The hunters who dutifully stopped at the Darby check station have never been happier. This year, they harvested a record number of elk and did pretty well on deer, too.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists checked 942 elk at the Darby station through Sunday. The next best year in the 53-year history of the station was in 2003, when 727 elk were counted. The five-year average is close to 450.
“Although this level of harvest is at record levels, we actually harvested a lower percentage of the elk herd than what we did in the mid-1990s,” Vore said. “There's just so many more elk around.”
The elk herd in the Bitterroot Valley has just about doubled in the last 10 years, and Vore estimates there are now close to 10,000. Taking that into consideration, Vore said hunters need to harvest closer to 1,400 elk a year just to keep the herd size steady.
“That's a sustainable hunt,” he said. “To actually reduce the herd, we'd have to harvest even more than that.”
Elk populations in the Bitterroot Valley remained relatively stable from 1960 to 1980, and hunters could count on harvesting about the same percentage of the herd every year. That all changed around 1990, when the state decided to increase the elk herd. To do that, it shortened the season and did away with an either-sex season.
That strategy worked so well that biologists are now looking for ways to cut the herd back a notch.
In some hunting districts, the herd size needs to be pared down to meet levels set by a local volunteer organization and adopted by the state commission, Vore said.
For instance, in the East Fork of the Bitterroot - where hunters filled the 250 cow elk quota in a weekend - the population objective is 3,000. Last spring, Vore counted 3,499 elk.
Vore said hunters can probably expect to see quotas for cows bumped up a bit next year in the upper reaches of the Bitterroot Valley. The state also will probably make some changes in the season length and opening date to make the hunt a bit more socially acceptable.
Elsewhere in west-central Montana, hunter numbers are on the rebound and the deer and elk they're harvesting are sporting some nice racks, said Bob Henderson, one of the acting wildlife managers for Region 2.
At the Bonner check station, hunter numbers were the highest they've been since 1997.
“We're slowly regaining hunters following the winter of '96-'97,” Henderson said. “After that winter, we lost a lot of hunters who started hunting down in Region 3 or eastern Montana. They're just now starting to come back.”
Hunters who stayed close to home found some nice trophy deer and elk.
Deer and elk populations around west-central Montana are maturing after getting knocked back by the heavy snowfall in the winter of '96-'97, Henderson said. This year's ample rainfall also helped create the kind of forage deer and elk use to grow antlers.
“We saw a lot of five-point whitetails and a lot of four- and five-point mule deer in places where they hadn't been coming from before,” Henderson said. “There were a lot of people tickled pink.”
Up north, hunters turned out in record numbers and had a record harvest of mule deer and elk. The six check stations in Region 1 checked 24,843 hunters with a harvest of 1,932 whitetail deer, 372 mule deer, and 224 elk.
The whitetail harvest was the largest since 1996. About
70 percent of the whitetail bucks were four points or better.
In southwest Montana, hunter numbers lagged a bit, but those who ventured out found plenty of elk.
Despite a drop of 9 percent in hunter numbers, the elk harvest was up by 26 percent, said Kurt Alt, Region 3 wildlife manager.
The largest increase came at the Mill Creek/Divide check station, which checks hunters from the Big Hole and Fleecer areas. The elk harvest was
89 percent higher than the five-year average, Alt said.
“Overall, I'm pleased with the harvest this year,” Alt said. “Hunters can expect us to stay in the same liberal season package for next year.”
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