Quite the conversations happening here:
Private Land/Public Wildlife (PLPW) Advisory Committee | Montana FWP
Private Land/Public Wildlife (PLPW) Advisory Committee information.fwp.mt.gov
Forgot that was today. There are some good names on there, with a few HTers to boot.
The line "Hunters want a hunt and landowners want a harvest" hit me as being pretty standard differences in thought. There was also someone who said "public hunters can't kill elk" in relation to the ability of most hunters to be successful. I think the same guy referred to the how an effect program could allow hunters to "execute" 6-8 elk and then more hunter could come in the next day and "execute" 6-8 more without scaring them off.
“ I see a lot of stuff in here I consider complete garbage” Matt Rinella
Regarding Region 6 mule deer problems, I believe he just said he had the staff look at how many hunters had bought multiple tags and how success they were. I don't believe FWP has the latter data because they don't sample well enough. Hell, the email below is for this year and it excludes elk.
That was me who said it
It was interesting to watch. Reminding me of a lot of corporate meetings I attended- no real agenda, lots of non sequiturs and rabbit holes, and it ends when people get tired and nothing material accomplished. Everything seemed to come back to too many hunters. My thought after watching was the one thing everyone might agree on is more LEOs and better enforcement of rules. After that I found myself really worried about being able to find common ground on much else.
I can relate to both of those quotes.
Sure. But they was a lot of conflicting examples in the meeting. The brief discussion on Region 6 Mule deer where the member claimed all the out of state hunters (MN, WI, WA, MI) had deer stacked in the bed of the truck. Of course it is NRs and not Rs doing that (sarcasm). If public hunters aren't effective then all those deer wouldn't be dead. Maybe it's just elk? There was the sharing of the picture of the young man who shot an elk and probably wouldn't have had the chance otherwise. Warm, heartfelt story, but not the point of the program. The end result was one-dead elk. Feel-good story sure, but that should be under a different program- which we would all support. Creating a program to give away highly sought after bull tags in LE districts to landowners and supporting it with that example was completely off point.
If the elk lived where the mule deer in NE Mt do, they’d all be dead too.
Or SE Montana or western Montana or central Montana. Apparently everywhere except few select ranches. Which is probably why there are so many elk on those ranches.
