There is currently an attempt at making special elk permit areas in Montana, open to general either sex elk tags on private land. So many Montanans have waited decades to draw a tag in one of these areas, it would be one of the biggest slaps in the face to Montana resident hunters that there ever has been. We need to step up and express our anger toward the attempt at allowing our public resource to become a private resource open to the wealthy friends and families of large land owners. They are doing this under the disguise of correcting overpopulation issues. Anyone who knows anything about population control knows that shooting bulls is not the answer. If landowners have such a problem with elk, the answer is to let more people kill cow elk, not keep people off of your land and then complain about too many elk. It has also been brought up that land owners are tired or not being able to draw a bull tag in some of these areas. First of all, we already have land owner preference set up in Montana. If that's not good enough I'm sorry, deal with it like the rest of us. Montana has a long tradition of hunting and we need to stand and fight, or God forbid we become like other states, where if you aren't wealthy or have connections you might as well not even think about having a realistic opportunity at a quality hunt or decent trophy quality. If this passes, any ranches that are kind enough to let people who are fortunate enough to draw one of these special permits, will have a monetary incentive to not allow it anymore, and charge trespass fees to allow people to kill elk on their land using a general permit. In closing here is a well written statement that sums it up pretty well. "So sad. Montana had such a well designed system that balanced quality and opportunity areas. Allocated opportunity with a strong preference for the owners of the wildlife, residents. Fidelity of the principle that wealth, landownership, influence, and prestige does not grant preferred hunting opportunity. Montana was truly a shining star among the western states for putting the general public and the wildlife first. And these bastards in control of state government, the legislature, FWP, and the FWP commission are conspiring to blowing up decades of doing right in a matter of a couple of years."