How bad is the hunting in Montana?

[Geewhiz]

I have a hard time hearing year to year reports from non res hunters who base their entire view on their 6 day experience.

 

[wind gypsy]

I have a hard time hearing year to year reports from non res hunters who base their entire view on their 6 day experience.

Fair. For what it’s worth I used to spend 2 or 3 trips during hunting season and did some summer backpacking scouting trips as well.

 

[Greenhorn]

What is this legislation you speak of?

I was wondering the same thing. A lot to unpack in that first post and his reply. I think he must be talking about the MCS groups’ deer proposal - not really legislation. The proposal suggested taking general season deer hunting out of November. If I remember right, he was one of those guys that had some real heartburn over that.

@Jon Boy - sounds like you lace your boots up tighter the majority of us complaining softies and experience some awesome hunting. I’m glad that you have it all figured out and have a different opinion than some of us oldies who expect the instant gratification of the old days, and much easier hunting than you choose to tackle.

There’s no arguing with somebody else’s opinion, assumptions, or other wild fantasies, but I’ll share my opinion, again . Montana has some great hunting. It’s not improving, and it could be so much better.

 

[willfrye027]

I was wondering the same thing. A lot to unpack in that first post and his reply. I think he must be talking about the MCS groups’ deer proposal - not really legislation. The proposal suggested taking general season deer hunting out of November. If I remember right, he was one of those guys that had some real heartburn over that.

@Jon Boy - sounds like you lace your boots up tighter the majority of us complaining softies and experience some awesome hunting. I’m glad that you have it all figured out and have a different opinion than some of us oldies who expect the instant gratification of the old days, and much easier hunting than you choose to tackle.

There’s no arguing with somebody else’s opinion, assumptions, or other wild fantasies, but I’ll share my opinion, again . Montana has some great hunting. It’s not improving, and it could be so much better.

I think your last two sentences are spot on. You can easily replace Montana with any western state at this point..

However the easy button for bigger bucks would be to get rid of late November mule deer hunting, and MD doe hunting. Very few states have an “easy fix” like that, but getting your residents to give up an easy thanksgiving week road forky seems to be a challenge. Selfishly I’d love to see that proposal go through..I’d love to see some bigger deer on the landscape. For now I’m pretty happy with either sex elk every few years, it’s keeping my freezer full

 

[Fowl Play]

My general experience, not just in MT but in many states. Is that areas where hunting has “gone downhill”, “is terrible”, “ruined by NR” etc. many times just means you can’t shoot a monster from the road anymore…

It must have been great to experience that, you still can, just requires a little more work.

 

[freezerfull]

I have a hard time hearing year to year reports from non res hunters who base their entire view on their 6 day experience.

I can understand this and fully agree with residents who have witnessed the long term slide of MD particularly in eastern Montana, something needs to change.

I would like to know though. What is it that most eastern Montana residents want to see? A 180” buck in every draw? Easy road hunting that allows them to look over multiple mature bucks? I ask these things from genuine curiosity. In my limited amount of days in Montana forky units, I have not found it hard to turn up mature age class bucks on public land. And by mature I mean 4.5+ age, not 160”+ typicals though I’ve encountered a few of those.

 

[AHayes111]

This is wisdom. Thank you for this.

