Ep. 59: State of Montana Mule Deer and Hunt Recap with Tyson Drevniak
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Welcome back to Cutting the Distance. Today we're going to talk about the state of Montana mule deer from my position as well as Tyson's and do a little hunt recap. So today's guest I just mentioned my longtime friend and hunting buddy Tyson Drevnok. Back in I believe 08 we started Primetime Outdoors way back then and we were kind of putting some hunts on YouTube way back before it was cool and everybody did it. I've also been around when Tyson's wife and his dad have taken numerous bucks that may be a little bigger than Tyson's. Sorry I couldn't help but bring that up early in the podcast. The

We just got back from our, what I would call our somewhat annual Montana mule deer hunt. We've been going for almost 22 years and we're just gonna talk about some things we observed, good, bad, and then what we feel is maybe, maybe,

a growing problem that we just need to talk about. We don't claim to be a biologist or any of that. We're just going to talk about kind of the state of Montana mule deer. And we have a pretty good measuring stick for what's going on, being on and off for the last 22 years, getting to hunt deer there in Montana. So welcome to the show, Tyson. I'm so glad you introduced me. This third fiddle behind my dad and wife. But yeah, glad to be here. At least I didn't introduce you as Taryn's husband. That might be better off at this point.

Oh, I do love it though. And I've only been to your new house a couple of times now, but when you walk in, you're greeted by her, her big buck. I get to look at it every single day when I walk in the house and yeah, it's really great. But to your credit, you've been there for both your wife's big mule deer and both of your dad's bigger bucks now. Yeah, no, it's been, we've been involved in some great bucks getting shot. I just haven't been the trigger man for any of those. So yeah, no, it's,

it's good. Like you said, we, we grew up in the same town, didn't quite start hunting together till shoot right out of high school. We decided we were going to do the whole filming over the shoulder thing and got started. And then we, from there we did anger mountain productions together there for a late run in the late,

2000 teens there. And now we just, you know, with us doing this thing, we still hunt together as much as we can, or, you know, occasionally it seems like not as much as we used to, but we always have a great time, you know, great hunter, great mule deer hunter. And so I'm glad to have you on here. But like every podcast, we're going to start with some listener questions. I have to apologize off the bat.

I had thrown these questions in here waiting for a Mule Deer episode and my wife, God bless her, she was in there cleaning up my emails. And so I've got the two questions, but I do not have a name, but I appreciate whoever sent these to me.

And the questions actually were teed up perfectly for this, no one that was going to tie in. So we have a hunter that's going to head to Montana for his first year mule deer hunt, Western mule deer hunt. He's decided on a few areas, but once I'm there, how do I decide where to concentrate my efforts? Go ahead and take a crack at that Tyson. Where to concentrate your efforts? Well, if it's your first trip,

and you're unsure with the area and the amount of deer, I think your best, best to cover country with your first couple of days and put eyes on ground, try and find a concentration of deer and then see what you're looking at for bucks. And then don't be afraid to be mobile. If one area is not working, find a new area until you find deer and the deer you're after. Yeah. I I'm, I'm completely on board with that. You know, we, uh,

if we ever show up in a new area, I like to get somewhere where I can sit by my spotter and, and let that do as much movement as we can. And, um, you know, we talk about fringe areas all the time, you know, whether you're coming out of ag up into the breaks or you're coming from the mountains down into the flats, or you're going anywhere, there's a transition, no matter where you're at, mule deer hunting, uh,

I think you should definitely pay some attention to any of that transition, whether it's a vegetation change, whether it's a rolling terrain into steep, whether it's whatever it is, like concentrate on those, those fringes. And it seems like you're going to, you're going to pick up deer. And in my first couple of days on a hunt, I feel like we're always trying to just figure out where the concentration are. You can find a few anomalies or a deer down low or a deer way up high, but,

we're always trying to pick up where is the majority of those deer at and even more so on where those does at. Where those does at, especially if you're going to be able to hunt into the rut, keep an eye on it, keep checking. And then once you find those,

It seems like early on in the rut, you'll see those bigger bucks, maybe checking them really early in the morning. And then they'll start hanging out with them longer and longer into the daylight. Yeah. And you start getting to November. Every day is going to get better and you never know which buck's going to show up. And it's tough because I'm not real patient. I'm not real, like, in my opinion, I've been there. I've checked it out. It wasn't there. I'm not coming back.

but mule deer rut, just like, you know, maybe more so than elk rut, right? The elk rut, they're kind of just there. They're locked in. Those mule deer rut, it seems like they've got the ability to like reload every night. New deer show up, new bucks cruising, ends up with the hot doe because he hasn't found one. All of a sudden there's a new deer in your area too. Another factor to take in on a hunt like that is weather. Like we just experienced,

Like wind will keep your deer down to where you're not seeing very many deer and you go back to the same spot. And all of a sudden there'll be deer that were there the whole time that you did not see. Bucks that were there the whole time that were just hunkered down waiting out the weather. Yeah. I mean, we're not putting exact science to this, but just on the group that we were with, you know, we broke into three groups usually.

We were guessing on the windy days, we were seeing at least half, you know, if not more, we were only seeing half the deer from the non-windy days. And the other thing that really threw a wrench at us, I know we're kind of going off on a tangent here, but once they were out, they wouldn't feed near as long and they would drop into some areas where they were trying to get out of the wind and then they were very, very tough to dig out. So it's like you even had a heck of a time going and trying to find them once they left. They were diving deep in the canyons and putting themselves out of the winds.

