First time for Montana

[Derekc6713]

So here’s a question for the residents who are familiar with eastern Montana are the Whitetail populations doing as bad as Mule Deer ? If they aren’t do you have any thoughts as to why? Is it just everyone just wants to shoot Mule Deer so they aren’t receiving the same amount of attrition?

 

[Kurts86]

It’s pretty clear that Montana has had an opportunity focused tag allocation that no longer matches the game numbers on the ground. Huge changes are required to tag numbers for both residents and nonresidents if things are to get better.

Blaming nonresidents, whose tag allocation is around 10%, for all the problem is a lazy, played out scapegoat perpetuated in every state game meeting and hunting forum that usually has little quantitative correlation to the resource impact.

The reality is Montana has a growing resident population where there is no cap on OTC resident tag sales good across most of the state for 5 weeks of rifle hunting.

Montana needs to switch mule deer tags to all limited entry by region or unit for both residents and nonresidents. Make whitetail tags OTC for everyone and hammer them. Whitetail are taking over mule deer range across the west as they do better with human presence and they are more aggressive than mule deer.

If they keep certain mule deer units under a general tag and keep closing zones for mule deer hunting it will just move pressure to mule deer units that have better populations today and crater them over a few years. We saw the same thing in Colorado with OTC elk tags, they just keep dropping units off the OTC list for a decade and concentrated pressure while not capping total tag numbers.

OTC tags just can’t be a thing for western big game tags post 2020. The demand outstrips the supply so badly any half measures are counter productive. Find a sustainable number of tags for a unit then split them 90/10 to residents/nonresidents.

 

[Dos Perros]

I say this as a NR, but in circumstances like this, Montana should not be issuing "any deer" type tags to NR's. It should be buck only. Think they should also limit doe harvest to R's but that will be less palatable. NR's should give up all doe opportunity before R's give up any, but both should give up something here. Just my opinion.