Kind of...he was paying his grazing rights to the state, and when the feds took over that land he would still only pay to the state. He said his reason was to refuse to recognize their takover. If he didn't want to pay for the grazing rights at all, then yes, welfare, but his situation was a little different. I don't understand this fascination with this welfare rancher thing, people aren't simply refusing to pay any use fees. When they do, their grazing rights are revoked, no confusion there.
There is a little more to it than that. As one of his neighbors (a rancher who does pay her fees) explained it: they drastically cut the grazing rights of some ranches, including his. This was supposedly for the desert tortoise, while they were building a solar farm nearby for a friend of Harry Reid's (in which case the desert tortoise was considered um rather low on the totem pole). Anyway, to pay the fees you also have to sign an agreement which would basically say he was agreeing to the new terms.
Note that the attempted cattle roundup was not court-ordered because of his fees. It was ordered to remove the cattle because he continues to graze them where the BLM says he is not supposed to.
I don't know that I am in support of his argument, but it's not that he doesn't think he should pay $$ as far as I can tell.
Perhaps more importantly, grazing fees aren't the argument I hear from most of the ranchers. It is having water cut off to their private land, being told to put fences up in contrary to local law, and having their grazing or water rights removed.