You know, and, you know, on your buck, you know, number one, we didn't get winded. And number two, we had to kind of make a play. And those deer were in the absolute tightest. They couldn't get any lower than they were out of that wind. And, you know, when they're in that type of terrain, like you can only see into that spot from very few spots. So it was really...

not saying we, we knew exactly what we needed to do, but it was kind of in our, we knew we needed to hunt a, hunt a ridge that allowed for these wind breaks and, and kind of approach that way. Even though we were getting winded by a lot of deer, it allowed us to get down on glass back up. And ultimately that's where we found your buck down there. Um, you know, with the,

with a bunch of does pushed out of the wind. 10 does with him. Yeah. And he was, yeah, he was the man of the house down there. Yeah. We knew, we knew we could only approach one way. Ideally we'd have came up the other direction, not to get winded by everything and actually have the wind in our face. But when you, you know, you got limited access and only one way in, um, you got to do what you do. And we made the, made the best of it. So yeah, to, to go back to that question, um, look at fringes, um,

Um, do a lot of glass and from high, um, I say hi, just anywhere you can see a lot of country and then concentrate your time after a couple of days of what would be pre-scouting. You're always hunting, but you know, you scout and then, um, put your time there and usually some, some good things are going to happen. Um,

The second question, which is a piggyback on the first one, same guy answering it. So he also doesn't have, as he mentioned, is his first time. I don't have a lot of experience hunting meal deer in open country. Once I locate something, I want to get a better lookout or move in for a shot. What should I consider and how do I approach this? What can I get away with? What's kind of a safe bet as you're approaching deer? And we've kind of always fought this and it's been different. When we're in Colorado together, it seems like you get away with anything you want. You're in...

Montana, it's like, you can't let that deer see it from a thousand yards. You need to stay completely invisible. So give some, give your take, um, you know, maybe specific to Montana or just in general, um, on, on approach and, and all of that. With Montana, the big thing is terrain and using it to your advantage. And like you said, like those deer over there in our experience, if you, they see you at a thousand yards, they're taken off and running.

So using the terrain to your advantage, get behind any sort of cover you can, whether it's a roll of a hill or if you have a brush line, use it. And the big factor there too is just plan a route and there could be more deer that you haven't seen that you could bust and they could screw up your stock. There's a lot of deer in that state. They could be in between you and you don't know about it until you're there. And that's another big factor there.

And just planning that stock itself. One thing I would say is, is sometimes I get in too big of a hurry. Like, right. You spot the deer you want, you think it's big, you need to go. And then you get across the Canyon or you get across the other side of the Valley. And you're like, where am I at? This all looks the same from over here. Um, I would recommend taking a little bit of time, whether you're using on X, whatever you're using, like, um,

plot your, your route, make sure you know exactly what Canyon you need to go up and maybe even, you know, put a few way points on there. It only takes you a few extra seconds. And that way, when you get over there and everything looks the same and you can't look back and figure out where the heck you're at, at least you made some good decisions over there. As much as I hate using technology. Another thing we've did at times is like, just take a picture from where you're at. And then you get over there and you're like, Oh yeah, I'm here. I'm there. And you can figure out where you're at on the ground again, or pick out some landmarks versus, um,

Um, like I say, I, as much as I struggle with technology, like it's available, not against the rules right now. Um, like just take a picture of where you're going, um, on X, all of that will, will help you get in there. Um,

As you're approaching, as we kind of just told the same story, wind's also important in some of this country where wind can get from you to them. Keep that in mind. Add that into your approach. I know we talk about it a ton when we're talking archery elk, but rifle mule deer is the same. If you're trying to get inside of a

of a reasonable shot distance, you know, three to 500 yards, whatever it may be in this open country, like you're going to get winded if you don't play it right. So like you said on just my buck, I think we blew out three different groups of deer just trying to get to where we were going. Cause our wind was bad, but it was the best we could work with. Yeah. And,

As much as I don't like to say we had planned on it, we talked about it up top. It's going to be tight. It's going to be a jump shoot game. We'd hate judging deer that quick, especially when you're after something specific. We just always tell ourselves it's got to be a no-brainer. Worst case scenario, it gets away. You know he's in the area. It was pretty nerve-wracking playing the game that way. We were fairly confident in that tight canyon. We could get it done.

if needed. But yeah, what you can get away with, always pick a route where you stay completely out of the deer site. You know, they can't smell you. Go the extra mile. Get in, you know, go an extra canyon down. You know, I tend to get lazy at times. Like, well, I can just walk across the top of this flat and yeah, yeah, something might see me, but I could still get a shot. Just stay away from edges. Stay away from, you know, being seen and everything, you know, should work out.

um, you know, the only thing I can add to that, I don't want to spend too much time on this is pay attention to what the deer doing. Like if it's getting close to that time where all the deer have been been down on days before, like, should you wait and watch them? Do you need to go right away? Um, if you take off right away, you might not have eyes on them anymore. You might not be able to keep up with them. So there's times like, what are they doing? Are they, is it first thing in the morning? I'm very confident that deer is going to be right there. If it's about that time, like, are they going to move off five, 600 yards and bed down real quick while I'm making my stock? Um, keep all that in mind. And, um,

You know, sometimes it may be better in certain instances to sit back and watch him bed and then go. We can use a prime example for my dad's deer that he shot this year. He shot another pretty good deer and we were caught in the wide open.

