- [Announcer] Montana Ag Live is made possible by: the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, and the Gallatin Gardeners Club.

(light guitar music) - Good evening.

You are tuned to Montana Ag Live, originating today from the studios of KUSM on the very dynamic campus of Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, retired Professor of Plant Pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

Had an interesting program.

We've been on the air numerous years and we've never touched on a very active program in the state called Block Management.

And we're gonna discuss Block Management and how it affects sportsmen, how it is very productive and beneficial to Ag producers.

So if you have questions tonight about anything to do with block management, hey, here's a chance to get those questions answered.

So before we go any farther, let me introduce this evening's panel.

Sam Wyffels.

Sam is an extension beef specialist.

He's been here many, many times.

I love to have him here, because I can throw some real curvy questions to him and we have a lot of fun dancing around him.

So watch out tonight, Sam.

They're coming.

(panel laughing) Cheyanne Parker.

Cheyanne is Region 3 Access Manager here in Bozeman, Region 3 of Southwest Montana period.

She has a lot of information about block management, how it affects agriculture, how it's beneficial for the sportsmen.

So we'll get back to Cheyanne in a minute and if you have questions, make sure to get 'em in tonight.

Tim Seipel, our weed scientist.

I know there's always weeds in this state.

Everybody has weed problems, so if you have questions concerning anything to do with weeds this evening, Tim would be happy to answer 'em.

And Dave Baumbauer.

Dave is a manager of our greenhouse facility here, but he's also a very good horticulturalist.

So if you have any questions concerning why your tomatoes are not growing this year, we can throw 'em Dave's way.

Answering the phones tonight are Nancy Blake and Elizabeth D. Imperial.

So get that phone ringing, the numbers up on the screen.

Cheyanne, tell us about the Block Management program, the history and what you do for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

- Yeah, so the Block Management program is a cooperative agreement between Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and landowners.

We work together in order to help with the landowner specifically with game damage issues as well as managing of those hunters.

And for the sportsmen, it's creating access and other places to go hunt for 'em.

It formally was created in 1985 by a group of landowners that kind of privately did it, and they started, they realized there was a problem with managing the hunters and the wildlife, so they kinda created their own little program.

And then in 1996, it significantly expanded.

FWP got involved.

We hired regional access managers, and it's been going ever since.

- It's one of the best programs that Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has put together.

I've always believed it was more extensive in the eastern part of the state, but in reality, it encompasses the entire state, if I'm correct.

- Yeah, we have Block Management in all regions.

Across the state, we have over 6.9 million acres in the program, and that's private land.

And over 600,000 acres of landlocked public that are accessible through this program.

- That's a lot of acres.

- That's a lot.

(laughs) - And Dave, you hunted a lot of Block Management.

- I really, I'm a big fan of the program, and for someone like me that gets out sporadically and doesn't have like connections with private landowners to be able to go, and your literature's great.

I mean, it's super easy to use, both the paper and the online stuff.

And you can say, "Hey, let's go check this out."

And yeah, I was out yesterday in Shields Valley on the BMA and I had a great time and took my gun for a walk.

- [Jack] And didn't find anything.

(laughs) - Yeah, well, that's kind of the stuff.

I call it catch-and-release bird hunting.

(panel laughing) - We're really good at that.

There goes one.

- Okay, we'll get back to you in a little bit, Cheyanne, but before we do, I do wanna ask you, how beneficial is it for a producer, say a person in Custer, central part of the state has a thousand acres of ground that has antelope and deer on it and he joins the BMA block management program.

What does he earn and how does he earn that money?

- Yeah, so our payments are based on a hunter date impact payment.

So it's based on the amount of people you're allowing access for.

And so there was a bill that actually just passed in 2023, and that actually upped all of our payments.

So now it's a guaranteed $1,000 enrollment payment for every land owner.

Right off the bat, $1000.

And then they get paid up to $17 per hunter day, which is a hunter day is defined as every signature for that season.

So we count all those signatures, we multiply that by the 17, and then of their subtotal, they can an additional 5% of the subtotal if they agree to use it specifically for weed management on their property.

And that gets them their total.

With this last bill, it also increased the max landowner can get from 25,000 to 50,000.

- So there's who funds this?

- It comes from all of our non-resident and resident sportsman's packages as well as quite a few other little various kind of pots of money, but most of it comes from those resident and non-resident sportsman's combos.

- Okay, we have some questions come in.

We'll get back to you.

I wanna go down to Sam, and this person obviously knew that you were gonna be in the program here this evening.

Last fall, we had John Grande on who was president of Stockgrowers Association, and he predicted that cattle numbers would continually decline in Montana.

Is he correct?

Are they still going down?

- Yeah, I haven't like looked at the Montana inventory information yet.

A lot of calves haven't been weaned yet.

Usually, that comes around the first part of October.

My guess is that maybe they haven't necessarily declined but they probably haven't increased either.

Just where the prices are right now and how everything's going on, there's a lot of incentive to sell your calves rather than retaining a bunch.

