Montana General Season Structure Proposal

[sclancy27]

I agree with you about not increasing tags
and they already issue over 2600 tags and I bet half of those elk do not live on FS for any significant portion of the year. It's such a vast area and after a good amount of hunting pressure they head to private. It's not a tag issue but an access issue. And a majority of hunters will never have an opportunity to hunt the island areas of elk outside of the core populations. I've hunted and worked in some of these areas since 2015 (very recent I know) and I haven't seen much game being harvested because it's not what people think a limited district should be. I wonder about the same thing for 411, 412. 447, 417, etc. I just don't see many landowners allowing access for cow elk in Oct, but hopefully I'm wrong.

The real answer to that is break up those regions more (seriously, R7 elk is managed as 2 units functionally....WTF). That way you can actually target those populations on private with licenses only valid on private and manage the public elk also. Everyone wins in that scenario

 

[Pagosa]

The real answer to that is break up those regions more (seriously, R7 elk is managed as 2 units functionally....WTF). That way you can actually target those populations on private with licenses only valid on private and manage the public elk also. Everyone wins in that scenario

That makes sense, and they are issuing way too many tags

 

[cgasner1]

That makes sense, and they are issuing way too many tags

A guy I know that is very familiar with 799 told me once that the area actually has 3 “herds” of elk if you will and fwp should break that unit up and manage accordingly

 

[sclancy27]

That makes sense, and they are issuing way too many tags

A guy I know that is very familiar with 799 told me once that the area actually has 3 “herds” of elk if you will and fwp should break that unit up and manage accordingly

Yes. 700 is better, but you could even break that up into 2 units at least, East and West

 

[Gerald Martin]

One benefit to making the antlerless season private land only is political in nature. It could allow FWP to fulfill the legal mandate to manage for objective and potentially help eliminate the late shoulder season.