Date: November 29th, 2025
The 2025 Montana hunting season is now over and this last week we had some action early. The 3 elk hunters all got shooting at elk under 200 yards but couldn't seal the deal and then the elk hunting got tough after that. We did bump into a big herd of about 300 elk on Thanksgiving day and before the hunters got set up on them the neighbor drove a pickup truck to close to them and they took off. The last day and a half was brutal winds and snow where you couldn't see past 100-200 yards most of the time. A lot of the stuff was hunkered down during that storm which didn't help to end the week. We did get 2 whitetails.
A breakdown of the season goes like this.
We had 9 archery elk hunters who killed 3 elk, wounded 3 elk, and missed 2 elk. We had 4 archery whitetail hunters who killed 2 bucks, wounded 1 buck, and missed 1 buck. We had 18 rifle elk hunters who killed 8 bulls, wounded 1 bull, and missed 3 bulls. We had 8 rifle whitetail hunters hunting for just whitetail and they killed 8 bucks. We had 3 rifle mule deer hunters and they killed 3 mule deer bucks.
Overall the the season saw some of our best whitetails killed in years and some dandy elk. The weather was warm all the way until Thanksgiving day which the bottom dropped out to kick us out of the game pretty much. The last day and a half was brutal conditions. We saw lots of deer and plenty of big bulls during archery season but once the rifle season started the warm weather probably had a factor in how few elk we saw some weeks. We didn't have any snow but a few dustings until the last few days of the season. That is a first as far as I can remember in 21 years. Even the mountains where pretty bare of snow and the creeks where full because what snow we did get in the higher altitude was melting. Until next season, everyone have a great Holiday and good luck hunting!