And we knew we had all day. We knew where they were probably going to go bad. So we just hung back as much as it killed Jason watching us in the spotting scope. Why we weren't shooting at that deer. It was a long shot and it was wide open. So we just held back until they dove over the edge to where they were going to go bad. And we ended up finding him in his bed and we got him killed.

down off the hill. As much as it was painful to sit there and watch a deer, it ended up paying off. In my defense, in my spotter, the belly of that buck was literally on top of your head and it looked like he was 57 yards away. But I know after being there longer and looking from different angles, it was definitely far away and you couldn't see out of the grass. But I had to take

some, uh, yeah, anxiety medication. Um, I had to stop looking at the spotter at times. I had told dad this whole time is cause we knew you were watching in the spotter that you were probably going nuts and wondering why we weren't shooting that deer. And, uh, yeah, I was right. Yeah, no, it was like, I don't see what the problem is. Why aren't you shooting now? What the heck's going on? You guys open your eyes. Like everything I could think of, like, why aren't you guys killing that thing? Um, but no, it ended up. And that's the thing. Uh, you just be patient. It, it,

if there's a target deer or something you want to go after a lot of times, you know, I say this, but I'm also a hypocrite. Like sometimes we feel like you need to make this happen because it might not be in there in the morning. Right. Especially on a night hunt, but on a morning hunt, I feel like you've got a lot of time. The deer is most likely not going to blow out of the area. Um, you can be patient. Um,

So, yeah, thanks for those questions. Once again, if you have a question for me or my guests on cutting the distance, feel free to email them to us at ctd at phelpsgamecalls.com, and we'll do our best to get them on here. Or you can send us a social message, and we'll try to get them included here. So now we're going to jump into our discussion for the day. And I say it's the state of Montana mule deer and mule.

Um, I don't claim to be an expert. I don't get to spend as much time as, you know, all the residents do over there and, you know, they're with the deer all the time, but this is going to be just an observation and kind of a hunt recap from, from, we have been over there for the last 22 years off and on. Um, we used to try to go every year, but yeah.

I do get to talk to a lot of people in my position. You know, I, um, we're going to talk about, you know, talking to guys like Ryan Lampers, Rinella, you know, Ryan Callahan. We talked to the local wardens, the local biologists, the local meat shops, you know, all of these things and get a sense for what's going on. Um, as well as some of the local outfitters and, and, uh,

We're going to kind of just recap this. We're going to jump into it right now. I got Tyson on here. And a lot of guys can say, well, who are you guys to judge? Or say, well, one thing is...

But Tyson's one of the better glassers or hunters that I've ever hunted with. He forces me to step up my game because I've, this sounds, you know, pretentiously like I'm pretty good glasser, right? I spend a lot of time. I learned early on that the longer I'm in the glass, the longer I'm picking things out, the more successful I'm going to be. Tyson can spot with the best of them. And we're a little competitive. So it's always a game of who can spot what as fast as we can and get us on the deer. So I'm going to start with that because I feel like

Yeah, maybe we aren't seeing everything, but we're seeing the majority of what's there. We're hiking. We're on top of the mountains getting good viewpoints. We're seeing what's out there. You know, that's kind of where we're going to start. It's not, you know, scientific method. It's just what we see compared to the way we've always glassed, the way we've always approached an area. Yeah.

So for the first time in a long time, I'm a little concerned about the health of the herd. You know, leading up to this, talking to those guys, you know, talked about deer numbers being way down and we're going to jump into what that could be attributed to. But from my takeaway on this, you know, over a one week hunt, seemed like we had to work a lot harder to see even less deer than normal. Absolutely. Yeah.

and and we need to take into things like i'm not i'm not going to this blindly like i think you would need to to give it a fair shake you need to consider things like weather you know the wind we already talked about um hunting pressure but i'm confident with all these things included we were still able to get a pretty good feel for what's around in the deer numbers and uh my opinion um

I think we're missing the number of deer we had in 19, 20, 21 when we were there last. The numbers seem down by quite a bit. Like you said, it could have been weather partially, but overall just the numbers seem to be not there like they used to be.

And we've heard this number thrown around. I don't know if I would say all the way to a quarter, you know, talking to some of the people that were around that we were talking to, you know, some people are saying it's way more than half the deer gone. You've heard people say there's only a quarter of the deer left. I would say just because I think it's safer to just put an envelope or sidebars on it. We're somewhere between, you know, 25 to 50% of the deer that we had when we were there last in 21. Yeah.

um, would, would be my, my guesstimate. Um, and, and what this really brings up is, is conservationists, is sportsmen, is hunter that really do care about the resource, um, also known as, you know, the mule door being mule deer being the resource. Um, I'd like to just bring up some points and challenge us all to think about what can be done. Um, what we can do as hunters, um, what management ideas may be right, may be wrong. Um, you know, I feel like,

Montana has been here before, you know, the ups and downs and the, you know, bad winter after bad winter, the numbers go down, they bounce back really quick. They've got a good, you know, the ability to do that. But, and then some of what we might talk about might be a little controversial, you know, but I feel it's our job and our responsibility to help maintain the numbers, the age class, the quality, the quantity, kind of,

I think you talk to one guy, he might be wanting to manage for the biggest deer possible and doesn't care if there's only one per square mile. The next guy might want to manage for quantity, you know, or there's a hundred deer per square mile, but none of them get big or the age class isn't there. So I know everybody's got a different criteria. Everybody's looking for something different. And so we're going to do our best to kind of balance that as we, and look at all sides as we go through this conversation. Um, but, but,

The overall consensus was there were a whole lot less deer. Age class, I wouldn't say was as affected, but when you have less deer, I think there were just less of the target deer we were looking for. It seems like overall, though, the age class...

Might not be there as much as it used to be, but I mean, we did find some quality age bucks on our trip, but it might vary from area to area. Yeah, and I know my dad and uncles were there the week before and they struggled to find anything that was mature. And even, I have to joke, even with their aging age,

eyes and everything being taken into account they're eventually going to stumble onto something decent you know and they were seeing a good number of deer every day but nothing really of quality had popped up in that area where they were at which again we could go back to weather and just maybe it wasn't quite rut time yet either so i mean there's factors yeah the age is there yeah that we just don't know about but just in our perspective i feel like

The age has been taking a hit. Yeah. Yeah. They had the good weather, but we're earlier in the season. We had later in the season, but a lot worse weather, um, tough to get around. So we're going to kind of start off with, with one thing, um, a point I was able to talk to Ryan Callahan there about just a state of, of what I'd call the Plains mule deer, right? Anywhere from the continental divide over where you kind of drop into that Plains country. And we're talking about all the way from the Northeast down to the Southeast, all the way to the Central, um,

Um, talking with Ryan Callahan, um, they're here with me eater. He had told me, you know, he's very involved with the BMAs and the biologists and kind of where everybody wants everything. And he told me that the biologists like where the deer numbers are at right now. Um, and that don't take that verbatim. I'm, I'm kind of transferring over what he said, but that was kind of from the Montana fish and wildlife that this is where they want the deer to be, which is a little, uh,

And I only say that, and we're going to talk about CWD here in a little bit. I don't know if that's having a big impact on those decisions, but we've been there before. As we mentioned, if we're at 25 to 50%, we've been there when the carrying capacity is way higher. You know, our deer count per day was way higher. What do you think about if this is where they want the deer numbers? Are we just going to be stuck with it? As a hunter, it's kind of scary because we're used to seeing more numbers than what we have recently. Yeah.

