a rancher now," Roath says. "It just is. The economic things are against you. Even in the good years, they're only slightly above cost. Livestock alone won't make a ranch profitable."

On the other hand, land prices continue to escalate, spurred by demand from recreational and investment buyers.

That makes it even harder to keep ranches in the hands of traditional operators, says Dave Johnson, a Bozeman-based real estate broker at Hall and Hall. The ranch brokerage firm, with eight offices from Albuquerque, N.M. to Missoula, does business throughout the Rockies.

Johnson says ranchers have an incredibly deep connection to the land.

"'Lifestyle' is too trite," Johnson says. "It's deeper than that. It's life."

Most would like to keep the land in the family, passing it to their heirs. But the next generation can't afford to buy the land based on its productivity, and inheritance taxes often force a sale after a rancher dies.

Pressured by slim profits, tempted by fat purchase offers, more ranchers are selling out.

And if present trends continue, the new owners often won't be traditional farm operators.

A joint project of the Bozeman-based Yellowstone Heritage Foundation and the Colorado-based Center of the American West is trying to put some numbers behind the anecdotes.

Using methods formulated by University of Colorado geographer Hannah Schneider, the study is looking at ranch sales in counties around Yellowstone National Park, including seven Montana counties.

The study defines a ranch property as one of at least 400 acres operated primarily for agriculture.

In Park County, Montana, for example, about one out of four such properties changed hands from 1990 to 2001. Only 10 percent of buyers were traditional ranchers. Nearly two out of three buyers, 63 percent, were "amenity buyers," says Julia Haggerty, who is doing the research.

Amenity buyers are sometimes called conservation buyers, because they often are interested in preserving land as open space. They're more interested in the scenic and recreation values -- the fishing and hunting -- than in the number of cows the land will support.

And privacy is a prime motivator for their purchase.

"These folks don't need their neighbors, so to speak, and don't even understand the need to communicate," Roath says.

"The whole value sets are different," he says. "I can tell you what happens here in Colorado. As soon as the non-resident owner buys the land the 'no trespassing' signs go up. The first thing you see is the overhead sign announcing, 'I'm here, I have made it.' The next thing you see is the 'no trespassing' signs."

The interest from nontraditional buyers hasn't escaped the notice of Hall and Hall, whose fall 2002 newsletter included the cover story, "Hunting for a hunting ranch."

And while recreation buyers have been active in the western third of Montana for some time, there is increasing interest in plains land.

"Things are different in Glasgow," Roath says. "But their time's coming."

When even remote ranches are targeted by nontraditional buyers, hunters will find private land access still more dificult.

And although 35 percent of Montana is federal and state land, private land has always played a big role in Montana hunting. According to FWP harvest surveys, 70 percent of deer and 80 percent of antelope are taken on private land.

But where private land fits in the future of Montana hunting is an open question.

Stevenson, the Dawson County rancher, is 53 and the third generation to farm the land his grandfather homesteaded in 1908.

His ranch, about five miles from the Yellowstone River, isn't going to get any bigger. The last piece of neighboring property he tried to buy sold for at least twice what it was worth as crop and pasture land, he says.

And the money keeps getting bigger, not only for land sales but for hunting rights.

The money offered for a few three- and five-day hunts, says Stevenson, is more than some ranchers make from a year's calf crop. People are willing to spend several thousand dollars for the chance to shoot a trophy-class mule deer or whitetail. Elk bring even more.

"My view on the future of hunting, I expect it within my lifetime to be gone except for the wealthy," Stevenson says.

Land will be sold just for the hunting and other land will be exclusively leased for hunting.

"Money is no problem" he says. "There is so much money in this country out there we can't compete with them.

"You have a whole generation that's still on the farm and when they're gone, and this will happen in the next few years, the land will be sold and it won't be local people buying it," Stevenson says. "And the whole face of eastern Montana will change just as it's changed in the Bozeman area."

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