So if there is some growth, it's probably not a whole lot in terms of the inventory that we lost in the drought a couple years ago.

- Okay, follow up question that just came in.

You mentioned weaning, and this person is curious, at what weight do most ranchers wean their cattle?

- Man, that's another good question.

- I love that you don't have to- - Yeah, yeah, I mean, I wish there was a good answer, straightforward answer to that, but it really just kind of comes down to the ranch and their management and their objectives.

Some of these, and when their calving season is, typically, sometime between October and I would say November is when most folks are weaning, but some folks are having calves in May, some are having 'em in January, February.

So really, that number- - It varies.

- It's all over the board, I would say.

Anywhere from probably close to 500 pounds to, I've heard of folks having 700 pound calves.

- Those are huge.

- Yeah.

But a lot of times, that just depends on how old the calf is at weaning.

- Okay, thank you.

Left over from last week, and we put you on the spot last week.

I don't know if you're watching, but this person wanted to know the nutritional value of purslane.

- Yeah.

- Because you eat it.

- Yeah, no, I do eat it.

And it's actually, it's got a fair amount of Omega-3 fatty acids in it.

Linoleic acid is also in there, and it has some fair amount of magnesium, calcium, and is a good and leafy green vegetable source.

I had a quick look 'cause I watched last week's show, I had a quick look at the USDA nutrition facts for purslane and it is actually listed on there.

This time of year, I almost brought you some, but then you said you didn't like it.

- Thanks.

- But this time of year, it's pretty seedy.

It's flowered so it doesn't taste as good this time of year.

It's that really early, early season, the first flush of it, it's pretty good putting it into tacos.

I sneak it into the taco meat of the kids, just chop it up a little bit, and it's pretty good.

Roland Ebel who's in the sustainable foods, bioenergy systems program, he worked with La Tinga here in Bozeman and they actually did a pork verde with a whole lot of purslane in it.

That was the part of the verde part that made up the chilies and chilies and purslane in it.

- One question, if this is so good, why don't you see it in grocery stores?

- You do, actually.

I've seen it at the Butte Farmer's Market.

There's a couple producers who do actually sell it around, and there is, when you get into the other cuisines of the world, it's really popular in Turkey actually, really popular in the Middle East, and they actually have some weedy varieties that grow more upright rather than laying prostrate down.

High tunnels, David, that's where it does great and great potential harvesting spot in the high tunnels.

- Okay, enough on purslane.

- But you know what?

I have no answer for it in my garden, really, because once you do get the seed bank established in your garden, good luck.

I mean, you might as well eat it.

It's a really tough weed to get out of there.

- So do you eat raw or do you cook it?

- I've just munched it out of the garden.

It has a pretty okay taste to it, but usually, I cook it.

I've fermented it too.

I made it like a dilly bean style recipe, and with purslane instead of dilly beans.

Instead of beans.

- I'll stick with beans.

(panel laughing) Cheyanne, this person says that block management is that it's primarily for big game.

I don't think that's entirely true.

There's block management for a small game, and can you break it down acres-wise?

Any ideal?

- I don't have an idea of like how many acres are dedicated specifically to that upland or small game.

Kind of just depends on what the property has.

When we're evaluating a property, we're involving the game wardens and the biologists and we're thoroughly looking at a property and we're looking at what value it has for the hunters aspect as well on what species are there.

And we are looking at the small game as well.

- You bring up a good point.

So $1000 is a little bit attractive to people, and I have five acres, I have two cuvies that are hunting on it.

Now, could I make an application if I let somebody come in and shoot those?

- So block management, typically, it's over 640 acres is kinda where we consider.

However, there are exceptions to that.

We have one over and out of Livingston that's 358 acres, but it has some amazing success on it.

There's a lot of harvest that comes off that property that is primarily for elk, but it kind of just depends on the need of that property.

And if you're overrun and have all that, we'll look at it, but it will be a flat rate payment.

So we would adjust that.

And it might not be more than 50 bucks for your four acres.

- No, I'm joking, I know that.

I am curious.

You get a lot of applications, I'm sure.

So Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks send somebody out to each applicant to verify what they're offering?

- Yeah, so when I receive an application, we're going out and myself, the biologist and the warden.

Typically, I go out and I meet with the landowner and kinda walk through the property with them and look at what their needs are and what issues they're having.

Is it the hunters?

Is it the game?

Kind of what their situation is.

And then I'll usually, the wardens and bios, if they wanna come with me, they can.

Or sometimes, they know the property enough and they can give me a pretty good rundown over the phone of like yes or no, we need this in our program.

- Is the price negotiable?

I mean, there's a max, I understand that.

But if it's not as prime a property, does Fish, Wildlife and Parks offer a lower rate?

- We can use a flat rate, like what we call a special circumstance payment.

And that's typically, if it's gonna be under the 640 acres, if it gets less than 50, 100 days per year.

So if it's averaging only about 20 or 30, we may do that.

