Over hunting ? Calf tags..

maybe ken can look at new foundland & see why their moose population is striving I do respect ken” opinion

I think it has a lot to do with over hunting, regardless of what the moose population is able to withstand. The front page of the hunting regs says the province is commited to selling 100 000 licences by next year. It seems they don’t care how strong the moose population is, they just want to make the most money off hunters that they can. That doesn’t seem sustainable or healthy.

aplan must be implemented now because if we wait any longer it is going to be to late toall closure for moose province wide including guides ban atv horses donkeys llamas yearly flyovers surveys to see if populations are on the incline this leh is not working it started approx.27years ago and was to help sustain healthy moose ppulation for generations to come cn rail to be held accountable bettrsnow removal for runways extreme predator control

Seems simple to me, no hunting for moose in 2013. In the worst area.

Limit the use of ATV on hunts. You can go out into the bush with an ATV to hunt the moose, but can not use the ATV or like equipment to pull it out. Get Caught. $10,000 fine.

All the money collected in buying liscence goes into paying wildlife officers to go into the bush to catch poachers.instead of it being lost in general revenue.

Deep down most hunters wants to play by the rules, they enjoy the chase, the kill is only a fringe benefit. It burns the good hunters when they know the camp next door is breaking the rules.

First Nation Hunters, also have to have a set of rules as well.

Somebody in Victoria, needs to make a decision what is good for the long run, not immediate gains.

Unfortunately, humans have the ability to wipe out spieces of game. Invest in wildlife officers for five years, even if it cost 25 million dollars over five years. Catch the rule breakers and fine them, make examples out of the poachers.

Don’t feed me the crap, that if they dont get the moose the family will starve. I have never seen a situation that wild meat cost less than processed beef. When I go fishing, Salmon comes in at no less than $50/ lb.

Why is a tooth no longer required? You can’t make policy intelligently without good information.

i am a hunter i truly enjoy the outdoors my family and friends make many a excursion to the back country to see what we can see and the sight of a majestic moose makes these outings worthwhile as an outdoor enthusiast have noticed a decline in moose sightings but one thing i have noticed is the wolf sign that i have come across we do need better predator control sooner rather than later beeecause when its too late we will all wonder where did we go wrong i talked to a biologist the other day and asked him the question how come Newfoundland can implant some moose which are not native to the rock and turn it into ahealthy population of 150,000 head of moose his answer was they dont have a wolf problem

Overhunting? Would we not have an approximate inventory of moose in the wild and rather than only tags sold, actual animals taken, including information on animal age, location, date taken, gender, etc?

I mean, if we have to go on conjecture with the first item, and we are not doing number 4 anymore it does no take too many brains to figure out where the problem is.

So, in the spirit of the thing, I would think this goes on the list of screw ups by the Province. We’ll keep one for the City, the Province and the Feds.

The Feds list ….. we can start with the fiasco on the proposed jet purchase ….. I think that will trump all others.

Stop all cow-calf hunting untill populations come back.
Monitor first nations harvesting.
Talked to a Metis & was told he just got a permit to shoot any moose untill feb 28.
I would be interested to know how many moose are killed on railway tracks pg-tumbler ridge & pg- mcbride.
WOLVES a big problem have seen a lot more wolves & wolf sign than moose while out hunting this fall. I believe sustenance permiting is highly abused & not needed.
My rant.

Not once did he mention CN Rail, Talk to ppl that leave in Miworh or Giscome that live near the tracks. Predators hang out along the tracks because it’s a smorgasbord of animals that have been hit by the train. Shut down cow/calf season before it’s too late. I have heard up to 15000 thousand moose have been killed in the past 2 years on the tracks across the province since the new port was put in and they have increased the amount of trains running x five times.

What about Elk. Seems the Government has been transplanting Elk in various areas though-out BC for the past number of years.

I undestand that a big Elk will put the run on a Moose. Are the Elk taking over Moose habitat.??

The Government does not have to make money on hunting. Their only concern should be to collect enough money to pay the cost of running the various programs.

You need good, qualified, intelligent conservation officers in the woods. These people need to be able to move around quickly. They need to be able to camp out overnite, and to stay out in remote places for weeks at a time. This then allows them to catch more law breakers.

Back in the 50’s and early 60’s hunters were always aware that there could be a Game Warden in the area. At that time there were lots of hunters and few Game Warden’s but they seemed to get the job done.

So lets put these people to work. In addition stop killing cows, and calfs, for a year or two.

Further to the Elk. There have been hundreds of Elk spotted in the area in the past few years. This is highly unusual.

In addition a bull Elk was recently looking after a herd of domestic cows in the 100 Mile area. They had to cut off his horns, and move him to another area. What was interesting was the fact that Elk had rarely if ever been seen in this area before.

The Government makes money on selling license’s for Elk also.

So whats going on?????

What seems to be going on is that the government does not know what is going on.

I say we do it right or do not do it at all and move the money back into taxpayers’ pockets.

