A Poor Elk Hunter With A Good Elk Tag

[antlerradar]

Best of luck. I hope there are pictures of a great bull this fall.

 

[publichunter1]

Congrats on a great tag. Can't wait to see how it goes.

 

[bowhunterjae]

Congratulations! Enjoy every minute!

 

[Killergaurd]

Iam jealous. Good luck to ya

 

[WyoDoug]

Awww, looks like a cutie. I saw that quite frequent growing up on the farm. Fawns would stay put and not move. Unfortunately, we ran over a couple with tractors on the farm haying and that, not deliberately but you can not see them until you are right on top of them.

 

[Addicting]

Following, congrats on the tag!

 

[Ridge Ghost]

Awesome, best of luck! Should be fun following this thread in the fall

 

[theyeti]

Congratulations on your draw. Looking forward to following and learning from your adventure. This will be my first year hunting Montana and my daughter's first year as a licensed hunter. Can't wait to really get started on this adventure.

 

[Big Fin]

I'm looking forward to following this thread. Congrats on the tag.

 

[madtom]

I don’t know anything about which elk tags are good in Montana, but it sounds like this could be good and I’m excited to see how it goes. Good luck!

 

[oilcan]

Good luck

 

[elkrchr]

First of all, congrats on drawing the tag. I hope you enjoy the entire experience from scouting to the hunt itself. You will have many of us glued to this post and following your adventures.

 

[tzone]

Well, I don't know enough about elk hunting to be jealous but....Good luck. I'll look forward to the picks of elk in an area that hard to draw!

 

[MooseCaboose]

May the wind ever be in your favor! If I had any areas specific knowledge I would share it.

 

[HSi-ESi]

Enjoy the experience and congrats on the tag. I'm looking forward to following along.

 

[Nameless Range]

I don't have any cool pictures of elk yet to share, but I have been doing some scouting, and the early summer is a fine time for hiking. I figured I would share some facts about the hunting district, since it has some pretty interesting history and geography.

This map was reduced in size when attaching it, so you can't really see the things I wanted you to, but you get the idea.

​

Hunting District 380 is mostly comprised of the Elkhorn Mountain Range and surrounding valleys to their midpoints.

Quick Facts:

- Highest Point: Crow Peak 9,415 ft
- Lowest Point: Canyon Ferry Dam 3,800 ft
-The district is 728,127 Acres in size and public ownership is broken down as such

Ownership	Acres
USFS	160,700
BLM	93,888
State Trust Land	20,624
Bureau of Reclamation	3,296

- There are 75,400 Acres of inventoried roadless area
- 1 Wilderness Study Area

Quick History:

The Elkhorns were not always a prized hunting area, and were once an overhunted, over-roaded mess. From FWP, "In 1987, concerned about the low number of branch-antlered bulls, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks established a “spike season” in the Elkhorns. Any hunter can shoot a yearling (spike) bull, but to shoot a mature bull or a cow a hunter must apply for a special permit. The regulation allows more bulls to grow older and produce larger antlers. Today the Elkhorns are world renowned for trophy elk, and the population contains a biologically healthy mix of young, middle-aged, and old males."

As an ecosystem they are managed for wildlife as a Wildlife Management Unit (WMU). This is pretty cool, and is an interagency coordination between the BLM, USFS, and FWP, so that their management strategies align. The WMU was formalized in 1992. Prior to the 1990s and following a large fire in 1988, the Elkhorns were in disrepair. In 1992 a large landscape analysis was performed by the agencies. The three main findings of that analysis were:

•The full diversity of wildlife habitats has been compromised by the loss of vegetative diversity due to the influences of historic livestock grazing, fire suppression and other variables;
•The full range of wildlife should include recovery of native wildlife populations such as bighorn sheep and westslope cutthroat trout; and
•That mining, grazing, recreation and other human uses of the Elkhorns have compromised wildlife value

Knowing this, they moved forward on fixing these things through different strategies, and as someone who just plays in the mountains and isn't educated on land management, I think they have done a good job. It's a special mountain range.

I did a big hike and set up some cameras Saturday. Here's some photos from the day.

A wallow that looked great.

Untrammelled and seldom-visited

Elk trails that look like dirtbike single tracks

A dog that wallowed where the elk do too

Hopefully I'll have some elk photos soon. I know that is what folks wanna see.

 

[teej89]

HAHA the dog wallow! I'm sure he loved it, gotta love labs! Our lab comes in muddy every day from trying to catch the frogs in our nearby stream, can't keep him outta it.

 

[Carnage2011]

This is going to be a great thread. It looks like you've already started making memories on this hunt.

 

[theat]

Only thing missing from this thread so far are some pictures of bulls! Here are some of the larger bulls that we caught and collared in the Elkhorns in March of 2017. These are the four largest bulls that were spotted by us or the state pilot and bio in a super cub during two days of flying. We covered most of the winter range on every side of the public parts of the mountains. I was a little surprised that we didn't see any real giants, but of course even from the air there are plenty of places for an elk to hide and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them were on private. Looks like you are going to take full advantage of that coveted tag and have a great time doing it.

 

[Nameless Range]

Awesome stuff Theat!