Bill would allows out-of-state aerial hunters to hunt in Montana

Caven Wade

UM Legislative News Service

University of Montana School of Journalism

The Senate Agriculture, Livestock, and Irrigation Committee advanced a bill Thursday that would allow non-residents to hunt coyotes and red foxes on private property from the air.

The bill cleared the House 75-24 on Jan. 26 before moving to the Senate. 

Rep. Brandon Ler, R-Savage, is co-sponsoring House Bill 104, which would remove a regulation that non-residents can’t hunt from airplanes in counties that do not share a border with another state.

“This just takes away that section of code, so now any county in the state of Montana can hire an aerial hunter to hunt anywhere in the state,” Ler said. “This is good policy for the cattle producers and sheep producers in the state of Montana.”

The state currently allows for aerial hunting on private property, but only for residents. There is an exception to this law if the county is connected to another state – for example, ranches in Carbon County could contract a gunner and pilot from Wyoming to hunt the predators on their land.

The Department of Livestock has a program that allows pilots to register their planes through the Montana Department of Transportation Aeronautics Division and obtain an aerial hunting license to protect livestock on plots of land.

Mike Honeycutt, chief executive officer of the Montana Department of Livestock, and two others supported the bill, including representatives from the Montana Stockgrowers Association and the Montana Farm Bureau.

Honeycutt said there are currently 30 registered pilots in the program but that this number would grow if out-of-state pilots were able to hunt everywhere in the state. He said the program kills about 15,000 coyotes annually.

“We want to make it a viable program, and we want to maintain it. We want to give landowners all the tools in the toolbox to deal with coyote depredation that we can keep available to them,” Honeycutt said.

Hunters cannot hunt species that Fish, Wildlife, and Parks manage, and that leaves only coyotes and red foxes to be the aim of aerial hunters.

Marc Cooke, president of the Wolves of the Rockies, opposed the bill saying that the lack of enforcement with more hunters could lead to managed species being hunted on purpose or accident.

“This will lead to illegal gunning, illegal killing, and illegal poaching of wolves and other wildlife. The reason I say that is law enforcement with FWP has a huge parcel of land they have to protect and watch over, but recently about a year or so ago in the Big Hole Valley, there were two wolves killed from aerial gunning,” Cooke said. “My thinking is this isn’t an isolated incident, and also because law enforcement with FWP is spread so thin, nobody’s going to catch it.”

Cooke also said that out-of-state pilots are at a disadvantage when navigating the state’s terrain, creating a safety problem for the pilots, gunners, and residents of the area.

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Caven Wade is a student reporter with the UM Legislative News Service, a partnership of the University of Montana School of Journalism, the Montana Broadcasters Association, the Montana Newspaper Association and the Greater Montana Foundation. He can be reached at [email protected].