HELENA, Mont. — Montana’s 2023 big game hunting season closed Nov. 26 with elk harvest trailing 2022 and slightly down from the five-year average.
Lower elk harvest was correlated with the lack of snow fall and mild temperatures throughout the first half of the season.
Deer harvest totals were similar to last year with 102 mule deer compared to 105 last year.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks released the following:
Montana’s 2023 general big game hunting season closed Sunday, Nov. 26 with elk harvest reported at the region’s wildlife check stations trailing behind 2022 by 71 elk and just slightly down from the five-year average.
Lower than normal elk harvest can be largely attributed to the lack of snow season-long and mild temperatures that extended through the first half of the season. In 2022, cold and snowy hunting conditions persisted all hunting season, prompting more and earlier elk movement and better tracking conditions.
Elk harvest tracked through the station was 225 this year, compared to 296 in 2022. The five-year average is 237. Hunters continued to get out this season, taking advantage of more comfortable hunting conditions and average deer harvest success. Traffic through all of the region’s hunter check stations was up, except for at the station in the Fish Creek drainage west of Missoula.
Deer harvest totals were almost exactly the same as last season for mule deer at 102, compared to 105 in 2022, and identical for white-tailed deer at 492. Both were up from the five-year average.
The Anaconda hunter check station didn’t operate during the final weekend of the season so that a Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) testing station near Deer Lodge could run instead. The Anaconda station typically only logs a small number of hunters (approximately 50-150 hunter stops) and harvests (10-20 animals) during the final weekend of the season, so overall check station totals reported were impacted by the station closure but not by much.
Wildlife check stations only account for a small percentage of total harvest across the region, but because the stations have been in operation consistently for many years, they monitor important early harvest trends and are a key way to gather biological information on wildlife health and age.
CWD was detected for the first time in Hunting District 213 during the last week of the season, and the temporary CWD sampling station near Deer Lodge helped to collect more harvested deer and elk samples from the Upper Clark Fork area for testing.
CWD is a contagious neurological disease that can infect deer, elk and moose. It is always fatal, and there is no known cure. It was first detected in Montana’s wild herds in 2017. The disease is known to exist in various regions of Montana, with the closest prior detections approximately 100 miles to the southeast of HD 213. Hunters play a significant role in CWD disease management and understanding by providing test samples from harvested animals that give biologists information on disease distribution and prevalence. For more details about CWD management and instructions on how to submit samples from harvested animals, visit: fwp.mt.gov/cwd.