23-05-2025
North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong brings a hunter's mindset to the governor's office
May 23—When it comes to hunting, North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong leaves no doubt about his passion for the pursuit.
"My wife would use the word 'addiction,' " Armstrong said. "And my favorite thing to hunt is ... 'What season is next?' "
A first-term governor who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2019 until last year, Armstrong stopped by the Grand Forks Herald office Thursday, May 15. While the purpose of the visit
was to talk about the recently wrapped-up session of the Legislature,
the governor also discussed hunting, fishing and some of the challenges and opportunities the outdoors faces in North Dakota.
"I always say we're not the best at anything, but we're the best at everything," Armstrong said, referring to North Dakota's abundance of outdoors opportunities. "There's still not a lot of places that you can go shoot a limit of pheasant, grouse, partridge, mallards, geese, whitetail, mule deer — all of the above. You can do it 100 miles from the governor's residence."
One of the most publicized outdoors-related bills during the legislative session was SB 2137, which prohibits the Game and Fish Department from restricting the practice of baiting for big game hunting on private land in hunting units with confirmed cases of chronic wasting disease.
Game and Fish historically has banned baiting for deer on private land in hunting units within 25 miles of a confirmed positive CWD case. The highly contagious brain disease is fatal to deer, elk and moose, and minimizing the chances of bringing animals into close contact has been a standard practice wildlife managers use to mitigate the risk.
The "baiting bill," as it was commonly called,
passed the House by a 56-34 vote, and Armstrong signed it
Thursday, April 17. Baiting remains illegal for hunting on public land.
"I think one of the things North Dakota always has to be conscious of is we don't have a lot of public land," Armstrong said. "I always viewed (baiting) as a private property right."
Considering only about 9% of North Dakota land is public land, support from private landowners is crucial to the future of hunting and access in the state, he said.
That's why he signed the bill. All the "habitat in the world" doesn't mean much without access to private land, Armstrong said. The legislation sunsets in 2029.
"We don't have outdoor heritage if we don't have buy-in from landowners because we don't have a lot of federal land, we don't have a lot of state land," Armstrong said. "We'll monitor and watch it. If we start seeing a spike (in CWD), we'll have to sit down and look at it.
Game and Fish tested 1,456 animals for CWD
during the 2024 sampling season, and 17 tested positive — 15 taken by hunters and two "clinical deer" that were confirmed through diagnostic examination. That brings the total of positive cases to 122 since 2009, when CWD was first detected in North Dakota.
In December, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department hosted a Habitat and Hunting Access Summit in Bismarck. Armstrong, just days into his first term as governor, spoke at the summit.
Gone are the days when North Dakota had more than 3 million acres of land enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Program. As CRP contracts expire, wildlife habitat is less abundant, and wildlife populations — especially white-tailed deer — are struggling and less resilient to severe winters and diseases such as the EHD (epizootic hemorrhagic disease) outbreak that
decimated deer numbers in some areas in 2021.
North Dakota today has less than 1 million acres of land enrolled in CRP, and 85% of the acreage enrolled during the peak in 2007 could be gone by 2026 if contracts continue to expire at their current rate,
Game and Fish biologist Doug Leier reported this week
in his weekly "North Dakota Outdoors" column.
The summit was the first step in what promises to be a slow, challenging process to address access and the loss of habitat. Whatever direction any potential solutions ultimately take, farmers and ranchers must be on board, Armstrong says.
There are no easy answers.
"If you don't start with the ag groups and the actual farmers and ranchers about what works for them ... what works for sportsmen and what works for the guy making a living off that land every day of the week aren't always the same thing," Armstrong said. "I think the low-hanging fruit, me personally — youth deer, youth pheasant, youth duck — I think you have to be a pretty (difficult) guy to say no to a 14-year-old kid who wants to shoot his first whitetail doe or her first pheasant or first duck. I think there are opportunities to do this."
Game and Fish recently announced it will offer 42,300 licenses for this fall's deer gun season — a near 50-year low — down from more than 100,000 for several years during the peak of CRP.
In some ways, North Dakota is losing its "deer camp culture," Armstrong says. CWD and baiting isn't the issue, he says, it's EHD and two bad winters.
"We have way too many people chasing inches instead of chasing experience," he said, referring to the size of a buck's rack. "I can tell you, looking back on all of my favorite deer hunts, I don't care how big the deer was. I don't look back 20 years ago and have a more fond experience because it was a 156-inch deer vs. a 142-inch deer."
Trapshooting has become one of the fastest-growing high school sports in North Dakota and nationwide, but "less and less" of the kids shooting trap are actually hunting, Armstrong says, a trend that presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
"How we can figure out how to (get kids hunting) also happens to be a pretty good workforce recruitment and retention tool," Armstrong said. "If you're 17 years old and love to hunt and fish, the chances of you staying in North Dakota at 35 are higher than if you don't" hunt and fish.
While Armstrong says he's not an avid angler, the quality of fishing available in North Dakota is another piece of "low-hanging fruit," in terms of outdoors opportunities.
"For as much criticism as Game and Fish gets — and a lot of it isn't deserved — we spend a lot of time talking about Devils Lake, Sakakawea and the Missouri River, but there are tons of the little fisheries out there that are (anglers') secret spots," he said.
As for hunting, Armstrong says he looks forward to spending more time in the field as governor than he did as North Dakota's representative in Congress.
Regardless, he says, it won't be enough.
"No hunter on his deathbed ever said, 'Man, I really wish I would have hunted less,' " Armstrong said.
