MT ELK, Changing it up?

[MTelkHuntress]

I can’t find anywhere it’s pointing to extending pheasant to end of January. Anyone help a guy out in pointing out to where it’s saying that?

Upland Game Bird Hunting Season Regulations And Turkey Quotas | Montana FWP

Hunting season dates, biennial quota ranges and game damage

fwp.mt.gov

Under the upland drop down tab

 

[Hunting Wife]

I cannot for the life of me understand what need there is for another month of upland hunting. Especially given the habitat conditions and drought in eastern Montana lately. Stupid.

 

[MTelkHuntress]

I cannot for the life of me understand what need there is for another month of upland hunting. Especially given the habitat conditions and drought in eastern Montana lately. Stupid.

Because we just can't have nice things anymore.

 

[BenInMT]

I’ll tell you an opportunity I would get behind. SPRING SNOW GOOSE SEASON.

 

[rogerthat]

I cannot for the life of me understand what need there is for another month of upland hunting. Especially given the habitat conditions and drought in eastern Montana lately. Stupid.

What’s hilarious about this is out of the thousands of public comments they received they grabbed that one. That dude has to feel like a stud right now. Ignore all the thousand comments regarding biology, data, and science and grab the one about extending a feathered bird that looks like Paris Hilton on a bad makeup day. That pretty sums up the current state of Hank and the “bird” brain trust in place!!

 

[TheJason]

Ya i dont buy it. There's a reason they made it brow tine bull in otc units years ago. Take unit 380. Make it illegal to harvest spikes. In 5 yrs up the 150 tags to x number. Based off a high mature bull to cow ratio. 150 tags goes to 225.

You don’t have to buy anything. Sounds like you have it all figured out.

 

[Unlucky]

No dont have it figured out.

 

[Hunting Wife]

I’ll tell you an opportunity I would get behind. SPRING SNOW GOOSE SEASON.

Sounds like they did approve it, which makes perfect sense since there’s even less biological support for this than for extending the upland season.

 

[BenInMT]

Sounds like they did approve it, which makes perfect sense since there’s even less biological support for this than for extending the upland season.

They hunt them in every surrounding state. There is no biological reason NOT to hold a spring snow goose hunt here. Show me real data that proves “our” snow geese are part of a micro-population that needs to be protected.

 

[Irrelevant]

Snows are booming here in E WA. 10 years ago I'd never seen one. Now almost 1/2 the geese I see in the basin are snows.

 

[Hunting Wife]

They hunt them in every surrounding state. There is no biological reason NOT to hold a spring snow goose hunt here. Show me real data that proves “our” snow geese are part of a micro-population that needs to be protected.

Point to where so said they needed to be protected. I said there are no data supporting a season.

The conservation order is for Central Flyway snows only. Every year for 10 years we would go drive around NE MT to survey for snow geese in the spring because the state was getting pressure to open a season. Know how many snows about 10 people counted across those 10 years? Two flocks…300 one time, 1000 another time. They don’t stop over here. They go right on over us into Canada, or east of us in the spring. Sure, make a season. But don’t pretend there’s actually going to be something to hunt.

 

[Irrelevant]

Point to where so said they needed to be protected. I said there are no data supporting a season.

The conservation order is for Central Flyway snows only. Every year for 10 years we would go drive around NE MT to survey for snow geese in the spring because the state was getting pressure to open a season. Know how many snows about 10 people counted across those 10 years? Two flocks…300 one time, 1000 another time. They don’t stop over here. They go right on over us into Canada, or east of us in the spring. Sure, make a season. But don’t pretend there’s actually going to be something to hunt.

Freezeout Lake

Freezeout Lake is Montana's primary snow goose staging area, a place where as many as 300,000 snow geese and 10,000 tundra swans gather and rest before flying onward. In Spring, the snow geese head for Alberta and central Saskatchewan in Canada. There they mass with hundreds of thousands of...

www.visitmt.com

So I've read about this in a couple different spots but have never witnessed first hand, maybe it's not true?

 

[Hunting Wife]

@neffa3 Freezeout is incredible. It is also in the Pacific Flyway. That is not part of the current Conservation order under which this season is being established.

 

[Irrelevant]

@neffa3 Freezeout is incredible. It is also in the Pacific Flyway. That is not part of the current Conservation order under which this season is being established.

Gotcha. Knew I was missing something

 

[BenInMT]

@neffa3 Freezeout is incredible. It is also in the Pacific Flyway. That is not part of the current Conservation order under which this season is being established.

We should move the pacific flyway boundary over to the other side of the mountains where it belongs.

 

[Hunting Wife]

We should move the pacific flyway boundary over to the other side of the mountains where it belongs.

Unfortunately it’s the band returns and population data that determined the flyways, not the geography.

 

[Schaaf]

Unfortunately it’s the band returns and population data that determined the flyways, not the geography.

 

[TheJason]

Unfortunately it’s the band returns and population data that determined the flyways, not the geography.

 

[Doublecluck]

I’ve hunted waterfowl better than 40 days a year since I was 12, all over the pacific and central flyway. The proposed Montana “spring snow goose season” in the central flyway has me scratching my head. I’ve called lots of friends, up in the northeast, the southeast, everywhere east and in between because I thought maybe I was missing something.. no, even my friends in the most northeast portions of the state are left wondering wtf. Is this like a precursor for expected shifts in migration changes from global warming or something? Lol. Putting out 5k decoys to kill a couple hundred white birds in nodak when hundreads of thousands pass over is hard enough, not about to go chasing ghosts in eastern MT.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Is this like a precursor for expected shifts in migration changes from global warming or something?

No, it’s completely a product of people seeing birds at Freezeout, seeing spring seasons in other states, and complaining about needing a season without understanding what they are looking at and how spring seasons are regulated.

Maybe people will finally figure it out now when they show up to hunt all the spring snows at Medicine Lake.