SE Montana winter kill

And there lies the mindset of the guys buying the B tags. Most pay no attention to anything other than yanking the trigger. mtmuley

I was joking about the there must be plenty part - in my opinion there should not be a b mule tag in montana
 
We got 4” Of snow last night but it will be gone by Tuesday for the next storm to roll in Friday. Seen reports of 12”-18” of snow in Friday’s storm. Poor ranchers trying to calve in this junk

Yes , here in eastern ND they are talking upwards of 2' Thursday -Saturday
 
I have been shed hunting east of Lewistown for the last 5 weekends, in the same general area and find a new dead deer every day I go out. Still a few running around, but a couple of them look rough.

Why not leave 'em be then?
 
I think the one thing hunters Could do , key word being could , is lay off the doe's . But hey if Fwp sells em there must be plenty of deer . Right ......

The problem is not the doe tags being issued by the FWP. The problem is the doe tags are not limited to private land in some regions. I know several private ranches that have a hundred or more mule deer on their alfalfa fields each evening. Harvesting does there is probably healthy for the herd.

One of the problems IMO is the management areas are too large and the FWP thinks hunters will self distribute but are unable to do so due to limited access. Therefore the large parcels of public get hammered for 11 weeks.
 
Big timber is in a Chinook wind zone. If it is 30° in Billings, it will be 20° in Columbus, and 40 to 50° in big timber, often with winds up to 70 mph. Even on days when it does not have the warmth, the winds keep the snow clear. You will find the same thing at the Stillwater mine at nye, on the east facing Beartooth foothills between Red Lodge and the Wyoming border, and in the Livingston area.

Thanks a ton I have heard they got Chinook winds there just have never experienced it I guess. Pretty cool stuff crazy I swear.
 
I was joking about the there must be plenty part - in my opinion there should not be a b mule tag in montana

The 11k doe tags issued for r7 last season was the best thing that could have happened for our mule deer going into this winter! I asked a biologist! Purty sure it's gotta be true.
 
Thanks a ton I have heard they got Chinook winds there just have never experienced it I guess. Pretty cool stuff crazy I swear.

It’s pretty incredible. Sometimes it doesn’t reach all the way to big Timber. The biggest change i saw this winter was about -2 in Big Timber and high 30s in McLeod just to the south.
It will steam up the windows of the car it warms so fast.
 
I was on the road yesterday and listened to Herring and Jacobs. Interesting discussion around 42 min.

https://www.backcountryhunters.org/bha_podcast_blast_episode_13

This was the part that got me fired up. Though, I disagree with Mr. Jacobs when he says, "You can't ban the line, so you gotta do it by shortening the seasons."

In that instance the "line" he is referring to is the threshold of acceptable technologies. I think we would do well to decide on acceptable thresholds and ban at will, and in the long run we would make hunting more defensible to hunters and non-hunters alike.
 
Nameless, I wish I could agree with you but I can't. You wrote, "I think we would do well to decide on acceptable thresholds..."

That right there, I do not think is possible. Even if there was a mechanism for it, we couldn't come to any sort of agreement about what is acceptable. As a result, shorter seasons and fewer tags are the solutions. And that forces everyone to step up a level in the technologies they are willing to use simply to be able to have a reasonable chance of success.

Imagine the seasons and tag numbers for a world in which only patched roundballs with iron sights and longbows with wooden arrows are permitted, vs one where every sort of game finding technology in the world is at use, adaptive, "Smart Optics", 6.5 Creeds ( ;) ) look down satellite imagery, every sort of engineered product you can imagine (and zillions that you can't imagine but are just around the corner now). Where would the sporting goods industry be if those sorts of rules were set in place? It would be tough to make a living for them.
 
Great stuff Mtmiller. Thank you for sharing that. Pretty much sums up what has happened to our herd. Would love to see healthy herd with age structure. Unfortunately this winter will give MT fwp an excuse as to why we are not seeing older deer and people will continue to come shoot their meat buck.
 
Nameless, I wish I could agree with you but I can't. You wrote, "I think we would do well to decide on acceptable thresholds..."

That right there, I do not think is possible. Even if there was a mechanism for it, we couldn't come to any sort of agreement about what is acceptable. As a result, shorter seasons and fewer tags are the solutions. And that forces everyone to step up a level in the technologies they are willing to use simply to be able to have a reasonable chance of success.

Imagine the seasons and tag numbers for a world in which only patched roundballs with iron sights and longbows with wooden arrows are permitted, vs one where every sort of game finding technology in the world is at use, adaptive, "Smart Optics", 6.5 Creeds ( ;) ) look down satellite imagery, every sort of engineered product you can imagine (and zillions that you can't imagine but are just around the corner now). Where would the sporting goods industry be if those sorts of rules were set in place? It would be tough to make a living for them.

I don't want to hijack this thread with a subject I've beat to death any more than I already have, but I want to clarify. I understand why you feel that way, but disagree. We've done this with other things already. You already can't hunt with certain calibers, you already can't use certain technologies(Infrared, two-way comms, etc). Also, this has already been done in certain hunting areas in other parts of the country. Primitive hunting areas exist. So of course it could be done. We would just decide how primitive we want to be.

The threshold being somewhat arbitrary, we certainly would not have consensus, just like we didn't with other arbitrary thresholds like speed limits, voting ages, drinking ages, caliber limits, etc. Those things work fine though. You come as close as you can to achieving your goal on your threshold decision, and codify it.

Lastly, I'm not talking about doing this widespread across a whole state or even a majority of districts. I'm just never going to accept that shortened seasons or LE tags are our only two solutions to reduce hunter take. And in fact, would argue that those are only bandaids to a problem that will perpetually get worse, requiring a bigger and bigger bandaid until hunting seasons are too short to be meaningful or so few can hunt that hunting becomes less relevant to the whole. Yes, those aren't problems that will likely take effect during my lifetime, and maybe I'm looking too far into the future by bringing them up. As to the outdoor industry, I'm not worried about them. I'm sure Hoyt would find some way to come up with the $2500 2018 model recurve. ;)

I agree with everyone above that a good first step would be to get rid of muley hunting in November.
 
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I ran into Roy Jacobs while hunting last fall. He's a fun guy to visit with and what he says is entirely the truth. Guys just don't want to hear it. Those "willing" to give up the last couple weeks of the ridiculous MT deer hunting season will have continue to be satisfied only seeing young dink deer in MT.
 
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