In your opinion, what has caused the trend?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Could be a very long answer,
The short answer is everything.
I can only really speak for SE MT, so I will direct my answer for there. I first started hunting in 1978, back then you could hunt just about any place by just asking to hunt, but it was also the start of the end of the hand shake access. The winter of 78/79 hit and that is what started the leasing by outfitters. People talk about the recent tough winter as being the reason for the current drop in numbers and it is certainly part of it. 78/79 was much worse and the reason is because winter started early that year. On Nov tenth we had over a foot of snow and that snow and a lot more was still on the ground well into April. Deer numbers were devastated and because of this outfitters started leasing private land. Doug Gardner told me he signed the first lease in Powder River County. The reason, After the winter of 78/79, he could no longer find the quality hunting his clients demanded unless he found a way to restrict access. Leasing snowballed after that and this displaced plenty of hunters from private and squeezed them onto Public.
The deer however recovered quickly from the winter and 87 was the best year I have ever seen as far as the number of truly big deer on the Custer and surrounding public. Just about every drainage had a 180 inch buck or two. I can think of several days where I would see more then one. Eight eight was a horrible drought and bucks were stunted and by 89 and into the 90's word of big deer on the Custer was spreading fast. Hunters flocked to the Custer in droves. People talk about how social media and hunting shows has ruined the Custer, The wave of new hunters brought by this is not nearly as large as the number brought by just word of mouth back in the early 90's. The difference is the Custer had more deer to go around back then and fewer tags to fill. Fill your A tag and you were hunting birds the rest of the season.
That changed in the 90's, Some time in the mid 90's FWP started issuing doe tags that were good region wide. You could buy doe tags in the 80's but those tags had restrictions limiting you to places that had an abundance of does. The up to 11,000 region wide doe tags had no such restrictions and on where the tag was filled and big blocks of public took the brunt of the doe hunting pressure for various reasons. Then came the winter of 96/97, Just like 78/79, deep snow arrived early and stayed well into April. Deer died by the thousands, but again the recovery was soon behind and by 2004 deer numbers on private land were sky high, but unlike the recovery from 78/79, the recovery on the big blocks of Public like the Custer was not nearly as robust as that of the private land. I lay the blame for this on the region wide doe tags. Private land river bottoms and hay fields are just more productive than the rough hills and timber on much of the public land. Deer naturally recover faster on private then they do on public and when FWP counts started showing a recovery, doe tags were quickly issued in large numbers, problem was the public herd was still lagging on the recovery, but took the brunt of the harvest when tags were issued.
The next big historical event started in the late 90's, This is where the elk started to repopulate SE MT and the elk attracted plenty of people. Archery season went from very few hunters to almost as crowded as rifle season. There are 280 bull tag holders and almost none of them are hunting with out a few friends that are helping find a big bull. Also there are people with cow tags or looking to fill there A tag on a cow or spike. It all adds up to a lot more hunters, hunter days and nearly all of them have a deer A tag that they are willing to fill if the opportunity happens.
The winter of 2012 was another bad one, and again the deer recovered on the more productive private, but this time the recovery was week at best on the Public, Again I put the blame on the region wide doe tags, but also much of the blame falls on the elk. FWP has long relied on the Law of Diminishing Returns to distribute hunters. The way this works is when game numbers are weak hunters will move to where the numbers are better and give the game a chance to recover. The problem is that the elk were little effected by the winter, so they still attracted hunters and those hunters all had deer tags to fill. The deer never got the break in hunters they needed to make a recovery. Then we had a couple of years of bad drought and a tough winter piled on to a struggling deer herd and that is where we are today.
That is kind of a history of the Custer, It is late, so when I get more time I will dig into what else has changed.

 

[Jon Boy]

In

I was wondering the same thing. A lot to unpack in that first post and his reply. I think he must be talking about the MCS groups’ deer proposal - not really legislation. The proposal suggested taking general season deer hunting out of November. If I remember right, he was one of those guys that had some real heartburn over that.

@Jon Boy - sounds like you lace your boots up tighter the majority of us complaining softies and experience some awesome hunting. I’m glad that you have it all figured out and have a different opinion than some of us oldies who expect the instant gratification of the old days, and much easier hunting than you choose to tackle.

There’s no arguing with somebody else’s opinion, assumptions, or other wild fantasies, but I’ll share my opinion, again . Montana has some great hunting. It’s not improving, and it could be so much better.

You’re correct and legislation was not the correct term, my apologies. I haven’t kept of with any of the updated proposals but seem to remember changing the whole states general seasons around to accommodate R 6&7 mule deer hunting.

I’ve be been proponent of eliminating all mule deer doe tags and requiring a mandatory reporting system for a long, long time.

I was hoping this wouldn’t turn into a SE MT mule deer thread. I completely understand and agree that the deer hunting out there is absolutely a sad affair, and I recognized that in the first few sentences of this thread. The thread was more to shine light on some of the fantastic hunting we still have and some examples on how much better it has gotten in some areas for some species. It seems this time of year every other thread is about changing this or that in Montana and how terrible everything is.

Also, it’s been very interesting to see how a lot of animals have adapted very quickly to long range optics and rifles and how fast they have changed their habits. It’s always interesting to see that success rates may fluctuate at the front end of a new technology but then often regulate to historic norms. Archery elk hunting and the advent of range finders comes to mind.

