This is a very interesting discussion to follow.
I killed my first buck in southeastern Montana in 1993, a mule deer buck, probably a 3.5 year old, and for my impressions at that point in my hunting life, a nice 4x4. I had my wife and a three year-old kid along with me. Much like it did when I pulled into the motel parking lot in Forsyth with that buck in my truck bed, I suspect taking that buck now would have would raise some eyebrows as to "Why didn't you let it grow?" Even at that time, there were comments of "Deer hunting here has really went to hell in the last ten years."
That skull is on the wall in my shop and it is one of the fondest memories of my hunting times with a young family. Hearing Matthew, who was outfitted with snotcicles running and ruddy cheeks from the cold and wind, proclaim, "Dad, that's a whopper, you better shoot 'em" rings in my mind today, as if it was yesterday.
Since that time I have hunted eastern/southeastern Montana many, many, times. Hunting pressure has been about the same, though easing during tough economic times and increasing during better economic times. During the 1990's you made next year's motel reservations in Miles City, Forsyth, Broadus, and elsewhere before you left the current year. A lot of private lands that were open to hunting or enrolled in the Block Management Program are now closed to public hunting. Public land does seem more crowded.
I have not taken a mule deer in SE MT since 1993, though I have chased a few I had hoped to shoot. They just escaped. I've taken three friends who have shot mule deer bucks in SE MT, none of them big bucks, and all three were as happy as could be with the outcome. None of them had the least concern about antlers.
I have taken plenty of whitetails in SE MT since that time. I have grown more fond of chasing whitetails there than mule deer. Given the harshness of two of the last three winters, I've not hunted there last year or this year, and I suspect I will not hunt there for a few more years, or until such time the deer numbers have a chance to recover from hard winters.
Antlerradar makes a good point about the quality of deer hunting in other parts of the state being a driving factor in residents traveling to eastern Montana. I can provide observations from where I live and hunt elk. The mule deer hunting in SW MT is nowhere near what it was when I moved here in 1991. I cannot name a single area in Region 3 where the mule deer hunting has improved, or even stayed the same.
As a result, many residents go elsewhere for better deer hunting, both mule deer and whitetail. I know some who make annual treks to SE MT, some to NE MT, some to Central MT, all being areas they feel provides better deer hunting than what they have within 100 miles of home. If the hunters in Regions 1 and 2 feel the same, I suspect those hunters would travel to find better hunting on their $16 general deer tag.
Following the super harsh winter of 1996-97, hunters pressured FWP to do something different for mule deer. Huge pressure from hunters resulted in cuts to doe tags in Region 7, though FWP made it clear they did not think it was necessary. That is when we went to limited entry units in some areas; Bridgers, Snowcrests, Lima Peaks, etc.
The rest of Region 3 (and I think parts of Region 2) was placed on a "Validate system" for mule deer hunting. You had to pick the unit you wanted to hunt mule deer and that is where you were hunting mule deer for the entire season; no traveling to hunt mule deer outside of the area you validated for. If you wanted to hunt mule deer the Big Belts, you had to validate for that area prior to season starting. If you wanted to hunt mule deer the Tobacco Roots, you had to validate for that area. Whitetail hunting was exempted from this system.
My mind is slipping as to how this worked in Regions 5, 6, and 7. If I recall properly, I think if you made up your mind in advance to validate for a unit, you could not hunt eastern MT. If word got out that eastern MT had great conditions and the hunting was really good that year, you couldn't hunt mule deer in SE MT if you had validated for mule deer in a Region 3 unit, say the Gallatin Range. Hopefully someone of my age and better memory can confirm or deny how that operated in Regions 5, 6, and 7 during that time.
FWP stopped that program when they felt mule deer had "recovered" to acceptable levels. Though I'm not a biologist, my anecdotal observations never noticed a recovery of mule deer in the validation units. If anything, the mule deer are even lower than following that terrible winter or 1996-97, which was followed by another terrible winter in 2000-01. FWP cited "complexity" and lack of enforcement/compliance as negatives to the validation program. Considering MT has written the book on complexity, that seems a bit hollow to me.
If the surges in hunting pressure in SE MT are the result of traveling residents seeking better deer hunting than what is near home, maybe it is time for FWP to reconsider a validation program for mule deer. Experience shows that changing anything related to mule deer in Montana is akin to changing the orbit of planets. FWP would say in the 1990s. "To have more mule deer you need to kill more mule deer." Seems if that was the case, today we would be awash in mule deer.
Compared to neighboring states, MT has always shied away from actually managing species in a district, whether deer, elk, or antelope. It has always been done with state-wide or region-wide policies; almost a "one size fits all." Until that changes, it is impractical to think that MT is going to have a different mule deer scenario than what has been for sixty years. "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got."
Montana has 1,070,000 residents as of June 2019. In 2000, the population was 894,000. How many of these 176,000 new residents buy deer tags? I suspect a pretty good percentage. Does a 20% increase in the resident population correlate to a 20% increase in resident deer tag sales? How is hunting pressure on public land amplified when a 20% increase in tag sales is combined with a 20% (probably higher) decrease in private lands open to hunting?
I don't have answers to those, but I am quite confident that resident population increase requires some reassessment of how MT manages elk, deer, and antelope. I am also quite confident that MT FWP will resist most of those changes. I am completely confident, based on experience, that any effort to change even the slightest aspects of deer hunting will bring some vocal resident hunters out of the woodwork to protest whatever change might be proposed.
Back to the original point of this thread. I haven't hunted SE MT for a couple years, so I rely on locals as the true barometer of whether this is an upswing or a one-year spike. History, at least in my near-30 years as a resident deer hunter, shows there are spikes of improvement along a many decade trend of slow decline. Those spikes seem to correlate with years of excellent weather/conditions that result in optimal antler growth. Given how Montana manages mule deer, I suspect this observation being made by some is a spike more than an upswing. I hope I am wrong.
