Others have also questioned my judgement on this apparent obsession with moving camp. I’d think they’re just jealous of my slender physique, except come to think none of them could be considered portly, either. Oh, well, a big part of the idea of having a spike camp is the flexibility it affords to rapidly change areas as conditions warrant. At least that’s my theory, and I’m stickin’ to it.

We’ve been into loads of elk, and have no complaints on the wildlife sighting front. I’m holding out for a big one, and haven’t felt compelled to pull the trigger on anything yet. My son has missed two bulls, one of them reportedly the biggest we’ve seen in the area. I wasn’t with him at the time, but have no reason to doubt his report of a well-over-300 B&C 7X8. Just wasn’t meant to be, I guess. Perhaps it’s a lesson for him in delayed gratification, or a character building exercise, or maybe just another example of the fickle nature of elk hunting.

Speaking of which, there’s some people who are of the opinion that we’re getting too many elk in this State, and it’s high time some of ‘em went away. To that end; the Montana Dept. of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks recently released the draft of a new Elk Management Plan. The prior version went into effect in 1992, so we’re clearly due for an update. There are some significant changes with this new plan, and I have to hand it to the FWP staff for doing a superb job of balancing diverse interests.

Backing up just a bit, though…. I’ve eagerly been awaiting release of the new plan for nearly a year now. It kept getting put off; first it was going to be released last January, then in May, then August, and it finally came out at the end of September. Not that I blame ‘em, as the draft runs just under 400 pages, plus another 83 page Environmental Assessment. Still, there’s undoubtedly some underlying political conflicts involved. The 2003 Legislature could in no sense be described as wildlife or sportsmen-friendly (which has some bearing on the shift in power resulting from the recent election). That’s where the mandate to get rid of a bunch of these doggone elk came from. And, there are certainly individual ranchers who are hosting more elk than they’re comfortable with. Elk populations are at record levels in many areas. Part of the problem, though, is that many of the ranchers who’re screaming the loudest about too many (cow) elk don’t allow general public access during the hunting season. In some cases they’re outfitted, and only allow paying clients access, to pursue trophy bulls. And of course, being a booking agency, we don’t really have a problem with that. We’ve found that it can be pretty good hunting on the public land adjacent to those places, if you’re willing to expend the effort to get there… There’s also some large properties in prime habitat that don’t allow any hunting at all, or at least extremely limit it, like the Yellowstone Club near Big Sky. Naturally, those have turned into terrific elk sanctuaries during the hunting season. Later in the winter, though, the neighbors of some of those places find they are suddenly hosting a thousand or two elk. If you’re a rancher, you’re mainly in the business of growing grass, and a couple thousand elk have a noticeable impact. They’re tough on fences, too….

So the problem is getting more of those cow elk harvested. FWP currently has several special late seasons to that end, although they’re not really getting the job done. The Flying D Ranch outside Bozeman has had several incarnations of late seasons, with mixed success. They allow the public on the last four days of the season for cow elk (on a reservation basis), and have allowed those who’ve been successful in drawing the special permit during several subsequent weekends. At first it was every weekend (actually Friday-Saturday, or Sunday-Monday) for four weeks starting in mid-December. That worked well for the early participants, but the elk wised up rapidly, and those who came later in January found slim pickin’s. So they went to every other weekend, which worked a little better, but the harvest still wasn’t that great. Last winter, we got the big snowfall at Christmas. I hate to think what the ranch spent plowing roads for the late seasons. The cost per cow elk harvested would easily run into hundreds of dollars, I suspect.

Over in the upper Madison Valley, places like the Sun Ranch are also hosting immense herds of elk (although they don’t seem to mind). The late season over there has also been a mixed bag, mainly due to the nature of the topography. You get a herd of a thousand or two elk out on a big flat area where they can see everything for a couple miles around, and they’re quite difficult to get up on. It’s a bally good strategy for surviving wolf predation, too….

FWP is finding these special late hunts an ineffective mechanism for reducing elk numbers, and they’re an administrative headache to boot. So, with some exceptions (the Gardiner late hunt, north of Yellowstone, for one) the emphasis with the new plan is getting more elk harvested during the general season. To that end, the core concept of the new plan is "Adaptive Harvest Management". Each elk management unit has liberal, normal, and conservative regulations, and which are implemented on a given year depends on elk populations relative to the quota for the unit. It varies by area, but a typical normal regulation might allow harvest of brow-tine bulls throughout the season, plus antlerless elk (cow or calf, with just a regular tag, no special license required) the first and last week. The liberal regs would expand that to include antlerless elk the entire season. The conservative version would eliminate antlerless harvest except by special drawing.

