JIM ZUMBO : Welcome to a session that's going to deal with one of my 

 greatest concerns about the future of our wetern lifestyle, "The Future 

 of Hunting." We're privileged to start off with one of the world's 

 foremost experts on hunting, Mr. Jack Atcheson, Butte's own 

 international hunting consultant. 



"I feel that all land, BLM land, Forest Service land and state public 

 land belongs to the people and the people should be able to use that 

 land..." 



JACK ATCHESON: Thank you. I've got a number of things to cover 

 on access. I usually tell a few little stories first but I'm gonna 

 dispense with that and get down to the meat of the things. 



I missed part of the meeting this morning primarily on the 

 Sagebrush Rebellion and I'm very much opposed to it. And some of the 

 reasons why are going to come out with this talk on access to state 

 lands. I got started on this access to state lands issue about two 

 years ago. I was hunting up by Malta and believed that I was on BLM 

 land--and I may have been, I'm not sure. Anyway, a rancher drove 

 out at high speed and told me that I was on state land which was his 

 land and to get the hell out of there in a hurry. So I left, but it 

 wasn't that there were any cattle there to bother. It had been raining 

 so there was not much of a fire danger. And luck had been bad and I 

 had not been shooting many birds anyway, so I wasn't doing too much. 

 Anyway I left, but I thought, "I'm going to look into this because I 

 don't like being told that I have to leave public land." Now it's easy 

 to say that there are a lot of places you can go and hunt in Montana 

 without being public state land. There's a lot of forest land. There's a 

 lot of BLM land and the BLM and the forest invites you to use the land 

 for recreation. 



But there are some other problems and I'm not just thinking about 

 myself but thinking about the average person. I've got plenty of time 

 and I'm in the business of hunting. So maybe I can take the time. 

 Bui the average person who has say two or three days to hunt every 

 weekend can only do so many things. Well it's easy to say you can go 



