BRETT FRENCH | bfrench@billingsgazette.com
As any hunter can tell you, elk are frustratingly smart, but they also adhere to certain habits.
Studies conducted by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks scientists in three different regions — between Helena and Great Falls in an area called the Devil’s Kitchen, on the Custer Gallatin National Forest in southeast Montana near Ashland and in the Missouri River Breaks northeast of Winnett — affirm some standard ideas about elk behavior while debunking others.
Numerous elk were collared in each of the three locations over three years to understand how and when they moved and what kind of habitat they favored at different times of year. The study also adds to FWP’s growing understanding of how hunter access affects elk distribution during the hunting season.
“No such studies have been conducted in central Montana and only one study has evaluated factors affecting elk distributions during the hunting season in prairie environments,” the authors noted.
The authors include Nicole Bealer, Kelly Proffitt, Shane Petch, Elisabeth Krieger, Emily Mitchell and Ryan DeVore of FWP, along with Montana State University professor Jay Rotella and research associate Kaitlin Macdonald. The full 161-page Elk Habitat Management in Montana report can be found online.
Elk on the move
Perhaps most startling, as other big game collaring studies have shown, is just how far some animals travel.
One bull elk collared in the Custer Gallatin National Forest’s Ashland Ranger District walked more than 200 miles, migrating across southeastern Montana and into northwestern South Dakota where his collar died.
Several of the elk in this study area traveled south into Wyoming, and two cow elk went as far west as Interstate 90, about 100 miles.
A cow elk in that same portion of the study traveled more than 100 miles to North Dakota before returning.
In the Missouri Breaks, one bull traveled from east to west across the majority of the 50-mile study area between the Musselshell River and the town of Jordan, south of Fort Peck Reservoir. The bull also swam across the Missouri River, spending time exploring the north shore before traveling back to the east end of the study area the following year.
In all of these elk walkabouts, the researchers noted how important Bureau of Land Management parcels were to connect the animals to other habitats.
Such long treks also emphasize how diseases like brucellosis and chronic wasting disease can be impossible to contain to specific geographic areas
Hunters decrease elk numbers
One of the goals of the research was to help the agency understand how to control elk populations where they’ve become so large that landowners complain about loss of forage meant for livestock, as well as damage to infrastructure like fences.
Conservation groups, along with Fish, Wildlife & Parks staff, have long said that without hunter access to private lands, elk will congregate on those private parcels to avoid being shot.
FWP’s study affirmed what seems obvious: “As the proportion of hunter accessible land in a hunting district decreases the number of elk over the population objective is predicted to increase,” the report found.
Elk respond to pressure
The Devil’s Kitchen — spread across portions of Cascade and Lewis and Clark counties — offered a unique opportunity to see how elk can shift their location due to hunter pressure.
The study area is 69% private land and contains an elk population estimated at around 3,500 head in Hunting Districts 445 and 455 (the Devil’s Kitchen) and around 2,000 in HD 446, the east end of the Big Belt Mountains.
This area is also unique because it contains the Beartooth Wildlife Management Area, a 32,300-acre parcel north of the Gates of the Mountains that is set aside specifically for wildlife habitat.
Based on landowners’ concerns, FWP classified the whole region as having too many elk and years ago initiated early and late-season hunts to try and trim cow elk numbers, called shoulder season hunts.
Yet FWP discovered that simply issuing more licenses and lengthening the season wasn’t enough to reduce elk populations. The study showed collared elk would move to less accessible private lands as soon as the early shoulder season and fall archery hunts began.
The result was that fewer elk were accessible to hunters in the region once the general rifle season opened.
During the late shoulder season hunts, which open after the general rifle season, many of the female elk would migrate onto the Beartooth WMA where late-season hunts are not allowed.
This migration was good for landowners, taking the elk off private ground, but made fewer elk available to hunters to reduce the overall population.
These results are similar to a 2016 FWP study of elk in the Missouri Breaks north of the river. Even though the majority of lands in the area were open to public hunting, the study found, “that even relatively small geographic areas within an elk population range being managed for restricted hunter access or no hunter access may have a disproportionate effect on elk distribution and prevent effective harvest of female elk to maintain elk populations at objective levels.”
Shifting from pressure
Another unforeseen elk migration occurred in the new Missouri Breaks study area, which consisted of portions of Garfield County and mostly HD 700, but also seeped into portions of HDs 410 and 701.
About 44% of the study area is privately owned, with 27% comprised of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge along the Missouri River and 24% BLM land. The elk population in this area ranges between 1,200 to 1,300 animals.
While female elk in this area would move to lands with restricted access to avoid hunters, bull elk preferred private lands in the archery season, shifting to public lands during the rifle hunt.
The reason for the shift may be because this hunting area sees much higher hunting pressure during the archery season — 800 permits compared to 250 during rifle season, FWP researchers reasoned. Yet much of the archery pressure occurs on private lands and parcels leased by outfitters, the study noted.
The authors wrote another explanation is the elk shift as they seek out areas to spend the winter, rather than a response to hunting pressure.
No safety in security habitat
Another interesting finding in the study was that even when lands accessible to hunters have dense enough trees or steep enough coulees to qualify as “security habitat,” more elk are killed.
An alternate explanation, the authors said, could be that lands with more security habitat also have more land accessible to hunters.
Habitat protection or restoration to create security habitat could provide an opportunity for conservation groups while increasing hunter harvest.
“Maintaining or increasing security habitat on public lands may help offset the effects of higher hunter pressure, thereby increasing the amount of time elk spend on publicly accessible lands,” the authors wrote.
The finding also emphasized the importance of creating resistance to wildland fires that can wipe out such habitat.
Two examples were cited. In the Ashland Ranger District, live timber declined from about half of the district to a quarter from the late 1990s to late 2010s. The 2017 Lodgepole Complex fire burned more than 270,000 acres, about 420 square miles, including a significant amount of elk habitat, the study noted.
In the fall, elk inhabited only about 30% of the Ashland Ranger District, the FWP study found. The majority of elk in the region, about 55%, hung out on private land. Because of this protection from hunters, the population of elk in the survey area has grown from around 800 animals in 2017 to 1,350 in 2025.