Seemingly, at the end of the day, it appears my experiences aren’t the norm of most. I’m not sure what everyone else wants in their hunting season as I seem to find good opportunities where ever I look. Maybe I am just another market hunter looking for the last best pockets of game.

 

[TheGrayRider]

I can say the same thing about Alaska. I moved to AK in the 80’s. I didn’t know how good I had it. Caribou were easy and plentiful, moose were easier (mostly because of any bull regs I think), and sheep hunting was pretty much a gimme and a 2-3 day effort. None of this is true anymore. At least that’s my perception. More pressure, better tools to access areas than before…..fishing is the same way….king salmon fishing in SC Alaska is almost non existent now.

Amen, brother. I have hunted and fished Alaska six different times over the years…great place, great hunts, and great people but from everything I continue to read and hear the hunting and fishing is on a stready downward trend.

My disposable income is going to the African continent - still the best value in hunting. I wonder if Africa will hit a downward trend in the coming years and decades like much of North America??

Good luck on your future hunt choices and happy hunting to all, TheGrayRider a.k.a Tom.

 

[Greenhorn]

Seemingly, at the end of the day, it appears my experiences aren’t the norm of most. I’m not sure what everyone else wants in their hunting season as I seem to find good opportunities where ever I look. Maybe I am just another market hunter looking for the last best pockets of game.

Or, it could be that some people are not as easily satisfied as others.

 

[Turkeygetpwnd38]

Montana has some great hunting. It’s not improving, and it could be so much better.

I love hunting Montana and always have good hunts. The sentence above is also true though.

 

[Greenhorn]

Could be a very long answer,
The short answer is everything.
I can only really speak for SE MT, so I will direct my answer for there. I first started hunting in 1978, back then you could hunt just about any place by just asking to hunt, but it was also the start of the end of the hand shake access. The winter of 78/79 hit and that is what started the leasing by outfitters. People talk about the recent tough winter as being the reason for the current drop in numbers and it is certainly part of it. 78/79 was much worse and the reason is because winter started early that year. On Nov tenth we had over a foot of snow and that snow and a lot more was still on the ground well into April. Deer numbers were devastated and because of this outfitters started leasing private land. Doug Gardner told me he signed the first lease in Powder River County. The reason, After the winter of 78/79, he could no longer find the quality hunting his clients demanded unless he found a way to restrict access. Leasing snowballed after that and this displaced plenty of hunters from private and squeezed them onto Public.
The deer however recovered quickly from the winter and 87 was the best year I have ever seen as far as the number of truly big deer on the Custer and surrounding public. Just about every drainage had a 180 inch buck or two. I can think of several days where I would see more then one. Eight eight was a horrible drought and bucks were stunted and by 89 and into the 90's word of big deer on the Custer was spreading fast. Hunters flocked to the Custer in droves. People talk about how social media and hunting shows has ruined the Custer, The wave of new hunters brought by this is not nearly as large as the number brought by just word of mouth back in the early 90's. The difference is the Custer had more deer to go around back then and fewer tags to fill. Fill your A tag and you were hunting birds the rest of the season.
That changed in the 90's, Some time in the mid 90's FWP started issuing doe tags that were good region wide. You could buy doe tags in the 80's but those tags had restrictions limiting you to places that had an abundance of does. The up to 11,000 region wide doe tags had no such restrictions and on where the tag was filled and big blocks of public took the brunt of the doe hunting pressure for various reasons. Then came the winter of 96/97, Just like 78/79, deep snow arrived early and stayed well into April. Deer died by the thousands, but again the recovery was soon behind and by 2004 deer numbers on private land were sky high, but unlike the recovery from 78/79, the recovery on the big blocks of Public like the Custer was not nearly as robust as that of the private land. I lay the blame for this on the region wide doe tags. Private land river bottoms and hay fields are just more productive than the rough hills and timber on much of the public land. Deer naturally recover faster on private then they do on public and when FWP counts started showing a recovery, doe tags were quickly issued in large numbers, problem was the public herd was still lagging on the recovery, but took the brunt of the harvest when tags were issued.
The next big historical event started in the late 90's, This is where the elk started to repopulate SE MT and the elk attracted plenty of people. Archery season went from very few hunters to almost as crowded as rifle season. There are 280 bull tag holders and almost none of them are hunting with out a few friends that are helping find a big bull. Also there are people with cow tags or looking to fill there A tag on a cow or spike. It all adds up to a lot more hunters, hunter days and nearly all of them have a deer A tag that they are willing to fill if the opportunity happens.
The winter of 2012 was another bad one, and again the deer recovered on the more productive private, but this time the recovery was week at best on the Public, Again I put the blame on the region wide doe tags, but also much of the blame falls on the elk. FWP has long relied on the Law of Diminishing Returns to distribute hunters. The way this works is when game numbers are weak hunters will move to where the numbers are better and give the game a chance to recover. The problem is that the elk were little effected by the winter, so they still attracted hunters and those hunters all had deer tags to fill. The deer never got the break in hunters they needed to make a recovery. Then we had a couple of years of bad drought and a tough winter piled on to a struggling deer herd and that is where we are today.
That is kind of a history of the Custer, It is late, so when I get more time I will dig into what else has changed.