It's kind of scary that that's the numbers they wanted at because it was fun to come from somewhere like Washington where we're not managed great at all. Yeah. And the numbers are terrible. So you can go and see hundreds of deer to where now, if that's where the numbers are, it's going to be more like... It's still going to be better in Washington. Don't get me wrong. It can't be any worse. But as a hunter that loves hunting Montana, that's a little scary. Yeah, I...

I understand, and like I say, I've already said this once, I don't claim to be a biologist, but...

The CWD thing, I guess we can just go ahead and jump into it now and then we'll get to some of these other points. They're marking some of these areas like CWD hot zones or areas where they want to keep these deer down. They're proposing what you were saying. You did a little research on it. They're proposing keeping some of these buck or doe tags all the way until early January. Yep. I had a buddy send me a link who's a Montana resident and he sent me a link for some of the 600 series units that...

They're wanting to do either sex B tags that go clear to January. And it could be up to, it says anywhere from a hundred to a thousand tags per unit per hotspot, whatever you want to call it.

And man, that's a lot of extra. And those are extra tags, not just the general on top of the generals. Um, it's a lot of extra deer getting shot out of, I should have did some more research. I owed you guys more than that, but I'm going to, I'm going to speculate here a little bit. So, um, in 2019 and 21, I think we donated or, you know, went to the CWD check station and got everything checked in. Um,

And when me and my wife checked our bucks, all negative. But what they do is back then they had a number. I don't know if it's the same system now. They basically gave you an assigned number, a little tag, and then you went and checked on your number and it would say negative or positive. Well, you could see all these other results and very, very few, very few positives. And so,

I don't, this is where I'm saying I'm not a biologist. I don't understand like is one positive too many, you know, is it that serious? But it seems crazy that you want to take out an entire herd when it's obvious that there

I'm going to once again, speculation, but just what I remember seeing, you know, 95% plus, if not more of the deer were tested negative for CWD. And on this damn hunt that you're going to let people hunt till January 1st, you have no idea whether they're killing 90. You can kill 95 out of a hundred deer that were perfectly fine. Like,

I just, I struggle to think that that's a solution for the CWD problem, but I also don't know. Um, cause what if you killed a hundred deer and none of them had CWD, but the 10 that got away were the ones running around with it. Like, well, that was a real dumb program. You just killed a hundred healthy deer. Now you got five, 10 sick ones. Those 10 sick ones just passing it around. I just, I struggle to wrap my head around that. I'm sure there's some science-based reasoning, but, um, I'm gonna need somebody to sit down and explain it to me. Um,

if that's where they're at. So I got to talk to Steve, got a little recap from, you know, he always does the youth season with Brody. They're out of meat eater and they take their kids on a, on a hunt. And I'm talking with Steve, we were kind of just trying to, you know, just do an update. And once again, he told me kind of the same general,

you know, information before we went over there, like, oh man, numbers are, are down or they seem to be down. Um, and then he speculated a little bit. He's like, I don't understand, or I don't know if this is the issue, but he's like, man, I've never seen hunting the same general area as this many coyotes, like the predator problem. Um, same thing with us. We've seen, um,

multiple, multiple coyotes in real good shape. And they, they had the deer on edge too. Anytime the deer would get alert and start running around, you could look and there'd be at least one coyote right there. And, uh, so Steve was, Steve gave me a couple examples of like coyotes that would just run to him or run between like him and his kid, 50 or 60 yards apart and just really didn't care. Um, so, you know, I, around here we, we have, you know,

Some of those spots over there, I don't think they have a high cat population, don't have a whole lot of bears in certain spots. So you got coyotes mopping up fawns and whatnot, and they can do some pretty good damage. And so...

I was trying to think back before this podcast so I could have some good data. I was trying to remember how many fawns we've seen on this. And I'm starting to think we did see quite a few, but there was maybe a little hole in the numbers. Like there weren't as many does with those, you know, fresh fawns. Yeah, we definitely saw some fawns, but it wasn't an overabundance, I would say. Yeah, I would say maybe 50, 60% had fawns, but it seems like on normal years they were kind of all packing fawns, you know, right up to the right. And some...

On a good year, it seemed like every doe had twins. Yeah, we're not quite there this year, but it could be a down year, and we're going to get into some more things that may have caused that. Drought, bad winters, all the other things that may be affecting Montana deer that we really don't have control over from an environmental standpoint. I know all the climate change people are going to be yelling at me that we do have control over it, but let's just say in the short term we don't have any control over the weather, the drought,

the hard winters. It's just one of those things you got to deal with. So let's fast forward to another guy that knows Montana Mildew real well. I was talking to Ryan Lampers and he feels, and he did piggyback on Steve Singh idea on the coyotes a little bit. He's like, man, Jason, I'm seeing...

these things hunt more like wolves now. He's like, you'll be out on the plains seeing four or six of them hunt together surrounding deer. And he's like, I feel like they are having a bigger impact. So that's just my quick note on what Ryan did hint about coyotes.

