Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game 2023 in Montana

I had a great year of chasing around the various critters I had licenses for here in MT. To start with, I did some fishing with a good friend that is a phenomenal walleye fisherman. He invited me out on a beautiful summer day on Ft. Peck and we absolutely slayed the big walleye. The top five fish for the day weighed in at over 55 pounds!


Next up was archery elk season. My son and I gave it a good shot, but the bulk of the elk were on the next ranch to the west of us during archery season. The crop ground there was absolutely crawling with elk and they took some good ones out of there. Regardless, we had a good time and were on elk most days, they just didn't cooperate.





At the start of October, upland bird, waterfowl, and rifle antelope got rolling. I couldn't get away to get up to my son's place and get after the huns and sharptail up there, but he had his dog on birds several times a week and had an outstanding fall.


I got out a few times chasing waterfowl here at home and had some excellent hunts.



When rifle antelope season opened, I had a couple of buddies come down that like to chase them around. We had a good weekend of BSing and looking for a buck for each of them. They each managed to take a nice, 14" buck and went home with some good meat. I had spotted a heck of a good buck on a place just south of mine during the summer. I called the landowner and asked if I could chase after him all the way back in early August and he said that was fine by him, but I had to wait until he had moved his cows out of there. The Monday following the opener, he called and said that the cows were moved and if I wanted first crack at him, I better get after it. Well, having never set foot out there, I did a little looking around that afternoon. I saw several bucks, but not what I thought I had seen back in July. I decided to just get up high and glass away the last couple of hours and no more than 10 minutes after getting on the little rocky knob overlooking a large part of the ranch, I saw a group of 14 bucks make their way into the stubble field below me. I moved down to a lower vantage point and gained about 200 yards, but they were still out there a good long poke. They set about grazing in the stubble field and were not going to get any closer, so I looked them over and picked the one that appeared to be the best, although there was another that may have been a little better mixed in with the main body of animals. The one I chose was off by himself to the side of the group and was right at 720 yards. The wind was at next to zero, so I dialed him and settled in for the shot. At the break of the trigger, the 6XC recoiled and I watched through the scope as the bullet impacted exactly as anticipated and the buck crumpled to the ground. One tag down!


The next hunt on the list came by way of a phone call from a buddy with a cabin in the mountains. He said that he had a pretty good bear that had been coming out on the hillside above his cabin every day for the last couple of days. I told him I'd be there the next day and packed by gear up. I rolled in to his place that evening and we sat around and visited for a while before I went up the hill to wait for the bear to show himself. It was two days before the opener of general big game, and I had a date with a cow elk spot, so I needed to make something happen. Well, nothing happened. Despite the lack of a bear that evening, we cooked up some steaks and had a little whiskey while enjoying a beautiful evening in God's country. I figured I'd give the bear one more chance to mess up in the morning before heading home to get ready for general big game. The next morning, I was back up near the tree line on the hillside and waiting for daylight. About 15 minutes after the sun came up, here came the bear. He stopped on the edge of the trees and was pawing at a stump when the 180 gr. ELD M smacked him in the side after a 250 yard trip from my muzzle to the bear. Beautiful boar that squared 6'5".


After a quick trip home, I got him skinned and cut up and was ready for the cow hunt the next morning. I arrived at my neighbor's place about 30 minutes before daylight the next morning and we had a little coffee. He lets me hunt and trap on his place and in exchange I help him out with carpentry projects his ranch and a little bit of haying. Well, he is a little late getting going, so we ease up to the top of a hill right at daylight and see that the elk are already on the way off the neighbor's field and on to his place. He is a self described terrible shot, so he told me I was up first. All I had was a cow tag, he had a rifle bull tag and there really wasn't anything great out there anyway. Maybe 100 head of elk were congregated just across the fence on his place. I spent some time looking things over and picked a young cow out on the edge of the herd. She was broadside at 740 yards. With another beautiful, calm morning, I dialed her and held about 1 MOA of wind. The resounding thwack of the bullet impact was followed by a 30 yard sprint and spectacular crash right at the neighbor's fence.




To be continued...

After this hunt, I had plans to head north to my son's stomping grounds for some deer hunting. This was, of course to be combined with getting to spend time with the little grandson that hit the ground the December before. We had lots of laughs and enjoyed a great evening before the hunt got rolling the next morning. We were both very disappointed in the deer situation. At the peak of the rut, in areas that had held dozens of deer in years past, we were seeing next to nothing. There were NR hunters EVERYWHERE and that definitely wasn't helping the situation. MT really needs to reduce the number of tags they are giving out, in order to both preserve the quality of the hunt and allow at least some of the deer to survive. We did find some deer and managed a couple of decent bucks, but only saw one deer in 5 days of hunting that was truly trophy quality. Unfortulately, that one was on a place we couldn't hunt. Both of our bucks were spotted bedding in heavy cover and had to be walked up and jumped. Both were shot at roughly 100 yards on the run.





More to come!!

Congrats on a fantastic hunting and fishing season ranger1 and cool pictures.

Great pictures of the birds and your dogs, good stuff!

How big was the walleye?

Wow, congrats on what looks to be a great season! Beautiful animals and fish!