Just to put a little less to that property specifically and use more money for a bigger, more successful property or more used property.

But typically, all of ours actually in this region, actually all of mine in this region, are a standard payment, and they're based upon that 100-day system.

- That explains that.

Thank you.

- So there's other programs for wildlife enhancement.

So are you in the position to be able to, like, "Hey, this would be a great applicant for the upland game bird enhancement program or something like that?"

- Yeah, we see there's obviously lots of different access programs, there's different like habitat programs and different things like that.

So we always tell people, "There's a program for you.

It may not be block management, but it could be our public access land agreements or elk hunter access regional access projects."

We have all sorts of programs, and between access programs, habitat programs, game enhancement, there's usually one for someone.

- Thank you.

Good question.

I'm gonna shift over to you.

And this person from Bozeman had a very bad raspberry crop, and she's blaming it on you.

So what's the reason?

I gotcha.

(laughs) - [David] She's blaming it on me?

- No, I'm joking.

(laughs) - So because it was fruit-formed and it just was- - It says few flowers and no fruit.

- Oh, so probably improper pruning.

- That would be most logical.

- Yeah.

- You might explain how to do that.

- So you only wanna prune the canes that produce fruit in that year, because most raspberry varieties produce fruit on the second year old cane.

So once it has produced fruit, then it's done.

So that one you can prune out, but you don't wanna prune out the ones that have not borne fruit.

This year's canes, 'cause those will be good next year.

- So those stalks still look green this time of year and they look like new growth from this year, and then you have the old brown ones that- - Exactly.

- Are starting to look- - That's kind of how you can tell it.

So you can then cut those out.

- Yeah, the older tan brownish ones.

- Okay.

You're forgiven.

I got a message here that she no longer blames you.

- Thanks.

- Okay.

This is a good one, and I wasn't aware of this.

This is from Lewistown.

This person has a question as to why Clopyralid, which is Curtail was discontinued and would like to know what is a good replacement, especially in regards to Canada thistle in the fall.

Clopyralid, it still can be used in agricultural situations, can it?

- Yes, absolutely.

- But not in lawn situations.

- Yeah, I guess I don't know about the lawn situation.

It's probably the carryover that comes from it and the damage to other desirable vegetation.

Clopyralid's still very much used in ag systems, range systems.

I just met with canola growers this week who are using it in the ag world.

And it's often sold under the name Stinger in the ag as ag chemical.

Yeah, I don't know why exactly it was not used, it's not labeled for lawns anymore, but there's some good products out there for lawns for getting those broadleaf weeds.

And if you're gonna manage dandelions, this is the time of year to manage dandelions.

- I still think we're a week early.

- You think we're a week early?

- I like to get it just before that first freeze, and that is really effective and simple 2,4-D, which is very unexpected, inexpensive, but make sure it's the amine formulation and not the ester formulation.

Sam, this question came in from Ekalaka, and we've had a couple questions through the years.

They would like to know how much forage does a deer or an elk eat compared to a cow?

- Yeah, that's a really interesting question.

And I think in the reality of things, it's a really hard one to estimate, but there are some estimates out there.

And so the general estimate for an elk is they eat about 65% of like what a full grown mother cow would eat.

So we talk about these as an animal equivalence.

And so like one mama cow is equal to one, and then an elk would be like a 0.65.

And then deer come in about like a 0.2.

So when you kind of think about, I was actually talking to a producer the other day, talking about grazing and hay and grazing on hay.

And they said, "Yeah, we used to try to, after we take a hay harvest, like irrigate it up and get it going.

So we had a nice fall pasture to bring cows into."

And he said that his cows never got there 'cause the elk got there first.

And so yeah, it doesn't, you talk about 100 head of elk coming in, and that's like having 65 cows out there.

So yeah, they can eat a substantial amount of forage.

- That's been an issue on a lot of ranches that are practicing a sustainable production where they're rotating their herds off.

And you're right, I know a couple of the Mannix brothers who are in block management.

They've actually had to change their grazing pattern, because the elk came in and wiped out the next pasture, and that's in one night.

So they can be a problem.

What about antelope?

- You know what?

Believe it or not, I was looking at what the subject matter of today's Montana Ag Live was, and I looked this up.

But an antelope is- - You got me.

- Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, after all these times I've been on here, I figured I'd better start digging a little deeper, right?

And antelope, from the numbers I saw recently, are about 0.17.

So a little less than a deer, but still pretty close to about 20% of a cow or 17% of a cow.

- The antelope love chickpeas.

More than anything I have ever seen.

Antelope are just drawn to chickpeas.

It's pretty amazing.

- It is pretty amazing.

- Yep.

- We saw that out here at Churchill.

- Yep.

- In Amsterdam where Perry Miller had some.

First year, he tried to grow chickpeas out there.

He went out there one day, and I think every antelope in that part of the county was in that chickpea field.

And deer like it too.

- Yeah, deer like it too.

Up at the hospital fields here in Bozeman, the deer have been camping out in chickpeas.

- Okay.

From Highwood.

