Elk and deer hunting on public land in MT is nowhere near as high quality as it was a decade or 2 ago. Why does that statement seem to be so upsetting to you?
Through most of the '90's friends hunted the Buffalo Horn and along the buffer zone of Yellowstone. They'd walk or ride horses up from the trailhead behind the 320 Ranch. They were successful in places known as "Cow Flats", "The Bull Pens", and under a place they called "Blizzard Ridge". They stopped going in '04-'05 because they stopped seeing elk.
I suspect you know that country. Do you theorize that elk migration habits changed? Seems like any direction folks used to experience high success rates hunting migrating elk close to Yellowstone have all become far less successful. Be it the Buffalo-Horn area I described, Thoroughfare, the migration down to Jackson Hole, or out to Gardiner. To what would you attribute those lower success rates?