Excellent. thanks for the show.

You had a good year!

Great pics, write up and critters. Thanks for sharin

Mighty fine!

ya!

GWB

Awesome thread. Congrats on a great season!

A fantastic year, congrats on all of it!

Awesome lifestyle!

I got an itch to try the "Heritage Season" here in December. Of course I didn't have a traditional muzzleloader, nor did I have any idea how to use one. I've hunted in MN and KY with a modern inline, but they are a whole different ball game. I started with a pawn shop find, TC Hawken in beautiful shape for $150. I scrubbed the bore really well and started buying some of the needed gear. From here at the fire, I got the necessary advice to get moving on a load for it. Settled on 90 grains of fffg behind a 385 grain Great Plains bullet. I could get about a 3" group at 100 yards, which was good enough, considering that I had minimal time to mess with it. I had a lead on a herd of elk hanging in the general zone not far from here, so I called a couple of landowners and got permission to take a look. I didn't have time to hunt until the last weekend so my first morning was spent on a tall hill glassing a forested ridge to my south. After about 20 minutes of glassing, I spotted a group of 3 bulls working their way to the end of the 2 mile long ridge. They were out in the broken prairie and were probably a couple of miles away from me at this point. I checked OnX and could see that there was a trail that ran near their location, so I packed up and headed to my pickup for a quick jaunt in that direction. It probably took me 20-30 minutes to get to my pickup and drive over there. When I got there, I got lucky and saw some elk moving up a dry creek to the junipers and rocks at the head. This country is totally wide open below the junipers. No sage to speak of and it has been grazed. I decided to work my way down a side creek to the main creek that they were in and hopefully be able to close the distance in the 6-8' deep dry wash. When I reached the main creek I couldn't see any elk at all, so I crawled to the top of a little hill next to the creek and started glassing. After a few minutes glassing, I spotted the main herd bedded on a rocky knob at about 1000 yards, but didn't see any bulls. All of the ground between us was bare, with the exception of 8-10 small junipers. The creek bottom was wide open and faced the whole herd, so that was out of the question. I decided that my only option was to crawl through the area with intermittent junipers, moving extremely slow, and try to spot the bulls as I did so. So off I went! I started belly crawling at about 9am, moving a few feet at a time and glassing as I went. There was no hurry, as I was the only person that could be in there and the elk were mostly bedded and totally relaxed. When I got to about 600 yards, I spotted antlers sticking out of a small juniper and then a few more antlers. The little group of bulls had bedded on the other side of a draw, about 200 yards closer than the main herd. Now I was in business! I adjusted my angle on them a little and started my slow crawl again. It was a gorgeous day with maybe a 5mph wind and was around 50 degrees, an uncommon day in Montana in December. When I got within 100 yards, I started trying to figure out how I was going to make this work. The bigger of the 3 bulls was about 30-40 yards away from the other two and was bedded just below the lip of a slight hill. Only his antlers and back of his head were visible. I decided at 80 yards on the dot, that I was close enough. It was 12:15pm. I got into a sitting position, eared back the hammer, set the trigger and placed my sight right were I thought he would be if he stood up. A quiet little cow mew put the smaller bulls on their feet and they were staring holes through me. What felt like hours was maybe 5-10 minutes of this stand off. The larger of the two smaller bulls was a 6 point, but really spindly. It was temping to move shoot him as he stood there broadside though. They eventually decided that I was no danger and the 5 point bedded again. The 6 point decided to walk down into the creek. About that time, the largest bull stood up and stretched. I placed my sight behind his front leg and let that Hawken eat. The huge cloud of smoke obscured everything, but there was a resounding "thwack" and all hell broke loose. There were elk everywhere! All of the herds seen and unseen came busting out of every piece of cover around and joined into one big herd, before streaming over the hill and into the trees. I was glassing and didn't see any bulls that resembled the one I shot and then, just over the rise in front of me, I herd him groaning. By the time I got to him, he was laying there dead. What a day! One of my favorite hunts, to be sure.




After this hunt, the remainder of the winter has been spent running my trapline. I have had a good year and have picked up a bunch of cats, coyotes, and a few coons and red fox. Big fur sale in Livingston tomorrow - we'll see how I do! Here are some highlights of the trapline.

Congrats on that bull! Great hunt!

Also congrats on that fur! Awesome pics.

Nice write-up, perfect shot on that bull, well done sir!

Great stuff on all Ranger… nice seeing the cats. See any sign of big cats?

You are speaking to the choir on too many deer tags. It would be nice to see them trimmed back a bit and give the genetics time to work like they did in the”old “ days.
Fish and game just can’t resist a nickel.

Osky

Sorry you had such a crappy autumn! I hope next year will be better!

What- no moose or caribou???
Fantastic season for sure.
Thanks for taking us along.

My goal this year was to fill every tag you can get in Montana, with the exception of moose, sheep, goat, and bison (since they're next to impossible to draw). The lion and wolf tags are looking like they're not going to get filled, but there's still a little time. I'm not sure what you'd call it, but getting them all filled would be a heck of a personal accomplishment.

You've definitely put some meat up! What a great season.

Congrats ranger1 hell of a season.mb