New To NW Montana - any advice?

[justseth]

So I just moved to Yaak, MT so that my wife could be back close to her folks. I've spent the last 34 years hunting and backpacking in NH. I'm looking forward to learning to hunt here in Lincoln County --- looks like it'll take me a while just to learn all the licensing, permiting & other regs, let alone how to hunt the whitetail, muleys, elk, bear, wolves and (i can dream) moose out here.

Any pointers, advice, insight, harsh warnings on any aspect would be welcome. I'm an experienced backpacker and hunter, but never in the NW and I've never combined the two --- I'm excited to try though.

Thanks, Seth

"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong."

 

[theat]

I live about 60 miles south of you near Trout Creek but have spent quite a bit of time in your neck of the woods on a few moose hunts. It seems to me that the elk and moose numbers in the Yaak are way down lately, that is also what we heard from most hunters we met in the hills. I did see a few of very nice whitetails down along the Yaak river and in some of the creek bottoms a little west of there. One thing that there is a lot of up there is wolves. We had several close encounters that resulted in blown moose calling setups and some interesting video of wolves circling us. If you are serious about killing a wolf I can PM you the names/locations of the meadows where we ran into them. One was definitly a den site with at least 4 pups present so I bet they will still use the area. Don't get me wrong I don't blame the low numbers on just wolves, its also due to the lack of logging and agressive fire suppression that has been going on the past twenty+ years.

I had a moose tag last season in unit 104 just south of you and it was one of the most discouraging and depressing hunts of my life. I spent 29 days hunting and probably close to 15 scouting and only saw one bull, three cows, and one calf. Found plenty of moose carcasses and moose fur in wolf scat. I drove and hiked all over the unit and did several backpack hunts into as remote of spots that you can get into in there and saw very few muleys and only a handfull of elk let alone any moose. The funny thing was that everyone I ran into looked at my 35 plates and asked "what the hell are you doing hunting up here?". Once I told them I had a moose tag they understood, its funny because I see more 56 plates in the mountains down here during hunting season than I see local plates. Now that I have hunted up there I know why.

Don't get too discouraged though I am sure if you hit the maps and find some elky spots away from roads/trails you should be able to find a few. Good luck

 

[Big O]

I live about 60 miles south of you near Trout Creek but have spent quite a bit of time in your neck of the woods on a few moose hunts. It seems to me that the elk and moose numbers in the Yaak are way down lately, that is also what we heard from most hunters we met in the hills. I did see a few of very nice whitetails down along the Yaak river and in some of the creek bottoms a little west of there. One thing that there is a lot of up there is wolves. We had several close encounters that resulted in blown moose calling setups and some interesting video of wolves circling us. If you are serious about killing a wolf I can PM you the names/locations of the meadows where we ran into them. One was definitly a den site with at least 4 pups present so I bet they will still use the area. Don't get me wrong I don't blame the low numbers on just wolves, its also due to the lack of logging and agressive fire suppression that has been going on the past twenty+ years.

I had a moose tag last season in unit 104 just south of you and it was one of the most discouraging and depressing hunts of my life. I spent 29 days hunting and probably close to 15 scouting and only saw one bull, three cows, and one calf. Found plenty of moose carcasses and moose fur in wolf scat. I drove and hiked all over the unit and did several backpack hunts into as remote of spots that you can get into in there and saw very few muleys and only a handfull of elk let alone any moose. The funny thing was that everyone I ran into looked at my 35 plates and asked "what the hell are you doing hunting up here?". Once I told them I had a moose tag they understood, its funny because I see more 56 plates in the mountains down here during hunting season than I see local plates. Now that I have hunted up there I know why.

Don't get too discouraged though I am sure if you hit the maps and find some elky spots away from roads/trails you should be able to find a few. Good luck

Theat- any updates on wolves around Trout Creek? I have hunted archery for quite a few years between Noxon & T.C. and have only heard them once or twice. Don't even hear much about them in that area, probably just a matter of time.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Big O, They are definitely well established here as well. It used to be that you would find tracks and scat in an occasional drainage and the packs were named. Now there's wolves in every major drainage (although maybe not at the same time) and the packs are so intermingled they don't have individual names anymore.

