Gaining Public Access

One of the biggest challenges hunters face today is getting access to the land. Mark Holyoak, Public Relations Director for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation explains what they are working on to make this possible.

Mark "Well there's a number of different ways, sometimes there's just little tracks of land that are just stuck and a lot of people just don't know about them. We have a lot of land locked public land that people can't get access to. So we'll look for little traps that butt up against public lands, for example we had one in Wyoming a couple years ago, and followed that through and it opened the door so people could get better access to 47,000 acres of land. In Montana there was one 2 or 3 years ago, just a little 40 acre plot and it was surrounded by big private ranches but this 40 acre plot butted up against national forest land, it had just 30 feet in common with national forest land. So because we had the opportunity to get in there and purchase that 40 acres and eventually convey it to the local fish and game agency here, now people can walk through that 40 acres and have access to that forest that was previously almost inaccessible and so they picked up about 18,000 acres of public access."

Tom

Mark that's great stuff you guys are doing with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. It's one of the biggest struggles we have as outdoorsmen, getting access to great land to hunt that can often be landlocked by inaccessible private property.

Matt

If you or someone you know would like to get involved in the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, check them out online at RMEF.com