Disappointed in FWP 5-year plan for game

I recently went to a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks meeting in Libby out at the Libby Rod and Gun Club’s facility. I can tell you, I and many others were greatly disappointed. What I was hoping for was the FWP’s  five-year plans for whitetail deer, elk and what their five-year plan was for predators.

What we got was just a bunch of mumble, jumble and data that didn’t correlate with trends hunters have been seeing in the field for the past 10 years. I can tell you what their plan has been the past 15 years for whitetail deer.

Following the winter of ‘96-’97, the experts dropped just about all the “B” tags for whitetail does. They argued that the winter hammered the deer, which it did.

But not soon after, they realized they were not pulling in the revenue they needed for all their pet projects, so they started increasing the “B” tags for does. One hundred the first year or so, then up to 200, and then finally almost unlimited “B” tags for does over the whole region.

It got that toward the end, if you were fast enough, not only could you apply and get a “B” tag, you could go online and purchase just as many as you could until they ran out. Pretty good revenue enhancer.

Unfortunately, even the specialists at FWP realized the whitetail deer population was nose-diving. They cut the seasons back so that you couldn’t shoot does anymore. With everything there is a cause and an effect.

By dropping the doe permits, hunters who would normally go out and shoot a doe for meat started shooting every “skipper” buck out there. The specialists are pretty proud that hunters are able to continue to shoot the 2- and 3-year-old bucks.

That won’t last forever. Without any recruitment there will no longer even be the 2- and 3-year-olds to harvest.

Now, they are kicking around the idea of raising licenses to hunt. They even shared at the meeting another revenue enhancer for the department. They call it simplicity.

Up until this year hunters who wished to take a chance on the draw for a moose, sheep or goat had to front the whole amount of money when they applied for the permit. If they didn’t get the permit, their money was refunded.

You can figure out that for a family of three or four hunters, the cost of even applying for the permit was cost prohibitive at $125 a pop.

So beginning this year they are going to have the hunters seeking those three permits to only send them $10 for each of the permits; surprisingly, non-refundable of course.

How good are your chances now of getting one of the “big three” permits since there will be thousands of more applicants?

They even talked about predators in the woods. They were proud that hunters harvested 30 percent of the “minimal population” of wolves in Region 1. “Minimal population”  is just a best guess.

But think about that number. Hunters harvested 30 percent of the minimal population. What does that mean?

What it means is that in their best guess, there were around 330 wolves in Region 1 before the hunting and trapping season.

In an earlier press release the FWP reported that their “minimal population”  could be lowered by as much  as 30 percent. So add another 30 percent to the population before the season began.

They have also said in earlier press releases that wolves re-populated at a rate of around 30 percent. So, are we gaining any ground in the control of the population by hunting and trapping? I think not.

Here are some more interesting wolf numbers. Montana hunters and trappers were able to harvest 230 wolves state-wide during the 2013-2014 season. Deer and elk Region 1 hunters and trappers were able to harvest 101.

Deer and elk Region 2 hunters were able to harvest another 70. That means that Region 1 represented 45 percent and Region 2 represented 30 percent of the total state-wide harvest. This means that Regions 1 and 2 harvested 75 percent of the wolf harvest. The rest of the state, including around Yellowstone, only represented a mere 25 percent of the harvest.

Now, I’m not one of the biased biologists working for the department, but that would indicate to me that the wolves are moving out of the open terrain and up into the northwest part of the state.

Looks like the hillbillies and knuckle draggers I call friends and neighbors will be the only people that will have to deal with the wolf pretty soon, much like the grizzly bear.

The department put a lot of stock in their hunter phone surveys. I believe they outsource this program to others to make calls on behalf of the FWP. How are they paid? Do they get paid on the basis of successful contacts? Would they just put in numbers that they know the FWP want in order to get paid?

Not saying that is what happens, but I do know that the only verifiers are the very people who work for the Montana FWP. These are the same people who continue to tell us that wolves don’t sport-kill; wolves only kill the old, the lame, and the young; there will always be only one breeding female in a pack.

These have all been proven to be lies or, at the least, misrepresentation of the truth.

I will repeat what I said five or six years ago. The only way we are going to get the department to listen to hunters —  the only way we are going to get the legislators to really listen to hunters? is to cut off the purse strings.

As long as we continue to buy their licenses, send in for the special permits, continue to be willing to stick our heads in the sand, they will never REALLY listen to hunters and they will NEVER change. They won’t need to.

— Don Wilkins

Libby