Montana reducing nonresident deer tags

[Tmac]

I’ve hunted MT as a NR consistently since 1993. I was happy to see most MD doe tags finally almost eliminated in SE MT recently. I have zero issue with dropping NR buck tag numbers now due to low populations on the east side. I fear it is not enough based on what I have seen where we have been hunting.

We’ve had access to 20 sections in the far SE for about 10 years. Always a good population of WT, MD and Antelope. That started to change with bad droughts 20/21 ish. Hemorrhagic outbreaks took down over 1/2 the game in that time. The winter of 22 pretty much finished them off. This is all private land and lightly hunted. Just 4-6 deer a year are taken. Where we’d see 150-200 WT/MD in a couple sections of mixed grass alfalfa, there were 15. The next year 7.

The problem in this area was not hunters, it was weather. All the adjoining ranches are in a similar place. Virtually no recruitment for several years off a terribly small remaining population. All it takes is coyotes or a couple cats to keep that small group small, aka a predator pit. 3 cats got taken out 2 years ago so that should help.

We have not hunted the ranch since fall 2021. It is going to take several more mild winters and adequate moisture for this area to have any hope. 2,500 fewer NR tags won’t hurt, but I fear it is not enough to help.

I 100% agree with mandatory reporting and management of tag numbers by unit/area. Without this, the recovery is likely to be long and drawn out in the worst hit areas, like we hunt in the SE. I hope I’m wrong as I really enjoy my SE MT hunting trips.

 

[Chris in TN]

I have several friends who have large ranches in the Big Hole. They've had the night kill permits when the elk were coming in ONLY at night. They were spending the day on NF and crossing the river at night to feed on their calving grounds. I know of 3 times in the last 40 years that it has been done. The last time it was done for elk (around 2015) they took 28 elk and donated them to the food bank. This was done after hazing, fences, and flash bangs failed to keep them out. As for deer, I've had multiple ranchers show me their kill permits when we show up for a damage hunt. They had gut piles all over from shooting them at night off the hay stacks. One rancher bragged about shooting them in the guts with a 22 so they'll run away and "feed the coyotes". When the population becomes a burden to the landowners, wildgame has no value and is treated like varmints. Harsh reality.

Jay

That’s good info. Years ago I got to be involved in depredation on a certain farm. Weird experience.

I can see how such numbers could skew the picture of how healthy an area was, if some portion of it saw deer as a pest and some other part was overhunted. That was our situation - the few thousand acres next to us was grossly overcrowded. The farmer begged us to shoot more does because his lease hunters wouldn’t, until he forced them to do it or lose the lease. But you could go 5-10 miles in several directions and deer numbers were very low. It would be impossible to make general statements about that areas deer population that encompassed all the nuances you’d see between two spots a few miles apart.

Also, while we enjoyed the high deer sightings and harvest, the summer depredation was a huge waste of venison. Most summer kills were left laying, but state law only allowed them to be shot while *in* the crops. Drop a doe in a beanfield and if you had to drive across the beans to get her, you did more damage than the deer. Sounds like it’s not as bad where you were.