The ban has support from the North Dakota Stockmen’s Association, but its foes predict more opposition as people learn more about it.

“I don’t think it’s a legislator’s business to determine what somebody should be or shouldn’t be able to do with their land,” said Rep. Duane DeKrey, R-Pettibone, N.D.

Last year, the Legislature overwhelmingly voted to bar landowners from permanently selling the right to hunt on their property without selling the land itself along with it.

Expiration date

The restrictions expire June 30. The Legislature’s interim Natural Resources Committee, which has been studying the issue during the past year, has recommended making them permanent.

North Dakota law allows landowners to sell other property rights separately, including the right to mine coal, graze livestock, pump water and explore for oil.

In western North Dakota, separate sales of mineral rights have created circumstances where landowners have to tolerate disruption caused by oil drilling, while someone else collects royalties from oil production.

The legislation does not prevent landowners from leasing temporary hunting rights to others, and a North Dakota Game and Fish Department program that pays landowners to allow hunters access to their property is exempt from its provisions.

A permanent sale of the right to hunt a parcel of land “affects every future landowner of that particular piece of property from then on. It really strips your ownership rights,” said Rep. Chuck Damschen, R-Hampden, who supports the ban.

“If I’m a farmer, and I’ve got a crop out there, and all of a sudden somebody comes and says, ‘I’ve got hunting access rights, I’m going to be out in your grain field.’ The problem there is obvious,” Damschen said.

Rep. Rod Froelich, D-Selfridge, has asked Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem for a legal opinion on whether the ban violates the North Dakota Constitution’s prohibition against taking private property for public use without paying its owner.

Lawmakers made a similar request of Stenehjem during the 2007 Legislature, but no opinion was drafted because the bill’s final version included a legislative interim study of the issue.

“I understand the opponents of the legislation. They’re tired of out-of-state hunters buying up property, turn around and selling it back, and keeping the hunting rights,” Froelich said. “But that’s what you call capitalism.”

Douglas Shinkle, a policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, said no other state had a law similar to North Dakota’s when he researched the issue last year. He found no indication that other states were concerned about the issue, he said.

Rep. Todd Porter, R-Mandan, who is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, believes that groups who oppose hunting could buy up hunting rights to make it more difficult for sportsmen to find places to hunt.

Once sold, hunting rights to land also could be sold in pieces, a practice that is common with mineral rights. That would make it more difficult to determine the land access that a rights holder may be entitled to, supporters of a ban say.

A survey of North Dakota county recorders by the Legislative Council, the Legislature’s research arm, found few examples of separate sales of hunting rights.

But agricultural lenders say requests to reserve hunting rights in land sales are becoming more common. Steve Tomac, a real estate appraiser at Farm Credit Services in Mandan, said the issue is making it more difficult for appraisers to value farm land.

DeKrey said he believes it is a mistake for landowners to permanently sell the right to hunt their land, but he said lawmakers should not continue to ban the practice.

“I personally think it’s a bad deal to sever. I think leasing and options like that are a whole lot smarter on the landowner’s behalf,” DeKrey said. “But even if I think it’s smarter, I don’t think it’s our business to tell them what to do.”