This person has broomweed on the property and is currently spraying with 2,4-D, but it is spraying faster than it can control.

Some other options?

And what is broomweed?

- I'm not exactly sure what broomweed.

I think they mean equisetum horseweed or horsetail maybe.

- Horsetail.

- It kinda goes up, it looks a scouring rush.

People used to use it to clean pots with kind of a stick that comes up.

That's what I would assume that they're talking about, but I'm not totally sure.

I can't think of another broomweed that might be out there.

That's what I would think of.

- Send a sample down to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab.

But if you send it down this week and we don't figure out what it is, we'll bring on the program next weekend and show the people out there.

Speaking of which, we had a caller from Columbia, or an email that sent in some pictures of tomatoes that really has some unique, rather ununiformed spots on him.

And we were debating what causes that.

So here's the picture of the tomato.

And our tomato expert here is going to tell us what's going on.

- Well, this is really interesting.

So if you get closer to it, you'll see that it looks like a little slit in the tomato, and then the tan part is where the wound kind of healed, dried up.

My initial thought is it did not look pathogenic, but I showed it to the extension heart specialist and also the diagnostician and the Schutter Lab, and they both came up with some variation on bacterial.

One was a bacterial canker, one thought it was bacterial speck.

It just didn't look pathologic.

There wasn't that kind of damage to the tissue.

So anyway, we'd like to see them.

So if that person's watching, if they could send them in, that'd be great.

And I think this is one of the challenges when we, the importance of having like a local or at least a statewide diagnostic lab because different diseases are gonna look different based on environment.

And so a bacterial disease of a tomato in Florida could look very different than one in Montana given our humidity levels and things like that.

Anyway, yeah, please send it in.

I'm leaning towards insect damage, potentially thrifts or something that just, you know, when that fruit was young, damaged the outside of the skin, and then as it expanded, as the fruit was filling out, that little gap opened up and then dried out, so.

- I agree entirely.

I think it's insect damage.

- That's what it looks like, yeah.

A little slit from a little plate.

- Yeah, okay.

Cheyanne, caller from Terry, I think I know who this is, has indicated that a group of ranchers, five or six relatively large ranchers have banded together to negotiate a block management program with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Is this commonplace where you get several ranchers or several producers together, and is there a benefit for them doing it that way?

- Yeah, so it's pretty common.

We have quite a few in this region actually.

So you might see that in this region, we have 95 BMAs, but we actually have 123 landowners.

So a lot of that comes from those aggregate situations where there's multiple landowners for one block management area, and there's a pretty good benefit for the landowners in that if they work together.

We provide a 20% additional to the 100 days.

So whenever we calculate for that BMA for the year, each landowner's guaranteed 20% of that in addition to their portion.

So if you own 50%, you own 50%.

And you get 100 days, you're each gonna get 50% of that, plus that additional 20% off that 100 days, and an additional $1,000 for being in an aggregate.

And we do that because it's to help us.

We incentivize that because our technician isn't servicing four boxes.

They're servicing two, so that's less maps that we're producing, less coupons, less boxes, less time.

So it's a little more time, less time for us that we're spending, and it helps the public as well with just one BMA1 rules.

- Does that help keep pressure more even?

A lot of times, I waved at some elk on private land yesterday as I walked out, and you see a lot of this animals moving.

They know where the private land is that's maybe not receiving the same amount of hunting pressure.

When you put these multiple landowners together, does that help regulate the pressure a little bit so that it's more even and maybe they don't go camp just on the alfalfa pivot that doesn't have a lot of hunting pressure on it?

- Yeah, it'll help move them around a decent amount if they're moving from ranch to ranch within the same BMA.

So it does kind of relieve some of that pressure.

- Okay, thank you.

We had a question last week about whether the Montana Ag Experiment Station is doing work with cercospora, and I assume that's on sugar beets.

And I don't think anyone other than maybe you that might be doing a little bit.

I actually worked on cercospora for my master's many years ago, but today's genetics, we just don't quite have the problem with cercospora per leaf blight.

The other part of that question was, has Palmer amaranth spread in the state and have we found it in the state?

So Tim, that's a nasty weed.

- Yeah, so it's a nasty pigweed, and we've been looking for it for, we started our Palmer amaranth task force in 2020, and we've been looking for it every year.

And we just found the first positive plant for the year in Montana this year.

It was one roadside plant somewhere in Carter-Custer County out there in that general area.

It didn't make seed though.

We've done really good with early detection and rapid response, and the person who found it is the local county agent, and she was driving down the road with the weed district manager, and they both spotted a funny pigweed out of the window, and they went and they found it and they did an awesome job.

And so we just found it in the state.

But the good news is it hasn't made seed, and they'll be out there bird dogging it around, since we're talking about block management Monday, and looking for any other potential plants.

It's gonna keep coming our direction.

Contaminated equipment, millet seed, sunflower screenings people buy to use for cattle feed or- - Bird seed.

- Bird seed is another one.

