Upland game bird hunters will have access to more than 40,000 additional acres this season through the Upland Game Bird Enhancement Program. The program enrolled an extra 47 projects this summer that are not included in the 2024 Upland Game Bird Access Guide. These new projects are in addition to the 450 projects that provide more than 700,000 acres for public upland game bird hunting.

The new projects open up over 20,600 acres of new walk-in hunting access for bird hunters, plus an additional 20,000 acres of Block Management. The additional acres are in northeast, southeast and north-central Montana.

The new projects include stands of grass nesting cover that are also enrolled in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Ten of these projects will be newly seeded CRP, so those projects may not provide as much hunting opportunity this fall as they will in future seasons. All of the other new projects feature good habitat conditions for game bird hunting this fall.

For more information on how to access these new habitat projects, visit the UGB Access Guide webpage at fwp.mt.gov/conservation/habitat/upland-game-bird-enhancement-program/access-guide. Locations of all the new projects can be found on the FWP Hunt Planner map.