sucess that rifle hunters have and therefore have less impact on 

 the overall game population including trophy animals. 



Archery Hunting provides very Good hunter oppurtunity with very 

 little impact on the Resource. I feel the dept. should be 

 looking at ways to expand the Archery season. Not restrict it. 



Overall, feel archery hunting is becoming more popular and is 

 affecting elk movements off public land to private land in some 

 areas. Although I hate to see it come, I feel restricitons will 

 be needed in the near future to address this issue. A two week 

 season would only cause greater pressure. 



Elk hunting w/a bow is the greatest hunting thrill available in 

 my opinion. I don't beleive archery hunting has a very great 

 impact on populations due to the difficulty of the sport. Please 

 don ' t shorten the seasons or make hunters choose between gun & 

 archery seasons or districts. Such controls eliminate much of 

 the sponenaety the I enjoy during the season. 



I also believe that whitetails are under utilized. Their habitat 

 is well suited to bow hunting. I think there are larg e numbers 

 of them in many areas. Hunting them when they are not in the rut 

 is extremely time consuming & challenging - success rate is 

 probably fairly low for bucks . 



Therefore I wish you would issue more either sex whitetail 

 archery tags. Such tags would provide many hours of hunter 

 enjoyment & minimal impact on game populations. 



Please leave the season as is . Although the number of archers 

 has increased in the 100 District, so has the number of Elk. I 

 don't believe the number of Elk taken with Bow & arrow is having 

 much effect on the overall populations. 



Many bowhunters will pas up a doe or fawn, when they still have a 

 chance to shoot a Buck with a rifle in a later season. If areas 

 are overcrouded during the archery season, limit the number of 

 hunters in that area only, by requiring a special permit. 



Bow hunting just spooks game and pushes them back far enough that 

 it cuts your chances for getting them during the general rifle 

 season. Its not fair for rifle hunters. 



I think instead of raising the archery stamp have a heap licenses 

 for archy season the same price as gun license and be able to 

 take deer, elk, or bear on each license. I don't think there are 

 that many animals killed by bow hunters. 



I have bow hunted for 17 years but only hunted in MT for elk 2 

 years I have only been a resident of MT for 2 years. But ahve 

 not heard very many bulls bugle and I do bugle my self last year 

 was not a good bugle year perhaps the hot and dry weather cond. 

 If any of those proposals on page 3-section 8 were posted I would 



