You can clearly see that they're just trying to pick a fight with the Feds. The land their cattle are grazing on, is a place protected by Feds. They recognize that they have to pay grazing fees, however, they don't wanna pay it to the Feds cause they think the latter is too big.
This is just an excuse for them to confront the government together with militias to show their ideals.

Nah he just doesnt want pay what he owes.   He is not a hero he is a freeloader who doesnt want to be held accountable for knowingly, over now a 20 yr + period of breaking the law, and not paying the rerquired restituition for allowing his lifestock to graze on what is clearly private goverment owned property that is being used to house protected animal species.

He doesn't own it, but his family has used it for 120 some-odd years and he had a permit until 1993, when the feds began deliberately running ranchers off the land using constant fee increases and claims of environmental concerns. In Bundy's case, the feds expressed concerned about tortoises and capped his herd at 150 head, to which Bundy responded by ceasing to pay the fee.

At the heart of the problem is the feds claiming land inside of established states, which is a flagrant violation of state sovereignty. I mean, it is kind of an absurdity that they claim ownership over 85% of Nevada.

Anyway, it's the kind of thing that the feds could easily have won in the court of public opinion if they had just portrayed him as a deadbeat and took a softly, softly approach. But thugs gonna thug.

Exactly! If I owned land and my neighbor's cattle were destroying my property by grazing on it (assuming that is the case here) do I just go take my neighbor's cattle with the intentions of auctioning them off, and threatening to shoot him and his family, or do I take my neighbor to court and sue him?

If one assumes the rule of law, one must assume all of it: not just the parts one likes. 

The guns allowed their voices to be heard. had they not been armed, they would all be in jail right now and there would not have been time for a fuss to happen. he was able to defend himslef becuase he was armed

badgenome said it better, but its more of a state vs fed thing. the feds should not own that land, its state land, and Bundy should be dealing with state authorities over it, not the BLM a federal agency. Over the years the feds have used many "systems" to take state rights aways, and it isnt right.

Edit: I'll add that I dont think this mans problems are over. I would not be suprised to now see him scrutinized by the IRS or other federal agencies. we will see

The organization that represents the animal species that are being protected on that land are now threating to sue this guy if the govt does not intervene, and not if but when they win that case this guy is gonna wish he had just payed the fine or simply kept his livestock on his own property.

From what i've read there may be a fairly reasonable reason you might support them. 

The grazing fee's and seizing of land was done on the premise of protecting the desert tortoise... and to do this the BLM has been selling off that land to home develoeprs.  Which is actually a hell of a lot more dangerous and disruptive to their habitat then some cattle... since it's permanently shrinking it.

They did this to fund a conservation center where they keep a bunch of the turtles that used to be pets.  Except now they can't fund THAT anymore because nobody is buying the turtles natural habitat so they're killing off a lot of them before releasing them back into the wild.

 Basically the BLM fucked up what the cattle ranchers had going to sell some land to home developers, and actually make things worse for an endangered species, more or less so they could have jobs for 20-30 years.

That said, I doubt many of the people who rushed to his support support him for that reason.

Oh and as for why he stopped paying the fee's basically it was because he couldn't.  The BLM wanted him to cut down his heard by 90% and wouldn't grant him grazing rights for the rest.  Essentially what was really going on was that the Government didn't like the fact that ranchers had inhertiable fee rights that were cheap.  So by citing enviromentalism as a reason they changed the laws to run the ranchers out of buisness and sell the land to developers.

Do you have a link for the bolded part?

They should just abolish their oh so awful government and be done with it. Let's see how that turns out for them.
I wonder what the real story is. It seems to me that that rancher refuses to pay what's due.

This^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ they can wrap this up whatever patriotic anti goverment retoric they want but at the end of the day this guy for over 20 yrs has acted like an entitled punk who now that he cant use what was back then communal grazing land has decided to throw a temper tantrum to get his way.