571—99.11 (481A) Eligibility for free landowner/tenant turkey licenses.
	 99.11(1) Who qualifies for free turkey hunting license. Owners or tenants of a farm unit, or a member of an owner’s or tenant’s family that resides with the owner or tenant, are eligible for free turkey licenses. The owner or tenant does not have to reside on the farm unit but must be actively engaged in farming it. Nonresident landowners do not qualify.
	 99.11(2) Who qualifies as a tenant. A “tenant” is a person other than the landowner who is actively engaged in the operation of the farm. The tenant may be a member of the landowner’s family, including in some circumstances the landowner’s spouse or child, or a third party who is not a family member. The tenant does not have to reside on the farm unit.
	 99.11(3) What “actively engaged in farming” means. Landowners and tenants are “actively engaged in farming” if they personally participate in decisions about farm operations and those decisions, along with external factors such as weather and market prices, determine their profit or loss for the products they produce. Tenants qualify if they farm land owned by another and pay rent in cash or in kind. A farm manager or other third party who operates a farm for a fee or a laborer who works on the farm for a wage and is not a family member does not qualify as a tenant.
	 99.11(4) Landowners who qualify as active farmers. These landowners:
	  a.   	 Are the sole operator of a farm unit (along with immediate family members), or
	  b.   	 Make all decisions about farm operations, but contract for custom farming or hire labor to do some or all of the work, or
	  c.   	 Participate annually in decisions about farm operations such as negotiations with federal farm agencies or negotiations about cropping practices on specific fields that are rented to a tenant, or
	  d.   	 Raise specialty crops from operations such as orchards, nurseries, or tree farms that do not necessarily produce annual income but require annual operating decisions about maintenance or improvements, or
	  e.   	 May have portions of the farm enrolled in a long-term land retirement program such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) as long as other farm operations occur annually, or
	  f.   	 Place their entire cropland in the CRP or other long-term land retirement program with no other active farming operation occurring on the farm.
	 99.11(5) Landowners who do not qualify. These landowners:
	  a.   	 Use a farm manager or other third party to operate the farm, or
	  b.   	 Cash rent the entire farm to a tenant who is responsible for all farm operations including following preapproved operations plans.
	 99.11(6) Where free licenses are valid. Free licenses are valid only on that portion of the farm unit that is in a zone open to turkey hunting. “Farm unit” means all parcels of land that are operated as a unit for agricultural purposes and are under lawful control of the landowner or tenant. Individual parcels of land do not need to be adjacent to one another to be included in the farm unit. For purposes of obtaining a free turkey hunting license, all the land under the lawful control of a landowner and eligible family members or a tenant and eligible family members shall be considered as one farm unit, regardless of how that land is subdivided for agricultural or business purposes. “Agricultural purposes” includes but is not limited to field crops, livestock, horticultural crops (e.g., nurseries, orchards, truck farms, or Christmas tree plantations), and land managed for timber production.
	 99.11(7) How many free licenses may be obtained. The maximum number of free licenses for the fall turkey season is two per farm unit, one for the landowner (or family member) and one for the tenant (or family member). If there is no tenant, the landowner’s family may obtain only one license. A tenant or the tenant’s family is entitled to only one free license even if the tenant farms land for more than one landowner.
	 99.11(8) Registration of landowners and tenants. Landowners and tenants and their eligible family members who want to obtain free fall wild turkey hunting licenses must register with DNR before the free licenses will be issued. Procedures for registering are described in 571—95.2(481A).