Montana draw 2026

[Roebuck]

$900 for an 14 inch 3 point?

You guys know there are other states that have deer right?

 

[antlerradar]

$900 for an 14 inch 3 point?

You guys know there are other states that have deer right?

You don't get to hunt for five weeks and all of November in those states.

 

[SAJ-99]

Couldn’t you have applied this year without buying a point and went into the draw with only your 2025 pref point. Drawing odds of 0%.

Possibly. The FWP didn’t bring that up as an option when talked to the person. I would have bought the 2027 point and still only had 2 so it just comes down to cost of buying the stuff to apply (conservation license, app fee). I think I anchored on the old price of the PP and not the new price, so it might have been cheaper to go that route. The FWP HAL 9000 might have freaked out when I didn’t check the “buy PP” box knowing I was applying for something I had a 0% chance at.

 

[Forkyfinder]

Isn't the state still almost double the "objective" population for elk?

Not anymore

 

[Forkyfinder]

You don't get to hunt for five weeks and all of November in those states.

Imagine how foolish someone would be to come here for the mediocre deer and dumpy access in october.

 

[SAJ-99]

Imagine how foolish someone would be to come here for the mediocre deer and dumpy access in october.

I would rather MT deer season be in October. Reduce the road hunting and make people work a little harder for deer that are scattered rather than just sit a pivot. I don’t expect it to change though.

Over the weekend, I drove across I90 across the Columbia plateau (eastern 2/3 of the state of WA) at prime dusk hours and saw 3 deer. It’s all relative. Don’t expect NRs to suddenly come to their senses and rescue MT deer hunting.

 

[golfer]

Can a portion of the BG combo be returned while retaining the other portion an hunting whichever portion was kept ?

 

[Treeshark]

Imagine how foolish someone would be to come here for the mediocre deer and dumpy access in october.

 

[Treeshark]

I would rather MT deer season be in October.

Not like my opinion matters here whatsoever, but I would too.

 

[rjthehunter]

Imagine how foolish someone would be to come here for the mediocre deer and dumpy access in october.

Agreed, everyone should stop hunting in MT!

 

[bigsky2]

Can a portion of the BG combo be returned while retaining the other portion an hunting whichever portion was kept ?

Yes. You can choose to only keep the elk portion. When that happens, the deer portion gets allocated to someone else (referred to as "orphaned" deer tags). Before this year, FWP was allowed to sell 5000 of those orphaned deer tags. The 2500 NR deer tags that were cut this year came out of this pool. So instead of being able to sell all 5000 orphaned NR deer tags, they can only sell 2500 this year.

 

[Pagosa]

You don't get to hunt for five weeks and all of November in those states.

Five days in Colorado and Wyoming can offer some pretty good hunting as you know. I would happily give up my 5 week opportinuty of carrying a rifle in Montana for one of those tags

 

[Hams42]

You don't get to hunt for five weeks and all of November in those states.

Speaking of this. Did the proposal to shut the general season down at the end of October get killed? I liked the idea of October being general and then needing to draw to get a November rut hunt tag.

 

[Hams42]

I would rather MT deer season be in October. Reduce the road hunting and make people work a little harder for deer that are scattered rather than just sit a pivot. I don’t expect it to change though.

Over the weekend, I drove across I90 across the Columbia plateau (eastern 2/3 of the state of WA) at prime dusk hours and saw 3 deer. It’s all relative. Don’t expect NRs to suddenly come to their senses and rescue MT deer hunting.

I usually see more mule deer in my yard than I do during the season where I can hunt.