It's gonna keep coming at us, and we're just gonna have to be vigilant.

In North Dakota, they've had more populations of it, and they've still done a really good job of containment in North Dakota as well.

And they've screened some of their plants that they've found in the field, and resistance to seven different modes of actions so far they have going.

Palmer amaranth is resistant to every mode of action of herbicide that we have commercially available out there now.

So that's why we spend so much time putting this effort into early detection, rapid response, 'cause we don't know how it would be, really.

Other than steel the field, there's not a lot of good management tools.

They rogue it by hand in the southeast.

- Roundup doesn't touch it?

- No.

97% of the populations in Iowa are resistant to the 1x and 2x rates of Roundup.

- Speaking of that, and I just experienced this the past weekend.

I was at a local farm supply store, and people are walking out of there.

Not one but three different customers had jugs of 30% vinegar.

- Yep.

- And so I asked them, they've heard it works on weeds.

Does it?

- If you are applying it to very small weeds that just germinated in cropland settings or certain settings, you can get.

It functions as a burn down, as a contact herbicide essentially.

Can you burn the top off of a dandelion?

Yeah, you could burn the top off a dandelion too.

I know people who mix salt in it too, which that's not a good thing for the long term for your soil health, but you can burn the top off of it.

But that root of the dandelion will be back in the next year and the next year and the next year after that.

- It's pretty common in organic gardening scenarios to use vinegar as opposed to like flaming, which is probably akin to that, or the citric acid wine.

- Citric acid.

There's a clove oil.

There's another organic product out there that's clove oil, some vinegar.

It's basically a burn down sort of cocktail.

- Speaking of weeds, block management, are there rules restricting introduction of weeds into block management areas and how is that enforced?

- It's kind of based on the landowner and their preferences.

I know there's several in this region that, right in the rules, it asks them to ask hunters to wash their vehicles prior to entering the property.

I mean, that's what most of them do is they just ask for people to wash their vehicles to keep from the spread of getting that in.

- All right, sound good.

- Remember, if you're on block management and you got a bunch of hound's tongue on you, don't just pick it and flick it.

Put it in your pocket, throw it away later.

There's a lot of hound's tongue out there, but still, everything we can do for that seed going back.

- And that includes making sure your dogs are free of hound's tongue, which takes a lot of work.

- Yeah, exactly.

- I can verify that.

- Your lab, golden retriever.

- Golden retriever, yeah.

- The golden retrievers really.

- They like it.

- Yep.

- Although last week, we had a person on here talking about bio control.

It's not registered in the U.S. but it's creeped across the Canadian border, and it's very, very effective.

Now, it's not been introduced.

It's natural introduction.

And I have noticed a couple areas that has really knocked back the hound's tongue.

So that's a good thing.

I wanna go to Sam here, because this person from Lewistown would really like to know what the actual effect of wildlife is on livestock production.

I know that's, yeah, it can be vary a lot, but does it have an effect?

- Yeah, I think so.

But to some extent, you gotta think about the wildlife work here when the ranching system starts.

So it's not something that's like new, but just things to think about that people have to manage around.

And I'm sure most of the viewers and people in this panel have heard of fence damage due to elk herds.

Seems especially during hunting season when animals really get moved around or shot at, they just take off and may or may not try to go over the fence, they go through it.

So there's things like that, fence damage.

We already mentioned the diet consumption stuff.

So the elk coming down in the hay fields, hay meadows.

I know of lots of folks in the Paradise Valley, as the elk start moving out of the park, they'll come into their haystacks, and so some of those guys have started either putting hay in pole barns or fencing around haystacks.

So I mean, the biggest ones I've seen, I would just say, is just competition for feed resources.

We tend to grow things that are very nutritious for cattle.

We wanna put pounds of beef on cattle and just because they are nutritious for cattle.

They are also very nutritious and a magnet for elk and deer as well.

I would say deer can have some impact.

A lot of times, deer select for more plant parts or a little higher quality piece of that diet versus the general grazing like a cow will do.

But elk are more intermediate and will consume more similar things than what a cow would.

- There's a crop out there that elk and deer and cattle love.

It's called sainfoin.

And if you try to produce sainfoin, now if you wanted to run a good block management program and have a lot of hunters, you plant some sainfoin because you're gonna draw, like chickpeas, the elk and deer into that area.

So it varies a lot with what you're producing and the effects, no doubt about that.

Follow up caller Lewistown regarding the Clopyralid question.

He's looking for management on hay land and range land and was told by the local weed manager that Clopyralid Curtail is discontinued and no longer available to purchase.

Is that correct?

I don't think that is.

- No, I don't think so either.

It may not be under that name Curtail any longer.

And that's just the product name, you might check.

If not, there are a number of other products out there that can be used in hay pasture management.

Yeah.

And one thing to bring back is often milestone, which is aminopyralid.

There was a lot of problems associated with that.

Cows, if you look on the label, there's this big diagram.

It shows the cow eating the forage that was sprayed with this herbicide going through the cow, coming out into the manure, and then the manure ending up on people's gardens.