But he feels the two bad years of drought back-to-back with Ben giving him a pretty bad winter last year was a perfect storm to really kind of knock the numbers out. All across the West last year, Wyoming, Pronghorn, Mule Deer, Montana, it seems like you send them in to the winter in a bad shape because you got drought, no food, and then all of a sudden you get a bad winter. Yeah.

It was kind of the recipe for disaster. Which, I mean, they did have a pretty remarkable spring feed-wise, but the damage might have already been done to where at least the deer that lived had a good shot going in with a bunch of feed. But yeah, like you said, it was the perfect storm of back-to-back droughts and then throw a bad winter on top. It's not an ideal situation for all those deer. Yeah. And then Ryan even went a little deeper, and I don't claim to understand this. He talked about

um, you know, cold winters, bad droughts. And he doesn't feel like the bucks are coming in and rutting as hard. Like their health is down a little bit. And so like these internal, like biological triggers aren't getting triggered as hard, which from a hunting standpoint, we want those bucks to rut hard. He's like, they're rutting a little less and, you know, certain bucks. And so he's like, that may be affecting a little bit what we see as hunters, um, as far as the rut, which, which,

which could hold true. Like I said, I don't pretend to know exactly what's going on with the rut and the intensity of their rut based on weather, but I know the does, they're all based on health. They won't come in and be ready to be bred until they're healthy enough, and so maybe the bucks are similar. They're not kicking. We've seen a few bucks on this hunt, which a lot of this

Real cold, they can freeze their testes off or whatnot. We did see quite a few bucks still that kind of have velvet and just didn't seem to be quite cranky. Testosterone wasn't quite cranking. Did see one cactus buck while we were there also. Yeah, I think your dad and Tim seen a cactus buck. You guys seen one. That two-point that was hanging around from the glass and knob. So I think there's a few of them over there.

And you, you wonder how that's affecting, you know, there's kind of hanging out with the does. They're just, they're one of the, one of the girls hanging out there. But yeah,

Yeah, so those are three guys that I would trust that are around. They're involved a lot more, and they've all got a little bit... Ryan kind of gave us the information that the numbers where they're at, Steve thinks there's a bad predator problem, and Ryan thinks it's a drought and winters, which they all probably have a little bit of a... Could be all of them combined. Yeah, and if we're managing for deer numbers there, man, it's just...

I don't want to say it's not the right thing. I don't want to like, let me be selfish and say that we need to hunt more deer, but I like, I know if there's two or three times more deer than we could hunt more deer. Um, so I'm selfishly thinking like, let's just increase the deer numbers and we'll get to hunt a little bit more. Um,

Another issue, um, issue, concern I have is, you know, I, I'm going to go off topic here a little bit. I drew a mountain goat tag in my home state of Washington and, uh, everything that you have to pass a sex identification course. Right. And they give you all these reasons why you're not supposed to shoot a nanny. And they basically show you in 10 years, if you shoot this nanny, you literally just take 80 goats out of the herd. Right.

You go take Alaska's goat identification test. They teach you the same thing. You take Colorado's, they teach you the same thing. And I'm just thinking like, well, if it's that important not to shoot nanny goats, why does Montana give out so many doe tags? And please send your hate mail to some other email than the one I listed earlier. Send it, send it off to somewhere else. But yeah,

I feel, and this is where we're going to battle a little bit, right? If we take what Cal said, that this is where we wanted your numbers to be, then maybe doe tags are going to keep us there. But let's say we wanted to get back to the carry capacity of two or three years ago, even, and, and, uh,

There's a lot of doe tags given out. There's a lot. You go over there and white-tailed does, this one's for Dirk because me and Dirk argue white-tailed versus mule deer. I don't care if you give out a lot of white-tailed doe tags. Get them out of the competing mule deer country. But for mule deer, there's nothing to show up at a gas station in the middle of the day and see

12 sets of legs hanging out of the back of a truck. It's just like these mule deer does are getting wiped out. But on the same hunt, we're seeing a quarter to a third of the deer. You're like, well, dang it, man. That's our way to repopulate the herd to get everything back to maintain that level. But yet it seems like a lot of these does are getting wiped out.

shot up like you said that's kind of the scary part with the state wanting maybe their numbers to be where they're at so they're going to keep giving the doe tags and maybe they just haven't revisited the number it's just kind of been the same number every year and but you go back to 19 where there was a ton of deer and those numbers could sustain that many does getting whacked and

yeah, I don't know. Maybe things, the numbers need to be revisited, but it's kind of scary. Some of the proposals that are out there that are showing just let's shoot more. Yeah. And, and don't take me, don't take this the wrong way. Like I'm not against shooting does, but if, if the management objective is to increase the population, I don't think you do it through doe tags or, you know, we talked to a lot of guys like, yeah, I was able to, to get one doe tag in the draw. And then I bought three more leftovers when they came open. And I'm like, well,

I just, I don't know. I, I just, I struggle with the idea a little bit like this. Do we need to shoot that many does numbers seem to be struggling. O'Reilly auto parts are in the business of keeping your car on the road. I love O'Reilly. In fact, the other day, I'm not kidding you. The other day I went into an O'Reilly auto parts looking for a part. I needed a different thing that wasn't really in there. You know, only like tangentially related to what they carry.

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This is Brent Reeves from This Country Life. What makes South Dakota the greatest for pheasant hunting? With over 1.2 million pheasants harvested last year, South Dakota boasts the highest population of pheasants in the nation. In fact, you'd have to add up the total harvest from neighboring states just to get that many birds.

There's also millions of wide open acres chock full of different landscapes, meaning the hunt in one county is often completely different from just a few counties over. But what really makes South Dakota the greatest goes way beyond just hunting a colorful bird. It's the pursuit of something more like the camaraderie that awaits all kinds of hunters from all walks of life and partaking in South Dakota tradition over 100 years in the making.

