anywhere in the forest. No, you can't go anywhere in the forest 

 because you've got a number of problems. Number one, there are 

 man-'made barriers and there are natural barriers which stop you from 

 actU^ly hunting where you want to. Now I maintain that there's only 

 about 20 percent of this entire state available to the hunter who has 

 limited time. Now all you have to do is just think a little bit and go 

 down any road that you know of. Let's say you go from Bozeman down 

 to West Yellowstone. This will be kind of a good area to start with. As 

 you drive down there, there's a fast flowing river on one side of you 

 and there are steep cliffs. There may be good hunting above that but 

 it's very difficult to get there. You can't cross the rivers. There are 

 a couple of bridges crossing the river with great big signs on them 

 saying "No Trespassing" because there's a litte bit of private land on 

 the other side of the river. So actually, you're limited. You go down 

 to the Madison Valley where years ago all you had to do was just go 

 hunting. Usually you did ask the landowner and almost always they let 

 you go, but that was in the good old days. There are now a lot of 

 private lands, strips along the river that have been purchased by out 

 of state interests and interests within the state, who just don't want 

 you to cross their land. Some of them told me that's their private game 

 reserve behind there and they don't want you there. Now if you have 

 enough time, there are some access areas that you can get into, but 

 there're miles and miles that you can't reach. And on the Madison you 

 can go down and hunt on the Bear Creek Game Range, but it is 

 becoming somewhat saturated with people because that's access. You go 

 a mile south to Indian Creek and you might get access and you might 

 not. If you go into Corral Creek you are not going to get any access. 

 It's very difficult to get into Wolf Creek, Papoose Creek and for many 

 miles down because of some nonresident interests there that bought the 

 land. They just won't let you across it... no way. There is also a 

 tremendous amount of subdivisions. I got a brochure once from a 

 subdivision developer there that said that one of the reasons that you 

 should buy into their subdivision was because you had millions of acres 

 of land behind this land and you had the only road to it and they more 

 or less insinuated that you didn't hve to let anybody behind it, which 

 is true. 



So the access problem is severe and I really think that if someone 

 were to take a pin and go over a map and ppnch a little pin in where 

 every animal was actually shot at, I think yod'd find that most of them 

 were killed pretty much in the same areas, v^th little sprinkling in 

 between because the people can't get to many public lands there. And 

 I'm opposed to this. 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 because I don't believe that the general public at 

 large is going out to ravage and ruin and slaughter cows or anything 

 like that. I'm sure they do damage. There are vandals, but I've 

 heard of so many cows being shot that if they were all piled up they 

 would cover Butte. But in my lifetime, I have never found the gutpile 

 of a cow. I have never found a cow with a piece cut out. So in order 

 to take a cow away, how do you do this? Do you pick a whole 1,300 

 pound cow up and carry it away? It leads me to believe that there is 

 some exaggeration about cow killing. 



