Montana deer populations

[3nails]

 Who cares about ugly mulies in the east. Lots of great whitetails in the west!  Not as beautiful as blacktails but at least not as nasty as mulies. 

[3nails]

 Westside whitetail are in great shape. Mild winter there.

[vandeman17]

Westside whitetail are in great shape. Mild winter there.

Shhhh. There are no good whitetails in western Montana either! 

[3nails]

Westside whitetail are in great shape. Mild winter there.

Shhhh. There are no good whitetails in western Montana either! 

[Tball77]

It was a way different hunt this last year vs 2020,  wyoming cancellled all of the doe/fawn pronghorn, elk and mule deer hunts this year.  Going to need a few mild winters to bring the herds back. 

[444Marlin]

I had a good time reading the comments below the story.  It's nice to know that OR and WA are not the only states where residents blame F&W (and non-residents) for everything wrong in the world. 

[big wood]

Last year I talked to a game warden over there. He told me a group of hunters fron north Carolina shot whatever buck tags they had plus 76 does. Ridicules.

[Twispriver]

Where my son lives he could buy up to nine doe tags OTC but they are only valid for whitetail.

[jstone]

That’s the way to kill a population. To many doe tags given out. Keep them limited

[huntandjeep]

Last year I talked to a game warden over there. He told me a group of hunters fron north Carolina shot whatever buck tags they had plus 76 does. Ridicules.

Alot of Western Montana residents head east and fill trucks with does . There's usually a group from Western Montana that's in town around the same time as us . Usually stay at the same hotel  . One year I was BSing them and they had 16 at the Butcher , and were looking to fill 4 more tags . Of course they had to bad mouth the " Washington " hunters that roll into town and shoot whatever they see 

[dagon]

Montana is a huge state that very different snow falls this year. The F&G guys I talked with all said their area's had about the normal or maybe a little more winter kill. For sure not like the big hit southern WY saw.

[Stein]

Montana is a huge state that very different snow falls this year. The F&G guys I talked with all said their area's had about the normal or maybe a little more winter kill. For sure not like the big hit southern WY saw.

The area I hunt was about 115% or 120% of normal (snow amount) and looking through the snow maps its highly variable from drainage to drainage.  Of course timing is also an issue but it didn't look bad either, so I expect a normal year hunting this year.

[idaho guy]

We hunt Eastern Montana but switched to shooting whitetail about 5-6 years ago. The mule deer are struggling. When I was younger and lived in Kalispell I had some freinds that took horse trailers over east and would load them full with deer and antelope. You could buy 6 mulie doe tags and 2-3 doe antelope tags plus a few whitetail . Antelope buck tags were 100 percent draw in our area. More tag’s than applicants. That was in the 80’s and the deer numbers justified all those b-tags. Montana has just been slow to adjust the tags to match the herd. Not sure why. I think mule deer season should close a couple weeks before whitetail and have draw tags for the last 2-3 weeks. Obviously limited doe tags should help. but I have seen 20-30 doe groups with one 2 point buck in the whole bunch at the peak of the rut. Does zero doe harvest make sense in that area? It’s complicated you can’t just say no doe tags either. I agree they need to manage smaller area’s different. Right now they manage the majority of the state the same and regions like 7 are huge. I still love hunting Montana though