And that's actually been a big contamination issue that's shown up more than once into the Schutter Diagnostic Lab.

People's tomatoes, potatoes, especially the nightshades.

- I have also seen that where people have used Tordon.

- Yep.

- And they'll graze some of the plants that were tolerant of Tordon.

And pea and somebody's alfalfa field, and you got big dead spots.

A lot of these herbicides do pass through animals.

Question from Billings.

Cheyanne, this person would like to know, do you have to have a reservation to hunt on block management?

What are the rules and how do they find out more about it?

- Yeah, so it kind of depends.

So we have two different types of block management areas.

We have type one and type two.

A type one is referred to as a area in which your signature is your permission.

So the hunter administers their own permission.

They walk up to a sign in box and sign in the coupon, deposit the coupon in the box and they're free to go.

All maps and rules are gonna be in those boxes when they're on site.

And then a type two is where either FWP or the landowner is gonna administer that permission.

Those are typically limited, whether it's so many permission slips for a season, so many per day, so many per week.

However they kind of wanna do that.

It's all ultimately up to the landowner on how they wanna restrict that.

And a person can go online on our website, under the Hunt tab and Hunter Access, if they go to block management, they can go, it's sorted by region, and so they can go whichever region they wanna hunt, and it'll give them a PDF with a link to every single block management map and rules for the area.

- [Jack] I have a question.

- Yeah.

- This is from me.

I know our hunting licenses, out-of-state hunting licenses are used to fund block management.

Out of curiosity, are there a lot of people from out of state that purchase out-of-state licenses?

Do they utilize block management in this state, or is it just mainly for people like Dave or myself that live here?

- So part of the requirements for block management, it's free and public access for all.

So they cannot discriminate between residents and non-residents.

However, in 2023 in Region 3, so that's all your 300 series districts, I can say that 87% of the 69,000 people that signed into block management in Region 3 were residents.

So in Region 3, we only had about a 12% rate of non-residents.

- Hmm, that's interesting.

But they're funding a large portion of it- - They are, yep.

- Okay.

- Yep.

- I have a question here from Kalispell, and this caller has musk thistle in his grass pasture.

They'd like to know how to control it.

- Yep, I think, so right now, you'll see the big stalks sticking up with the flowering heads on it.

Those are going to die, the seed is going to disperse, and it's a biennial plant.

It'll basically die back.

If you go out and you look at your pasture what'll grow next year, you'll see these big, round, what we call a basal rosette and they're hugging the ground really smooth right now and they're flat and you'll see those.

My suggestion would probably be, if it's a relatively small infestation or the plants aren't super close together, I would just go out and spot spray those individual plants out and keep what you have in there.

Broadleaf herbicides, the group four herbicides, synthetic auxins, clopyralid being one of them, there's a number of products out there.

If you visit your ag retailer in that sense, Dicambas, 2,4-Ds, that'll all work really well on musk thistle, and you'll keep your grass in there and you'll be able to manage your musk thistle in that sense.

But those stalks that are sticking up now, it's too much too late for those to be managed.

Those seeds are viable.

- Not only musk thistle.

Let's go to Canada thistle.

You notice I've been trained not to call Canadian thistle anymore, but thank you for the weed scientist.

But anyway, what's the best time to control Canada thistle?

- It's like you said about the dandelions, in about a week or two, maybe it's supposed to rain this week and then it might freeze, might not freeze, but the fall is actually the best time to manage it.

And really, there's an important step that should happen in July and that's you should go and maybe mow those off to prevent the seed one from blowing around and drifting all over the place and making a lot of new Canada thistle plants.

But also, you can get those, you can stimulate those plants to grow a new chute at the bottom.

And that new chute is really green right now, and it's getting prepared for winter.

So it wants to take its sugars and starches down into its root system.

And if you apply a herbicide to it this time of year, like glyphosate, glyphosate 2,4-D, you can really impact the below ground root system, which is what you need to manage for Canada thistle.

If you spray it in June, July, all those sugars are coming out of the ground to make flowers and they grow up.

So you really have almost no impact on the underground root rhizomes.

So this time of year, before the first frost, I guess I'm a believer in poor man's precision, you just walk around with the backpack sprayer next to the ATV and just spot spray those rosettes.

- It does a good job.

- It does, it really does do well.

- As you mentioned fall, and one thing that happens in the fall, flies have a tendency to gather in the house and so forth.

And I have a picture of a fly control system that my wife and I found down in Mexico just a few weeks ago and I don't know if we can get a picture of the rosemary and sterno, and yeah, there it is.

We sat down for dinner at a restaurant in Cabo, we had a meeting down there, and they brought this sterno pot around filled with rosemary, and a couple slices of lime.

And I thought it was something that was elegant and so forth and so on.

Uh-uh, it's a fly preventative, and seriously, there were flies all over the place until they showed up with this and they're gone.

