Montana - Time to Shake it Up?

[brockel]

Im fairly certain it has been expanded to include a larger area. The wildlife manager said it happened but couldn’t say when.

Hope so. A lot of their flight areas are larger private chunks or land locked public so I can see how they get pretty good counts compared to what people are seeing

 

[DFS]

The people bitching aren’t bitching without reason that isn’t how eastern Montana works. The western Montana guys saying things can be fixed with habitat management are showing how much they they actually know about an area.

 

[cgasner1]

I’m pretty young guy but I’m old enough to remember when getting a gun to shoot under a moa with hand loads was a big deal. When scopes didn’t have a dope chart. When I hunt over east I’d say that’s the difference. A guy can be out the door at Scheeles and be shooting 500 yards effectively enough to kill a deer with any gun they have on the rack. Ya it’s pretty awesome how accurate factory ammo is now but at what cost

 

[Carl 9.3x62]

Habitat is definitely a big part of the equation but in Montana our season structure and management supersedes the impact habitat has on big buck production. For example check out the old times thread and a few of the giant bucks that came from Eastern Montana 50-60 plus years ago. Range practices and conditions in eastern Montana are much better now than they were back then. Habitat conditions is not the limiting factor for big buck production in eastern Montana, lead poisoning is. In 2016 I passed up a mule deer buck on public land that was well over 180 inches. He was an 8x10 with 5 inch bases. I could tell that buck was young. My buddy went and shot him 3 days later. Come to find out that buck had been missed by at least two other hunters just days before. He was the talk of the area. He didn’t have a chance. He lab aged 3.5 years old.

How could you tell it was a young buck?

 

[rogerthat]

How could you tell it was a young buck?

His face looked young ie no Roman nose overall smaller facial features including ears and his body was small without the typical older buck traits such as sag in his back and pot gut. Those are mostly what I look at. It only really works until about 4-5ish and then I can’t always tell from their body other than they are older than 3. I always joked to my buddy that later shot the buck that the doe he was with the day I passed him that I could tell that was his mom.

 

[antlerradar]

Hope so. A lot of their flight areas are larger private chunks or land locked public so I can see how they get pretty good counts compared to what people are seeing

Even on the new Otter Creek trend area, a substantial percentage of the deer spend November down low and off the forest. Once winter sets in the deer will move up to the better south facing slopes and warmer temperatures.

 

[antlerradar]

I’m pretty young guy but I’m old enough to remember when getting a gun to shoot under a moa with hand loads was a big deal. When scopes didn’t have a dope chart. When I hunt over east I’d say that’s the difference. A guy can be out the door at Scheeles and be shooting 500 yards effectively enough to kill a deer with any gun they have on the rack. Ya it’s pretty awesome how accurate factory ammo is now but at what cost

I can remember when a Weaver K4 was a dang good scope.

My father guided during the 60's and 70's. He would often talk about a monster buck (mid thirties wide and massive antlers is how he described him) that he and the hunters tried to get for several years and failed. They ran into him many times, got to within 400 yard a few times but that was out of range for most hunters.

 

[sclancy27]

I feel like I know the answer, but just out of curiosity - does anybody have recent doe/fawn mortality data for eastern Montana? FWP, university research, anybody? I feel like that would help explain a lot of the habitat variables/range conditions quicker than anything else, at least for the purpose of mule deer management.

I don't have anything recently, but not long ago I read that adult doe mortality in eastern MT was running about 5% and the places studied in western MT were running much higher. Lead poisoning is by far the biggest reason for doe mortality on public land in eastern Montana.

The studies I have read suggest total mortality of does ~17-25% (hunting mortality was ~2/3 of that). I think those are from the 90's.

Now that there is no doe harvest on public, it would be a great opportunity to compare hunting vs total mortality. The mortality numbers in the above studies break it out, but certainly some of the does getting shot would have died from some other cause during the year. I have a friend that works on mule deer in CO and they see annual mortality around 10-15%, albeit, that population is less hunted than eastern MT, habitat and winter severity are different as well.

A big part of the problem, IMO, is FWP's recent refusal to study the damn things. I just don't understand not running projects tracking female body condition, female and male mortality, etc.

 

[brockel]

A big part of the problem, IMO, is FWP's recent refusal to study the damn things. I just don't understand not running projects tracking female body condition, female and male mortality, etc.

I don’t think they actually want that data. Easier to act like there’s not an issue

 

[sclancy27]

I don’t think they actually want that data. Easier to act like there’s not an issue

IDK, they are doing the exact same studies on elk in Eastern MT right now. I saw several cows last year sporting jewelry and have talked to the R7 bios about it.

I just think they are comfortable using the same conclusions when they did all the studies on mule deer in the 80's and 90's. I'd imagine those aren't entirely relevant anymore. Give me some fresh studies and mandatory harvest reporting on deer so we can get a good picture.

 

[brockel]

IDK, they are doing the exact same studies on elk in Eastern MT right now. I saw several cows last year sporting jewelry and have talked to the R7 bios about it.

I know the last time the mule deer foundation chapter was going over here they talked to fwp about using some of their money they raised on helping with a mule deer study such as collars. Fwp declined. That was probably 6-7 years ago so maybe things have changed

 

[Deleted member 48080]

Does anyone know offhand what a GPS collar costs?

 

[MTTW]

A big part of the problem, IMO, is FWP's recent refusal to study the damn things. I just don't understand not running projects tracking female body condition, female and male mortality, etc.

If you consider that they have things the way they want it and would like to keep it that way, it makes a lot of sense.

 

[bigsky2]

I know the last time the mule deer foundation chapter was going over here they talked to fwp about using some of their money they raised on helping with a mule deer study such as collars. Fwp declined. That was probably 6-7 years ago so maybe things have changed

Do you know whether it was the local bio’s or department staff in Helena that declined? There was a recent collaring project in the works for 410 but the staff in Helena pulled the plug on it.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Any updates on this being scheduled Ben? Apologies if I missed it.

We're set for a day, time & place. Participants are working on their regional stuff to talk about & we've been talking through some process stuff on email.

The consensus is to keep this first meeting quiet and see if there is enough common ground to keep moving forward. If the first meeting is successful, participants will decide next steps including adding stakeholders/people to the discussion.

Huge thanks to @antlerradar for providing the protein & @cgasner1 for picking up literally everything else for the logistics!!

 

[brockel]

Do you know whether it was the local bio’s or department staff in Helena that declined? There was a recent collaring project in the works for 410 but the staff in Helena pulled the plug on it.

That I do not know. I don’t think our biologist would have turned it down as she is big on having data so I’d assume it came from above.

 

[sclancy27]

Does anyone know offhand what a GPS collar costs?

It depends on the type, but radio collars (so you track by truck or airplane with an antenna) are like 500$. GPS collars double or more depending on the size and monitoring capabilities. I would guess the most state of the art GPS collars are several grand.

 

[Ben Lamb]

It depends on the type, but radio collars (so you track by truck or airplane with an antenna) are like 500$. GPS collars double or more depending on the size and monitoring capabilities. I would guess the most state of the art GPS collars are several grand.

VHF is about $500, GPS around $1500.

Add on whatever the other hardware needed costs if not already in inventory, etc.

 

[WanderWoman]

Does anyone know offhand what a GPS collar costs?

There’s some variation depending on the bells and whistles but generally $1,000, plus animal capture ($500-$600 each), plus the collar subscription service.

 

[seeth07]

So its about a dozen NR license sales to fully fund a pretty solid study involving collar tracking. Maybe add a dozen more NR tags to the pool...I kid, I kid