We have been through the landowner thing time and time again here in Nevada. My family has a 3000 acre cattle ranch. No elk, but tons of deer in our alfalfa fields. The state comes out and counts them and for every 50 animals they count on our property, we get a landowner tag that we are allowed to sell. The purchasing hunter can hunt in the entire unit and can designate before hand whether the tag is archery, muzzloader, or rifle. They then have to hunt the season for the weapon they designate.
At one time, the season could be set for any weapon at anytime during the fall as long as the hunter hunted on the private property. People made a big deal here becuase on some ranches, guys were setting up rifle hunts in September (on privat land)and shooting huge bucks during bow season. At that time, those tags were going for around 5 or 6 grand a pop. A stop was put to that due to jealous hunters compalining and now the hunters have to hunt the designated seasons regardless of on private or hunting in the rest of the unit.
The problem with restricting the landowner tags to only hunting on the private land is that it decreases their value. SO WHAT you say, but these are landowner COMPENSATION tags. Having 500 deer eating in your third crop of alfafa does a lot of damage. We have no problem supporting the deer here, and as our ranch sits right against the mountain, we are providing a lot of support for the heard. We just want a fair compensation for that. Even now, when you crunch the numbers, we are losing money in the deal but we are are happy as is, cause we are all hunters and enjoy having the deer around. And no, I don't even hunt the deer in the ranch. We have had 180 class deer in our fields before and I will get on a horse and go up to 8000 feet and hunt my ass off because I don't want to go lean across a fence post and shoot a buck, I want to hunt for it in the hills.
The alternative to not getting compensation is to have what happened on a ranch not far from here a few years ago. The rancher felt like he wasn't getting compensated and told NDOW he wanted all the deer off his property so NDOW had no choice but to open up an emergency deperdation hunt and people went out and slaughtered all the deer on the private land. It was a public relations nightmare and gave hunting and wildlife management a black eye. You need to be careful what you wish for in a lot of these circumstances as the alternative may be way worse. Remeber, landowners have a lot of rights when it comes to wildlife on their property so be careful what you wish for!