Montana Game Management History
- Thread starter Stifler
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Managers were dealing with issues of scarcity, not abundance. Since the 1970/80's's, abundance has been the hallmark of most species we hunt & fish for.
I would wager that they had more public support for reduced opportunity because people were still well-conditioned to lack of game. 50 years may be a blink of an eye, but it's at least 3-4 generations where things have been stable and increasing, leading to better opportunity until such a time as that opportunity starts to impact animal behavior, etc. As such, the management prescriptions are going to change.
That's my point, everyone's saying we are at a scarcity point for mule deer now. Atleast they seem to make it sound like that. History repeats itself in different ways imo, but along the same parallel. First it was the fur hunters and native americans for the need for licenses in the first reports. Now it's residents/nr killing excess does... I'm just pointing out some interesting things I found. Doe tags started coming back in around the 50s, I'm pointing out doe management has the largest impacts to herds historically.. every report from low numbers I read is usually in conjuction with over harvest of does and a bad winter or two bad winters.
It's somewhere around the 70s and 80s when nr started funding the department. Il try to find the graph again after work, we were still at 40% nr funding.. It's my belief around then was the tipping point so 75 they had to inact the nr cap to appease residents. The regs stay true to it for some years. Then politics...
Regardless doe tags have been easy money for the department since the late 80s and 90s.
Doe licenses do not provide the revenue that folks seem to believe they do. When we curtailed the NR B license in 2023, it had a $50-75,000 fiscal note. If you sell 60,000 resident B licenses, then you've made $600,000 (about the number of resident B licenses sold). I remember listening to a lot of old timers back in the early 2000's when they would discuss how things used to be, and even the gut reaction against shooting does once they were in surplus enough to support a season.
It will be interesting to see what you turn up in the 1970's - 1980's relative to licensing. Current data shows that the NR/R split in funding really took off in 2011.
Doe/ cow tags are, what I believe the workaround the 17,000 NR cap.
The 17,000 Cap is for the Big Game Combination License. That's the Deer/Elk combo
6,600 (2,000 landowner set asides plus the 4600 general) B11 combination licenses are for deer combo only.
The B license is not a workaround for either of these, since this the combo tags are about either-sex licenses.
There exists commission authority to authorize a second buck tag if warranted for management purposes. However, the 17K cap on NR licenses isn't exceeded on any appreciable level. The change in 2015 to resell the deer portion of the B10 is not a new issuance of licenses, but a creative way to get them back out for sale after being turned back in. They are not new licenses, just reissued licenses.
Some NR licenses are not capped (waterfowl), some never reach their cap (upland). If the desire is to only allow 17,000 NR licenses sold, then residents will need to pony up significantly more money than they are today.
The spike would be tag costs in 2011 I would think? We have been a nr Hotspot since around the 70s and 80s. I can see the come home to hunt etc coming into play in what, 2009? Il see if I can dig anything up around 2011 or so as well.
And true it doesn't even provide that much revenue so why do we allow it besides in truly overpopulated areas. It's just a extra easy cash machine. We should implement a true doe management program I guess. Stop being so liberal. But il see what numbers I can find in the next few days or so.
It's not just the cost of the tag (I-161 did that in 2010), but the number of NR licenses sold: https://fwp.mt.gov/binaries/content...re/2023/hunting-license-trends-in-montana.pdf
That's only a 10 year snapshot so I'm curious to see the numbers you can get from the 70's on up.
I wouldn't say that the agency looks at B licenses are a revenue generator. It's more of a rounding error than anything. The managers tend to set the quota of what they want to see harvested and whether you agree with them or not, the finances aren't their motivator - just the herd size and set objectives. Given CWD and some other localized issues of abundance, the agency will want to retain a lot of the current tools they have to manage wildlife, and honestly, it's short-sighted to try and limit that authority legislatively in a draconian fashion because the hot new topic is NR pressure (which is still significantly lower than resident hunting pressure).