All the fires in the last dozen years didn’t do the deer any favors over there either.

 

[nubbin]

I’m very novice to Montana, hunted region 7 in 2018, and 2023. Killed a young 4x4 first trip with Archery, doubled up with two mature bucks with my dad with rifle in 23. Weather and broken heater on our camper pushed us out 3 days earlier than planned. I felt pretty confident that in our group of 4 we could have put another mature buck on the ground. It was obvious from 18-23 there was a difference in deer numbers, but we were still finding deer. I’m from Arkansas, I’m gonna add a perspective here most people don’t get to view. I’m not denying mule deer populations on the decline, it’s very evident from data and hunters perspective. I hunt public land in the ozark mountains with steep, rugged terrain, low deer densities, and high hunting pressure. Killing a mature whitetail buck is a lot of work. Being out in eastern Montana, being able to cover ground, easily and quickly (on foot, not vehicle) and seeing multiple deer a day is a breath of fresh air. I love going out there in the open country and feeling confident that if I put in the same amount of effort as I do back home, I will have success. I’m not hunting trophy mule deer, I’m just trying to have a change of scenery and put a decent buck on the ground. I’ve had success doing it.

 

[mtwarden]

We're a big state and what is happening in one part is not in another.

What I can tell you from the last several years is that mule deer and antelope numbers in the Southeast part of the state have plummeted (I was a warden there for 24 years).

I hunt an area just west of the Divide for elk, decent elk numbers, but far from overrun. I've hunted this area for about ten years now and what I haven't seen is a mule deer (a few tracks). This habitat is definitely very suitable for deer and my guess that not too far in the distant past, there were decent mule deer numbers—not now.

I think elk numbers are pretty good to very good across most of the state. Mule deer numbers (at least in the areas I hunt) are very troubling.

 

[AHayes111]

These are some of the changes I have seen in 50 plus years

I will get some peoples boogeyman out of the way first. We have way more predators now than we did back then. 1080 had been banned less then ten years earlier. In 78 a good coyote would sell for a 100 dollars, That is like getting nearly 500 dollars today. Just about everyone was hunting and trapping coyotes. One friend of my fathers had a Piper Cub and was shooting, he would get 100's of coyotes. Far fewer coyotes back then.
I saw my fist lion tack in 78, it was a big deal, it was 8 years later when I saw the second. Now I see lions and track often, do a long hike in the rough country with a fresh snow and there is a good chance you cross a lion track. Way more lion now than when I first started hunting.
There was no bears to speak of in the 80's, First bear I crossed paths with was in the 90's, Now bears are everywhere. My brother has a camera on a rubbing post, Over 20 different bears used that post last year. I am not a big blame it on the predators kind of guy, but I would be naive to think that there is no effect. I think that the biggest effect is on the deer herd recovery after a drought or bad winter. The deer have always been boom and bust in Eastern MT, The difference now is the herd doesn't bounce back nearly as fast as we did form winters like 78 or 96. On Public land there is hardly any bounce back at all. Predators are likely at least part of the reason populations do not bounce back nearly as fast. I am not a blame it on predators guy and find the argument a bit of a distraction because I just don't see a viable way to address high predators numbers. 1080 is not coming back, I don't see coyotes bringing 500 dollars anytime soon. The lion quota often doesn't fill if the weather conditions are not ideal. The bear quota need to be increased, but even three times the current number is not going to matter much. We are just going to have to learn to live with predators. I am not sure doe tags on public land should ever come back.

