I've hunted antelope all my life in Montana and I'm 67 years old. I took my granddaughter out on Sunday and saw 0 antelope on public land in a 90 mile loop north of Ryegate, area 516-20. I wanted her to experience the thrill of the hunt but failed miserably.
Don't waste your time on Montaña unless you want to pay to play. The MT FWP do a survey every year. They see 10000 antelope on private unhuntable land (Wilks Bros), 500 on public huntable land. They base their quotas on 10500 antelope and issue 2000 permits to hunt 500 antelope as well as additional doe and fawn permits. As with all governmental agencies they do things the way they always done it and the lack of critical thinking is appalling. There may be some interference from the state legislature but I haven't research that yet. You can get lucky and get a nice antelope but you won't have a quality hunt if you plan on hunting public land in Montana.
We are in 705 in MT fri/sat and part of sun with 2 buck and 2 doe tags and probably not going to pass many opportunities. I hunted this area 4 years ago and there were animals everywhere, I hunted it last year on 2 doe tags and there were not many but still a few. Taking my boy to grind it out, he will tag out first if I eat my tags I wont be mad about it. Wyoming seems to do the best with tag cuts when herds are hurting and tag additions when there is abundance, surrounding states seem to be slow to react and not enough.
Going hunting is better than sitting at home though and you cannot shoot anything from the couch, so we'll be out in the spitting rain Friday, see how it goes.
