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Old 01-19-2018, 06:03 PM
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coolbrze0
Nontypical Buck
 
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: VA
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Originally Posted by tatonka
We (my son and I) did well... We both killed a nice whitetail buck and we each killed a whitetail doe and my son killed a cow elk (late season tag in the Breaks). I'm not sure if we saw more critters or more hunters. We have been getting absolutely swamped with non-resident hunters as well as hunters from other parts of Montana (I'm in region 6).

Block mgt. is a catch 22 deal... It's nice to have places to hunt without knocking on doors, but they draw hunters from out of state and other parts of Montana like flies. In Blaine County alone I believe we have 38 block mgt units and they get hammered to death. Consequently, the hunting pressure is unreal. Yes, we have good numbers of animals, but trying to find a mature buck, etc. is very, very difficult. Most are shot before they ever come close to being mature. It's common to go out and see 100 deer or more and 90% of them are does and fawns and the remainder are mostly young 2 and 3 point bucks.

Pheasant numbers were the worst I've seen in the 38 years I've lived here.
Man I hate to hear that. I'm a VA resident but have hunted MT 3 times & have had a blast each time. Got lucky & harvested 3 pretty nice Mulies & 1 4x5 Elk but didn't shoot an elk my 1st go round. We got into a lot of birds Nov. '16 when we hunted in North Central MT but only a few the other times I hunted South West MT. Totally different terrain though. Your winters really change things w/ game populations. Something that we take for granted here in the Old Dominion. We've had a colder than average winter this year, but nothing like what y'all experience out there. Plus our "colder than average" prob. won't do any damage to the game #s here...
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