Less NR Deer tags soon to come in MT

[Buglebrush]

Opening this back up

#1 no mule deer doe tags unless depredation hunt requested and local bio agrees.

#2 mandatory reporting for every big game species tag.

#3 count every species you give a tag for. In region 4 this is the first year(and only in two units) WT have been counted while doing deer flights.

#4 units with a declining population averaged over 2-3 yearly counts are now 2 week season general and 3 week draw(rut hunt).

#5 (for legal only since our state doesn’t like to follow laws) follow the law 10% non resident tags. Come home to hunt only allowed within 5 years after residency change, No more tags for billionaires, no splitting of big game combo tags into orphan tags and excluding.

#6 commission is elected official from ballot not an appointed official by governor.

These are my opinions and mine alone. Crucify me as you may, I have thought long and hard and do travel a lot of the state we have healthy mule deer in certain areas and poor in others. We also have a biologist issue, that is for another discussion thread though.

#5 is so important.

 

[RutandDie]

Interesting. Just crunched some numbers on this. We can all agree Montana is probably the most liberal mule deer hunting state in the union. Nevada is probably the most conservative of the West.

That said, there are about as many deer in Region 7 as the entire state of Nevada. 2024 Nevada mule deer harvest: 5,367 mule deer. 2024 Montana Region 7 mule deer harvest: 7238 mule deer. That's a 8% harvest of the population in Nevada versus 10% in Montana. This is assuming harvest estimates are somewhat effective.

While crowding certainly is real, I just am consistently worried we believe hunters have a bigger impact on the critters that are out there than we do. Can we shoot out the top age class, I'd say so! Especially because we are selecting for the top few percentage of bucks. But, as weather patterns are favorable, Montana will likely bounce back to 2019-2021 numbers and I'd like to see opportunity bounce back the same. Just don't see it happening and a Montana General opportunity hunt will take 5 preference points to draw in a few years.

This is more overall commentary on trends in the West and I don't see it being great for keeping nonresidents advocating for habitat and access. Just making the pie smaller.

With all due respect I’m not sure you have a full understanding of what happened in region 7. The deer herds never recovered after back to back bad winters 2011-2012 even though FWP’s flawed data showed they did. During this same time Newburg started his hit piece on southeast Montana. Hunters especially nonresident shifted to DIY public land. Fwp added liberal doe tags where many areas were yet to recover. I personally watched nonresidents take trailer loads of does out of the same area 3 consecutive years. That deer herd has never recovered. There is no other state that would even consider managing like Montana does. 2500 less nonresidents isn’t a bad thing for our deer herd an hopefully will help with the crowded public lands, I have to laugh when people talk about how good things were between 2015-2020 because that is simply not the case. You would have to go back a lot of years to see things good.