Our INSIDER research tools are constantly evolving to provide you with more tools for finding the perfect hunting location.

This past year Brandon and I were brainstorming ways to give more value to our INSIDERs looking to hunt in Montana and a light bulb came on! You can now filter and sort Montana Hunt Districts by the number of bucks or bulls harvested in every general season and permit districts. Prior to this, you may have noticed how difficult it was to get harvest reports from Montana due to the way they report their data and harvest success. But that problem has been solved!

We are very excited to announce this new feature that will greatly enhance your research efforts for general season deer and elk in Montana, as well as permit districts.

Here’s how to utilize this new feature

Step 1

Navigate over to Filtering 2.0 from the INSIDER dropdown and click on Montana and then select a species. With this new enhancement, you can get this data on elk, mule deer, and whitetail deer. For this example, we are going to research general season elk opportunities.

Step 2

Right away you’ll see this new information displayed in the result section of Filtering 2.0.

From here you have several ways to utilize this data

Option 1

Scroll through the results and click on a Hunt District you’re familiar with. Once you are on the Unit Profile, you’ll see a graph at the bottom that will show you year-by-year trends for the number of bulls harvested.

Option 2

In the Active Filters section. Scroll down to the bottom and adjust the new # Bulls Harvested slider.

This will quickly narrow down and show hunt districts based on the number of bulls harvested.

Option 3

And lastly, you could click on the Default drop-down in the result section and sort by # Harvested. This will sort all the hunt districts from the highest number of bulls or bucks harvested to the lowest.

How would you utilize this tool in Montana?

Let’s say you are looking for the perfect Montana hunt district for a general season rifle elk hunt. Here are the steps I would take to use this new feature:

• Navigate to Montana on Filtering 2.0.
• Select Elk under Species.
• Scroll down on the Active Filters section and choose Rifle - General under the Select Season(s) drop-down.
  • You will now have 122 results.
• Next, I would select 300"+ on the Trophy Potential filter.
  • Now there are 95 results.
• I then adjusted the Public Land filter to 35% or better.
  • We are now at 72 results.
• At this stage, I will now select the # Bulls Harvested filter and adjust it to 100+.
  • This one takes a big jump. We now have 29 results.
• Here I like to go back and forth on some of the sorting options.
  • First I will sort by # Harvested. This will show me the hunt districts sorted from the most bulls harvested to the lowest.
  • Next, I would take note of several of the top districts, but this time I would sort by Public Land %.
• From here I would compare several hunt districts that caught my eye by selecting the Compare checkbox.
• Lastly, I would click into each Unit Profile and scroll down to the bottom to check out the year-over-year trends in the number of bulls harvested, as well as the number of hunters surveyed.

In conclusion

Overall, there are many ways you can utilize this new feature in combination with the other filtering tools on Filtering 2.0. This is a great addition to find the perfect deer or elk district on general or permit hunts. It's always our goal to keep expanding and offer more and more to our INSIDERs so you can be more successful in the field.

If you have any questions on how to use these tools, feel free to reach out. Best of luck this season!

Not an INSIDER and want to use this tool?

Step one: Sign up for goHUNT INSIDER to instantly find quality hunts.
Step two: Dive in and have a better hunting season.

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