Understanding North Dakota’s ‘Private Land Open to Sportsmen’ program

If you’ve spent any time driving the backroads of North Dakota over the past few decades, you know the sight well – inverted yellow triangles indicating a Private Land Open To Sportsmen tract.

What started as a visionary idea to bridge the gap between private landowners and public hunters has grown into a modern-day foundation of North Dakota’s outdoor heritage. I’ll remind old-timers (me included) that most hunters under age 40 have always known a hunting landscape with hundreds of thousands of PLOTS acres.

In a state where 93% of the land is privately owned, we need to remind all hunters that without the cooperation of farmers and ranchers, our hunting opportunities would be limited and congested.

Today, the program provides around 900,000 acres of walk-in access. While that number has plateaued recently, the impact remains huge for the average hunter who doesn’t own a piece of land or a lifelong connection to a local producer.

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Here are a few things to keep in mind as we approach three decades of this partnership:

– Hunter-Funded Success: The program isn’t built on general tax dollars. It’s a user-benefit system funded entirely by hunting license sales and interest from the North Dakota Game and Fish Department’s general fund. When you buy your license, you’re directly paying for the habitat on the ground and the access to walk it. Additional funding also comes from hunter donations and unsuccessful lottery refunds.

– More Than Just Access: PLOTS biologists work with landowners to plant thousands of acres of new grass and develop food plots. This habitat doesn’t just benefit the hunter in October; it provides essential nesting and winter cover that helps our deer and pheasants – all wildlife – game and nongame to survive.

– The “Walk-In” Rule: The foundation of the program is walk-in access only. This means traveling by foot with your legal gear. Unless you have specific written permission from the landowner, activities like driving ATVs, camping, or horseback riding are off-limits. Respecting these boundaries is what keeps landowners in the program.

– Work In Progress: The program has come a long way from the early days of paging through a paper map guide. Today, you can find every tract via the online PLOTS Guide or mobile mapping apps like onX, which make it easier than ever to know exactly where that yellow sign begins and ends.

As we look toward the future, the goal remains the same: reaching 1 million acres of quality habitat and access by 2028. It’s a big target, but if the last three decades have shown us anything, it’s that North Dakota values its outdoor legacy enough to keep it alive. So, the next time you see one of those yellow signs, take a second to appreciate the landowner who made it possible.

Are you interested in enrolling land in the PLOTS program or finding a local biologist to discuss habitat improvements? Contact the N.D. Game and Fish Department office at (701) 328-6300 to start the process.