That’s some serious gymnastics. Every person that understands biology will tell you that you don’t manage populations with buck/bull harvest. As long as there are enough males to breed every female then populations are directly related to doe/cow populations. Sure…you can have a tiny percent...
I can’t think of a single unit that went LE and then back to general. Other than one unit that has high prevalence of cwd and it took one year for it to go right back to garbage.
I do think that with the state of Mule deer in Montana you guys can actually get some good change implemented. You also are operating under a different Director. I don’t know what Dustin’s stance is on most of these things. Maybe he’s hearing enough negativity regarding Mule deer that he will...
Capping mule deer doe tags didn’t come from it. I was on the elk CAC. When FWP started talking about doing a mule deer one I had a conversation with a guy towards the top at FWP that wanted feedback from the elk CAC. I told him that FWP wasted our time and used none of our recommendations. I...
I don't think a reduction in funding for FWP is a good idea in any way shape or form. I understand what you are saying, but the research side of things is what always seems to get cut first. That doesn't help us now or in the long run.
Overall I think this could help with the age class of Mule Deer bucks. A few things I'm a little concerned about. 1) I think a month of mule deer rifle pressure on public will push a lot of elk to private before the rifle season starts. I do think this may be offset by the lack of hunting...
I spent 20-25 days in there last fall helping my wife try and find a 180” buck. We saw tons of deer and more 150” bucks than a guy would ever imagine. We seen 2 bucks that I firmly believe were 180+ and one of them walked from public onto private and disappeared. If I had that tag tomorrow...