President Trump signed an executive order on September 17 that tells federal agencies to treat the land they manage as open to hunting unless there’s a specific, local reason to close it. The order also directs Interior to allow hunting in two national monuments, tells agencies to permit traditional lead ammunition and tackle, and puts landlocked public ground on the agenda. Here’s what’s in it, what it leaves alone, and when you’ll see it on the ground.

What did Trump sign on September 17, 2026?

On Thursday evening, September 17, President Trump signed an executive order titled Reinvigorating America’s Hunting Heritage. He signed it in the Rose Garden in front of hunters, anglers, outdoor industry leaders, and conservation groups. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum was there, along with Bass Pro Shops’ Johnny Morris and Jeff Crane, president and CEO of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation.

He signed a second order the same night, Restoring American Saltwater Angling and Recreation, which deals with saltwater fishing. This article covers the hunting order.

The order opens by stating that hunting on federal land has gotten harder because of regulatory overreach, inconsistent access policies, and restrictions on hunter education and recruitment. Its answer is what the White House calls a “presumption of accessibility” for federally managed land. In practice, that means agencies start from yes.

This isn’t an Interior-only order. It hands assignments to the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, War, Commerce, Labor, Education, and Veterans Affairs, and it sets deadlines ranging from 60 days to a full year. It’s also written to work alongside Executive Order 13443, the 2007 order on hunting heritage and wildlife conservation.

Which national monuments does the order target for hunting?

This is the most concrete piece of the order, and it comes with the shortest clock. Within 90 days, the Secretary of the Interior is directed to allow hunting in two national monuments where National Park Service rules have kept hunters out:

The order applies to species that aren’t listed under the Endangered Species Act, and it states that managed hunting won’t put at risk the historic and scientific features the two monuments were set aside to protect. Ninety days from September 17 lands in mid-December 2026.

This one has support well beyond the usual camps. Ryan Callaghan, CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, told Outdoor Life that opening hunting on both monuments has been a priority for BHA.

How will Interior open the monuments?

That part isn’t settled yet. Park Service rules generally allow hunting only where a federal statute authorizes it, and the order has to be carried out consistent with applicable law. At Craters of the Moon, the 2002 law that created the preserve specifically authorizes hunting there, while Park Service management documents say the monument’s enabling legislation prohibits hunting in the monument unit. Castle Mountains is on different footing. Hunting was allowed there under the BLM before the 2016 designation, and groups like Safari Club International have argued the land’s status still permits hunting without new legislation.

Interior has 90 days to carry out the directive, and how it handles these legal questions is one of the details to watch. Wait for final rules, species, seasons, and access guidance before you plan a trip.

What does “open until closed” mean for federal land?

The biggest long-term change sits in a single line. Within 180 days, the Secretaries of War, Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce have to propose changes to the policies and regulations that restrict access on the land they manage. Those proposals are meant to expand hunting, fishing, shooting, and recreational access, including by generally allowing hunting unless a specific closure is justified by local resource conditions.

That flips the default. Today, hunters often wait on an agency to open an area. Under this approach, the agency would need a local, resource-based reason to keep it closed. NSSF describes it as an open-until-closed provision. National parks are excluded, and so are national monuments other than the two named above.

The same set of proposals is supposed to do several other things hunters have asked for:

How will the order open landlocked public land?

If you’ve hunted the West, you know the problem. You find a promising piece of BLM or Forest Service ground on your mapping app, and it’s surrounded by private land with no legal way in. A lot of it sits in the checkerboard pattern left behind by 19th-century railroad land grants, where public and private sections alternate across the map.

The order tells agencies to prioritize practical ways into difficult-to-access federal lands and waters. The tools it names are voluntary access easements, land exchanges, and cooperative agreements with states and local governments, all of which respect private property rights. Nobody’s land gets taken. Landowners get a reason to come to the table, and hunters get a path to ground they already own.

This is the part of the order that even its skeptics praised. Land Tawney, co-chairman of American Hunters and Anglers, told Outdoor Life that the landlocked access portion is substantive and welcome.

River access lotteries get fixed too

Within 60 days, the Secretary of Agriculture has to review high-demand river access lotteries run by the Forest Service and start reforming them. The order directs those lotteries to prioritize U.S. citizens, including applicants who’ve lost out before, and to ban automated computer entries. Bot entries have become a real problem on some of the country’s most popular rivers.