So I know a lot of people have more rosemary in their garden than they know what to do with, so if you're eating outside and you have a fly problem, get a sterno pot, throw some rosemary in it.

I hate to waste limes if they're not in a vodka tonic, but they do work well in here.

- [David] And you light this thing?

- You light it and it burns.

The orange is a fire there.

So it does work, I can verify that.

You learn something on vacation once in a while.

- Ah, a mature person like you.

- Yeah.

(laughs) You can say old, it's acceptable.

From Livingston, this caller lives in a ranch near Livingston, and the ranch manager is not controlling the weeds.

And in today's world, most ranch managers do a pretty good job of weed control.

I'll verify that.

Are there state grants that would help pay for spraying these weeds?

I don't think there are.

- There are cooperative agreements.

- [Jack] Well, if it's noxious weeds.

- It's the Noxious Weed Trust Fund.

I would contact, in Livingston and Park County, there's a really good, I was just in Clyde Park this week and I met with them.

There's a really good weed district manager that you can find there.

You can talk to Jackie Pondolfino.

She's the Ag extension agent in Park County, and she can connect you with Theresa, who's the weed district manager, and she can get you all lined out on everything.

There is some incentive to clean and manage, clean up and manage weeds.

I don't know exactly what they are, but you should talk to Theresa.

She's really good in the county and is convincing.

She might be able to convince 'em to manage those weeds.

- Sounds good, I appreciate it.

I know who this is.

A question from Colstrip.

Cheyanne, are there block management for waterfowl?

I happen to be a waterfowl hunter.

So I'm curious, are there various block management agreements that favor, or that people can hunt waterfowl on?

- Yeah, yeah, we have several in this region.

One of them that's really popular, all the data that actually is used on it is all from waterfowl hunters for the most part is the Christensen Ranch down out of Wise River area.

That one's used heavily for waterfowl hunters.

So at a minimum, to qualify for that $17 a hunter day, a landowner must hunting for both species and both genders of deer, elk, antelope, upland, and waterfowl.

So those are the key species that we are looking for on properties that we're kind of looking for.

But that upland and waterfowl, we do have definitely some in this region.

I know there's some kind of all spread out throughout the state, like I said.

Then the whole purpose of a BMA may not be specifically to one set of species of waterfowl or upland, but there is opportunity.

The best way to look at that is on our maps and rules.

Each one will say the primary opportunity on that BMA, and that's gonna give you a pretty good indicator of what the main species on that piece are.

- Well, it's kind of a little bit of a sour tomato, but when block management first started, and this would've been in the '90s, there were some BMAs in the Yellowstone Valley and they were primarily for goose hunting.

And goose hunting is really very, very good in the Yellowstone Valley, the lower Yellowstone Valley.

But I do know at that time, there were people that were misusing it by signing in people that never showed up.

Is there a lot of misuse with the block management program and how do you manage that?

- Unfortunately, it's becoming more and more common.

I don't know if you guys follow our socials.

This week there was a picture of a fox over, I believe in region six or seven that was shot up by a hunter.

I recently had one this week as well up out of the Helena area that was shot up with a shotgun.

Just completely obliterated.

We have people that are leaving their trash everywhere.

It's really sad to see.

Unfortunately, that's kind of playing into the part where landowners will revoke that access.

It takes one bad apple, unfortunately.

So we're trying to get the message out.

Currently, we have "It's Up To Us" campaign, so pack it in, pack it out.

Make sure you're thanking those landowners for the access.

We have our Thank a Landowner portal that went live last year.

It'll go live again about mid-October.

That's a great way to go in and say thank you to those landowners.

We disperse that in letters to them, and just making sure that you're reporting violations if you're seeing them.

I will say the biggest source of finding these people is actually from other hunters that are self-managing and helping report on those.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, that's sad when that does happen, because that is such a beneficial program.

I know a lot of producers who were initially hesitant to join the block management, but once they're in and have not had any bad experiences, they appreciate the dollars that the sportsmans provide and the sportsman definitely appreciates the opportunity to go hunting there, even though he never finds anything.

But that's okay.

Tim, a caller from Missoula would like to know more about henbane.

Specifically henbane, yep.

They claim it's toxic.

- Yep, it is toxic.

Hyoscyamus niger, it's a really cool, it's actually an old world nightshade family plant, and it's also one of these biennials, and you'll see the rosette on the ground this time of year.

That would be the time to manage it.

And then next year, it'll make a flowering stalk that'll come up and it has very goblet shaped fruits, or it has really beautiful, it looks like a goblet you might drink out of them.

It's very oval on the base and then spreads out on the top.

It is a toxic plant.

It's closely related to atropa belladonna, which women used to, in the Middle Ages, it was the original Botox.

And so yeah, it's toxic.

You might be able to cut off the flowering stems this year and prevent all the seeds from coming out of those goblet-looking fruits and cut that stuff off.

But then you're gonna probably need to go back and spot spray the basal rosette, which will be next year's crop this time of year, even maybe in the spring next year when it starts growing too.

- [Jack] Where do you find it?