I’ve been studying the plan, and again, personally I think FWP has done a good job with it. What is odd, though… After waiting months for its release, the public comment period was initially only going to be a couple of weeks. For whatever reason, the FWP Commission is in a lather to get this plan implemented, like right now! Virtually all the sportsmen’s groups in the state protested the lack of time for evaluation, and now the deadline for comment has been bumped back a bit. Just reading between the lines, it appears to me the Martz administration wanted this plan implemented before they limp off into the sunset at the end of the year. While FWP staffers are understandably reluctant to confirm that opinion, I’ve received more than a couple of chuckles and rueful smiles from the principals involved when I voiced that opinion.

What I’m wondering, is whether some of the parties that mandated increased elk harvests and want to see this plan in place hasta pronto, if not sooner, have thoroughly studied this 400 page document themselves. They just might find it contains a surprise or two, and isn’t exactly what they thought they were getting…. Throughout the plan, for nearly every management unit, public comment decrying the lack of access to elk is noted. So let’s just throw out a hypothetical scenario here….

Let’s say there’s a big ranch that is outfitted, and then would like the public to come in after the season and clean up the leftovers, so to speak. Well, for a multitude of reasons, which can be summed up as elk hunting is tough, even under the best of circumstances, their cow harvest just isn’t really making a dent in the population. So, they’re above quota on elk, and the liberal regulations are in place. A couple of years go by. The public still isn’t getting access during the general season. The liberal regs aren’t getting the job done. The next step is to go to "antlerless only" regulations.

Now that could really foul up an outfitting operation, eh?! So far, it appears to me that aspect of the plan is slipping under the radar of the powers that be. And if it comes to pass, which is likely in certain cases, some jaws will be hitting the floor. It’s a pretty big hammer for FWP to wield, and I’ve really got to hand it to ‘em for including it in the plan.

Now some would like that to mean that places like the Flying D will have to throw open that gates and allow beer-swilling bubbas to drive about willy-nilly, shooting those trophy bull elk they currently complain about having no access to, right from their trucks. No, that’s not how I see it at all. I think private landowners have every right to profit from wildlife on their lands. It’s established law in Montana that the wildlife is public property, though. So, these large outfitted ranches are going to have to allow at least a limited amount of public access for those highly coveted bull elk, and allow more public access for cows, during the general season. That doesn’t mean they have to hang a big "Everyone Welcome" sign from the gate. The Flying D has offered two youth and/or disability tags for bull elk, the last few years. Last year, the FWP Commission unilaterally decided they were going to bump that to four (a couple of Commissioners wanted eight!). Of course, they failed to consult the ranch on that little change, and the feces hit the whirling blades when it became known. After considerable negotiation, all four were allowed to go, but none for ’04. Anyway, I think somewhere from 2-4 tags is reasonable. Some consider that a token amount, but considering that the ranch is hosting around 30-35 paying clients, it seems reasonable to me.

Since I’m speculating about possible future scenarios, I’ll stick my neck out and offer a prediction about how all this might shake out. Elk populations are increasing throughout Montana and most of the west. I see no reason to believe that is going to change. Sure, wolves and grizzlies are having an impact in some areas, and a severe impact in a few. There’s plenty of other areas that are awash in elk. And for that matter, when we came across a fresh wolf track in the Madison a couple of weeks back, I didn’t fall to the ground wailing and gnashing my teeth, seizing that as the reason we weren’t packing out an elk. No, we’d seen elk galore, and my son had missed two good bulls. Somehow we didn’t feel gypped at all! We also encountered very few other hunters in the area. So I see no reason to expect a massive increase in elk harvests. As I’ve repeatedly mentioned; elk hunting is tough. We’ve generally been pretty successful, but my son says it’s the hardest thing we do. So, getting back to crystal ball mode; we’re going to continue to see high elk populations in most areas. Land ownership and use patterns are changing, and global economic factors don’t favor a continued high emphasis on livestock production, particularly in high amenity wildlife-rich areas. Wildlife tolerance levels are going to continue to increase. Forward thinking types will adapt, and benefit. The population curve isn’t going to be a steady upward rising line on the graph; one of these years global warming will relapse and we’ll have a hard winter. I predict wildlife numbers will rebound rapidly, though. In a nutshell, we’re going to have more wildlife, and more access to that wildlife.

What’s not to like?