Relaxed regs assist strong whitetail harvest

Poor weather conditions didn’t stop hunters in Northwest Montana from bagging nearly 1,500 white-tailed deer during the general rifle season this year, with game check stations recording the highest harvest — both overall and in terms of bucks — in seven years.

That’s consistent with recruitment numbers over the past few years, said Region One Wildlife Manager Neil Anderson. Still, he attributed a large part of the overall increase to loosened regulations on either-sex harvest during the first and last weeks of the season.

“We approached this season, knowing we had a lot of deer out there, a little cautiously but we opened up some opportunity for does,” Anderson said.

Of 1,494 whitetails reported at check stations since Oct. 22, 1,069 were bucks. The sizable harvest came in spite of the weather, with the region’s historically rainiest October giving way to a November largely devoid of snow.

State wildlife biologists will have a clearer picture of overall deer and elk populations once hunter surveys are completed in the coming months, but Anderson estimates the local population to be about where it was at this time last year. Whether forecasts for a cold, snowy winter pan out will help determine what those numbers look like next year, as heavier snowfall limits the animals’ access to food sources.

Despite a good year for whitetails, elk hunters had a tougher time this year, reporting a total of 72 at the region’s check stations, compared with 86 in 2015. The harvest was on par with the last five years but still well below 2010 and 2011, when the region’s check stations tallied 158 and 121 elk, respectively.

Anderson predicts elk numbers to keep tracking slowly upward, but noted that Northwest Montana’s thick forests will likely never produce the higher numbers found elsewhere in the state.

“It’s a different type of harvest up here, because elk tend to get into little groups, occupy little pockets and can be hard to find,” he said.

Most of this year’s elk harvest came from the western half of the region. Check stations on U.S. 2 west of Kalispell and in Thompson Falls each accounted for a third of the total. The game check in Olney dropped from 12 elk in 2015 to nine this year, with two elk reported in the Swan and three in the North Fork.

Anderson said he’ll be watching how habitat recovers in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, where massive wildfires in 2015 eliminated much of the canopy cover in the South Fork’s already limited winter range. Depending on the type of regeneration in those burn areas, however, elk could benefit from increased browsing opportunities.

Mule deer harvest improved significantly over recent years, despite the overall population’s low recruitment numbers. The 146 muleys reported at check stations was the highest total since 2010. Most were brought through game checks on U.S. 2 and in Canoe Gulch, but harvest numbers also rose at the region’s other four check stations.

Anderson was surprised by the rise in mule deer harvest, given low population recruitment. Regional wildlife biologists have struggled to explain the species’ decline in recent years, which will be the subject of a three-year study beginning this winter.

“We really don’t know what the limiting factors are,” Anderson said. White-tailed deer can out-compete mule deer in the winter, but loss of open habitat and increased predation could also be factors driving the trend, he said.

“We’ll probably never be a big mule-deer region compared to areas in the eastern part of the state, but we can offer some unique hunting opportunities.”

Based on the check-station data, hunter participation dropped from 18,411 last year to 17,656 in 2016. Part of that could be explained by the either-sex opportunities, Anderson said, which allowed hunters to fill general tags early in the season and log less trips through the region’s game checks. The unusual weather may have also taken a toll.

“If you don’t like hunting in the rain, we had rain through the first part of the season, and if you were waiting for snow, it didn’t come,” Anderson said. “Right now, I think we’re doing fairly well.”

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.