Whitetail numbers looking good for hunting opener

Hunters should have a good shot at bagging a deer when the general hunting season opens Saturday.

“Whitetail numbers are looking really good,” Neil Anderson, wildlife program manager for Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Region 1 said last week.

This year, for the first time in years, hunters can harvest either sex whitetail regionwide the first week of the season using a general tag. On the last week of the season, they can harvest either sex, but only on private lands, excluding timber company lands, which include F.H. Stoltze Land and Lumber, Weyerhaeuser and Stimson lands.

The regulation is designed to thin whitetail numbers on private lands and give hunters a better opportunity to harvest game, Anderson noted.

Permission is required to hunt on private property even if the land is not posted, he cautioned. He also cautioned hunters to check their B tags. Some are only valid on private lands.

According to a September 2015 whitetail report, the last year hunters could shoot either sex whitetail deer was 2009, when there was one week of either sex harvest.

The report notes that in general, whitetail deer numbers have been increasing since 2012, though Anderson cautioned that if we have a bad winter FWP biologists will be watching deer mortality closely.

Hunters have the greatest success in the lower Flathead River area, where harvest per square mile ranged from 2 to 8.3 deer per square mile.The hunting districts that include wilderness regions had a harvest rate of less than .1 deer per square mile.

While whitetail numbers are robust, mule deer in Region 1 still aren’t doing as well and harvest is for bucks-only. The Whitefish Range has seen declines, but the Thompson and Fisher River areas are holding their own. FWP will start a mule deer research project in the area this winter, Anderson noted.

Elk numbers he said are doing fairly well outside of the Bob Marshall, he noted. The Bob population in Region 1 is struggling. Habitat is likely a factor as is predation, he noted. The west side has had a lot of wildfires and it takes about six years for the elk to fully utilize burned areas after a fire, studies have shown, Anderson said.

But cow-calf recruitment outside of the wilderness has been pretty good, he said.