As greenhorn mentions, the fires have been a big change. The first landscape type fire was in 2000. It burned 80 thousand acres and all of one of my go to spots. Before the fire, there was some open south facing slopes and the rest was mostly timber. Now most of the trees are gone. More deer food, less cover, The drop in quality bucks happened fast. In the late 80's and 90's I would find during the summer at least one 180 or better buck there and often two or even three. Since the fire I have seen two in the last 25 years. One of those is the buck in my avatar. Before the fire you could find the bucks on the south facing slopes eating sumac all summer long, as soon as the leaves were gone from the sumac the bucks would move into the timber and it was much tougher to find them and even if you did find one across the canyon it was hard to get a shot with out busting them in the timber. Now without the timber for cover, even a novice behind the glass can find the deer and with today's gear getting a shot is not hard. Add in snow and the rut and it is almost like shooting fish in a barrel. Very difficult for a buck with the potential to be big to live past age three and most don't make it past age 2. The only old big deer I have seen in the past 20 years survived by moving to lightly hunted private for most of rifle season or lived where there was large blocks of timber. With the Remington fire last year, there are no large blocks of timber left, Around 90% of the Custer has burned in the last 25 years, some of it more than once. The fires are a big reason why the quality of the bucks has tanked on the Custer in the last 25 years. It is not just the bucks, the fires haven't helped the does. FWP has given out as many as 11,000 doe tags in region 7. Individual hunters could buy enough tags to fill a pickup. Hence the term truck load tags. The number of tags is not the problem, during good years region seven can handle that kind of harvest if it was distributed evenly throughout the region. Problem is the harvest is not evenly distributed, it heavily skewed to public land. A party of three or four hunters with truck load tags can just about wipe out a doe family group when there is little to no cover for the does to hid. Seen it happen. Once the does are gone it takes years for them to repopulate with the fidelity does have to a home range. The fires have been great for making deer feed, but with out cover the deer are very vulnerable to hunters with rifles, add in snow and the rut and they don't stand a chance in an OTC district. I can go out of winter range and find Rabbit brush six feet high and winter fat up to my knee. Tons of feed, not may deer to eat it. The good news is with the recent cuts to doe tags and the elimination of doe hunting on Public land in regions 6 and 7, we are in the start of the recovery. It is not good. but it will improve. The deer food is there for it to happen. Bad news is. soon as deer herds show a recovery we could be right back to selling 11,000 region wide truck load tags and we will be right back to where we are now or worse the next time a bad winter or drought hits. Getting back to the quality bucks I enjoyed in the 90 is not going to happen until the timber grows back or there is some kind of change to season structure. Even with season structure change I don't have much confidence were will ever make all that much improvement in the quality of the bucks.

The make up of the hunters has changed.
When I first started hunting most of the hunters were from SE MT, ,the nearby small towns and the Reservations, Billings hunters were the outsiders.and from the most part they were day hunters and weekend warriors. You almost never ran into someone from west of Billings. The NR were from the Dakotas and the Midwest. The vast majority would come for opening week and were gone by the end of the second weekend. There was plenty of hunters, but for the most part it was pretty low impact with the bulk of the hunting pressure confined to the first week of the season and weekends. Now you still see some local hunters, but for the most part the locals have ether quit hunting or worked there way onto some private land. You almost never see someone from the Crow or Cheyenne, because quite frankly the hunting is quite a bit better on the reservations than it is on the Custer. Billings hunters have become almost like next door neighbors. There are lots of hunters from the western part of the state and there are just as many Washington and Oregon hunters as hunters from the Midwest. Now most of the hunters are camping and staying a week or two. The first week of the season is busy, but is mostly people looking to find an elk. Most of the deer hunters wait until the rut starts and pressure on deer is concentrated in the three weeks around Nov 15th. It all adds up to high impact non stop pressure for the enter five week season. I am sure that there is still some hard to get to spots with quality hunting in western MT, but I have a hard time believing the much of the western part of the state has not seen serious decline in the last 40 years. If western Montana was holding steady, we would not be seeing the crowds of western Mt hunters here in the east and Washington and Oregon hunters would not be driving a 1000 miles extra to fill their tag on a small three or four point mule deer.

