Access is Vital
Finding land to access is the single biggest reason why people stop hunting or thwarts those seeking to try it. Opening and improving public access to quality hunting opportunities is core to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s mission. Access is also vital so land and game managers are better able to enhance habitat and manage healthy elk populations.
Just three years after its founding in 1984 by public-land hunters, RMEF purchased the nearly 17,000-acre privately-owned Robb Creek Ranch in southwest Montana and conveyed it to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Today, that acreage lies at the heart of what is now the 43,000-acre Robb-Ledford Wildlife Management Area, home to elk and other wildlife, and open to all for hunting and other recreational activities.
RMEF utilizes various tools to improve public access
- Land acquisitions and exchanges on checkerboarded lands that create unbroken expanses of public land
- Transactions that open or improve access to difficult-to-reach or landlocked swaths of public land beyond
- Projects that expand state or federally-managed public land
- Road and trail easements that provides legal access to public land
- Grant donations to state agency programs that expand hunting access to both public and private land
Example RMEF land conservation and access projects.
Lack of access to quality hunting opportunities is the single biggest reason people stop hunting.
How you can help do more
When you join or donate to RMEF, you provide critical funding to ensure that RMEF can continue to be good stewards of the land long into the future.