I just told em every day. My bows next to my desk and there is occassionally an older forky deer on my small piece of property.
I remember every week in the 70's, my mother would make my brother and I pick the cheat grass out of our socks before she put them in the wash, I think there might be less cheat grass now than back then. I know everyone wants to blame habitat, but I have never seen the habitat look better where I live. I was out yesterday, not sure I was ever out of sight of some winterfat. Not uncommon to find winterfat in patches of a dozens of plants.
In either case - the lowest years of the last 15 are significantly higher than the lows of the 70s and 80s. Was my only point.
Almost 3000 posts and we have determined that Montana has too many cheapskate luddites.
Are you suggesting that if there was mandatory reporting, harvest results would show less NR harvest and more R harvest in region 7? And thus, possibly, NR are more compliant/honest than R in voluntary reporting?
4130 x $760 (NR deer combo) = $3,138,800
I don’t think we know, I could see that going either way, I would not be one bit surprised if there is actually more nonresident harvest.
The way Montana manages game wardens could do the job of a complete fwp office on the big game side. If they drive around and still see deer they can tell the commission there are still some alive keep issuing tags. I get what you are saying “funding”. I just am yet to see any benefit from the funding.
You can blame FWP all you want, but it manages game the way Montanans want it to manage game- cheap tags, long seasons, and rut hunting. Any political official that suggests otherwise is going to be out of a job.
Understood, managing wildlife through legislation is not working. I understand the constraints that have been put on many good FWP employees. What are we funding? Not a knock on fwp we just are pissing wildlife resources and money away.
Block Management, enforcement of F&G statutes, the allocation/issuance of licenses and permits (even OTC is limited by the number of people who purchase them), research, habitat improvements on FWP/private lands….
Start campaign to make unit 704 LE. Make the Custer Great Again. See where the pushback comes from.
Agreed. Good postBlock Management, enforcement of F&G statutes, the allocation/issuance of licenses and permits (even OTC is limited by the number of people who purchase them), research, habitat improvements on FWP/private lands….
None of it is perfect but I’d take now over the continuance of where we were in 1895-1900 through the 30s-40s when state wildlife agencies were first starting to find their feet.
The current funding mechanism has gotten us to a point over the past century-plus where we can argue about management and funding on an online forum, as opposed to having nothing to argue over
Just using mule deer bucks harvest and not actual population estimates is problematic. Just the increase in NR deer hunters in seven dew to splitting the elk/deer combo license might account for enough harvest in recent years to make them look better that the 70's and 80's.
