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Hunting season heads into final days

Sam Wilson | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 9 years, 5 months AGO
by Sam Wilson
| November 25, 2015 11:07 AM

Hunters who have yet to fill their freezers still have a few days left before the general season for deer, elk and most other big game in the state wraps up Sunday.

While elk are notoriously elusive, the numbers this year indicate that the ungulates’ numbers are high this year, particularly compared with previous paltry success rates for hunters in Northwestern Montana.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife manager Neil Anderson said this is a tough time of year for elk, which tend to respond more acutely to the presence of hunters than deer.

“Elk are going to be more difficult to get at now, because they’re being pressured and they’re going to try to go to places where they’re not being pressured,” Anderson said. “You’re probably going to have to work pretty hard for them.”

He said last week that most of the animals are still likely hanging out in their higher-elevation summer ranges or just beginning to transition to winter range.

The lion’s share of elk takings in this part of the state have been west of Kalispell, with check station reports showing that Thompson Falls and lands closer to Libby are yielding most of the prized game animals.

Most of that harvest happened in the first week, however, and has since slowed significantly.

Hunters are faring better in the North Fork than last year, but overall success is still low, and the check station there had yielded only a single elk as of last Sunday.

“The North Fork has just been pretty slow, consistently, for more than just this year,” Anderson noted. “We don’t have all the numbers for folks that go up there, but it’s pretty heavily timbered and pretty thick country, so it can be tough to hunt.”

White-tailed deer, however, remain relatively easy pickings.

“The reality is white-tailed deer are pretty much everywhere, but you’re going to have to find those pockets where they’re congregating,” he said. “West of town, deer numbers seem to be doing real well. In the Swan, recruitment hasn’t been as high, and it can be a bit more difficult to hunt because it’s thicker with more cover.”

At the current rate, Northwest hunters will have bagged more than 1,000 deer (based on weekend check-station statistics) by the end of the general season, with the Olney check station producing the best success rate. Close to one in 10 hunters were rolling through that game check with a buck, and more than 10 percent reported taking a deer or elk.

It’s still an open question whether Weyerhaeuser will continue Plum Creek’s open public access policy on its private forests, but the current block management agreement with the state will keep those lands open to hunters at least through the spring turkey hunt.

Anderson said that west of town, at least half of the animals taken have been on land owned by either Plum Creek or F.H. Stoltze Land & Lumber Co.

“If you look at Thompson River, and almost everything south of Kila and everything north of the chain lakes, a lot of that stuff is Plum Creek [land] and that’s where Highway 2 gets those folks coming through the check station,” he said.

Tuesday’s snow could help, both to hide the sounds of hunters stalking their quarries and allowing animals to stand out more as they roam through wooded areas. It could also help to push animals farther down toward more accessible hunting spots.

Aside from some the possibility of some isolated lake-effect snow, no additional precipitation is in the forecast, but with temperatures forecast to remain below freezing through the weekend, that powder will likely stay put through the end of the season.


Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.

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