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There is no way to limit aside from some special units where you just can't hunt, but let's say your general units inside of the state, there's nothing that stops every general deer tag holder from going to the same unit and killing their deer out of that. Right? So there's no control. There's no way to keep people out, um, of a general area. And, and so, uh,

I don't know if it just kind of self-governed based on what there's too many people here I'm getting out. But one thing, it seems like some areas where we've been hunting are just like overloaded with people. You're like, how do you deal with all these people? You know, they're coming from out of state. They're locals. There's a good mix of everybody, but there's nothing stopping, you know, everybody from taking their deer in a certain area. I won't lie. I cringe a little bit driving into Montana with Washington plates because I know we are not liked around that state. Yeah.

And, uh, yeah, like you said, there's no way to keep half of Washington out of one area and it really sucks for that area. But until the state does something about it, like, and, and we're talking, I mean, there's spots that are easier hunting, easier to pick off deer, easier to spot deer. And it seems like obviously just naturally everybody gravitates to those areas. And it just, I feel like it just puts too much pressure on those deer. Um,

You know, where we grew up hunting, you know, we used to go there at certain times and see one or two camps and maybe five or six other rigs. Now there's 20 camps and 50 rigs at these locations. And it's just like, dang, how much pressure can these deer take? You know, they're still always there, but they're just, you know, quantities down, qualities down, hunting down.

And then the other thing I really want to get to is like the quality of the hunt goes down, right? You can't go out a ridge without running into other people. And you're like, well, you know, it's not what you wanted out of the hunt. It's not what the hunt used to be to us, but now you're a little bit of combat hunting. Yeah. Which like you said, that's why we go to different States because we have enough combat hunting in itself here in Washington to where you would go somewhere else to try and get away from that. And boy, it's just, it's not there anymore. Yeah.

I mean, we always do what we need to do. You know, it's like we, we, you guys, for the first couple of days, you and your wife just started climbing mountains, right? You knew you weren't going to see anybody. Yeah. I mean, you guys just started climbing the biggest, deepest mountains and it paid off, but it's like, you know, trying to do some of these things, but it's like, dang, you know, we didn't have to used to do that to get away from people, but we're, we're the mindset, like what do we got to do to get away from them? And you just push a little harder and go a little higher. And it worked. Yep.

But yeah, it's the old days of, I don't want to be labeled as a road hunter, but you could do it that way if you wanted to. We did a lot of hiking in the area just because you could be stealthy and look in the little pockets. So it wasn't hard hunts, but you'd be three, four miles out there just looking into the pockets and then hunt your way back. And nowadays you do that, you're going to have somebody across the ridge from you and on the other ridge from you. People walking in behind you even. Yeah. On to my next point.

And this is where I said earlier, it might be a little controversial, but I don't know. I tell even my own family that went the week before me, like you don't have to shoot a deer. You can, it's okay to drive to Montana, especially in,

I'm going to, I'm going to preface this a little bit more with, if you've got meat in your freezer and you're not starving to death, right. And you're not, you're, you're doing it because you love mule deer or whatever, but you absolutely don't need to, to, to fill the freezer. You don't have to shoot a deer. And I justify this a little bit. I feel like I have to.

So when you're traveling to these spots from out of state, you're spending, I mean, especially with gas prices the way they are, you're spending hundreds, if not thousand plus dollars in gas. So the whole justification of I need to feed the family or I need to fill the freezer, like it would be a whole lot cheaper to go to the grocery store or buy food.

buy a beef or something now. Yeah. You're not going to get deer meat. If you're going to play that card on me. Yeah. You're not going to get wild, organic, non-hormone deer meat necessarily that way. But, um, if it's truly about filling the freezer, um, I just, I don't buy it anymore that you're going to drive 12, eight, 10, 16 hours, um, and put a lot of time in plus by the time you're done with motels or setting up a camp or Airbnb, whatever you're staying in, like there's, there's costs, you know, eating out and, um,

I just, I feel like you don't have to go over there and shoot a deer if it's not what you're after. I see. I can see both sides because like you said, you just spent a bunch of money. The tags aren't cheap. Like if you were going to drive all the way over there, you'd like to come back with a deer. But then I also look at bigger picture and I see the numbers and the age quality and myself, which I mean, everybody has their own opinion and you can shoot whatever you want on these tags, but

I myself would rather come home with my tag than shoot a two-year-old deer, three-year-old deer, the up-and-comers, you call them, because the numbers are struggling. The age class is struggling.

I would prefer to just come home with my tag than shoot a potential better buck. Yeah, and we even talked about, you know, a lot of this is going a little bit on a tangent, but a lot of guys get caught up on shooting a four-point, you know, with pretty forks. And me and you, we were some of the last tags left. We kind of held out. We started talking like, why don't we shoot these more mature deer that might be, you know, three-by-fours or back fork three-points or whatever.

bucks that you look at that aren't going to score great, but they're older deer, they're bigger framed bucks. And that's kind of where we, we kind of went down that road. Like, let's just find a mature buck. You know, he might not score as well, but he's, he's going to be a big old deer. I was super interested in that big wide three by two that you'd found that we'd never end up getting back to. He struck some interest. I wanted to go find him, but he was a cool buck, big old main beams. He's just a big giant two by three. He was probably,

based on the size of them was never going to be anything different. You know, big belly, you know, big chest on them, a suede back. He was an old, old deer just was never going to grow any more points. Um, which is actually a great segue into my next topic, um, which is antler point restrictions over there. Um, you had just mentioned like you can shoot anything you want over there, right? Um, you know, year and a half, one and a half year old, you know, spikes or two points, like they're all fair game. Um, and, um,

One thing I want to talk about antler point restrictions is it's a management strategy that usually just protects the younger deer. But the only problem with it is that it protects those younger deer, but then you end up taking out in your two and a half, three and a half year, your better genetic deer. So a lot of these studies, you know, there's a great one out of Mississippi state, um,

And they actually say your average size goes down when you implement an antler restriction. And it makes sense, right? Because you're now shooting a four-point at its two-and-a-half-year-old age. Because you have to shoot a four-point. Yeah, you have to shoot a four-point. And so what it does is it knocks these bucks out earlier. And the data all shows that you end up shooting less deer per year when you implement a restriction like that. Right.

