State biologist shares elk, deer survey results

Springtime is when wildlife biologists amp up their schedule because EVERYTHING is moving fast, again.

Bird migration, fawns, cubs and calves plus the food for all of these critters is in their rapid growth cycle.

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Region 2 wildlife biologist Liz Bradley was tough to pin down for a quick report on her annual aerial survey she conducts in Mineral County for ungulates, but she did cover the basics we like to know about.

When did the annual aerial survey begin and end?

I started flying on March 30 and finished May 2.

Overall, for elk in Hunting Districts 201 and 202, could you share the health of the heard and compare them to past years?

Hunting District 201 is over objective. We’ve added some extra opportunity to harvest cow elk and we’ve been seeing a downward trend in counts the past several years, but still are over objective. HD 202 is within objective.

How are the mule deer faring in HD 202?

I didn’t get a great survey in HD 202 this year, but I did add a survey in parts of HD 201 and recruitment looked good this year.

Any surprises you could see with the whitetail population?

We had a mild winter and recruitment looked good for whitetail deer this year. I did ground surveys near Superior, Fish Creek, Petty Creek, Lolo Creek and the Ninemile.

Did your survey include predators and if so, anything you observed worth noting to the public?

I only survey big game but there is other work currently being done on mountain lion estimates for the Mineral County area (we’ll have more data by mid-summer). Tyler Parks works on monitoring the wolf population.

How are bighorn sheep looking?

Petty Creek sheep numbers have decreased in the last several years, due to ewe mortality from various causes and a few years of poor recruitment of lambs. We’ve reduced ewe tags from 7 down to 2 and ram tags from 4 down to 3 this year.