By Tim Jones, Managing Editor
(Editor Note: We've had two recent, very positive reports about hunts on properties owned by Ted Turner. One is the Flying D Ranch in southwestern Montana, which subscriber Kevin Fain hunted last November for elk and deer. The other was from Russ Smith on a successful oryx hunt in April in New Mexico on Turner's Armendaris Ranch on the Rio Grande.
As many readers know, Turner's ranch properties are managed as working businesses, and hunting is one of the major income streams. The other is raising bison; some properties offer fishing as well. For some, certainly not all, the Turner Ranches serve as models for keeping open lands in the American West both economically viable and ecologically sustainable. According to both our subscriber correspondents, the hunting opportunities offered are highly recommendable.
Digging deeper into these reports led us to take a closer look at the outfitters who ran these hunts, which in turn took us beyond the boundaries of the Turner Ranches. Both of these outfitters offer some very interesting opportunities both on and off the Turner properties. Read on.) The Montana Hunting Company may not sound familiar to you, but continuing
Hunting Report subscribers will know outfitter Rob Arnaud's name. We first reported on Arnaud way back in 1998 when Senior Western Correspondent Lance Stapleton wrote about Arnaud Hunting Company in southwest Montana and his involvement with Ted Turner's Flying D Ranch. (See
Article ID 455.) He was also mentioned in a 2001 report by Stuart Williams on Turner's properties. (See
Article ID 758.) Seems Arnaud has since changed his operation's name to The Montana Hunting Company and expanded into other states, while he continues to oversee the hunt programs on the Flying D and another Turner property, the Bar None Ranch.
Arnaud is a trained wildlife biologist, who made his name on the Flying D, applying state-of-the-art techniques to the management of wildlife and maximizing trophy quality. Today he runs hunts on 16 properties, totaling 600,000 acres, across Montana, Wyoming and California. He offers hunts for Rocky Mountain elk, mule deer and antelope, plus tule elk. But you won't see any advertising or marketing for any of the properties he hunts because Arnaud strictly sells hunts through repeat business and word of mouth, much like the hunt report recently filed by
Hunting Report subscriber Kevin Fain (
ID 8684). Fain hunted elk on one of Arnaud's Turner properties, the Flying D, this past November.....
