I can give you the quick rundown.
Way back in the 90's the FWP came up with an idea to develop an elk management plan (EMP).
In that plan there was supposed to be input from sportsmen, landowners, and other interests. Long story short, sportsmen got rolled and elk objective numbers were set very low and based largely on landowner tolerance. There was an exemption for excluding elk from the objectives if those elk were being harbored. To my knowledge that has been ignored and used only once.
Things sort of just rolled around until Debby Barrett (R) Dillon, along with the R dominated State Legislature passed a law requiring the FWP to hold elk at the objective numbers found in the EMP.
The first response from the FWP was to just issue a boatload of cow permits in areas where elk needed to be killed. That worked fine in areas with lots of public land, but in areas where elk could harbor on inaccessible private, the elk just continued to expand. That "management" style was a failure as all it did was kill off and greatly reduce the elk numbers on public lands, since the cow tags were not limited to private land. In other words, the wrong elk were being killed for decades, all the while the elk on private continued to keep the unit wide/herd units above objective. Along the way was a "revision" to the EMP that didn't do much.
Then there were things tried like depredation hunts, some success some failures. All the while the interest in elk hunting continued to expand, Montana's population continued to increase. The elk on public continued to also get pounded via MT's traditional 6 weeks of archery and 5 weeks of rifle hunting.
The next wise idea was to invoke shoulder seasons on a "trial basis" in a few areas to see if pounding on elk on private land for 6 months would work. Before the ink was dry on the proposals, and before any data was gathered on whether the seasons would work, it was expanded to 44 units across the State. Sportsmen were lied to and in spite of fierce opposition, the shoulder seasons continued.
The MTFWP has refused to recognize that you can't continue to manage elk the exact same way now, as they did in 1957. The same general season structure as when my Dad started hunting in the 50's. They also don't recognize that public land elk have taken an absolute whooping as technology in archery, rifle, backpacks, GPS, etc. etc. No adjustment to season length, or the ability for 130,000 residents to purchase OTC general tags and at least another 17K+ NR's to do the same.
I could see the decimation taking place on public lands. Elk numbers plummeted through the early 2000's on public land, and sky rocketed on private. Of course wolves, bears, and everything else was blamed, but its human hunting that caused a majority of the declines combined with some habitat loss, and of course also some increased predation that didn't help.
I killed a nice 6 point, from a herd a small herd of bulls in 2012 on a NR license. I had hunted that country every year since 1979, and I know that country and the elk there better than anyone alive. I knew the bulls I was killing in the 2000's, was not killing the surplus, it was devastating what little was left. I decided I would not kill another bull in Montana until things changed. I felt like I was killing the last buffalo when I killed that bull and wished I hadn't. I wrote a letter to the FWP Director, the Governor, and local Biologist explaining all of what was happening and had happened. Didn't hear a word back.
Nothing has changed since, and now the UPOM, has filed a lawsuit since the FWP is, in fact, breaking the law because they can't hold elk at objective numbers.
The human population has continued to increase, elk hunting on public has continued to suck, and management has not changed a bit since the 1950's.
That's how this mess has happened...and there's one political party that has caused it all.
