Hunting Regulation Changes in Montana
The deadline to comment on proposed hunting regulations is
November 21st. Montana Fish
Wildlife and Parks plans to implement a new management strategy for the
upcoming 2024 hunting season. Town hall
meetings for public comment will be heard beforehand and new regulations will
follow. At these town hall meetings, we will
hear about a number of issues, presented by those representing the state of
Montana that include opening new access, how hunting benefits local economies, maintaining
the same number of hunting permits and expanding Block Management. Now the newest topic, which I will save for a
separate article, is CWD. I dislike
openly discussing CWD at all, but I think I speak for many in saying, the
reaction to CWD scares me more than CWD itself.
Anytime we are discussing management practices for Mule Deer and other
wildlife, the first and main question should be, what is best for the wildlife?
Often, stricter management strategies get a lot of push back
and can be labeled as managing for trophies, when in fact, here should be a
target goal of what can we do to produce the healthiest mule deer herd
possible. What is the target population?
What is the target buck/doe ratio? What
have the previous drought conditions and/or winter done to our fawn
recruitment? Instead, we are seeing management
strategies that appear to only take into consideration the things that are best
for putting more tags in pockets. Things
such as, how many folks are dining out in these local communities? How can we expand Block Management? In my opinion (and it is my opinion),
wildlife management and various wildlife foundations were put in place to do
what is best for wildlife. Are we doing
what we can to take care of these natural resources? Is this sustainable for the next 5-10 years? I have seen and read several reasons why our
Mule Deer numbers have declined in Eastern Montana. The answer should simply be; we had two years
of the worst drought most can remember followed by a drastic winter in
2022/2023, all while not decreasing any permit allocation while counts were
down and in fact, there was actually more pressure in certain areas as hunters
became more concentrated. It really is
that simple.
Five to ten years and prior, much of Eastern Montana was an
outdoor paradise for many different species of wildlife including Elk, Mule
Deer, Pheasants and the fishing on Fort Peck Lake. Today, with exception of the fishing on Fort
Peck, many wildlife species are hurting and some severely. Increased permits combined with increased
access and longer seasons are not sustainable for healthy wildlife. I would rather see money spent on habitat improvement
or predation control. Maybe what’s best
for wildlife management is that we do not all have a permit every year. I would
rather see healthy animals and not be able to hunt them than have a permit and
not see anything to shoot. Part of this plan
should be the experience of seeing healthy critters in the wild. Montana is often thought of as a fallback
state for hunting, or a state you can always get a tag when unsuccessful in
other state applications. We have the
most liberal seasons and permit allocation than any other state in the western
United States. Coupled with ease of
access on public lands (especially Eastern Montana BLM) and block management
expansion, the increased pressure on much of our wildlife is just too
much. Many have compared Montana to
Idaho, who also has very high quotas in much of the state, but the last time I
hiked in Idaho my legs were burning from the steep terrain and there wasn’t a
two track road on every ridge line that cut through public ground.
One argument I hear from many organizations, including the
State, is local communities would be negatively impacted if the access and high
number of permits were restricted, but it’s important to remember there is a
flip side to that. If the pheasant, elk
and deer numbers continue to drop across the area and are not given a chance to
replenish, people are going to look at spend their money elsewhere. We have already seen some of that in the fall
of 2023. Some folks are leaving earlier
than usual, and I have heard more than once they are not sure if they are
coming back next year.
Yes, all wildlife populations go through cycles, but are we
doing anything to manage the severity of these cycles or are we lightening the
human factor? Current practices and
regulations are unsustainable in the long term.
You cannot continue to open larger tracts of ground, especially those
with vehicle access, destroy vital habitat, and expect to maintain the same
wildlife populations.
CWD will be used as the primary contributing
factor for future decisions, but are we using CWD as an excuse for management
decisions? These “conservative measures” should not be
linked to conservation, and I have to question, what is it that we are calling true
conservation? The current CWD management
plan could have made more sense in years like 2015 to maybe 2019 when deer
populations were much higher throughout the eastern part of the state. The plan being pushed is much too late as
current management practices and mother nature both already brought down
populations to supposedly help battle CWD.
The answer to CWD cannot be to bring down numbers lower than they are
now going into 2024 and keep them there.
Again, the state’s reaction to CWD should raise more questions to all of
us than CWD itself.