Hunting Harvests Stay Flat Through Tough Part of Hunting Season for Western Montana

Right now, hunters are dealing with one of the hardest parts of the season. Vivica Crowser from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks says the skiff of snow that we have has helped keep harvests level.

"Not a lot going on with wildlife," Crowser said. "In the middle of the season sometimes those early season hot spots have passed and we're not quite in to the mule deer rut in a lot of places yet. The cold and snow have helped, though. We've got good tracking conditions in some spots and animals moving around. All things considered, things have stayed fairly steady through this season."

Luckilly, deer hunting in western Montana has been relatively easy this year.

"Deer have been coming from all places in the region really," Crowser said. "We've seen a lot of deer through the Bonner check stations, so those coming out of the Blackfoot and Seeley Swan areas. Just anecdotally we've heard of quite a few hunter-harvest success stories west of Missoula. The Bitterroot has also been good for deer harvest, both out of the Big Hole and the southern regions of the Bitterroot."

Although deer harvests are up, the elk harvest this year is worse than last year, and below the five year average.

Below are the FWP numbers for the past week (November 17):

The hunter check station near Bonner has tallied 4,167 hunters this year, down 4 percent from last year, and 7 percent below the four-year average. Elk harvest recorded at Bonner remains low this season, with 37 elk checked so far, 16 percent below last year’s pace. Deer harvest remains up with 43 mule deer, compared to 25 at this point in the 2013 season, and 195 white-tailed deer, compared to 188.

In the southern part of the region, hunters made 3,274 trips through the Darby hunter check station on weekends so far this season, 11 percent higher than last year’s tally of 2,949 hunters during the same weekends. However, the harvest of 118 elk at Darby lags behind the 127 elk checked last year during the comparable sampling period, and the mule deer harvest of 24 is running behind the harvest of 33 mule deer at this time last year. White-tailed deer harvest through Darby remains higher than last year, with 74 checked, up from the 65 whitetails checked on weekends last year at this time.

At the Anaconda check station, hunter traffic spiked upward in the third week. The harvest of 31 elk through Anaconda so far this season is 21 percent lower than last year and 34 percent below the four-year average. Deer harvest through Anaconda is low every year, and the tally of 22 mule deer and 10 white-tailed deer so far is on par with previous years.