[OregonRancher]

A few facts: When a rancher leases land from the Goberment, he is not leasing the "Land". He is leasing the right to graze his cattle and improve the land for the benefit of the cattle. He has no right to keep others off the land. The reason ranchers get pissed off with "tresspassers" is that most of the time, they do harm to the land, the improvements -read water holes, etc. - and sometimes, the cattle. Most city slickers don't realize that when you open a gate, you need to close it!

[OregonRancher]

Couple of other points. Ranches in eastern Oregon and Nevada are usually made up of maybe 250 acres of deeded land and 25,000 acres of leased land. If it was not for the leased land, ranches in these areas would be non-existant. Not sure of the figures, but NV is about 98% federally owned - go figure... In eastern Oregon its about the same.... I know one ranch of 200,000 acres and only about 13,000 is deeded... Hey, you folks in the east, do any of you have any idea how big that is???? The Hearst ranch in Kalifornia is over 320,000 acres - over 500 sq miles...leased to the government..love it!!!!!