Mar. 29—The Red Lake Band of Chippewa will offer 20 elk tags to tribal members — double the number of tags offered last year — for a season in northwest Minnesota that will begin Sept. 15 and continue through Dec. 31, the band announced last week.
According to Jay Huseby, wildlife director for the Red Lake Department of Natural Resources, the Red Lake 1863 Ceded Territory Conservation Commission met Thursday, March 20, and developed the season framework for the tribal hunt.
The band will offer 10 “either-sex” licenses that will allow tribal members to shoot either a bull or a cow elk, and 10 “antlerless” licenses. No elk will be taken from the Grygla herd, Huseby said; the Grygla elk herd has lagged below management goals for more than a decade.
Much of northwest Minnesota falls within an area covered by a treaty that Red Lake tribal leaders signed with the U.S. government on Oct. 2, 1863. As part of the 1863 Old Crossing Treaty, the Pembina and Red Lake bands of Ojibwe ceded some 11 million acres of land in northwest Minnesota and eastern and northeastern North Dakota to the U.S. government.
The North Dakota portion of the Ceded Territory, which extends nearly to Devils Lake, includes Pembina, Grafton and Grand Forks.
The Red Lake Nation didn’t exercise its treaty rights to hunt the ceded land until 2022, when the band held its first tribal elk hunt, offering five tags in northwest Minnesota.
In addition to the 20 tribal elk tags, the band plans to offer three either-sex tags to nontribal private landowners with property within the 1863 Ceded Territory area, Huseby said. Details for the nontribal licenses are still being worked out, he said, but as with the tribal licenses, no elk harvest will be permitted from the Grygla herd, and season dates will be the same — Sept. 15-Dec. 31.
In an interview with the Herald, Al Pemberton, director of the Red Lake DNR, said the decision to offer 20 tribal elk tags this year stems from the Minnesota DNR’s agreement with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa to relocate 100 to 150 elk from Kittson County to northeast Minnesota over a period of several years.
That hasn’t sat well with the people of Red Lake.
“Last year, we were going to (take 20), too, but (the state) kind of talked us out of it,” Pemberton said. “What they’re doing is trying to set up for doing that elk removal.”
The first relocation
could happen as early as spring 2026.
Pemberton has said the Red Lake Nation wasn’t properly consulted on the relocation plan and was instead treated as an afterthought. He
expressed his dissatisfaction with the relocation
during a meeting Thursday, Feb. 13, at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College in Cloquet, Minnesota.
“You guys never confided in us, none of you,” Pemberton said at the meeting, quoted in the Pine Journal, a Forum Communications newspaper. “All of a sudden we started hunting elk. All of a sudden Fond du Lac’s coming to take some.”
While the Red Lake Nation is doubling the number of elk tags it offers this year, Pemberton says tribal leaders aren’t yet expanding the hunt into the portion of North Dakota included in the 1863 Old Crossing Treaty.
Parts of North Dakota elk units E1E and E5 fall within the Ceded Territory area.
“We’re looking at that, though — we’re going to start looking at it,” Pemberton said. “That’s our treaty area all the way to Devils Lake.
“Hopefully, we can get something worked out there. I mean, we’re not going to go over there and (shoot all the elk) or anything. We’ll work with (the Game and Fish Department) over there, too.”
The Minnesota DNR hasn’t announced license numbers for the state elk season, but it stands to be lower than last year, when 10 tags were available and eight hunters filled their tags.
“Based on the aerial survey results in January, we are below the legislatively limited population goals for two of the three herds, so our recommendations to our leadership were to reduce harvest compared to last year,” Kelsie LaSharr, elk coordinator for the DNR in St. Paul, said in an email. “Our state elk lottery will likely open mid-May and close mid-June, but in the meantime our recommendations for state harvest are working their way through the DNR season setting and rulemaking process.”
During its
annual winter aerial survey
in early January, the DNR tallied 75 elk — 63 antlerless and 12 bulls — in the Kittson Central herd near Lancaster, Minnesota, and 24 elk — 18 antlerless and six bulls — in the Grygla herd. The Kittson Central count was unchanged from the last survey in 2023, while the Grygla number was down from 29 in 2023.
All of the elk in the Caribou-Vita herd — which ranges between Vita, Manitoba, and the Caribou Township area in northeast Kittson County in Minnesota — were on the Manitoba side of the border during the January count. The DNR, under an agreement with Manitoba, counted 134 elk — 128 antlerless and six bulls — in an area that represented about 25% of the Manitoba survey block.
* On the web:
For more information on elk in Minnesota, check out the
Elk Management page
on the DNR website at mndnr.gov/elk.
