Commission Caps Doe Tags In Region

The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission voted Thursday, Oct. 9, to limit the number of white-tailed doe tags available for hunters in Region 6 in northeast Montana because of outbreaks of a hemorrhagic virus that is killing deer in pockets across the state but particularly so along the Milk River.

Commission Chair Lesley Robinson, representing Region 6, said landowners in the area had already seen suspected cases of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) ravage white-tailed deer populations in recent weeks. One man near Malta told her he’d found 60 dead deer in the past month and another had told her he could hardly go outside because of the stench of dead deer.

She said areas along both sides of the Milk River are seeing “extreme” effects this year from the virus, which is not uncommon in parts of Montana but varies by year as to how hard it might hit deer, pronghorn and other ruminants.

“I know we’ve had this before but it’s really bad in Region 6,” she said. “Very few live deer are being spotted in the areas this is happening.”

EHD is transmitted by biting midge gnats and can affect a wide range of ruminants, but most often whitetailed deer. The particular type of midge that carries the virus is most often found in muddy and moist areas, and the virus historically has been most common in eastern Montana, though it was first detected on the western side of the Continental Divide in 2013, when a bad outbreak hit the Missoula area.

That year, the commission also stopped selling over-thecounter white-tailed B licenses in both Region 6 and parts of Region 4 because of EHD.

Animals typically display few symptoms of the virus before a quick death, FWP Game Management Bureau Chief Brian Wakeling said Thursday. They often quickly grow weak, start salivating excessively and can develop fevers. That often leads them to water, where they die of internal bleeding. The virus is not transmittable to humans, but officials say meat from sick animals may not be safe for consumption by humans and other animals.

The midges are active during the summer and when temperatures remain warm in early fall, but they are often killed off by freezes. Virus outbreaks are typically highly localized, Wakeling said.

“At times you can have a lot of animals dying. You described a landowner mentioning 60 animals die. Two miles away, there may not have been any animals die, and so it tends to be real sporadic,” he said. Though the virus seems to have hit northeast Montana worse than other parts of the state this year, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks has been warning of suspected cases being identified across the state for the past month.

In mid-September, FWP warned they had found suspected EHD in white-tailed deer near Eureka and Plains in northwestern Montana. The commission added the proposed EHD adjustments to Region 6 to Thursday’s meeting agenda on Monday, and FWP on Wednesday announced it had also identified suspected EHD in whitetailed deer along the Clark Fork River near Missoula and Frenchtown, as well as along the Blackfoot River near Lincoln and Potomac.

The concern from the department and commissioners is since the highest concentrations of the virus appear to be in Region 6, continuing to allow hunters to buy up to three white-tailed doe tags — known as 006-00 B tags — could lead to an overharvest of the species when the number of deer killed by hunters is combined with the EHD losses.

FWP Licensing Bureau chief Emily Cooper said at the meeting, 1,437 of those tags had already been sold this year in the region. Of those who purchased the tags, 169 hunters bought three tags and 175 bought two. Last year, there were 4,788 total sold.

FWP’s initial proposal sought to limit future sales of the license this season to one per person. But after about an hour of discussion — including about whether there should be a limit or full-stop on license sales, or a possible special hunting closure — the commission decided it would cap total sales at 2,000, meaning there would be only 563 of the tags remaining for sale. The changes also kept in place the prohibition on selling second or third tags to a single hunter, though some commissioners and members of the public wondered if that might create a situation where more hunters are coming to try to fill a single tag.

There was also some concern about overharvest in Region 7, both due to the presence of EHD there and the idea that more Region 6 hunters might head southeast under the new restrictions. But Region 7 commissioner Bill Lane said regional biologists had advised against any changes to the season there.

“If they do not see the need to put any limitations on it, I at this point don’t feel the need to bring it forward,” he said.

Region 2 commissioner Jeff Burrows said he would like the commission at some point to consider putting something akin to hoot-owl fishing closures in place for hunting when viruses, prion diseases or other illnesses could greatly affect a targeted species’ population.

Robinson told Region 6 officials she would like to see them come up with a plan in the next year on how the commission could close particular areas along the Milk River in the event a similar outbreak occurs in the future, which most everyone at FWP said Thursday was not currently an easy solution because of the river, Highway 2, and hunting district boundaries. Before the change to cap the tags in the region at 2,000, Robinson said she was struggling to come up with a good overall solution because she would have liked to have been able to issue a specific closure.

“I don’t really feel this is enough, but I don’t know what we can do that’s a manageable fix for this year,” she said. “But this does hopefully take a big dent out of it.”

And Wakeling said that the recent cooler weather across most of the state, and some hard freezes and snow expected over the weekend and early next week, might spell the end of this year’s EHD threat. “We’re moving towards winter, and so we would expect a more routine winter pattern,” he said. “When that happens, those vectors that caused and carry that disease, they die, and the problem goes away. The disease is no longer spreading.”