Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Montana mule deer or whitetail

Oh well. Not like I haven't eaten tags before. It is the thrill of the chase that keeps me hunting and seeing new counrty and meeting new people. Me and Deb might even take a road trip out there this summer and do some scouting. Combine that with some antique and yard sales and sight seeing and you have the recipe for a great trip! If we pass up on all animals this year hopefully we can build a foundation and relationship with some people out there so that in future years we may return and have a success or two. Thanks for the feedback!

Are you looking for either 170 whitetail of mule deer? If you're willing to lower your standards on the whitetail to 140ish, you'd have a really realistic chance of killing one.

For mule deer, you've probably got a better chance hunting in one of the island ranges of Central MT than hunting Eastern MT, especially if you're setting your standards at 170 or bust.

Whitetails, 170 or better would be a recipe for never shooting a whitetail. lol. No, whitetails would have to be about 150 or better. Still a high standard but more realistic. Yes, for mule deer it will be a 170 or bust situation with a few exceptions. Score is a guideline not a rule. If I was faced with a monster 3x4 or huge mature buck with great mass and say a broken tine I would probably pull the trigger. Age trumphs the score of the rack to some extent. I was generalizing with the 170 thing but Yes, all small and medium sized bucks will be viewed with pleasure and allowed to grow. Thanks for the feedback rl1. I would bet there are some great bucks in most regions of the state, the key is to find the spot on the spot and probably many of those spots will be on private lands but there seems to be a fair amout of public land in Montana as well. I plan to hunt the last week of the season so maybe I should be looking at the basins adjacent to rugged elevated areas.

Rene, some have eluded to this year's potential. I will give it to you straight up. There are still some good bucks in Montana (very few), but other than last year you probably could not have picked a worse year to trophy hunt in Montana in the last decade. We had two extreme back to back winters that killed a lot of deer, then a big EHD outbreak in 2011 that killed off the majority of an already struggling deer herd. Now granted, most of the EHD victims were whitetails, but Old Man Winter put plenty of hurt on the mule deer as well. If I were you, I would completely rule out the entire Northeast portion of the state. There are a few pockets of deer in the Southeast but it is largely private land, with a few exceptions. There is some Block Management and some Forest Service, unfortunately the word is already out that that is where the deer are, and you will likely have company. Some serious time on the phone with wildlife biologist would be prudent in trying to find areas in the state that still have enough deer to make it worth your time out here. I'm not saying there are "no" deer or "no" trophy bucks, but the numbers game is not in your favor this year.

Region 1, 2, and 3 haven't had any significant winter kill or EHD since 1996, for comparison's sake. We've got a predator problem though.

It's a big state, lots of different areas with different stories on them right now. Year after year I'm amazed at the amount of big deer that come off public land and block management in this state.

Region 1 was slammed two years ago by snow. Predators or not, lots of game died two winters ago. Not this spring, but the previous 3 have been long in getting here. Weather has contributed just as much death as preds during those winters. Its has basically been the utter schits up here.