The issue of over-prescription to doe harvest in some regions is being dealt with, and the HT season structure proposal serves to provide that more detailed guidance for management, rather than a strong prescription. Regulations need to change over time. Antlerless harvest when it needs to happen is a management tool we cannot lose. What the legislature did last session under SB 281 is limit the agency to selling 2 B licenses to a NR if they hold a B10 or B11, and 1 if they do not. That kind of reduction still allows for FWP to issue multiple B licenses to residents, and in limited instances - to NR's as well.
Also it's not that nr were funding it at that point in the 70s we are still at 40%... It's more my mind thinking about as fwp know they could get those funds. Budget become more on the biennial reports then game management around this time as well... This is also when you start seeing the nr prices increase fairly quickly each decade for tags. These costs were nr in the 90s then im fairly sure by 2008 it was around 800 for a combo tag... im pretty busy today so cant really dive into that yet.. but im guessing that 2011 was more funding related. 
I understand that. My main point is if we don't have solid counts of does and fawns we should plan on retaining some bad years. Untill they put solid effort into does and fawns counts we really shouldn't expect anything more then, some years will be bad because we issued to many tags, and some will be good because we remedied it.... doe harvest couldn't go away... it just wouldn't work farmers would be complaining about herds, meat hunters etc... but untill they find a accepted carrying capacity and manage doe harvest to those regions specific... it will always be a crap shoot of issuing the right amount of doe tags.
And maybe not a revenue generator but who's going to opt for 600k to be taken out of a already limited budget... Smart management of does is really the only way your going to maintain a reasonable carrying capacity. I'm also not saying it's a nr problem it's all of our problem... I think just about everyone I know gets the opportunity doe, particularly whitetail... it's a extra tag in the pocket to make people feel good. The 1 buck law was the only reason people could get 2 buck tags again. I'm just saying that doe management needs to be a bigger priority in understanding what the acceptable capacity is for each district... imagine changing the thought of opportunity to 2 bucks, instead of 8 does.
I need that to be a bumper sticker. Split the profits? mtmuley
Gerald Martin
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50/50 if you’re the one using the crayons to color them.
SAJ-99
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I think the problem is “acceptable capacity” is a social construct. There were complaints from landowners in cutting tags. One landowner has a concerned about Md and the other landowner complains they are eating his winter feed.
The best way. mtmuley
Exactly.. and it starts to dive away from the general population capacity per region.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
Yes. I think everyone would admit to that. FWP Bios can’t managed to the carrying capacity. They manage to the level of acceptance. I think money might be better spent on ‘pint nights’ for the complaining landowners.
Gerald Martin
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I would guess that “acceptable capacity” as defined by the agricultural industry community is more of a driving factor in the amount of antlerless tags issued as is FWP’s desire for license dollars.
Keep in mind the political climate of the past ten years with a “war” on too many elk being waged by the MT Legislature in response to depredation complaints.
That was accompanied by FWP and the Legislature seemingly not meeting an “opportunity” that they didn’t want to issue to hunters. It made FWP look good that they had managed to surplus and gave them the ability to demonstrate that they were trying to take the complaints of landowners who were complaining about crop depreciation seriously. Unfortunately, their strategy of liberalizing tags as private access becomes less meant that the majority of pressure for liberalized harvest takes place on the areas that don’t actually need population reduction.
rogerthat
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They can however structure their management to take into account land administration and its affect on management objectives vs burying their heads in the sand which is what to their dislike the commission had to do for them.
I underestimated this task. Going to take longer to graph it all out (havent opened excel in 15years or so). But from the 70s we were raising prices for NR every decade or so. Just Combo prices only for NR 1970 $151, 1976 $225, 1982 $225, 1993 $238, 2003 628$, 2011 912$. In the 70s we were selling around 20k nr combo until 75. Then it levels at the 17k cap for a few years. I'm pretty busy for work, and the wife signed me up to coach tball for the kids. Il get it all together the best I can after work over the next few days/week.
It's a ton of data to go through, and kids ruin everything so, sorry about that.
Don't forget the B11 combo as well. That's another 6600 deer licenses.
Those are just for antlered animals. Antlerless will be smaller in number for both resident & NR's.