Does the order protect lead ammo on public land?

Yes, at the policy level. The order directs the Secretaries of War, Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce to propose changes that permit the use of traditional lead ammunition and tackle on the lands they manage. In his Rose Garden remarks, Trump told the crowd the order protects affordable, traditional lead ammunition.

The order follows a major refuge policy change made a few weeks earlier. Rules finalized in 2022 and 2023 were set to ban lead ammunition and tackle on September 1, 2026, at nine national wildlife refuges: Patoka River, Blackwater, Chincoteague, Eastern Neck, Erie, Great Thicket, Patuxent Research Refuge, Rachel Carson, and Wallops Island. Hunting groups like Safari Club International opposed those phaseouts. In its 2026-2027 refuge hunting and fishing rule, effective August 31, the Fish and Wildlife Service rescinded all nine before they took effect. It also removed an existing lead-free requirement on the Big Cove Unit of Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge in West Virginia to match state rules. The same rule opens or expands more than 1,450 hunting and fishing opportunities at 111 refuges and hatcheries.

Cost and availability are a big part of the debate. In a November 2025 market check of in-stock ammo at 16 urban and rural stores, the Service found lead-free rounds cost 37 to 245 percent more than lead across five popular calibers. Only 3 of the 16 stores had lead-free 12-gauge slugs in stock. NSSF, which says it worked closely with the White House and Interior on the order, argues the price gap risks pricing hunters out of the field.

Congress is working on making this permanent. H.R. 556, the Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act, sponsored by Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, passed the House 215 to 202 on March 18, 2026. It went to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee the next day. The bill would bar the Fish and Wildlife Service, BLM, and Forest Service from banning lead ammo or tackle on federal land unless field data from that specific unit shows lead is the primary cause of a wildlife decline and the state approves.

What does research say about lead in wild game meat?

The most frequently cited study was run by the CDC and the North Dakota Department of Health in 2008, testing the blood of more than 700 North Dakotans. People who ate wild game had modestly higher blood lead levels than people who didn’t. After accounting for other lead sources, game consumption was associated with an increase of about 0.3 micrograms per deciliter. The highest level measured in the study was 9.82.

Public health guidance has changed since then. The CDC now says no safe blood lead level has been identified in children, and it uses 3.5 micrograms per deciliter as its current reference value for flagging kids with higher exposure than most.

Bullet fragments in meat are real, though. Minnesota research found they can spread well beyond the wound channel and turn up far more often in ground venison than in whole cuts. If you shoot lead, trim generously around the wound channel, favor whole cuts over burger, and follow the advice North Dakota and Minnesota health officials gave that pregnant women and children under 6 avoid venison taken with lead bullets.

What doesn’t the executive order change?

Several rules hunters deal with every season stay exactly where they are.

What changes for migratory bird seasons and Sunday hunting?

Within 90 days, Interior is directed to propose regulations that improve the process for authorizing seasonal migratory game bird hunting. The order says the Flyway Councils stay full partners and that the process should take annual surveys, guidance, and history into account. For duck, goose, and dove hunters, a smoother federal process could mean less lag between the science and the seasons states set.

Within a year, Interior is directed to encourage state fish and wildlife agencies to promote and expand Sunday hunting on state and federal lands. States set their own seasons and days, so the federal role here is encouragement. It still puts real weight behind efforts in states that restrict Sunday hunting, and NSSF has pushed for years to roll those restrictions back.

How does the order bring in new hunters?

Section 3 of the order focuses on the next generation, and it assigns work to agencies that don’t usually show up in hunting policy.

Schools. Within 90 days, the Secretaries of Labor and Education are directed to issue guidance clarifying that federal education funding can be used for archery and hunter education programs in schools.

Youth and veterans. Within 180 days, Interior has to identify more ways to use existing federal funding and authorities to help states build the hunting tradition among young people and veterans.

Adaptive sports. The Department of Veterans Affairs is directed to prioritize hunting and fishing opportunities in its Adaptive Sports Grant Program, to the extent the law allows.

New hunters matter to everyone who already hunts, because hunters and shooters pay for conservation. The states were apportioned about $1.3 billion for conservation in February 2026, and NSSF reports that more than $804 million of it came from the Pittman-Robertson excise taxes paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers.

