Montana, talk to me about your mountain whitetail.
- Thread starter TOGIE
- Start date
I would. mtmuleyIt’s like you want us to come to “not Montana” sooooo bad!
Fine maybe I will
Agree about WY. Ive seen some monsters near Meetseetee and around Sundance. Seems like they would have been easier to hunt in WY due the openess of the country.
The difference in the ease of hunting whitetail in western MT and Eastern MT is light years apart. See the after school deer hunt by Brockel. That caliber of deer would take daily driving of 300-400 miles of back roads in the 5 week rifle season to even see. Or a tremendous amount of still hunting in the thick NW/Western part of MT.
Nah. It isn’t the driving. Hunting them in the timber and woods is a whole different ballgame. mtmuley
Raisin Bran
Well-known member
For sure! No roads even close for the obnoxiously loud Razer Riders!
Little Big Man MT Chris
Well-known member
My uncle lives in the mountains in Idaho up in the panhandle, lots of whitetails up there
Haha. A big fat dry doe is in the freezer. From the backyard. .243 and 80 grain Hammers wreck deer. She probly ate my wife's flowers all summer. mtmuley
Mountain whitetail in Idaho are amazing! Fantastic hunts! Great place to live with an abundance of hunting AND Idaho's friendly to NR's whereas MT? Get off my lawn type mean spirited mentality.
Wrong! No whitetails here. Head for Washington where you can bait them. Way way better hunting
Irrelevant
Well-known member
The only hunting that's better in WA is bears, and that's probably still debatable.
Maybe ducks too, but only because we can chase sea ducks on the salt.
trackerbacker
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(note to self:
Hunttalk-a place to not talk about hunting, biology of the game, and certainly not a place to talk about Montana that is full of 5th gen better-than-thou with NR deer taken up station displacing MD. And damn you if you don't do some cryptic text style to hide results from the Googs as you search (hunt)quietly and spell like a mostly grammatically correct adult, not some Harry Potter nerd reading a spell)
(Inner monologue engaged)-Sucks, but when you see an entity so upside down, you get a little giddy at their own demise. And face it-yall montanans yell at the rooftops about being the bestest. Moms favorite. No NRs allowed, amirite?
Don't be screaming out to NRs for help...looking at some of y'all's search history..glaring..'damn you good for nothing NRs, but please help my amazing state I don't want you in, I'm gonna lose OUR hobby!')
Anyway, yeah, so the working theory (as posted) is some hybridization between ungulate species that bred the MD, however, it appears that mule deer are hypersensitive to a lot of things in life, where as WT (in this case) aren't near as sensitive.
Probably why mule deer originated in Montana. Pretty cute West coast gal off at some college stumbled upon some insensitive Midwestern man meandering his way West. Finally thinking she found a real man, not some overly sensitive, soy drinking, prop65 can't open that box bigot.
It was homecoming night afterall, he didn't care and she loved that. The next morning, Ms blacktail found herself wondering if Mr WT was going to be coming again, but she only found him going.
As she raised her newfound bundle of joy, she instituted a hatred of all those coming and going, and refused to be known as a dumpster. Try as she might throughout the years, she only helped perpetuate the cycle as she found her only daughter to be knocked up by some Mr mysterious at college. Coming. And going for good. Another baby with big ears and no dad. Sensitive, like all the ones she's used to back home.
Circa 8,000 BC. It's still said she can be seen on a late October night, serenading the memory of long ago lost, serene and insensitive Midwestern romp, and what life could have been, if only for Doe v Wade.
For continual MD v WT conversation. Here's a link to OnX about MD,WT and what is being asked, from a site sponsor, that is surely somehow eroding away something somewhere (Montana surely, only, if that's not evident) so someone can't do something .............
........except if it's Randy profiting, then mums the word, right?........
Really, you could probably just blame Ms blacktail for being loose and inviting every tom dick and Harry to go West to get lucky. It's reductive enough.
Hunttalk-a place to not talk about hunting, biology of the game, and certainly not a place to talk about Montana that is full of 5th gen better-than-thou with NR deer taken up station displacing MD. And damn you if you don't do some cryptic text style to hide results from the Googs as you search (hunt)quietly and spell like a mostly grammatically correct adult, not some Harry Potter nerd reading a spell)
(Inner monologue engaged)-Sucks, but when you see an entity so upside down, you get a little giddy at their own demise. And face it-yall montanans yell at the rooftops about being the bestest. Moms favorite. No NRs allowed, amirite?
Don't be screaming out to NRs for help...looking at some of y'all's search history..glaring..'damn you good for nothing NRs, but please help my amazing state I don't want you in, I'm gonna lose OUR hobby!')
Anyway, yeah, so the working theory (as posted) is some hybridization between ungulate species that bred the MD, however, it appears that mule deer are hypersensitive to a lot of things in life, where as WT (in this case) aren't near as sensitive.
Probably why mule deer originated in Montana. Pretty cute West coast gal off at some college stumbled upon some insensitive Midwestern man meandering his way West. Finally thinking she found a real man, not some overly sensitive, soy drinking, prop65 can't open that box bigot.