Because you're not always guaranteed that you're going to get a shot at those younger deer once they get older. It's kind of how the data all...

But what I did find interesting in the same report is it's like a sliding scale. Well, if it's a two point, it's got to be 14 inches wide. If it's a three point, it's got to be like, you know, and then it's like, well, shoot as a hunter. Like, right. It almost, it puts like the Alaska moose thing on you. Like you better be good at guessing. I got to count points and width and height. And yeah, they said that's like in that same report, that's like the best way to manage. But,

but be very, very hard to implement. And, um, like as a hunter, you have to be very, very sure. And then it actually defeats a purpose. But, um, you know, I, I heard that today down at the meat shop, you know, we're cutting up our Montana mule deer. Um, and you know, a lot of those guys antler point restriction, like we don't need to let them shoot the two points or the two by threes or whatever. And,

Just like the deer we talked about, like some of those deer are never going to be bigger. So how do you take out those older deer? And that's where that like, well, shoot, he was well over 26 inches wide. Like let's shoot him because he would on that sliding scale, like, yeah, he's a three point, but he's this big, like mature deer. Um,

It's tough. It's tough to manage by antler points. We get it around here a lot, blacktail hunting, because three-pointer better, but I'm like, you know how many big two-points run around here and kind of run the show? We may never get a three-point or four-point to breed with some of these giant two-points around here. So there's got to be a balance. It's just something that I wanted to bring up. I don't really know how we deal with it or if antler point restrictions make sense in Montana. I almost feel with the genetics they have over there and they've got pretty good

I don't know what the right word would be. They got a pretty good genetics that allow them to grow threes and fours, you know, pretty regularly. Um, I think we need, we would need to focus more on the overall health of the herd and getting numbers back. And then that's just going to kind of come along and there's going to be enough of them that get to escape every year. And we're going to have the correct number of deer to hunt, um, you know, other right, the right age and size. All right. Um,

One other, this is just more of an observation. You know, we've hunted some different public, we hunted some different BMAs, we got to look into some other private. They're easy to access public or easy access BMAs that are getting a lot of the pressure, right? There's

How do we, is there a way to fix that? Or is that just how it's always going to be? You're going to have heavily hunted, heavily pressured areas. And then the private or the surrounding, like harder to reach public is going to have to reload those. Cause it seems like there's an unequal amount of pressure in some of these areas where a lot of hunting pressure here and then nothing around there. Or, you know, like you guys went into some steep public where people hunt around you in the, in the flatter stuff. But as soon as you got in there, there was nobody like,

Is there any way to manage for that? I don't know if there is, or you almost just have to like think the private and the steep stuff around you. Like, thanks for keeping this place loaded up. I think so. Because like you said, I don't know how you keep people out of the easy spots per se and how you can manage numbers and disperse numbers. The easy spots are always going to get more pressure than the harder to get to spots. Yeah.

So I don't know. Yeah. I've always, it's like that whole, uh, whole idea. Like would somebody be willing to go shoot a two point on an easy to get to spot or would they be willing to go shoot a giant four point and a very hard to get to spot? I think that poor two points in trouble with most people, you know, at times it seems like, um, and that's, that's a, that hard thing, but there, it seems like some of the easy to access public, easy to access BMAs,

It's just being over hunted compared to some of the surrounding stuff, which I don't know what the right answer is. It's just an observation. Like we're seeing it. Deer flighty, deer seem to be in shot out a little bit more. Which the deer, they figure it out too. They know where the pressure is coming from and some they'll just up and leave those easier access spots and they'll head for private or they'll head for those deeper spots. Yeah.

Let's talk to talk on one of the things that's kind of always blown my mind. It's always amazed me that Montana allows us to hunt with a deer tag and a rifle way into late November. Now don't get me wrong. I I've taken advantage of it. I love the season, but from a conservation and a management side, like it's very concerning and it,

This is a hunter. It's going to sound weird, but I root for the big bucks at times, right? There's, there's a piece of me. Everybody loves big bucks. Yeah. There's a piece of me that wants him to win. Like I don't want him to get exposed. I don't want that big buck to come out of his crawling. Like I like the idea that there are giant bucks on landscape that just don't get shot at, but I feel like these late season you're, you're, you're forcing his hand. Like that buck's going to do what that buck's going to do. He's going to rut and those does are going to pull them out into danger. Um,

they're going to be vulnerable at some point in the hunt. And you look at other States like Wyoming, Wyoming hardly doesn't even give you a gun in early October. The majority of their deer hunts, like you're hunting September 15th to 30th and you're done. Or there's a few tags that'll let you hunt in the September or October 5th. Excuse me. Um, like they, I feel like Montana doesn't like their mule deer. Wyoming really liked their mule deer, you know, based on the season dates. Um, what do you think about Montana's like very liberal dates and, um,

We're seeing it more and more. You go over there later, what do you see? People. Yeah. People, people, people. You go over there early. Now I think everybody's figured it out. Like you go over there early, not as many people in opening. Everybody... Most opening days you want to be out there. Not in Montana. You might as well just wait until third, fourth, Thanksgiving week. Which I can't blame anybody because I love hunting mule deer during the rut. But at the same time, like...

the dates are super liberal for not the deer at all. Like the deer gets smashed those last couple of weeks of season. Um,

And like we've talked about, I don't know. And we'll, it's been this way for long time. So the numbers obviously have supported it, but I don't know if the quality can keep supporting it because not only do you have a bunch of non-resident hunters like us, but all of a sudden Montana has a whole bunch of new residents. People moving out of some of these States that don't like the rules and the policy. We're not going to get into that, but there's been a lot of people moving to Idaho, Montana. And so now when you allow every resident to,

to have a deer tag. Plus you really haven't moved the non-resident numbers because you want to collect that payment. Big paycheck. Yeah. You want to collect that big chunk of money.

