I just got back from a Montana general deer tag and I can’t say I’d recommend traveling for that hunt. The deer numbers are in bad shape especially on the mule deer side. I hunted hard and bounced around a lot of different areas, badlands, prairies, national forest, blm, etc and the situation was pretty bad across the board from both numbers and quality perspective. I talked to locals, forest service employees, biologists and the feelings around the deer population were universally bad.
The idea you can walk your way away from people in eastern MT isn’t really a thing. It’s heavily roaded and the remaining deer are in the good habitat which has roads. It’s more a find a high spot 1/2 mile or less from the road and burn down the glass finding deer. It is not a Colorado wilderness elk hunt where there is a definite element of brute force miles to success thing. The reality is a lot of those tag holders are just driving around or walking around at random hoping to bump into a buck so you are covering a lot more ground with good glass from a strategic spot.
I hope Montana seriously revises its management strategy for deer but I’m not hopefully either.
The idea you can walk your way away from people in eastern MT isn’t really a thing. It’s heavily roaded and the remaining deer are in the good habitat which has roads. It’s more a find a high spot 1/2 mile or less from the road and burn down the glass finding deer. It is not a Colorado wilderness elk hunt where there is a definite element of brute force miles to success thing. The reality is a lot of those tag holders are just driving around or walking around at random hoping to bump into a buck so you are covering a lot more ground with good glass from a strategic spot.
I hope Montana seriously revises its management strategy for deer but I’m not hopefully either.
