HELENA, Mont. (AP) – Montana's three-month public bison hunt opened Tuesday in areas outside Yellowstone National Park, including for the first time in Park County's Gardiner Basin.

The season runs through Feb. 15 and allows for up to 144 bison to be shot by licensed hunters.

Whether that figure is reached will depend on how many bison migrate out of the park, where hunting is prohibited.

In 2009-2010, when the migration was light, only one animal was harvested. But last winter, deep snows prompted more than 1,400 bison to migrate out of the park in search of food at lower elevations, with hunters killing 194 of the animals.

β€œIt really is all weather dependent,” said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim.

Bison, North America's largest land animal, can reach up to 2,000 pounds and provide hundreds of pounds of meat.

Vast herds of the animals once roamed most of North America but were wiped out by overhunting in the late 1800s. Bison were later restored to the wild in Yellowstone and a few other areas, and an estimated 3,500 now roam the park.

Most bison taken last year were shot by members of American Indian tribes under treaties signed with the federal government more than a century ago. Those hunts are not regulated by the state.

Three Indian nations participated last year – the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana, the Nez Perce of Idaho and the Umatilla of Oregon. Members of the Shoshone Bannock Tribe of Idaho also have treaty hunting rights but did not take any animals last year.

Aasheim said tribal hunters are expected to return if bison start to move out of the park.

The state-sponsored hunt is split into two areas: West Yellowstone and the Cabinet Creek-Monument Mountain area on the west side of the park, and the Gardiner Basin and Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness on the north side.

In the past, thousands of bison entering the Gardiner Basin were captured and shipped to slaughter to prevent the transmission of the disease brucellosis to cattle. That policy was changed last year at the direction of Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who put a temporary moratorium on shipping the animals to slaughter.

Park County officials have filed a lawsuit seeking to force the state to return to its policy of blocking any mass migrations of bison into Montana. That case is pending in state District Court.

The governor's moratorium on slaughtering bison ended earlier this year and it is uncertain if the tactic will be revived. Montana officials have said they will continue to allow bison into the 75,000-acre Gardiner basin, although in more limited numbers than last year.