Nice bucks Randy. Maybe 701 isn't as bad, outside that circle I drew.
All I know is inside that circle, 1995-2010, is where I'd had considered the best place in MT, hands down, for an antelope hunt. There were a couple bad bouts of EHD starting in '06 that started knocking the numbers down. Then in the fall of 2011, it was pretty terrible due to the bad winter prior. There were still some around - my friend and I found a few groups with bucks during the rut and each arrowed one, while joking that it felt like we were killing the last 2, or endangered species. I'd say that year (2011) we saw certainly less than 10% of what was there a few years earlier. I went back in 2012 and noticed it was dismal. One rancher who owns around 140 sections told me they had about 25 head on the place and I thought he was kidding until I went looking. I laid off them 2012-2015 and decided to check things out over the weekend. I heard the "they are coming back slowly" from a few sources over the last couple years. I burned through 2 tanks of gas this weekend in that green circle. I can say, they certainly have not come back. In fact, they are in a terrible state. I can't comment on outside that green circle, so maybe there's a place in 701 that's "coming back".
FWP gives out 5000 permits to be used wherever a hunter who draws wants to in region 7. It'll never come back in my life, and I just don't see how anybody could believe otherwise. Why is it so hard for FWP to segment out the antelope management by district? There should not be any, even minimal, antelope hunting there.