The elk

I saw my first elk in SE Mt in the early 70's, the next time I saw an elk was in the early 90's on Powder River, in five years they were over the divide on Tongue River. Now I if I try I see elk every day, There are more elk then mule deer. When elk move in mule deer tend to struggle. It is not just the competition with the elk, it is also the people the elk bring. Pressure during archery season before the elk was nonexistent, now archery season is busy. There are 280, soon to be 325 bull tags given out, and all most none of those hunters is hunting by themselves, most have one or two scouters helping them find a bull of a lifetime. There are also plenty of people with cow tags and you can shoot a cow or a spike off of the Custer with your A tag. All adds up to more hunters and all of them have an OTC deer tag to fill if the opportunity presents its self. Some places on the Custer that were very good deer hunting in the 90's are so full of elk hunters that deer hunters are looking else where and getting into places that never saw a hunter in the past. The elk have added a lot more pressure.

Increased opportunities

When I first started to hunt as a small boy with my dad you could shoot two buck deer and the season ended two weeks earlier. By the time I was hunting in 78 we were down to one buck and the season was extended to the weekend after Thanksgiving. The elimination of the second buck tag is the only permanent reductions in opportunity in my lifetime. Maybe the recent restrictions on doe tags will be the second. We have added a two day youth season, started the season on Saturday and a muzzle loader season. In 1978 when you filled your A tag you were down to hunting birds the rest of the year. Not so anymore. now we have up to 11,000 mule deer doe tags, whitetail doe tags, Cow elk tags, Rifle elk tags if you are lucky, if you are not you can still hunt for a cow or spike with your elk A tag. A bear season that starts in September and lion hunting during the winter. It all adds up to more hunter days and more pressure all fall long.

There are more change, but we have a 1000 character limit. If I get time I can post more.

 

[tboltz34]

I've been to southeast Montana the past 4 years chasing Antelope. 2022 seemed to have the most antelope with less in 2023 and 2024. This 2025 season seemed to have more than the previous two years.

Although, I'm not actively looking for them, we have definitely seen more mule deer starting in 2024 and even more so in 2025.

This doesn't mean all too much coming from a non-resident who spends less than a week there a year. I have a ton of fun but I have no idea what the "glory days" were like.

 

[TradLife406]

Montana sucks. Pressure is through the roof and populations are down.
There definitely is an element of elk hanging out on private land.
Where I used to hunt the elk hang on the private all year. They no longer go up in big herds to high country public to summer.
Also the predator issue is a factor. Wolves have elk so scared they won't come to calf sounds in archery season.

 

[Lawnboi]

These are some of the changes I have seen in 50 plus years

I will get some peoples boogeyman out of the way first. We have way more predators now than we did back then. 1080 had been banned less then ten years earlier. In 78 a good coyote would sell for a 100 dollars, That is like getting nearly 500 dollars today. Just about everyone was hunting and trapping coyotes. One friend of my fathers had a Piper Cub and was shooting, he would get 100's of coyotes. Far fewer coyotes back then.
I saw my fist lion tack in 78, it was a big deal, it was 8 years later when I saw the second. Now I see lions and track often, do a long hike in the rough country with a fresh snow and there is a good chance you cross a lion track. Way more lion now than when I first started hunting.
There was no bears to speak of in the 80's, First bear I crossed paths with was in the 90's, Now bears are everywhere. My brother has a camera on a rubbing post, Over 20 different bears used that post last year. I am not a big blame it on the predators kind of guy, but I would be naive to think that there is no effect. I think that the biggest effect is on the deer herd recovery after a drought or bad winter. The deer have always been boom and bust in Eastern MT, The difference now is the herd doesn't bounce back nearly as fast as we did form winters like 78 or 96. On Public land there is hardly any bounce back at all. Predators are likely at least part of the reason populations do not bounce back nearly as fast. I am not a blame it on predators guy and find the argument a bit of a distraction because I just don't see a viable way to address high predators numbers. 1080 is not coming back, I don't see coyotes bringing 500 dollars anytime soon. The lion quota often doesn't fill if the weather conditions are not ideal. The bear quota need to be increased, but even three times the current number is not going to matter much. We are just going to have to learn to live with predators. I am not sure doe tags on public land should ever come back.

