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His ranch is so expansive, in fact, that he flies a helicopter when he needs to tend to his herd or put out a fire in a hurry.

And he’s from a deeply entrenched and ´Ú²¹³¾¾±±ô²â.Ìý

But, no, he’s not John Dutton, the character who Kevin Costner played up until the start of its new season last month, on the hit “Yellowstone� TV show.

He’s Bill Galt, and he’s well aware that art appears to be imitating his life. 

“Oh, I’ve heard that a lot,� Galt said of the comparisons. “But I think mostly that's attributed to the fact that I'm a rancher that flies a helicopter and that those first few episodes of ‘Yellowstone’ had that helicopter in there. But that being said, they do use a lot of my sayings. I don't know where the hell they get them.�

One source might be “� a nonfiction account of former Lee Montana editor — and current Arizona Daily Star editor — David McCumber’s year spent working on Galt’s ranch in the late 1990s.

But Galt can’t be certain. And publicists from the Paramount Network, where “Yellowstone� airs, did not respond to questions about Galt’s role in inspiring John Dutton. 

“I’ve never talked to anybody from the ‘Yellowstone’ show or anybody that had anything to do with it,� Galt said. 

“One of the big reasons I wanted to work for Bill to do the research for ‘The Cowboy Way’ was that the ranch – both the ground and the family – represents a straight line through the history of Montana ranching,� McCumber said, “and I think that’s a lot of what ‘Yellowstone’ wanted to capture as well.� 

Like his fictional alter ego, Galt has made no secret of his desire to protect his big piece of Big Sky Country, even from the stray angler trying to fish on his property. And he has made his case, like Dutton, on television. 

In a 2016 of Anthony Bourdain’s show “Parts Unknown,� Galt and McCumber debated Montana’s 1985 stream-access law, which grants fishermen a right to use streams on private property, so long as they get where they are going within that stream’s high-water mark. 

Galt called that practice “thievery� back then. Nowadays, he begrudgingly accepts it. 

“Well, you know, stream access is a law, and we abide by it,� Galt said. “And I guess we'll learn to live with it.�

But there’s another form of encroachment on his land from sportsmen he’s less willing to look past: illegal hunting. 

“We have county roads running through each of the ranches,� Galt said. “So sometimes they just can't resist themselves, and they shoot one off the county road.�

And as Montana’s human population has grown, so has its elk population, especially on large tracts of private land like the Galt ranch. In hunting season, he said, his land has been “plagued� by such illegal shoots, even though he allows hunters onto his land through the state’s block-management program.

For Galt, it all falls under a plainspoken philosophy, one you can almost hear coming out of Kevin Costner’s mouth: “I just think private land's private land, and you should be able to do what's legal on it. Put it that way.� 

While no one has yet proposed a subdivision or a golf course on the land around his 90,000-acre spread — a scenario from the hit television show — Galt doesn’t necessarily think there would be anything wrong with it if they decided to do so. 

“If they're just selling to the highest bidder,� Galt said, “I think that's the American way.� 

He said such development can sometimes be about preserving ranching, not pushing it out, by acting as a financial “parachute� for people looking to “keep their ranch running.� 

“I know a lot of ranches that have literally been saved by being able to carve off a piece of ground, whether it's to sell to a neighbor or for development that actually saved their ranch from going broke,� Galt said. 

But Galt said “that's just about impossible anymore. You know, they're so heavily restricted.�

In what’s been viewed as a as the state tries to balance demand for development with laws that protect land and water, Galt’s brother Errol Galt was on the losing end of a recent District Court that stopped his plans to build 39 homes and two commercial properties on 442 acres of land on the east side of the Canyon Ferry Reservoir. 

Bill Galt said he has “never tried to do any of that kind of development on my ranch. So I understand my brother has issues with it, although, amazingly, we don't talk much about it. When we're talking, it's about ranching stuff.� 

And there’s lots to talk about.

Recent drought has shrunk the size of Montana’s cattle herd. That means ranchers have less livestock to sell, but it has also meant they can get a higher price from the feed lots that buy the yearlings they produce. 

And as Montana’s population has grown — partly due to the popularity of “Yellowstone� itself — so has the demand for land, who rely on the state’s wide open spaces to give their cattle a place to roam. 

Like the character he seemingly inspired, Galt has been on his land long enough to feel the forces of change swirling all around his ranch as new neighbors move in and bring with them new ways of doing things. 

“I’m surrounded by what we call the non-resident ranchers,� Galt said. 

While “every one of them does run some cattle and tries to make them look like a ranch� and “most of them do a pretty good job,� Galt said the fact that his neighbors aren’t making a living off the land is a sign of a broader shift. 

It’s a shift that ranchers and brokers from across the state say they are seeing too, as wealthy buyers, often from out of state, purchase agricultural properties for prices that cattle production can’t possibly pay for.

“All the ranching they do won't pay the interest on that ranch that they bought for that $1,500-an-acre price,� Galt said. 

While his business is focused on raising black Angus cattle and quarterhorses, Galt has embraced the use of new technologies to do the traditional job of cowboying. 

“The basics of ranching I don't think have changed much,� Galt said. “We still raise calves that we make into yearlings. But the mechanization is what has really changed. We used to go, when we were weaning, we would have a crew of maybe 16 riders down to now we do it with four just because of mechanization, because of the helicopter and four-wheelers and better hand machinery. We've become way more efficient as time goes on.� 

McCumber said his interest in Galt had to do with this approach that combines old-fashioned and modern approaches. 

“There was a mix of old and new in everything – fencing, feeding, gathering, range management, predator control, irrigating, haying, you name it,� McCumber said. “Things like big irrigation pivots, swathers and balers, artificial insemination, and the helicopter are modern ways. But lots of things don’t change. One of those is helping your neighbors. All of that seems to show up in ‘Yellowstone,’ and that authenticity is what makes the show as enduring as it has proved to be.� 

Though he acknowledged “Yellowstone� undoubtedly takes liberties with reality, Galt said he’s a devoted viewer of a show that deals with real issues that ranchers like him face, including everything from how to resist “the encroachment on ranches by the big money people� to how to handle estate taxes. 

“There’s parts of it that are absolutely correct,� Galt said of the show.

“Yellowstone� has closed its run, with the seemingly Galt-inspired character killed off after Costner quit the show. 

Or was supposedly killed off. 

“I guess I'm not real sure he's dead,� Galt said. “Just watching it, it seems to be there's some doubt.