Those who wait around Monday night so they can preach tax reform at the statewide fish and wildlife rule hearings need to tread carefully on Question 61, lest their zeal to save hunting cripples it instead.

If their emotions sweep in lawmakers, reformers could unintentionally shut down more private land to hunting while reducing or ruining its habitat value to wildlife.

Those aren't the objectives of Question 61, of course, but let's concede better intentions have led to hotter places.

The question, offered by the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, asks if woodland owners should be required to open their lands to public hunting, fishing, hiking, sight-seeing and cross-country skiing if they receive a tax break when enrolling in all future Managed Forest Law contracts.

The question and concerns are legitimate. As urban sprawl and subdivisions consume rural Wisconsin, wildlife habitat and access to outdoor recreation declines. But it would be worse if not for the MFL program and its predecessor, the Forest Crop Law, which began in 1927.

For more than 80 years Wisconsin has provided tax breaks to woodland owners if they signed long-term agreements to manage their properties for sustained forestry. In return, property owners from 1927 to 1985 had to allow public hunting and fishing.

When the Legislature replaced the FCL 23 years ago with the MFL, it let landowners opt out of public access by increasing their tax payment.

That change has since removed about 1.2 million acres from public access.

The MFL maintained a low profile from 1987 through 2004. Landowners who kept their property open to the public paid 67 cents per acre in annual taxes, and those who closed their land paid $1.57.

Either way, they had to follow a state-certified management plan and pay taxes on each prescribed timber harvest. The program's goal, after all, is to produce healthy forests to meet society's wood demands. At the same time, the state's management plans for these private forests generated wildlife habitat and outdoors recreation — and it couldn't be developed.

In other words, the tax breaks benefit landowners and the public, too.

Since 2005, however, fear and loathing has spread. Those who kept their lands open saw their tax rates jump 21⁄2-fold from 67 cents to $1.67 per acre; those whose lands were closed saw more than a five-fold leap from $1.57 to $8.34 per acre. Further, owners with large properties can't close more than 160 acres to the public.

Therefore, some landowners consulted their attorneys to sidestep the law. By forming individual Limited Liability Companies for each 160-acre parcel, they could claim the tax break, close their land to the public, then lease its hunting rights. Those moves displaced untold numbers of hunters the past two years and created a class conflict lawmakers couldn't ignore.

And so it was that the Legislature used a budget amendment last year — and Gov. Doyle signed it — making it illegal for everyone in the MFL to lease hunting rights. This upsets landowners with smaller parcels who had supplemented their income with hunting leases or received caretaker services in exchange for hunting rights.

Meanwhile, the Conservation Congress drafted Question 61 to require all future MFL contracts to allow public access. Although their intent is laudable, perhaps they should stop while they're ahead.

Small landowners already feel like grass trampled by warring elephants. They note that farmers receive tax breaks on croplands and subsidies for Conservation Reserve Program lands, yet they can keep their lands closed and lease hunting rights.

And look at it from a personal level.

If you're a woodland owner and you think hunters, anglers, hikers and skiers are pushing you into an economic corner, would you invite us onto your land?

If legislators make them choose, many would likely forgo the tax break, stay out of a forestry program and lease their hunting rights. Or they'd just sell to developers.

How much access and habitat/wildlife benefits will we reap by killing the Managed Forest Law in slow motion?