I had two come into a waterhole I was watching last archery season

 

[Big O]

Big O, They are definitely well established here as well. It used to be that you would find tracks and scat in an occasional drainage and the packs were named. Now there's wolves in every major drainage (although maybe not at the same time) and the packs are so intermingled they don't have individual names anymore.

I had two come into a waterhole I was watching last archery season

GM- have you found the elk to be alot more call shy or quiet versus 5 or 6 years ago?
We had em screaming years ago whenever we went. Fall of 09 I only heard a few bugles but called in quite a few bulls thru all of Sept.- they all came in silent. We pretty much just set up in good areas and started calling, for the most part it worked real well, never hearing the bulls until they were on top of us.

 

[theat]

Big O - GM is right there are a lot of wolves around here. I have found bulls in certain areas to be very call shy, probably due to both wolves as well as hunters over using their bugle and bugling from the road. Some of my former favorite elk drainages haven't held elk the last few years but there sure is a lot of wolf sign in there lately.

 

[Gerald Martin]

GM- have you found the elk to be alot more call shy or quiet versus 5 or 6 years ago?
We had em screaming years ago whenever we went. Fall of 09 I only heard a few bugles but called in quite a few bulls thru all of Sept.- they all came in silent. We pretty much just set up in good areas and started calling, for the most part it worked real well, never hearing the bulls until they were on top of us.

Big O, I don't know if I'm the most qualified person to compare the past two years to other years, since I didn't do much archery hunting for elk in this area the past two years. I did more deer hunting than elk.
IMO we have less elk total and a lot less bulls in our area now than we had five years ago. We've had several hard winters since 2008 and last year there were a LOT of bulls killed the last two weeks of rifle. There's probably five times the number of wolves now compared to five years ago. Like theat said it is a combination of hunter pressure, lower elk numbers, and wolf pressure. With less bulls there's less competition for the cows and more pressure from hunters. I know several hunters that called in wolves with cow calls during archery season some I'm sure that the elk are learning that wolves respond to calling.

 

[Big O]

Thanks theat & GM- I have mostly hit archery around that area and then if needed hit SW MT for rifle. It's so convenient to hit the TC area for me (2hrs) but I might be re-thinking those plans a little. Probably a little of both spots again- thanks for the update.

 

[Carrion Carrier]

NW MT has some huge bulls, but it's really thick country! Bowhunting is a great way to hunt that area because it's tough to find the elk in the jungle and being able to listen for bugles helps a lot! Rick Bass writes some about hunting elk in the Yaak. Not informative, but encouraging. Check out the May-June issue of Montana Outdoors magazine.

 

[justseth]

Thanks for the tips guys. I was hoping that hunting on foot, further from the roads, that I'd have some success --- but by the looks of all the forest service maps, anyone can drive just about anywhere up in there. I'll have to get the list of road closings & hope to find a good sized remote area.

Any suggestions on where to look for Elk? How they pattern (generally) up here? Any tips on what a "good setup) as BigO described, would look like?

Also wonder what to use for calls. I've done a lot of walking & sitting in NH, but never found a deer that came in to a call so I haven't had much use for them.

 

[drahthaar]

I grew up just over the hill from the Yaak. There are lots of roads on the map, but most are gated, and permanently at that. Some are seasonal closures, july 1 -August 15 or Sept 1. Haven't hunted the West Kootenai in a long time so can't help there. Lots of wolves, but I know a couple guys that always fill their bull tags over there easy enough.

At first you might not like that jungle brush, but for archery hunting its awesome. You can really close that gap with the wind right.

 

[justseth]

You bet I'm into the jungle brush. A scope is barely of any use here in NH. Longest shot I've had with a rifle was in a fresh clear cut, about 80 yards. Woods so thick you can't pick out a landmark if your life depended on it -- which it sometimes does : ).