Mixed Messages

All dressed up and nowhere to go.

Drive through Montana in the fall and you’ll see local small-town establishments—wood-paneled dive bars, single-story flat-roof motels, convenience stores that seem more like regional energy-drink distribution centers—all displaying “Welcome Hunters” banners.

Yet, drive a mile out of town in any direction, and every fencepost displays a “No Hunting” sign.

One has to wonder if this is a massive civic oversight or a brilliant play by Montana’s anti-growth crowd to sour outsiders on Montana’s appeal.

Do the owners of these establishments actually think out-of-state hunters are driving down I-90 weeping openly, wondering if Montanans loathe their very presence?

Either way, it makes me imagine two hapless hunters from Arkansas sitting on twin beds in one of those roadside motels that look like the place a Quentin Tarantino character goes to bleed out. They’re all dressed in camo with no place to go. After tiring of watching Fox & Friends, one looks at the other and says, “Hey Earl, whaddya say we put on some deer piss and go get ourselves a free continental breakfast?” Thirty minutes later, instead of gripping Remington 700s, they’re sitting on their motel beds with stain-remover pens, scrubbing waffle batter out of their shirts. Shoot-to-kill replaced by dab-to-clean.

Which raises an obvious question: why the need for hunter fanfare in the first place? Why the large-lettered banners usually reserved for Olympic hometown athletes or the second coming of Christ? Do the owners of these establishments actually think out-of-state hunters are driving down I-90 weeping openly, wondering if Montanans loathe their very presence? “I’m cravin’ a Nutty Buddy, Larry, but that Town Pump doesn’t explicitly welcome hunters.”

Montana acts as if men armed with enough firepower to make even Art Wittich uncomfortable possess the emotional fragility of a Missoula poet, requiring constant welcoming assurances just to buy a Slim Jim or a Coors Light draft.

Yes, nonresident hunters generate high economic impact for Montana. Combination tags (elk, deer, and rural road signs) alone pull in over $20 million annually. Impressive, yes. Especially when you consider all the collateral spending that follows. But no other demographic or recreational subculture receives such shameless pandering.

RV enthusiasts, for example, leave the deepest financial footprint in the state’s recreation sector. Research shows these moving road-clogs deliver an annual $238 million windfall. Unlike hunters, they don’t require locked gates, property maps, and tense negotiations over wounded animals. RVers only require a three-prong outlet, a level patch of asphalt, and directions to the nearest Olive Garden. Yet never do you see them receiving the same banner love.

No local dive bar hangs a blaze-orange banner reading “Welcome Recreational Vehicle Enthusiasts.” And under it, on a reader board with the obligatory misspelled word, “Show Us Yer Sewage Dump Receipt for a Free Michelob.”

If it were up to me, I’d have those same establishments hang “Welcome Philosophers” banners, with signs at surrounding ranches reading "No Ontological Speculation” and “No Existential Dread.”

And if this hunter-coddling is such a Montana mandate, why aren’t other industries rolling out the welcome banners? Better yet: hunter specials. Glacier Bank, for example, could leave rack cards on convenience-store counters with the following pitch: 

If you successfully solved the state’s Welcome Hunters / No Hunting dilemma, we’re offering emergency micro-loans for meat-preservation orchestration. Stop by our drive-up window for immediate, short-term funding to handle the grueling logistics of getting a rotting 400-pound carcass across state lines. We provide instant financing for Yeti cooler purchases, dry-ice surcharges, and, depending on your meat situation, 24-hour access to the employee break room freezer. Free camo checkbook cover while supplies last!

The general lack of consistency suggests that these contradictory communications are not, in fact, some secret ploy to alienate visitors. But they could be. If it were up to me, I’d have those same establishments hang “Welcome Philosophers” banners, with signs at surrounding ranches reading “No Ontological Speculation” and “No Existential Dread.” Hunters operate in a linear world of shoot-to-kill. They lack the mental bandwidth for heavy contemplation, and this type of conceptual ambush would wilt their gusto. They’d be terrified that trophy bull elk were being scared off by tenured professors dressed in black turtlenecks, loudly debating Schopenhauer’s pessimism from neighboring ground blinds.

Or maybe not. Maybe this mash of mixed messaging is just fine, keeping Montana safely intact as a legendary mythical landscape where never is heard a discouraging word—until, that is, you drive a mile out of town and get booked for trespassing.