- I find it mostly in waste areas, very gravelly soils, roadsides, gravel pits.

It's very common.

I think it's a common gravel pit contaminant, sand and gravel.

You see it in the Valley County in the bitterroot, sort of on the edge of the irrigation ditch.

Maybe when they go out and they clean the irrigation ditch back out and they just pile that soil right there, you'll see some of the henbane come out in those abandoned pastures, abandoned fields, mistreated areas is the most common.

- Okay.

Livestock poisoning.

Do we have much of it in the state from weeds?

- Oh, that question's a tough one to answer on the general.

I would say that the answer is yes, but it kind of depends on the year.

And I'm sure Tim sees this some years are just really support, like plants that aren't super great for livestock.

- A lot of nitrate.

I see it mostly associated, well, around, and we had the droughts for the last few years and you see around stock ponds, they'll be really green, and they'll have a lot of these goose foot family, these chenopods or these polygonum species in there, And they're weedy plants.

They may be native to Montana, they may not be, but then they'll have 10 to 15,000 parts per million of nitrate in them in some senses.

So that's where I see a lot of the issues show.

- And then during those drought years that we had a couple years back, we did see really high elevated nitrates even in species that we wouldn't expect to see high nitrates in.

But yeah, no, I would say, probably in any given year, yeah, there's some cattle that get into something that's toxic and have an issue.

I wouldn't say that it's like really widespread.

It usually is more like localized in areas where there just happens to be like a great crop, a larkspur, or something that comes up in a allotment or something like that.

But I wouldn't say like large, widespread, huge losses.

It's usually just, and with a lot of these toxic plants, like an animal eating maybe one plant, when you're talking about how much forage an animal consumes in a day, like capturing one plant is probably not gonna be enough to really cause a problem.

It's when you're in a situation where that toxic plant is abundant and happens to be selected for for one reason or another and they eat a whole bunch of it, and that's when it becomes a problem.

- On that note, we've had several questions.

We haven't gotten to 'em either last part this year.

hoary alyssum has become a very widespread weed here in the Golden Valley, and I suspect other areas of the state.

And I've seen people that have small pastures, that pasture the grass down to where the cattle are hungry.

They normally won't eat hoary alyssum, but if they get hungry enough, they will.

Is that an issue that you're aware of with hoary alyssum?

- I'm not familiar with hoary alyssum specifically, but I can tell you just from a general cattle grazing ecology is the more abundant biomass available in the pasture, the more selective those animals can be.

And when they can be selective, they're gonna be eating the things they like.

As that forged biomass goes down to the point like what you're talking about, those cows are gonna eat.

And so then diets will start shifting to whatever's abundant on the landscape.

So if that plant specifically has toxic properties then by over utilization of that pasture, you're limiting that animal's ability to select it for against those species.

You do have a potential for having those animals consume that in amount that could be potentially harmful.

- It may not kill an animal, but does some of these plants reduce the capability of the animal to gain weight or reproduce or?

- Yeah, there's things out there that if an animal eats a whole bunch of, that it doesn't necessarily impact the animal itself, but it impacts the fetus.

And so you can have animals that give birth to calves with birth defects or stillborn calves or even potential abort calves based on, so that's something that you can see with nitrates as well.

If you get into high nitrates, you can actually, it actually reduces circulation in the animal or oxygen in the blood in the animal, which then can have a negative impact on that animal.

- I wonder if the same, I've been told that wildlife are more selective and they don't eat things that aren't good for 'em.

I don't know if that's true or not, but- - Yeah, I mean I would- - I tell you, I see a lot of yellow toadflax and dalmatian toadflax that's supposedly toxic.

And the deer will eat all the flower heads off.

They'll eat all the flowers.

I think the plant is only toxic in certain times of the year or in certain parts of the plant too, and it is a big thing.

- We're running low on time.

Quickly, from Roscoe, quick question.

Other than block management, are there other programs available from Fish, Wildlife and Parks?

- Yeah, our access program actually is made up of 14 different access programs.

We have five in this region that I can speak greatly to.

We have what we call our PALA, public access land agreements, so that's gonna be through private to public that are like leased by that landowner.

We have private lands fishing access agreements, so basically, block management but for fishing.

- Okay.

- We also have regional access projects, which our biggest one actually in the region is our Matador coordinated hunt.

It's a massive elk hunt that we do on the matador.

We killed about 600 elk off that property in this program in the last two years.

And then we also have EHA, which is our Elk Hunter Access agreement.

- Okay, so that sounds good.

We need to run along.

I was gonna ask you about black medic, but it's too hard to control and you wouldn't wanna answer it.

So next week, we'll get into that.

Miller Moss next week.

I thank the panel.

Thank you, Cheyanne, for coming in.

It's very nice to meet you, and it's a lot of information there.

Next week, 4-H Foundation, you'll learn a lot.

Jane Wolery's gonna be here, so please join us.

Meantime, have a good week.

We'll see you next week.

Good night and stay safe.

- [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

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