What does the order do for game populations and venison donation?

Section 4 tells the Secretaries of War, Interior, and Agriculture to coordinate with state agencies on growing game populations. The tools listed include voluntarily removing barriers to wildlife movement, reducing invasive species, habitat degradation, and disease, and targeted management of predators and competing species. It also calls for prescribed fire, vegetation management, water development, grazing, and agricultural practices, along with voluntary agreements with private landowners and producers.

The volunteer provision ties in here. Callaghan pointed to examples like mountain goats in Grand Teton National Park and invasive pythons in Big Cypress National Preserve, places where hunters could help do the work.

Section 5 is about feeding people. The Secretary of Agriculture is directed to issue guidance supporting state venison donation programs, including through the Emergency Food Assistance Program. Interior is directed to encourage states to use Pittman-Robertson funds to manage overabundant wildlife, especially whitetail deer, including work that helps get donated game processed for schools and food banks.

When does the executive order take effect?

The order took effect when it was signed, but most of what hunters will notice depends on agency action. Here’s the clock, counted from September 17, 2026.

As Callaghan noted to Outdoor Life, those deadlines are where the actual details will show up.

How are hunting and conservation groups reacting?

Most of the major hunting groups came out in support, with different levels of enthusiasm.

NSSF called the order a major win and said it includes several of its priority issues, including traditional ammunition, public land access, and Sunday hunting. Bartozzi attended the Rose Garden event.

The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership praised the order’s support for wildlife corridors, access to landlocked public land, and management of invasive species and wildlife disease. Chief Conservation Officer Joel Webster said TRCP looks forward to working with agencies to implement several parts of it.

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers CEO Ryan Callaghan said, “I would applaud it for what it is,” and described the order as a clear go-ahead for agencies to emphasize goals that are largely positive. He also wants the administration to treat foot and horseback backcountry access as just as important as other kinds of access, and to boost funding and staffing at the land management agencies doing this work.

What critics are saying

Not everyone was sold. Land Tawney of American Hunters and Anglers praised the landlocked access piece but argued the rest amounts to common sense that doesn’t go far. He pointed to staffing cuts and proposed budget cuts at public land agencies as undercutting the good parts. Outdoor Life also pointed to criticism from some hunting and conservation groups over the administration’s effort to rescind the Roadless Rule. Those groups argue the rule protects important big game habitat.

Those concerns are fair to raise. Several provisions, like Sunday hunting, depend on states, and the order itself says it will be carried out subject to available funding. Agency capacity will decide how fast landlocked parcels actually open up.

What does the order mean for California hunters?

California hunters have one new opportunity to watch and a few rules that stay the same.

Castle Mountains could reopen. The order directs Interior to allow hunting within 90 days on roughly 21,000 acres of eastern Mojave ground where hunting has been prohibited since the monument was designated in 2016. Wait for Interior’s implementing details on species, seasons, and access before you plan a trip.

Lead rules here don’t change. California’s non-lead requirement for hunting with a firearm still applies statewide, including on federal land in the state. That would include Castle Mountains if it opens. Pack copper or other approved non-lead ammunition.

Waterfowl rules don’t change. Nontoxic shot is still required for ducks and geese everywhere in the country.

Federal access changes still help. California has a lot of Forest Service and BLM ground. An open-until-closed default, work on access infrastructure, and a push on hard-to-reach parcels all apply here when the agencies follow through.

What happens next?

The order sets direction. The details come as agencies act, and there are four things worth watching.

The monument openings. The 90-day clock on Castle Mountains and Craters of the Moon runs out in mid-December. This will be the first real test of how fast the order moves and how Interior handles the legal questions at each monument.

Proposed rules and comment periods. Proposed regulations typically go through a public comment period. That’s your chance to weigh in on access, lead, and how open-until-closed gets written.

H.R. 556 in the Senate. An executive order can be reversed by a future administration. If the Senate passes the Protecting Access for Hunters and Anglers Act and it’s signed, lead protections on federal land become law.

The 180-day proposals. The open-until-closed default, the lead ammo policy, and the landlocked access tools all arrive as proposals due around mid-March 2027. That’s where the fine print gets written.

We’ll keep tracking all of it here at Hunt Bums as the agencies move.

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