It was homecoming night afterall, he didn't care and she loved that. The next morning, Ms blacktail found herself wondering if Mr WT was going to be coming again, but she only found him going.
As she raised her newfound bundle of joy, she instituted a hatred of all those coming and going, and refused to be known as a dumpster. Try as she might throughout the years, she only helped perpetuate the cycle as she found her only daughter to be knocked up by some Mr mysterious at college. Coming. And going for good. Another baby with big ears and no dad. Sensitive, like all the ones she's used to back home.
Circa 8,000 BC. It's still said she can be seen on a late October night, serenading the memory of long ago lost, serene and insensitive Midwestern romp, and what life could have been, if only for Doe v Wade.
For continual MD v WT conversation. Here's a link to OnX about MD,WT and what is being asked, from a site sponsor, that is surely somehow eroding away something somewhere (Montana surely, only, if that's not evident) so someone can't do something .............
........except if it's Randy profiting, then mums the word, right?........
Really, you could probably just blame Ms blacktail for being loose and inviting every tom dick and Harry to go West to get lucky. It's reductive enough.
ismith
Well-known member
Look, I know they say mule deer are likely descended from a cross between blacktails and whitetails. However, have you ever seen a cross between a whitetail and a mulie? They look just like blacktails.
trackerbacker
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Hang on, gonna write to the local F&G, see if they have budgetary line items for ancestryDNA, we need to get to the bottom of this.
squirrel
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First your assumption of knowledge of CO WT is wrong, on all points except that the CPW is trying to kill them all, as they are trying to turn every hoofed critter into a positive bank balance. Unfortunately with great success using urban nimrod alchemists turning venison into gold. (But they are about to run out of raw materials)
Besides that point the key seems to be habitat, and NOT alfalfa. They do not spend time in pine forests. Willows, cottonwoods, sage, junipers (to a lesser extent) all will be used. But they avoid pine like a vampire avoids sun. The "crossover" is very skewed towards MD crossing into WT range not the other way. Migrations are a tiny fraction of what the MD do yearly, and tend to be "turkey tracked" in shape as they follow the bottom ground. Depending on the exposure/elevation of each individual drainage where it pinches off to pine tree habitat. Most do this @ 9000+ ft.
I have never seen crossover ruttting as the MD are mostly way higher until later. But it certainly does occur, boys will be boys.
Hunting pressure hammers them hard as locals think they are an "exotic" and therefore desirable, and in many cases have the connections to hunt the bottlenecks between the hay fields. In many cases this simply means they know where to sit and let their bullet do the trespassing until an after dark recovery mission. Any buck getting to bragging size either gets poached by locals or sold to a NR on an RFW tag.
Populations tend to be generally stable as they cant get too high due to winters and pressure and they cant get murdered to extinction due to private sanctuaries. And WT will gladly live right underneath the picture window in the shrubbery. Winter kill in harsh winters is extreme on both highways and RR tracks... same as MD.
The lack of the "habitat" crossing over passes at CO elevations would be the limiting factor of river/river spread. You mentioned Mr.Gore, those passes are challenging for goats in many cases, let alone WT.
Besides that point the key seems to be habitat, and NOT alfalfa. They do not spend time in pine forests. Willows, cottonwoods, sage, junipers (to a lesser extent) all will be used. But they avoid pine like a vampire avoids sun. The "crossover" is very skewed towards MD crossing into WT range not the other way. Migrations are a tiny fraction of what the MD do yearly, and tend to be "turkey tracked" in shape as they follow the bottom ground. Depending on the exposure/elevation of each individual drainage where it pinches off to pine tree habitat. Most do this @ 9000+ ft.
I have never seen crossover ruttting as the MD are mostly way higher until later. But it certainly does occur, boys will be boys.
Hunting pressure hammers them hard as locals think they are an "exotic" and therefore desirable, and in many cases have the connections to hunt the bottlenecks between the hay fields. In many cases this simply means they know where to sit and let their bullet do the trespassing until an after dark recovery mission. Any buck getting to bragging size either gets poached by locals or sold to a NR on an RFW tag.
Populations tend to be generally stable as they cant get too high due to winters and pressure and they cant get murdered to extinction due to private sanctuaries. And WT will gladly live right underneath the picture window in the shrubbery. Winter kill in harsh winters is extreme on both highways and RR tracks... same as MD.
The lack of the "habitat" crossing over passes at CO elevations would be the limiting factor of river/river spread. You mentioned Mr.Gore, those passes are challenging for goats in many cases, let alone WT.
TheJason
Well-known member
Maybe that’s true in CO, never hunted there, but it’s absolutely not the case in the areas I’ve hunted mountain whitetail.
This guy loved the ponderosa pines
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BuzzH
Well-known member
Right, they really hate pine trees where I hunt them too.
It could be a thing in CO, but I can't see why or how a whitetail in NW Montana or the Black Hills in SD/WY would be any different than one in CO.
Maybe, would like to hear an explanation of why though.
squirrel
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WT here have seen more Sasquatches than ponderosa
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