The Missouri Brakes of Central Montana is renowned among deer and elk hunters.

However, this year, Mule Deer hunters will need to monitor regulations closely due to low population levels in this area.

Related Reading: The Montana Hunting Slang That You Need To Know!

Hunting The Upper Missouri River Brakes

Significant drought has led to steep declines in mule populations throughout the upper Missouri River Brakes.

Because of these low numbers, biologists have decided to change hunting regulations in this region.

Some hunting districts in this area will also now require a special permit to hunt mule deer for the entire season, while others require a permit for part of the season.

Missouri Brakes Hunting Permits

Hunting Districts 410 and 417 are now permit-only to hunt mule deer bucks during the general or archery seasons.
HD 426 requires a permit to hunt mule deer bucks during the last two weeks of the general deer season.
The deadline to apply for these permits was April 1st.
Mule Deer B Licenses to hunt antlerless mule deer are also extremely limited this year and were only available by special draw with a deadline to apply of June 1.
In addition, the antlerless B Licenses in HDs 410, 411, 412, 417, 419, and 426 are valid only on private land, as is the case in FWP Regions 6 and 7.

"This is not a trophy management effort nor is limiting buck harvest going to bring the deer back totally on its own—we need healthy does producing fawns for that to happen, which is habitat and weather-driven,” said FWP Biologist Sonja Andersen. “But our deer numbers are near record lows here and even with very limited doe harvest we aren’t seeing improvement, especially given the 2020, 2021, and 2022 drought years on top of a bad 2022-23 winter. Biologists have only so many levers to pull when managing populations, and limiting buck harvest was one of our only remaining options.”