A Sign of Good Things. This year the NDG&F Private Lands Group added 5,000 acres of access to the state’s PLOTS program, keeping the total at around 800,000 acres through renewal of expiring contracts and newly-negotiated ones with landowners. Hunters can expect to see better habitat as a result o the group’s focus on that aspect, and a hospitable summer growing season for grasses across much of the state. Simonson Photo.
By Nick Simonson
North Dakota’s Private Land Open to Sportsmen (PLOTS) program added approximately 5,000 acres of access opportunity to hunters for this fall, but what drives the system which has been in place for nearly 25 years now is a focus on better habitat. In the era of lowered conservation reserve acres, a heightened focus of the PLOTS program is on quality, an aspect sportsmen are likely to notice in the upcoming hunting season, according to Kevin Kading, Private Lands Section Leader for the North Dakota Game & Fish Department (NDG&F).
“I would say we had a positive gain this year overall, not a huge amount of acres gained, but overall a good increase in where we did get those acres and nice habitat to go along with it. Conditions this year are looking really good in terms of moisture and hopefully it winds up a good fall hunting season,” Kading prefaces.
While many weekend warriors have simply come to equate the PLOTS system with the telltale upended yellow triangle signs scattered across the landscape and the annual guide adjacent to the till at their favorite sporting goods store, the work that goes into enrolling these private acres for public access is a year-round process. Starting as the hunting seasons wrap up at the back of the calendar year, Kading and members of his team are connecting with interested landowners looking to enroll their acres in PLOTS and reconnecting with those whose acres are about to expire and a contract renewal is in order. Via consistent marketing through partner agriculture agencies at the state and federal level, and a strong advertising campaign across traditional, social and department-based media, the Private Lands group gets to work reviewing new opportunities and previous contracts while answering the questions operators have on how they can build habitat on their land and what their goals for a PLOTS enrollment are, including access, the type of wildlife they hope to attract and the varied programs for grass, trees, food plots and other assistance they may need to accomplish those goals.
“After things are ready to go for the hunting season, our staff get out and they do assessments. We take a look at a lot of the PLOTS agreements; not every single one of them, but we get to around 1,500 to 1,800 of them across the whole state that we review, and we give them a score. We give them a grade to see if it’s something we want to continue and it’s meeting our expectations, and we have to do that to know where things are at before we go into the next phase, which is to renegotiate and renew those agreements,” Kading details.
The fruits of their labor come to be at this time of year, as late summer turns to fall and hunting seasons open up across the Peace Garden State. With more than 130,000 acres set to expire in 2023, through renewal of those contracts and creation of new ones with landowners, the agency increased the acres over 2022 which hunters will have access to this autumn. Kading advises that some of the newly added tracts may be in their very first year of habitat establishment, having just been reseeded into grass or had other conservation improvements installed, and hunters may have to wait a bit to see these new hunting areas reach their full potential.
“While that first year or two might not be the best quality habitat or it might be just getting started, we recognize that it’s going to be there for 10, maybe 15 or 20 years in some cases. We’ve got agreements that do run that long,” Kading explains, adding, “that has been our focus, as we’ve lost more habitat on the landscape we’ve been trying to take up some of that slack where we can and try to do more habitat development on PLOTS.”
Kading reminds those venturing out onto these lands that the acres are for walk-in hunting only and not for any other activity, meaning camping, target shooting, trapping and even looking for shed antlers are not allowed on them without written permission from the landowner.
Additionally, hunters cannot drive onto PLOTS lands and should treat the spaces well, picking up after themselves and others down to the last shotgun shell, and refraining from cleaning their day’s birds on the property or dumping carcasses on these private acres to avoid issues and preserve the opportunity for the future.
PLOTS guides are available in physical format at most licensing vendors throughout the state, and online at gf.nd.gov/plots/guide.