After a couple weeks of chasing a kid around haunted houses and then coming back to clean up the studio, reconfigure furniture, hang stuff on the walls and basically just taking care of some 'to-do' things, I'm going on a road trip to hopefully get my mule deer. Montana is a big state though so first things first: downloading maps and checking regs.
After getting some sage advice from a buddy, I decided to get onto the FWP website. Montana has a pretty stellar Block Management Program, where they contract with landowners to offer public hunting opportunities. With that, they provide information for those Block Management Areas such as specific rules, how to contact the landowner for permission, location, as well as fairly accurate maps of the areas. Hunters can get a book of all the BMAs at their local FWP offices and specific maps of each area can be obtained on-line or at the regional offices.
A couple other must-haves for planning the trip is the Montana Gazetteer and/or Montana Roads and Recreation Atlas, Montana 2016 deer hunting regulations, my laptop, and my Garmin GPS device with the Hunt Montana chip. As a hunter and especially as an outfitter out here, the GPS device is a must have. It will keep you from inadvertently trespassing, preventing a hefty fine and possible suspension of your professional guides/outfitters license. As an outfitter, the fine could even be doubled. It's definitely better to be safe than sorry.
My plan is to head North above what we call the High-Line. The cool thing about Montana is that there are these pockets of structure like buttes and coulees and river drainages coming out of the Rockies. It's a very cool area of the country with not a lot of people and a ton of hiding places for big bucks. I can't wait to explore.
Keep 'em where they live...
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