Dear FWP and the Elk Management Citizen Advisory Group -
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your ‘Use of Shoulder Seasons’ proposal.
The idea to carefully assess the benefits of shoulder seasons to redistribute elk and reduce landowner hunting fatigue thereby improving relationships between landowners and hunters is a good one. Moreover, becoming more strategic in the application of ESSs and flexible enough to recognize that ESSs are not the only method available to mitigate disease is the kind of thinking that will lead to new solutions.
Specifically, we fully support the recommendations to apply shoulder seasons on private lands only – not on any public lands; to focus only on areas that are above objective; to allow shoulder seasons to apply in the week prior to general rifle season (private land only); and to attempt to utilize damage hunts as a scalpel approach to replace early-shoulder-seasons, though we’d like that line of thinking to extend to late-shoulder-seasons as well. In our view, damage hunts should be the approach for any needed elk harvests after January 1st.
Additionally, we do not entirely agree with the recommendation to eliminate shoulder-season opportunities during the regular season and delay these until two weeks after the regular season. Our reasoning for opposing this suggestion is we would much prefer harvests efforts be focused on the existing and longstanding general seasons in Montana rather than seeing elk hunted six months per year. Additionally, if these cow harvests are to be on private land only, as they were intended, this should help better distribute elk to public lands during the general seasons.
Thank you again for the opportunity to comment on your ‘Use of Shoulder Seasons’ proposal. We appreciate your careful consideration.
-The Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers