Montana season change proposal

[Deadfall]

Yuck

 

[Deadfall]

August is too hot. They never going to reduce "pressure" without reducing tags.
Turn a bunch of rifles loose on elk during peak of rut.

All this blaming fwp crap gotta stop. If yall care so much about mule deer, stop shooting little ones. By that I mean anything under 180. Let then grow up.

Everyone runs around shooting 150 inch ish mule deer thinking they got a nice one.

Second...Start actively hunting wolves!

Everything else is just 6 year old fit throwin

 

[bigsky2]

I agree with everyone that FWP seems adamantly opposed to mandatory reporting. The choose your region part of the proposal would not help with the crowding issues, but it would tell FWP where hunters are going even if mandatory reporting isn’t implemented. After a few years of choose your region, FWP would have the data to determine if certain regions are seeing too much pressure. They could then implement region caps. The choose your deer species and separating mule deer and elk seasons would spread out pressure.

 

[mtwarden]

The choose your region part of the proposal would not help with the crowding issues, but it would tell FWP where hunters are going even if mandatory reporting isn’t implemented. After a few years of choose your region, FWP would have the data to determine if certain regions are seeing too much pressure. They could then implement region caps.

I’d have to disagree. There is no guarantee where folks are going; it could easily change every year.

If the majority of hunters hunt a single district in a region and very few hunt the other districts, is that too much pressure for a region or not enough?

Pressure doesn’t equal harvest, harvest is a direct impact on populations.

What are you going to base your region caps on? If deer are being under harvested in regions with lots of pressure, but over harvested in a region with low pressure; moving more hunters to the region with over harvest is just going impact that population more.

 

[Jhart]

Interesting proposals

 

[AHayes111]

Cow hunting only on private land, yeah I'm not thrilled with that at all. Not lots of good opportunities on private land and is only getting less and less. If the district is at or below objective—fine. If the district is above objective, issue B tags or just make that district either sex—lots of folks would use their A elk tag to harvest a cow.

This proposal is not cow hunting on private land only. There is sill going to be cow hunting on public and private during Nov.
The reason for private land cow hunting two weeks in Oct is to give landowners the opportunity to bust cows off of ag fields earlier.
A long time ago when outfitters were just starting to lease up land for hunting in eastern MT, Mark Hinkel (outdoor editor for the Billings Gazzette) specuted that the leasing would only be tempary and as soon as game numbers started damaging crops landowner would turn back to hunters for relife. The current season is part of the reason why he was wrong, The current season is just too late in the year to fingure into the calculus when it comes to crop damage. Bye the time the seson opens nearly all the crop damage has all ready happened. The only hope is that hunting might reduce damage next year. To do this you have reduce the populaton below recurtment, This is difficult with deer and impossable with elk.

I am also one of the hunters/landower that worked on this propsal and just found this thread. I haven't had time to read all 25 pages and am going to be busy the next few days trying to figure out a way forward for mule deer. When I get back I will post up my thought on why this is a better way forward than the current season struture,

Good to see your smiling face Jason,

 

[Jason Snyder]

Keep up the good work my friend.