As greenhorn mentions, the fires have been a big change. The first landscape type fire was in 2000. It burned 80 thousand acres and all of one of my go to spots. Before the fire, there was some open south facing slopes and the rest was mostly timber. Now most of the trees are gone. More deer food, less cover, The drop in quality bucks happened fast. In the late 80's and 90's I would find during the summer at least one 180 or better buck there and often two or even three. Since the fire I have seen two in the last 25 years. One of those is the buck in my avatar. Before the fire you could find the bucks on the south facing slopes eating sumac all summer long, as soon as the leaves were gone from the sumac the bucks would move into the timber and it was much tougher to find them and even if you did find one across the canyon it was hard to get a shot with out busting them in the timber. Now without the timber for cover, even a novice behind the glass can find the deer and with today's gear getting a shot is not hard. Add in snow and the rut and it is almost like shooting fish in a barrel. Very difficult for a buck with the potential to be big to live past age three and most don't make it past age 2. The only old big deer I have seen in the past 20 years survived by moving to lightly hunted private for most of rifle season or lived where there was large blocks of timber. With the Remington fire last year, there are no large blocks of timber left, Around 90% of the Custer has burned in the last 25 years, some of it more than once. The fires are a big reason why the quality of the bucks has tanked on the Custer in the last 25 years. It is not just the bucks, the fires haven't helped the does. FWP has given out as many as 11,000 doe tags in region 7. Individual hunters could buy enough tags to fill a pickup. Hence the term truck load tags. The number of tags is not the problem, during good years region seven can handle that kind of harvest if it was distributed evenly throughout the region. Problem is the harvest is not evenly distributed, it heavily skewed to public land. A party of three or four hunters with truck load tags can just about wipe out a doe family group when there is little to no cover for the does to hid. Seen it happen. Once the does are gone it takes years for them to repopulate with the fidelity does have to a home range. The fires have been great for making deer feed, but with out cover the deer are very vulnerable to hunters with rifles, add in snow and the rut and they don't stand a chance in an OTC district. I can go out of winter range and find Rabbit brush six feet high and winter fat up to my knee. Tons of feed, not may deer to eat it. The good news is with the recent cuts to doe tags and the elimination of doe hunting on Public land in regions 6 and 7, we are in the start of the recovery. It is not good. but it will improve. The deer food is there for it to happen. Bad news is. soon as deer herds show a recovery we could be right back to selling 11,000 region wide truck load tags and we will be right back to where we are now or worse the next time a bad winter or drought hits. Getting back to the quality bucks I enjoyed in the 90 is not going to happen until the timber grows back or there is some kind of change to season structure. Even with season structure change I don't have much confidence were will ever make all that much improvement in the quality of the bucks.

The make up of the hunters has changed.
When I first started hunting most of the hunters were from SE MT, ,the nearby small towns and the Reservations, Billings hunters were the outsiders.and from the most part they were day hunters and weekend warriors. You almost never ran into someone from west of Billings. The NR were from the Dakotas and the Midwest. The vast majority would come for opening week and were gone by the end of the second weekend. There was plenty of hunters, but for the most part it was pretty low impact with the bulk of the hunting pressure confined to the first week of the season and weekends. Now you still see some local hunters, but for the most part the locals have ether quit hunting or worked there way onto some private land. You almost never see someone from the Crow or Cheyenne, because quite frankly the hunting is quite a bit better on the reservations than it is on the Custer. Billings hunters have become almost like next door neighbors. There are lots of hunters from the western part of the state and there are just as many Washington and Oregon hunters as hunters from the Midwest. Now most of the hunters are camping and staying a week or two. The first week of the season is busy, but is mostly people looking to find an elk. Most of the deer hunters wait until the rut starts and pressure on deer is concentrated in the three weeks around Nov 15th. It all adds up to high impact non stop pressure for the enter five week season. I am sure that there is still some hard to get to spots with quality hunting in western MT, but I have a hard time believing the much of the western part of the state has not seen serious decline in the last 40 years. If western Montana was holding steady, we would not be seeing the crowds of western Mt hunters here in the east and Washington and Oregon hunters would not be driving a 1000 miles extra to fill their tag on a small three or four point mule deer.