Like I said, you made a great point that it hasn't been a concern to this point, right? Because it's maintained and we've always had lots of deer to hunt. What concerns me more now about these dates is we're still doing this when it seems like numbers are way down. You know, you talked about age class missing earlier, the upper age class being a little thinned out in these late November dates. Which I will say Montana in the past has been pretty good at recognizing when they have a problem. And I remember...

Years ago, when they would have bad winters, they'd cut all doe tags. Yep. Until they get their numbers back. Yep. But...

Now numbers are down. Maybe this is the year they adjust. Yeah. But in some of the proposals they have out there. Yeah. They kind of are. I know they're, they're talking about making some units draw. Yep. Yeah. That's a great segue. Cause we're going to kind of finish on that. Um, so with all of this gloom and doom, don't get me wrong. We had, we had a great mule deer hunt. It just was a lot more effort than normal. Um,

Which was fine. Yeah, we're not complaining. It just wasn't the same. We've got lots of reports. We know a lot of people that go to Montana, a lot of people that go to the same spot we do, and the reports were just dismal. And I'd never been this worried going into a Montana mule deer hunt because it's usually my favorite hunt. It's pretty stress-free. It's just a lot of fun. Seemed to be a real down year. And then you talk to guys that I would consider...

you know, good or a lot of boots on the ground. You know, you got your, your Lampers, your Rinella, your Callahan's, you know, all those guys and just the same reports, biologists, you know, like, what are we going to do? And so some of their proposals currently, um, it's going to suck if I don't get to hunt as much in Montana, but for the sake of the deer, maybe you do this for a couple of years. And like you said, if Montana is good at switching back and forth and they don't like

collecting a bigger paycheck from special draws, should be positive for the deer. So we've heard a few different things, making certain regions or areas draw only. We've seen some proposals where some units might only be general for the first two weeks. And then in order to be able to hunt into the late November, like we just talked about, you would have to draw a special tag, which would take your deer bonus points in order to hunt. I think it would be positive.

for quality. Now, if you're looking at it from a quantity standpoint and an opportunity standpoint,

It's not as great, right? You're trying to check all these boxes. Like how do you maximize quality of deer? How do you maximize the quantity of deer? How do you maximize your opportunity? You're taking a hit a little bit, but I would like to see until things get stabilized, maybe go into the system and then hopefully Montana Fish and Wildlife like reevaluates and maybe says we can go back away from the system. Like don't just stick it and leave it. Yep. And like we talked, like all these are proposals right now for next year. So if you have concerns,

or any interest in Montana military at all, go on their website, comment what you want to see. Now's the time to do it. Yeah, what was your experience? What have you seen in the past? What do you want to see in the future? I think as sportsmen, we need to be a little more active and not just reactive after decisions get made. And so, yeah, jump on there.

voice your opinion like I say Montana Mildew is still a great it's a great opportunity I just feel after this year's hunt and everything we heard and reports we're hearing it just it concerns me a little bit right you you you love you love the resource you love the opportunity you love the hunt there but uh I'd like to see it stay positive you know my my boys your boy is a little maybe one or two more trips away my boy's just getting into it and loves this hunt he he's

He struggles hunting around home here in Washington when he gets to go to Montana and see that many deer. And he won't hike around here, does he? He doesn't mind going on a six mile hike there just because you get to see all these cool things and deer. He can spot his own deer and it's just, it's a different experience for him and we really appreciate it. But yeah, that was, that's kind of a recap. It was a little bit more of a complaining or just a concern, I guess, about Montana mule deer. And I know it's going to be easy for everybody to be, you know,

if you could talk back to me like, well, you guys are the problem. I'm like, trust me. I, I try to respect the resources as much as I can. I search for specific deer that, that kind of, that, that scratch my itch that I have for mule deer. Um, that for all the people that hate us, Washington hunters, um,

Those tags are going to go to somebody. Yeah, somebody's got to. Some out-of-state plate's coming. And I promise we won't shoot the little ones at least until, well, maybe my kids. Maybe our youth will. But I promise I will take my tag home. And I think from now on, Dirk had a great point. We're just going to go there and then fly in and rent a truck with Montana plates on it. I think it's going to be. I feel like we get a lot less. Yeah.

No, it's, it is what it is. I do. Sometimes it's like, man, all the Washington plates you run around and now Minnesota plates running around there. It's just, um, but like Tyson said, somebody is going to hunt a non-resident tag. Somebody might as well have it. And, um,

Or somebody's going to have it and it might as well be me. I'm pretty glad when it's me. Yeah. Yeah. But no, that's it. That's our Montana mule deer recap. We had a great time. We're very successful, even though it sounds like we would have never seen a deer the way we just talked about this. You wouldn't think about it, but yeah, it was a great trip. Yeah. It was a great trip. Really appreciate having you on here, Tyson. You're taking off. We're both switching to whitetail mode now. You're heading to Idaho. I'm heading to Kansas. Yeah.

um, a little bit different style hunt. You're going to be more spot and stock glass and where I'm going to be tied to a tree. Yeah. But, uh, I look forward to seeing how you guys do. And once again, uh, always, always have a blast when we get to mule deer hunt together. We, we hunt a lot the same. We, we, uh, we dig deep and try to make sure we kill some respective, respective bucks. And I think we accomplished that on this hunt, even though it was a lot tougher than years past. Absolutely. All right. Take care. Good luck on that whitetail hunt. Thank you.

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