How accurate are Montana's harvest/hunter numbers

[TheTone]

I’ve Never hunted Montana but I will say as an Idahoan that has had “mandatory “ harvest reporting most of my life, people lie on all sides of the equation on harvest reporting. I’ve had people tell me they report unsuccessful when they were successful, say they killed something small when it was actually big, miscount points, say they hunted more days than they really did, etc. Unless the animals are physically handled by the person making the report I would guess any harvest data from anywhere is suspect

 

[fatlander]

Montana never called me or my hunting partner this past year. I can’t fathom how all states, especially western states, don’t have mandatory kill reporting.

In Virginia, we have to call in/use the app for every deer, bear, turkey and bobcat before they’re moved from the kill site. I can kill 3 bucks, 3 does, 1 bear, 3 turkeys and 12 bobcats for a whopping $70 in Virginia. Plus I can buy as many additional doe tags as my heart desires for 3 dollars a piece. But every single one of them has to be checked in.

It blows my mind that states that literally have people beating down the door for 700+ dollar nonresident tags and they don’t have mandatory reporting to better manage that resource.


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[Wilks54]

NR here, and I have been called every year I drew a tag. They usually also ask if I hunted any other species as well. I think there have only been a couple times where they didn't

 

[bigsky2]

I’ve Never hunted Montana but I will say as an Idahoan that has had “mandatory “ harvest reporting most of my life, people lie on all sides of the equation on harvest reporting. I’ve had people tell me they report unsuccessful when they were successful, say they killed something small when it was actually big, miscount points, say they hunted more days than they really did, etc. Unless the animals are physically handled by the person making the report I would guess any harvest data from anywhere is suspect

What is the point of lying?

 

[TheTone]

What is the point of lying?

I truly don’t know. I’ve heard every excuse you can think of; they don’t want someone looking at the data to think they’re a bad hunter if they weren’t successful, they think reporting unsuccessful if they were successful will help keep seasons long, they don’t want people to research an area and see a high success rate, distrust in the government. People are strange

 

[Pro953]

All states should have mandatory reporting.

Lying about harvest/hunt data is like lying to you doctor. It’s only going to hurt you in the long term.

We complain about wildlife managers making “bad” decisions, but ball when they attempt to collect data.

Bad data can be a problem but no data is certainly worse.


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[dreamingbig]

I got called for elk this year but it was in my Voicemail. They haven’t called back.


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