Milk River Whitetails on Your Own

The Milk River is a whitetail paradise—one long frequented by Realtree camera crews. It’s a remote area that’s also a long ways off for most people. But you may be surprised to learn that once you commit to tackling the travel issue, hunting the Milk River is a viable, affordable option. You don’t need a guide. You don’t need an outfitter. You just need to understand Montana’s Block Management Program (BMP).

According to the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) Web site (www.fwp.mt.gov), “Block Management is a cooperative effort between Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, private landowners and public land management agencies to help landowners manage hunting activities and to provide free public hunting access to private and isolated public lands.”

What this means is private landowners who choose to enroll their property into the BMP—thereby classifying the property as a Block Management Area (BMA)—are willing to allow hunters access to their land in exchange for financial compensation from the state. It doesn’t cost the hunter anything. The money comes from license sales, drawing heavily from non-resident license funds. 

BMAs vary in size and regulation. Some parcels are as small as 50 acres while others are larger than 100,000 acres. Landowners retain certain rights concerning how their land is managed, such as how hunters gain access and permission. Some areas are walk-in only, while others are accessible by vehicle. Some require a face-to-face interaction before hunting permission is granted, while others are posted with sign-in boxes where hunters simply fill out a slip. Individual landowners make their own rules.

Learning how to obtain permission for each specific piece of property is easily accomplished by reading posted signs or consulting a regional Hunter Access Guide, which lists the block management opportunities available for the current season. These are published on or before August 15 annually, and are available in hard copy and online. Montana is divided into seven regions. Regions are numbered from west to east. Region 1 is in the northwest corner of the state, while Region 7 is located in the southwest corner. The Milk River is located in Region 6.

Milk River Memories

The first time I visited the Milk River, just after I’d moved to Billings, I spent an entire day exploring the river bottoms from Glasgow to Malta. The sheer number of deer I saw is unimaginable. Forty here. Fifty there. Oh man, at least a 100 in that field. Look, there are 10—all of them bucks.

My uncle, Tom Butler, is a whitetail fanatic just like me. In fact, he’s the person who hooked me on hunting. So when I started to get serious about chasing bucks along the Milk, I began laying out a plan to repay the man who had gone out of his way to include me when he didn’t have to. He drew a tag on his first attempt.

With the biggest hurdle behind us, I set out to secure our hunting spot. With a copy of the Region 6 Hunter Access Guide in hand, I began zeroing in on a number of BMAs along the Milk River. I wanted to get as far away from town as possible, believing most hunters would focus on areas with easy access to accommodations. We would be camping, so a remote location was a bonus.

I found a BMA a distance from any others with a horseshoe-shaped field full of lush alfalfa. This particular field was surrounded by river on three sides. Between the water’s edge and the field a strip of timber 50 to 100 yards wide looked like it should house a significant number of whitetails. When I first pulled up to observe the field for an evening, it was empty. Within an hour, though, that changed. Well over 100 deer made their way into the alfalfa, and as darkness fell, more were still filtering in.

A Week of Close Calls

It takes a while to learn any new piece of property, and Tom and I were having trouble getting into bow range of shooter. For the first couple days of our week-long hunt, we sat opposite one another on points where the horseshoe ended and an adjoining stretch of alfalfa began. Countless young bucks and does filtered by, but no bucks of the caliber we were after presented a shot. With so many eyes, and more importantly noses, around, the older, wiser bucks weren’t making many mistakes.

Neither my uncle nor I are trophy hunters, but to shoot a lesser buck in the first couple of days of a week-long Milk River hunt is probably jumping the gun. Not because you should hold out for a Booner, but because there are so many bucks in the 130-150 class. But with the evening hunt of our last day upon us, we were both still holding un-punched tags.

Tom and I moved our stands away from the horseshoe after two other hunters set up deeper in the timber and killed a couple does. One of the issues of Block Management is, just like public land, you may have to deal with other hunters. They have as much right to be there as you.

Since we had been seeing so many deer hanging around the horseshoe, we failed to give the remaining 2,000 acres of the property much thought. But because our spot had been compromised, we decided to look elsewhere. The area I settled on was a cattail bog that basically was an island of cover in a square mile of open terrain. The bog jutted off a creek bank serving as a major travel route between a section of bedding timber and river-bottom fields.

Shooter in Range

The sun slid behind the western cottonwoods that last evening, and disappointment began creeping in. With so many deer around, how could we fail to fill our tags? Then I saw him. A 10-pointer was walking straight toward me from 100 yards away. He was closing fast. I came to full draw. When the buck was perfectly broadside at 30 yards I gave him a quick meeeep, and he froze. I drove my arrow through his chest and he expired within 50 yards of where I shot him. I couldn’t believe it. From the moment I saw him to the second he died less than a minute had transpired.

Though my tag had been notched, Tom’s hadn’t. So during his flight back to Indiana, I called both his wife and his business partner (my father), and cleared his calendar for a Milk River return trip two weeks later. This time Tom would be rifle hunting.

I went back to the Milk alone to hang two treestands for him. One was a ladder stand overlooking the horseshoe, and another was a fixed-position on the far side of the cattail bog. I felt either location should put a handful of shooter bucks within cracking distance of Tom’s .270. The rifle was his father’s, my grandfather’s. It was a gun that had made countless trips west, but had been sitting dust covered in a cabinet for nearly two decades. This was to be its coming out party. I was excited. My puzzle was fitting together nicely.

Tom held out for two days, waiting on the biggest buck of his life. Finally, a qualifying buck gave him a perfect 150-yard shot. He missed. I’d never seen him so dejected. We shot his gun, and it was on.

Human error; it gets us all from time to time. Now we were facing the unthinkable. Tom had to fly out of Billings at 2 p.m. the following day, and Glasgow is a good five hours from there. We had to leave, again, without  Tom punching his tag.

I had one last trick up my sleeve. I had bowhunted a piece of property on the north slope of the Absaroka Mountain Range near Red Lodge earlier in the year. The property held good numbers of mule deer and whitetails, and it was a BMA. The drive was about an hour from Billings. I figured if we were out amongst the junipers by sunrise, we could hunt for three hours before we’d have to leave for the airport.

Mule Deer Redemption

Sun broke over the sage flats with us perched high upon a bluff glassing the cottonwood-filled bottoms of the West Rosebud River. Deer were scattered around us. A number of lesser bucks could have easily been stalked, but Tom refused to kill something just to say he killed something.

I climbed one last rise. Tom said he was done, and waited at the bottom. Cresting the peak, I was shocked by the sight of a mature 4x4 mule deer walking up the drainage less than 100 yards from me.

This buck was in trouble. His direction of travel of obvious, and it would be easy to circle in front of him, staying on higher ground the whole time. I hustled back down the hill to where Tom was waiting and told him to follow me. We high-tailed it and covered a half mile in a few minutes. When we drew near the edge of the bluff we needed to reach, we found the buck only 60 yards away, broadside. Tom was winded. He was breathing hard and couldn’t get steady for a shot. I went down on all fours and told him to use my back as a shooting bench. He did, squeezed the trigger and the buck dropped.

Montana’s Block Management Program makes finding a place to hunt in this game-rich state much easier than one might expect. Even in parts of the state not blessed with a significant amount of public land, like the Milk River Valley, hunters can obtain access to quality ground. Don’t be mistaken by thinking you can’t afford to hunt the Milk River. All you have to do is apply, research BMAs, endure a seemingly endless road trip, and you’ll be headed for hallowed ground.

To learn more about Montana’s Block Management Program, click here.