Montana hunters struck hard on Sunday's opening of big-game season.

The harvest included at least one wolf, shot in the Big Hole Valley.

"The wolf attracted a lot of attention," said Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Craig Jourdonnais at the Darby check station. "We had a hard time keeping people moving through."

Jourdonnais said the hunter who shot the 75-pound black wolf was seeking deer and elk, but had seen wolves in his hunting area during archery season. At least half a dozen other hunters told FWP game checkers they were hunting exclusively for wolves Sunday.

Montana wolves were removed from federal Endangered Species Act protection last spring, and the state authorized its first big-game season for the predator this fall. It may be the last for a while, as a coalition of conservation groups have sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the delisting. That case is expected to come to trial before U.S. District Court Judge Don Molloy of Missoula this winter.

No other regions of Montana reported wolf kills Sunday, according to the FWP quota management report.

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On the more traditional score card, elk hunters were having above-average success at both the Darby and Bonner check stations Sunday afternoon.

"It's really been pretty good for this early in the day," FWP biologist Jay Kolbe said at Bonner as he watched a line of four trucks pull in - two with bulls in the back. "And they've been well distributed - in the Garnets, Gold Creek, Seeley Lake - they've been taken in all those districts."

One of the winners was Tom Lund of Missoula, who pulled in with a 4-by-5 bull strapped to his homemade game cart.

"That sled has brought out probably 25 elk over the years," Lund said. "This was the first animal we'd seen this morning, so we took it."

Charles Dealaman arrived with a 2-point mule deer and a much bigger story to tell.

"There was a cougar chasing deer everywhere," the Missoula hunter said. "We watched as he chased a herd over a hill, and then chased them back. That's when I got him (the buck)."

His partner, Sheldon Nowlen, said the mountain lion appeared to be about 130 pounds, and was a remarkably muscular sight as it belly-crept through the brush to stalk the deer herd. To save their own muscles, the two men had ridden bicycles deep into the Gold Creek drainage, and used them to haul Dealaman's deer out.

"I broke 30 mph on that baby," Nowlen said of the ride home with the deer draped over the crossbar.

Volunteer game checker Tubbee Moua said some hunters in the North Fork of the Blackfoot River reported seeing a wolf pack chase a small herd of elk. But while many hunters told of seeing wolf sign, no Bonner check station visitors got a clear shot at a wolf in that area.

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Darby hunters were also doing well in the elk department. Jourdonnais said he'd seen 35 elk by mid-afternoon, and the opening-day average for that location is 37.

"We still have four or five hours to go here," he said. "It started out pretty slow until about noon, and then somebody opened the floodgates."

Deer numbers were down somewhat, but that could reflect the dry, early season weather and the greatly reduced number of doe tags released this year.

Among the more limited tags, a few hunters arrived with antelope from the Big Hole area, but no one had scored a bighorn sheep, mountain goat or moose so far. Kolbe said he did see one impressive bear come through Sunday morning, taken by a 12-year-old boy.

"That was the happiest 12-year-old you ever saw," Kolbe said. "It must have weighed 300 pounds. You couldn't wipe the grin off his face."

Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com.