brocksw
Well-known member
That's the wildcard, general tags. I'm 100% guessing but I presume the general tags that hunt region 7 eclipse 10k?
Montana Mule Deer Mismanagement
- Thread starter rogerthat
- Start date
I don’t know that I asked that. I do know their data isn’t showing a substantial increase in hunters.
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And most all of your mule deer districts are legit mule deer habitat. A lot of region 7 isn’t mule deer habitat.
brocksw
Well-known member
I'm only familiar with bits and pieces of region 7. So, I can only take your word for it.
SAJ-99
Well-known member
My only counter would be that the fires were accompanied by drought and drought limits carrying capacity. I also wonder if some the changes over the last 40years in the eastern half, specifically more pivots and irrigation, benefited whitetails at the expense of mule deer. Experts will have to weight in on whether that has any validity.
antlerradar
Well-known member
The droughts of the recent past were ugly, no doubt about it. There was also ugly droughts in the 80's and 90's. Remember 88 and the big fires in Yellowstone, there was also big fires on the Custer that year. The only reason they were not forest wide is in most places there wasn't enough grass to carry a fire. I remember one year in the early 90's irrigation water was in real tight supply. Some were predicting it was going to be the new normal. Haven't had a year like that since.
Good point about agriculture, but not quite like you point out. In the 50's and 60's many of the smaller property's close to the forest had fields planted in dryland or sub irrigated alfalfa. This was a big help to deer on the near by forest. Now most of those field are in introduced grass. This is one of the reasons why it would be hard to duplicate the 60's.
As for irrigation on the river, that helps both mule deer and whitetails. One issue could be that mule deer that frequent the alfalfa go into winter in better shape than deer that stay out in the hills all summer and fall. In tough winters or drought the alfalfa deer out compete the forest deer on the same winter range. Whitetails do multiply like rabbits, but EDH does a good job of keeping the population in check.
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I have to stand corrected. Looks like they are going to try to make adjustments. Good for them.
Interesting. Glad to see some movement on this.
Something else I noticed that was interesting- Revision date is from 6/17/2022. So have they been working on this for nearly a year?
Carnage2011
Well-known member
I’m sure it’s a template that they use and the revision date just didn’t get updated.
Shangobango
Well-known member
Sometimes there is no choice lol.
I haven't been following this thread closely until now. I have the 'vid or something similar so I have some time on my hands.
I hope you make the committee.
antlerradar
Well-known member
First time I read this I didn't see the i in "vid". Glad I caught it the second time, reading comprehension has never been strong with me.
Bambistew
Well-known member
How many people shoot a doe on a buck tag? Do they have the data?
"May result in lower buck:doe ratios" assuming you know the answer to question 1.
Once a population gets so far depressed, it take years/decades to recover.
I remember in SW MT when you could shoot a MD doe on a buck tag in a lot of units. How's those populations doing?
I would suspect at least 1000 probably more. Hopefully not. Makes me wonder just how bad the counts were this spring. I know we are well below 2012 numbers where I frequent and it took them several years to cut doe tags after those bad winters. I would like to keep some deer on the landscape and hope something will change with management. Private land only doe tags makes a lot of sense to me if they do issue them.
Such an easy fix. I could probably figure out how to edit the regs to read private land only if they handed me a computer.
Lace em up tighter.
Good one. I hope you are right but I don’t have a lot of hope in that
