Hunting season's opening weekend in NW Montana sees solid numbers
Opening weekend for the general hunting season turned up relatively solid numbers at check stations across northwestern Montana.
A total of 3,146 hunters stopped at the stations with 136 whitetail deer, 25 mule deer and 31 elk for a 6.1 percent rate of hunters with game.
Of the whitetails checked, 95 were bucks and 41 were antlerless.
Because the season opened on a Saturday — after years of opening on Sundays — the results for a two-day weekend can’t be compared with past opening weekends, according to Jim Williams, regional wildlife manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
This year is also different from recent seasons in that far fewer B tags were available for harvesting antlerless deer. With the exception of youth hunters still being able to harvest antlerless whitetails, this season is pretty much buck-only for most hunting districts in Northwest Montana’s Region 1.
John Vore, the state biologist in charge of the Swan Valley check station, noted that there were a good number of yearling bucks taken during opening weekend.
“We expected that yearling deer would make up a significant portion of the harvest this year,” he said. “We observed good survival of these young through the relatively mild winter last year.”
He added that at the Olney check station, yearling deer accounted for about half the harvest.
Through Sunday, the check station on U.S. 2 just west of Kalispell, as usual, was the busiest with 40 whitetails, seven mule deer and eight elk.
The Canoe Gulch check station near Libby had three whitetails, five mule deer and no elk.
The Swan check station had 31 whitetails, two mule deer and six elk.
The North Fork check station had 16 whitetails, one mule deer and two elk.
The Thompson Falls check station was the busiest for elk with 15 checked, along with 17 whitetails and five mule deer.
The Olney check station had 29 whitetails, five mule deer and no elk.
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(Jim Mann is a reporter for the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell).