Montana Mule Deer Mismanagement

[MTTW]

In my experience the 5 weeks of pressure gets reduced to mostly 1 week. The 3rd week when deer are rutting hard. Then every few years you get early harsh weather, and every buck gets killed by hunters and you start over from scratch.

The 3-week season also runs too late. With our current season structure, paired with available technology, we do not over hunt mule deer by a factor of 2, we over hunt them by a factor of 10 or more. If a good buck gets seen on public there is almost no question, it is going to die. If we continue to hunt them on winter range while rutting, there is no hope for change. One week while rutting with the right weather is more than enough time to kill every buck that anyone wants.

In my opinion avoiding the weather is actually more important than avoiding the rut in the areas that I am familiar with. If I was king, we would cease to hunt mule deer in November. I am talking everywhere, whether LE or OTC.

I would be a very unpopular king.

 

[Nameless Range]

This 4 years of banter has and always will be BS. Let the bios make the calls, suck it up and deal with what they say. Even you, MOGA. Even you, residents. Even you, SGA UPOM and all the rest.

Something that has enlightened me is getting to know bios. They really do have tough jobs, and they also really don't get to "make the calls". They have acceptable political thresholds to work within, and I have seen them push against those only to be denied by either their higher-ups or the commission, often as an honest proxy for public opinion. I think it would be interesting if all the MTFWP bios of Montana got together and proposed a new way forward for both the state at large and their districts, because the latter without the former just shifts pressure. As it stands, they know implicitly and are often told explicitly what the "product" that is a Hunting Season should look like, and it has Opportunity as a core value. Which doesn't actually mean status quo, though to many any unrequired dilution of that value is something close to a form of failure.

Recently, one of the bios I regard as the best I've seen at her job retired, and in her retirement email said, "I did my best to shield you from bureaucracy and be part of the solution." That ain't easy, comes at a cost, and requires a very mature and robust level of professionalism truly void of calling the shots. I think a fair bit of the spirit of threads like this, are folks trying to move the Overton Window of an agency and the citizens it serves to being open to something that looks a bit more like bios calling the shots, or at the very least having more options.

 

[Gerald Martin]

Something that has enlightened me is getting to know bios. They really do have tough jobs, and they also really don't get to "make the calls". They have acceptable political thresholds to work within, and I have seen them push against those only to be denied by either their higher-ups or the commission, often as an honest proxy for public opinion. I think it would be interesting if all the MTFWP bios of Montana got together and proposed a new way forward for both the state at large and their districts, because the latter without the former just shifts pressure. As it stands, they know implicitly and are often told explicitly what the "product" that is a Hunting Season should look like, and it has Opportunity as a core value. Which doesn't actually mean status quo, though to many any unrequired dilution of that value is something close to a form of failure.

Recently, one of the bios I regard as the best I've seen at her job retired, and in her retirement email said, "I did my best to shield you from bureaucracy and be part of the solution." That ain't easy, comes at a cost, and requires a very mature and robust level of professionalism truly void of calling the shots. I think a fair bit of the spirit of threads like this, are folks trying to move the Overton Window of an agency and the citizens it serves to being open to something that looks a bit more like bios calling the shots, or at the very least having more options.

IMO, for bios to be able to call the shots for a given district or region they will need to have a clear long term mandate from the commission and leadership as to what goals to manage for.


Currently, I would understand management goals to be something like this.
1. Maintaining a 5 week rut centered rifle hunt.
2. Monitor status of mule deer populations to ensure there’s enough bucks to impregnate the does next year.
3. Frame messaging about the status of the states deer herds in the most optimistic way possible to make resident hunters think the status quo is sustainable and they’re going to find a great buck to shoot this year.

 

[SAJ-99]

IMO, for bios to be able to call the shots for a given district or region they will need to have a clear long term mandate from the commission and leadership as to what goals to manage for.


Currently, I would understand management goals to be something like this.
1. Maintaining a 5 week rut centered rifle hunt.
2. Monitor status of mule deer populations to ensure there’s enough bucks to impregnate the does next year.
3. Frame messaging about the status of the states deer herds in the most optimistic way possible to make resident hunters think the status quo is sustainable and they’re going to find a great buck to shoot this year.

You think the goals are that clear?

 

[bigsky2]

In my experience the 5 weeks of pressure gets reduced to mostly 1 week. The 3rd week when deer are rutting hard. Then every few years you get early harsh weather, and every buck gets killed by hunters and you start over from scratch.

The 3-week season also runs too late. With our current season structure, paired with available technology, we do not over hunt mule deer by a factor of 2, we over hunt them by a factor of 10 or more. If a good buck gets seen on public there is almost no question, it is going to die. If we continue to hunt them on winter range while rutting, there is no hope for change. One week while rutting with the right weather is more than enough time to kill every buck that anyone wants.

In my opinion avoiding the weather is actually more important than avoiding the rut in the areas that I am familiar with. If I was king, we would cease to hunt mule deer in November. I am talking everywhere, whether LE or OTC.

I would be a very unpopular king.

There is a lot of truth to this. Colorado moved their season dates back around 5 years ago and it sounds like it has had a huge effect on the number of mature bucks, even with their short seasons.

 

[Forkyfinder]

For a guy that is against anything that might help MOGA, to then come out for private land only tags. Trying to follow that logic is enough to give you whiplash. Private land only tags are just a small step from full on Treeshark landowner tags.

