Montana reducing nonresident deer tags

[mt terry d]

When talking to FWP staff I did get a few, "We cannot say anything that would disagree with the Commissions decisions."

Exactly.

I spoke with 5 biologist in four different regions and 2 wardens in different parts of the state. Habitat and weather are the main drivers of population and no amount of action from FWP is going to change either of those.

I don't think anyone expects FWT to manage weather or habitat.
They can manage/affect hunting pressure and predators and we expect them to do that

I do agree that the FPW Commission is not accountable to anyone as they are appointed by the Governor. If you want different policy then your gonna have to

That's not on us. We don't have the power to "elect a governor with a different approach." They can promise the moon but there is ZERO accountability for that or the destructive decisions they force on us.
Without an actual purely public method of accountability.

Bottom line: the system/process is flawed.
Eliminate the Agency and hire a private firm.

 

[AHayes111]

When FWP first started to issue doe tags in region 7 that were good region wide, I thought it was a good idea. My thinking was that people would shoot a few does from the roads first part of the and the pressure would push the does back of the roads. This was going to save a bunch of back country bucks that got shot by road hunters during the rut.
I was wrong. The number of doe tags in the region was never the issue, it was the uneven distribution of where they are filled. Doe herds on public near roads never moved because they are so faithful to their home range and got slaughtered. Add in a drought and a bad winter and doe numbers in some place got so low that they struggled to make a recovery during good years. The private does did much better and as soon as the private herd showed signs of recovery, we were back to issuing 11,000 good anywhere doe tags and you could buy enough of them to fill a pickup with does. This added insult to injury to a struggling public land doe herd.
Biologist are going to have to come to grips with the fact that the law of diminishing returns will not work to distribute harvest when access to private land is restricted.
The doe harvest also allowed many that were primary looking to fill the freezer to also become trophy hunters. With the doe tags you could fill the freezer with does and the pressure to shoot the first buck was off. This resulted in people hunting more day and added pressure. It was also hard on the bucks with the potential to be big. We can not all be trophy hunters.