From the NR I talked to during the season most of them choose to hunt Montana for rut hunting mule deer. There’s a reason opening day in eastern Montana isn’t as busy as middle of November for deer hunting anymore. October is a tougher hunt.
I guess my changes thinking of landowner/hunter relations I would have archery September 1-30. October 1-31 would be general elk and general deer with having to pick region and species for deer. Have private land cow Nov1-30. If we have to have the youth days have them thanksgiving day to...
Might be worth setting up a food stand on the old stage road in 700. There use to be a stand setup in 410 every year because there was so much traffic.
410 just went very limited entry this year so I wouldn’t say 4 is doing great
As far as point restrictions that has proven not to work. You end up with old 3pts and the young 4pts with potential and good genetics get killed
But at least they are picking between mule deer and whitetail and neither during the rut. Then with 5 years or so of data they can come up with regional caps