Just pretend their cow elk tags - then you wont care and will even act like theres no market for it. Even add an extra season so the NR can get a forky and pivot cow the same week.

I got you bro…. Just need to team up with that evil sorcerer Lamb and work those nefarious connections…. . It’s as easy as waving a magic wand.View attachment 416345

I think thats what a certain group thought. Too bad reality showed up.

I’m not sure what solution you have in mind in relation to the problem you outline above but if the conclusion is regional caps we considered that in our discussions as we formulated our general season proposal. We identified at least three areas of concern that we couldn’t find satisfactory answers to in our discussions and ultimately decided to move away from regional caps that we had called for in version one of our proposal. As I recall (others from our group can correct if necessary) those three concerns were as follows:

1. Regional caps that distribute the amount of tags available per region based on deer populations per region could actually increase pressure in R6 and R7. Even though 6 and 7 do experience more NR mule deer buck harvest than R mule deer buck harvest, mule deer populations across other regions in the state are so depressed that a division of hunters in the state with regional caps set at a ratio of the percentage of the states mule deer populations that reside in that unit could funnel even more hunters into 6 and 7.

Regions 1-5 have an even higher percentage of hunters per mule deer than 6 and 7 even though the NR to R ratio of harvest ofmule deer is at a lower percentage in R 1-5.

2. We didn’t trust FWP to set regional caps at a level that would actually limit harvest of mule deer. (Admittedly unscientific but not unreasonable based on historic setting of tag quotas for areas of high demand)

3. The potential for hunters limited to a single region to fill a tag in that region because it’s their only option and they have limited days in the area. (Again, not necessarily scientific but not unreasonable for a scenario of where a significant number of traveling hunters would choose to fill a tag on their one trip to a different region since that’s the only place they could kill a buck. Tie this potential scenario with concern #1 listed above and it seemed to us like regional caps might not be the best solution.)

I’m not saying that our concerns and conclusions are the best way or only way to look at regional caps. That’s just some of what we discussed and the direction we decided to move away from out of those discussions.

Hey gerald - why not just reduce the all out pressure on the resource and try to limit all harvest? Looking forward to the long, word salad, lacking logic. I already know the answer but its fun to see you run from it.

Statewide LE, splitting the tags (md/wt), and shortening the season would have done a lot more. Thats putting "resource" first and actually reducing harvest if you think theres a problem. I know i know - your handlers told you FWP wouldnt do it. NR harvest around 3x the MD that they do WT. R harvest is split 50/50. Easy to see why we cant split tags from a "my business first" perspective and not a resource one.

Crafting a season thats "approved by" the moga heads who were there "facilitating" isnt resource first. Its subsidized public resource grifting.

The shame about you is that you freely advocate against R hunters - at least the "evil sorcerer" gets paid for it. You sell out for reasons beyond my understanding. Not much worse than doing galts bidding for free.

 

[El Jason]

@Forkyfinder how are the initiatives coming along?

 

[DFS]

That must have been a really long time ago? There were like around 100-125 in the early 2000s, they got reduced to 50 or so after winter 2010-11, and except for one year they were at 200 (2021), they’ve been back to 100-125…

I stand corrected. Looks like 50 is the lowest it’s been that I can find.

 

[MTTW]

Oh yeah, and while I was king I would delete 1 account on HT.

 

[Rack Daniels]

Oh yeah, and while I was king I would delete 1 account on HT.

The one that’s consistently arguing about/on behalf of the resource and not personal anecdotes or private interests??

May as well make it 2 accounts…

 

[MTTW]

The one that’s consistently arguing about/on behalf of the resource and not personal anecdotes or private interests??

May as well make it 2 accounts…

If you insist, after all you did say that Mule deer are like cockroaches.

 

[Eric Albus]

That may be true, keep em on your leased private. If they jump the fence to public don’t assure your client you can still chase em there too. Should be legally restricted to your leases IMO

We are

 

[Eric Albus]

I’d better clarify my last post.

In R7 we are limited to hunting only ranches we lease, and can hunt only BLM on those ranches. So even if we see a buck jump the fence into a section of BLM on neighbors ranch we can’t hunt it. Keep neighbors on speaking terms.

 

[Eric Albus]

Spoken like the outfitter that you are. Alternatively, every NR that doesn't use an outfitter costs you and your posse. That's why MOGA invests heavily in legislators to benefit their state government-subsidized industry. Cronyism.

What subsidy? If there’s one out there I’d like to get in on it.

 

[Eric Albus]

652 went from 15-25 tags to 200 in a very short time frame. It’s a very small district. There was a time when it was good, not that long ago, maybe that should be a lesson to fwp and the commission of constantly increasing quotas. There are several LE units I have heard very good things about as recent as last year. I’m not advocating for LE I think there are plenty of steps we could do to improve mule deer management before we go down that road.

I called and reamed the commission about that jump to 200 permits. There ain’t 200 deer in 652, let alone 200 buck deer. Reply I got was “come to the meeting with better information and counts than the bio. Problem is when flying a trend area there were probably x number of deer and y number of bucks chasing the only hot doe or two around, take the disproportionate number, extrapolation of sq miles in unit, come up with an ask of 400 either sex tags for 652, the commission cut number back to 200.
Anyone wonder why I do t trust their methods of counting.
I’m not real pleased about how they changed the metric for counting wolves mid-stream and cut tag numbers either.