The word entitlement gets thrown around here quite a bit, But there are different meanings of entitlement. The basic definition is simply, the legal right to something. As Americans we are legally entitled access to public land, hence the term public land - open to the public.
Any landowner who thinks they should be able to prevent access to public land , so that they can access it themselves while making every effort to keep other people out, is displaying the other type of entitlement- ( undue, special treatment). I’m not suggesting they should allow everyone and their brother in law to cross their land. I posted links to the Access Yes program we have here in Idaho where the F&G uses sportsman dollars to compensate landowners for access to hunting and fishing opportunities. This is the way.
Ironically, many of these landowners rely heavily on our tax dollars - payments from the government through direct and indirect subsidies. Even if they don’t need the payments, they often take them anyways because hey, free money ! These subsidy payments are known as entitlements -
“Yes, many U.S. farm subsidy programs function as
entitlements because they provide guaranteed, mandatory funding based on established formulas, like direct payments tied to historical crop production, ensuring payments flow automatically each year under the
Farm Bill. While other programs rely on annual discretionary funding, these specific "entitlement" subsidies are legally obligated,
similar to programs like SNAP (food stamps), but unlike traditional social benefits, they often favor larger, profitable farms growing specific commodities like corn, soybeans, and cotton.”
Imagine if everyone that opened a business demanded that the taxpayers fund their losses and poor business decisions, and subsidized every aspect of their businesses from land development to insurance to disaster relief. Crazy right ? In the case of agriculture, the government does this to stabilize our boom and bust food system to prevent it from collapsing every few years.
Farmers and ranchers calling hunters “entitled “ simply because they want to hunt public land and would like to see more public land unlocked, is the epitome of the pot calling the kettle black. There are ranchers in my family and many close friends are in agriculture as well. I have had interactions with dozens, if not hundreds of ranchers over the years and some are great people. Others are entitled a-holes. On the other hand, some “hunters “ are a-holes as well and trespass, vandalize and poach on private land. Those people do not represent sportsmen as a whole. They are the bad apples and shouldn’t be lumped together with the respectful sportsmen who’s only goal is to hunt the land they are entitled to.
And before the angry rebuttals start , I fully support the hardworking family ranchers and farmers that feed the nation and I’m actually okay with subsidizing their operations . However , I do not support the real estate tycoons and land developers that leverage this system only for their own benefit without any intention of being a real producer, while also benefiting from the same entitlements as real producers.
