LAST EDITED ON Oct-08-19 AT 01:16AM (MST)[p]I lived in Montana for 11 years from 2006-2017. Antleradar is spot on. There?s 3-4 places that took me years to find that have since become overrun by hunters. I get a kick out of the fact that people talk about the ?heritage? ?pass it along?. ?Get the next generation Outdoors?. Blah blah.
I took a kid I go to church with on the youth hunt a few years back because his dad doesn't hunt and his grandpa couldn't any more. It was his first buck. That to me is what the youth hunt is for.
The other ?youth? on the mountain that day were simply young men who's whole family hunts and they were using their dads? $5000 rifle and their dads did everything but pull the trigger. The vast majority of the kids on the youth hunt are from families who already hunt and who are going to be hunters anyway and they get a crack at the deer before everybody else. In my mind there should be some pre-requisites to play that game other than just age.
With Instagram, long range equipment, Swarovski glass, game cameras, atvs, and yes even airplanes, killing these animals has just become too efficient. The only other option is to limit opportunity. While overall hunter ?recruitment? might be down, the average hunter who really gets after it hunts so much more often, in more states, and more effective than ever before.
It costs a lot of money to hunt out of state so with all things that cost more money to do, people want to make the most of it so they hunt harder and want to go home empty handed even less than ever.
Guys like me are the prime example. I grew up going on hunts but now I really consider myself a ?hunter?. I used to hunt opening day in my home state of Utah. I currently have tags for Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming right now. I've got onyx maps, Austrian glass, google earth, a rifle that's good out to 700 yards, and all the other gear that goes with it.
Eastern Montana is ?ground 0? for this change. Lots of television hosts have made episodes about this area and how to hunt is as effective as possible. Meateater and Newberg, and the Stone Glacier crowd all live in Bozeman but there are lots of ?6? plates hunting east of Hardin come the rifle deer hunt. The ones from out of state watched the episodes and followed suit.
This is turning in to just a rant but as time goes by we are hunting ourselves out of opportunity. It's turning in to a rich mans sport, but there are more and more rich men out there who want a grip and grin pic on Facebook of their own each fall.
I wonder if Montana charged $400 for resident tags and $4500 for nonresident tags? Would they sell out? If not would they get the same revenue and way less harvest?
People complain about private property but that's the only safe harbor there is these days. Why do you think that people fly helicopters and get dropped off on the land locked public? Because the piece of Yellow, Green, or Blue on the map is an island in the private and they are banking on the animals not knowing where the boundaries are for enough time or put the hammer down.
What about the guys who had been doing that for years and years and the next thing you know it's on YouTube because Newberg wants some clicks.
I hunt western Wyoming because of founders podcasts. That's a fact. I didn't even know what the letters G and H even were eight years ago and now I'm getting ready next year to go hammer it out myself. And because of google earth, I know right where some guys dumped a couple of 180 bucks last month from when they panned out on their video because they are also wanting more ?likes?.
Guess where I'll be sept 15th next year? Right where they were. Sorry, but not sorry. Ok, I'm done. Good luck on your hunt. If you don't see many good bucks in region 7 it won't be because you aren't far enough from a road, it will be because you aren't next to the biggest ranch that doesn't allow hunting.
"That's a special feeling, Lloyd!?
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