TwoBear

Everybody who put in for the Montana elk, elk/deer combo will e drawing a tag this year. There are 1200 leftover tags that go on sale April 18th first come first served through Montana FWP online licensing section. Congrats to all that put in for a tag. The deer only tag had around 7800 applicants and 4600 tags, so there will be a drawing for that.

Muley Hunter

No surprise when they cost $900.

No thanks.

salukipv1

I wonder if they'll sell out of them? are they at a reduced price?

MT needs to allow non-residents to apply for limited entry tags without having to first draw a general tag.

I don't want a general tag, i want a limited entry, period. If I draw a gen tag and fail to draw a lim entry I'm going to return the general at a 80% refund from now on.

Unless you have an in on some private land, outfitter etc...I see little reason for a non-resident to go hunt public land for bull elk in MT with a general tag, which essentially only comes down to region 3. Or have a honey hole...

beech18

Surprising yet not. I moved to Montana about 6 years ago, I remember mabey a year or so before I moved here I applied as a non resident for the deer/elk lic and didnt draw. Shortly later I got a notice from Montana that the outfitter pool of tags didnt sell out and I was giving a chance to buy the standard deer/elk lic on a first come first serve basis in order to fill the overall quota. So even back then with the old Montana system of lic's they didnt always sell out all the tags every year and had left overs to offer.

One positive with having some left overs the outfitters have a chance at booking additional clients that missed putting in the draw eariler.

According to 2 bears numbers, With the straight deer draws my calculation being approx 59% of the people will get the deer tag. Be interesting what % of the 41% of the people who dont draw the straight deer tag would be interested in purchasing the left over deer/elk combo lic. If no one else besides the people who didnt draw the straight deer tag would buy the left over lic's, it would take approx 38% of those people who didnt draw the deer in order to sell out the 1200 left over deer/elk lic's. This is assuming the 1200 left overs are the deer/elk combo lic's.

2 bear, I checked the Montana fish and game web site and couldnt find this info with left over lic's. Did I miss it somewhere on there or did you find it somewhere else?

TwoBear

Beech, it was a FWP press release from a few days ago. You can google "left over Montana Tags" and find it in all the Newspapers now.

South33

It's a shame that it costs $900+ for a non-res elk tag!

salukipv1,
I have to disagree; I moved here in 2002 & have yet to not get my bull every year. The elk are plenty & if the effort is put in you will get one. All it takes is finding a place that isn't pressured, & now that the tags cost $900.00 I feel I will be seeing less hunters in my neck of the woods...

-South

scottb3472

Boy are you ever wrong!! A general tag will let you hunt anywhere in the state EXCEPT the limited draw area's. A non resident with a general tag can hunt all of the Kootenai National Forest thats 2.2 million acres of public land by the way, and all of the Stillwater State lands and that is 260,000 accres, and that is in region 1. If you need more public land to hunt then that, then you might want to look at alaska then.

txhunter58

Our only hope of stopping this train (rapidly escalating pricing) is if they don't sell all the leftovers. Unfortunately I imagine they will.

salukipv1

How is access in that area? horses needed?

Region 3 is way down in numbers and quality, talked to many locals who have hunted 20+ years there and all agreed, 10 years ago you'd see 5x as many elk.

I'm willing to bet, that almost any limited tag area in MT produces better bigger elk than any general tag elk area.

btw I never said there wasn't enough public land in MT to hunt, there's plenty of public land, even for general tags, my point is if you want 300+ bull elk, I'd pass on hunting a general tag on public land in MT.

salukipv1

Guys who didn't draw elsewhere probably will end up buying up the rest.