The elk

I saw my first elk in SE Mt in the early 70's, the next time I saw an elk was in the early 90's on Powder River, in five years they were over the divide on Tongue River. Now I if I try I see elk every day, There are more elk then mule deer. When elk move in mule deer tend to struggle. It is not just the competition with the elk, it is also the people the elk bring. Pressure during archery season before the elk was nonexistent, now archery season is busy. There are 280, soon to be 325 bull tags given out, and all most none of those hunters is hunting by themselves, most have one or two scouters helping them find a bull of a lifetime. There are also plenty of people with cow tags and you can shoot a cow or a spike off of the Custer with your A tag. All adds up to more hunters and all of them have an OTC deer tag to fill if the opportunity presents its self. Some places on the Custer that were very good deer hunting in the 90's are so full of elk hunters that deer hunters are looking else where and getting into places that never saw a hunter in the past. The elk have added a lot more pressure.

Increased opportunities

When I first started to hunt as a small boy with my dad you could shoot two buck deer and the season ended two weeks earlier. By the time I was hunting in 78 we were down to one buck and the season was extended to the weekend after Thanksgiving. The elimination of the second buck tag is the only permanent reductions in opportunity in my lifetime. Maybe the recent restrictions on doe tags will be the second. We have added a two day youth season, started the season on Saturday and a muzzle loader season. In 1978 when you filled your A tag you were down to hunting birds the rest of the year. Not so anymore. now we have up to 11,000 mule deer doe tags, whitetail doe tags, Cow elk tags, Rifle elk tags if you are lucky, if you are not you can still hunt for a cow or spike with your elk A tag. A bear season that starts in September and lion hunting during the winter. It all adds up to more hunter days and more pressure all fall long.

There are more change, but we have a 1000 character limit. If I get time I can post more.

Appreciate the history and insight.

Sounds like a much more complex problem than most think.

Need to go crack some coyotes. I know it was said even in the 2000s coyotes were hunted hard. When the fur market went tits up we saw a huge increase in coyotes.

 

[TL406]

This is an insightful thread, I appreciate you old timers taking the time to write out these long responses. My perspective on my home state has changed a lot in the last couple years. I'm a transplant so my own anecdotes only really go back about a decade and are probably only really worthwhile going back 4-5 years. My current view is this: Montana is very good for two things, Spring Bear and Archery Elk. Its good enough for archery antelope; the 900 tag is nice; I really appreciate the opportunity to get some stalks in before September and have been able to arrow a buck any year that I give it an honest attempt. Rifle elk is an interesting thing in Montana. The general units, in my mind, have great trophy potential but, man, is it a lot of work to get on big bulls in rifle season, especially if the snow depth doesn't materialize up high like this year. The deer thing has been explained already by people that I think are plenty informed. I think that there are mountain mulies to be had but they're very hard fought and other states have opportunities that are more interesting to me right now. I haven't killed a muley buck in Montana in 6 years because I know the populations are struggling and I haven't been able to get on an old crusty one. So, until things change, I will continue to give it my all during spring bear and archery elk. If I still have an elk tag going into rifle season, I'll just plan to suck it up and go spike out up high and suffer a little. And in the winter, I think we all have an obligation to kill some predators, which I need to do better at.

My only personal gripe, and I don't really think anything will change on it, is the side-by-side traffic. I have to believe that the mobility of side-by-sides in all these western states is really messing up the ungulate movement out of the high country, and it is a newer issue. Side-by-sides are generally louder than trucks and they can climb these jeep trails on BLM when trucks cannot. Especially in SW MT, I think these side-by-sides are exacerbating the issue of seeing big bull elk up literally with the mountain goats on these mountain tops, knee deep in snow. They're still killable up there, but not when you have a three-day weekend to do it. So that is my two cents: If we could close some of these BLM two tracks, even if it was just from Nov 1st on and keep vehicles from romping up the sides of these mountains and pushing the elk into the scree fields, I think people's experiences would improve.

 

[bigv]

I may be out of line on this comment because I have never hunted montana and don't know the seasons for sure but....to the OP, your findings may be skewed. You say you see all kinds of elk during deer season and and all kinds of deer during elk season. Animals pattern you/hunters the same as we pattern them. So youre up chasing elk around during the elk season on public. Elk move off to private. As time passes after elk season is over, they'll slowly move back. Probably not catching all the human scent around anymore. So now you go deer hunting a month later and see elk and think public is full of elk. Visa versa for deer. This is how it is in SD. Bow hunters are all over public shooting 100 yd youtube shots wounding game and chasing them off public. So then public can be tough. Scent tracks all over. But you go back for late seasons and it can be good. Just a thought. I don't know Montana's season dates but speculate I'm not far off.