BUFFALO — The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is considering changes to its depredation prevention hunting season policy that could make it easier for private landowners to request and officials to create a special hunting season in areas where big game is damaging the landscape.
“It’s been written a bit more broadly to allow any opportunity that we might see necessary to be able to implement one of these,” said Craig Smith, Sheridan regional wildlife supervisor. “There could be potential for that anywhere in the region.”
The proposed change would eliminate a lot of red tape in validating landowners’ claims of damage and allow the special hunting seasons to proceed more easily. And it would streamline the process for hunters who want to participate.
An overabundance of elk in some locations has prompted landowners and livestock owners to bring the proposed changes forward, Smith said.
Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, who has been pushing for changes to the policy on behalf of ranchers, said that Johnson County isn’t necessarily one of the areas where excessive elk populations are causing problems that led the agricultural advocacy organization to pursue this policy change.
Still, nearly 60% of the county’s lands are privately owned, according to a socioeconomic profile compiled by the Wyoming County Commissioners Association in 2018. This means that wildlife spend a lot of time on private land.
“What we’re really focused on that hasn’t been addressed is not so much damage as just consuming a disproportionate amount of the available forage,” Magagna said. “I’ve got landowners that have had to reduce their cattle herds by, in one case, near 40%, because so much of the forage that he has for summer use is being consumed by elk.”
This is partly why the agency is proposing that the policy change from “depredation prevention” to “auxiliary management.”
If the regulation is changed, it would also include trophy game animals black bear, mountain lion, grizzly bear, and gray wolf — and wild turkeys that cause any sort of damage to private landowners’ property, in addition to big game.
To Adam Teten, the proposed changes could make the existing management process more localized.
Teten is a Buffalo resident who represents sportsmen on the Wyoming Wildlife Task Force. Game and Fish presented the proposed changes to the special hunting season regulation at the task force’s July 7 meeting.
“It offers a little more flexibility for the regional game managers to really truly address some of those problems rather than it just being through maybe a specific season setting meeting or something along those lines,” he said.
