Hi all, just want to give you a heads up. If you are planning a hunt on the east end of the state this year, be prepared for a less than stellar year. After three consecutive hard winters, game populations are taking a beating. Estimates range from 50% loss to antelope herds, and 25% loss to mulies and whitetails...and the whitetails continued to get hit with an outbreak of EHD up until a week or so ago. With the heavy snows, forage for mule deer was scarce, and we lost many to starvation over the winter, same with antelope.
 

I covered a 12 section ranch last week...(that's 12 square miles, or almost 8000 acres) and didn't see anything but one set of old deer trtacks, two grouse, and some meadowlarks. On a bright side, pheasants seemed to do okay with a very late hatch, although many birds are so young they can't fly yet, and elk numbers for this end of the state are good. Grouse and huns didn't seem to fare well either. It is going to be tough.
 

Bad enough, that as a sportsman, I may not even hunt this fall, even though they are predicting another bad winter, and we will lose many more game animals. One thought is that you should harvest, they might well die anyways...my thought is that I would like to save what little I can. Anyways, just some food for thought, and best of luck if you do come out.

Scott 

thanks for the update , we were planning a hunt out to your area but we heard the bird numbers are down so hoping next september 2012 will be better.
We run german shorthair pointers and my 30 yr old son has a new pup that we would like to get on some sharptails and huns next year.
We have hunted around glasgow in the past its a long drive from Michigan but Montana is real beautiful country.
If you ever make it to Michigan get in touch we have some fish and animals we chase around here also depending on the season starting in the spring with bowfishing at night, salmon, steelhead, deer, ducks,geese, turkey, grouse and woodcock.

I've been to a couple of other areas around ehre, and although spotty, have started seeing larger numbers of grouse. The pheasants still seem to have faired the best, there are quite a few of them. If you do plan on coming this fall, you will get into pheasants for sure. I hope they're wrong about the winter forcasts for this year, talking about alot of snowfall to the north, especially around Glasgow and Malta....like close to 200" of accumulations. If the winters don't let up, it will be several years before the game rebounds to sustainable levels I am afraid.

Go further northeast and the numbers are pretty good. I've had a fantastic time in the northeast corner. Sharptail and pheasants, no shortage there at all. They do taper off west of scobey it seems but its not the doomsday forcast everywhere. Mule deer are down everywhere, they have been overharvested by non residents for to many years, that and hard winters and missmanagment by the fwp h{1}**** antelope and mule deer hard across the whole state. But whitetails are strong everywhere I've been along the yellowstone river. Other parts of the state blue tongue is taking its toll on the whitetail population. Around the lewistown area here, I think the biggest culprit is "Pet" deer that aren't hunted. Its not normal to have 250 head of whitetails in one 40 acre field. But no hunting is allowed and they will just disease up and die.

Not blue tongue 2links, it's EHD, very similar, caused by biting midges during drought conditions. Whitetails around here have been hit very hard. Went to Ekalaka a week or so ago, and saw 5 live whitetails, and found 4 dead. Where I usually hunt whitetails, my friend that owns the ranch is not letting anyone hunt deer, found 5 dead ones at the end of one field when he was cutting hay. My take is that FWP needs to drastically cut antelope permits for the next few years, if not completely shut it off. Deer should be one tag, with no doe tags until the populations start getting some momentum, at least around here. They're gonna scream though, no revenue for the short term, but if they don't do something drastic, there won't be much of anything!

Yeah I live here in Ekalaka. There are lots of out of state and hunters from the west side over here now. Very few deer are being shot. I talked to one hunter who said he had been here for 5 days and had only seen 3 deer. Have been in the short pines outside of town seen several camps but no deer hanging. I think if a person goes south of here down to Alzada it is a bit better. But I have been here almost 8 yrs and this is the worse I have ever seen it for so few deer. Used to be you could not even drive the speed limit at night for fear of hitting a deer. Not the case now. Antelope??? What antelope. They are all gone frome here for the most part. No more big herds like there used to be....... I just hope we don't have another winter like last year. It's gonna be several years the way it is for the animals to get back up their numbers.... So if anyone is still planning on coming out here to eastern Montana I think I would look into somewhere else to hunt.

A group of three are going to try to get tags for 2012  season for south east  first time ever hunting muley . we are all from ohio so any input would be great guys . we will come no matter what if we get drawn . its just not about killing a animal but I still would like a chance. thanks in advance for any info .

You're going to have to put in early for the draw, so go to the FWP site and see when the applications are due. There is alot of block management, state, and federal land to hunt ot here, so don't let that bug you, there's more ground than you'll ever beable to cover during a hunt..or several hunts for that matter. You will have to hunt, and alot of it will be on foot. State and fed lands are a bit different, but alot of the block mangement ranchers will allow you to drive to get to your kill, or help you for that matter. Start calling around and get ahold of the Region 7 office in Miles City to get on the list for block management publications. That will have a whole list of places to hunt.

You can come early in the season, which has it's advantages, or you can wait until about the 1st or 2nd week of November when the colder weather comes. The mulies go into rut, and chances of scoring decent bucks really improve. If you need a hand, let me know.

Scott

The biologist here told me ehd is a strain of blue tongue. Basically bird flu or swine flu. different but its still the flu.

I had antlope tag for 700 . I am from the flathead but just like to hunt the plains. Went east and saw so few goats and deer I refused to shoot a goat and bucks I could have. FWP should ba ashamed of them selves, they shoud have limited goat tags to 1000  or less for all of 700 and limited deer tags. I returned home and got my venision  behind the house. Think we have more deer here{not many} than out east.

Terry t