I think KPMG would agree with that. But they may need $350,000 to come up with that suggestion. ;-)

I’m tired of listening to the hunters whining about the moose situation. What motivates people to go out into beautiful remote areas and shoot whatever creature happens to cross their path? It’s a joke to call hunting a sport! Hunting today is simply a slaughter, the animals have little or no chance of surviving when faced with ATVs, high powered rifles and everything else that man is throwing at them. Stop and think people – you don’t really need wild meat to feed your family – if you can afford all the equipment to hunt, buy alcohol and cigarettes,etc., you can afford to buy beef!

Wolves are NOT the problem. If the moose population is healthy and everything is in balance they will only kill the sick or the old. It’s a fallacy that they kill for the sport, man however definitely does. How many wolves are there in the province compared to hunters? The ratio of wolves to Elmer Fudd’s must be thousands to one. And wolves don’t have ATV’s and thousands of dollars worth of high powered digital scopes either. Not anti hunting, just anti idiot. Hunt to eat, not to compete. Getting sickening if you ask me.

There should be a Moratorium on hunting till we have some definitive answers as to the decline and a sustainability plan in place.

I blame it on the Sasquatch. They`re always stealin my Kokanee and partyin in the back country freakin out all the moose…It`s anyone’s guess what guess on out there with a forest full of drunk Sasquatch…

Limit the use of quads/ATV’s and ban the cow/calf hunt.
Rocket science this is not.

ice: Do you ever read over what you’ve written before posting?

I do think we need more COs out in the bush, I am all in favour of limiting ATV use for hunting and a closure on cow and calf hunting. Years ago it seems that hunters used common sense. They shot bulls and left the cows and calves alone and packed out their meat. They considered where they shot an animal as to whether or not they could retrieve it.

At one hunting camp a couple of years ago, COs confiscated two illegal moose in three days but the hunters were allowed to stay and continue hunting. Now how’s that for stupid?

I agree with Give more.

This is not rocket science. We should also keep in mind that we humans (not necessarily hunters) move into wildlife territory and are also a cause for the decline.

We located UNBC in prime moose territory, and we intend to fill this whole area with residential neibourhoods, and some commercial development and schools, etc; over the next 10/20 years. This has and will continue to result in a huge decrease in the moose habitat, and moose.

For those people who do not hunt, but build in wildlife habitat, you might want to think about what you are doing, before you cast the first stone.

I take exception to some of the comments by northern gal…I too AM a northern gal…I hunt but I don’t buy alcohol & cigarettes, nor do I use an ATV. I also don’t hunt every year. Not all of us are the stereotype.

I’d way rather have wild meat than anything mass produced – the recent ecoli scare is just one of the reasons.

Definitely agree that we shouldn’t have a cow/calf season – never did understand that.

I think what wolves kill is under estimated, what I see taken out by hunters is nothing compared to what we see taken down by wolves, and that is just mature animals,there won,t be any sign when a young calf is taken, and they are easy prey. when it comes to ATV,s for hunting, I think they are great for warning animals someone is comming, I see more “highway hunters” every year. If you look at an offroad map, there are lots of areas that are hard to get to where moose hang out.I also wonder who and how they count moose

They count Moose like the tourist bureau counts tourist.

First you find an area and count 20 moose, then you extrapolate it by 300 areas and Walla you have 6000 moose.

The Tourist Bureau count the number of tourists that sign their books (say 1000) and then multiply that by 100 and Walla you have 100,000 tourists going through Prince George.,

Anyone who thinks wolves only kill the “sick and the old” has been watching too much Disney.

A couple other things:

“Child believes that spraying has resulted in the severe reduction of food for these animals.”

Spraying is done to release conifers from competing vegetation. This vegetation is usually aspen, which moose don’t generally eat. Stem-selective (basal/ground) spraying kills ONLY the aspen, and even aerial spraying is concentrated on aspen patches. Why pay to treat areas that don’t need it? Granted, some ungulate browse gets knocked back within these aerial areas but the idea that entire blocks are sprayed and all non-coniferous vegetation gets killed is just wrong. Non-aspen areas of cutblocks are generally left untouched and browse is allowed to grow. In fact, we count on moose and deer to keep browse species in check, and we make damn sure we limit the amount of ungulate browse that gets sprayed. If there’s high ungulate browse in a problem area it gets treated with stem-selective application rather than aerial broadcast.

“Clear cuts have removed the forage that these animals require”

So, there’s no forage in clearcuts but spraying clearcuts removes food (forage)? Take a walk through a cutblock and look at the huge amount of browse that comes up following harvest. Then take a walk into some adjacent timber and have a look at what’s growing in there. Tell me: which one has more ungulate browse?

As far as access it’s pretty simple to just ban ATVs for hunting. Lots of region 5 has that restriction already.

n. Gal
You may not have the stomach to pull the trigger on your dinner, but you none the less wreak havoc on the environment including moose and other game habitat by supporting the beef industry.

The beef industry is one of the most wasteful of resources of all the food sources.

Second to that, beef has been poisoned with the use of steroids, anti-biotic injection, and growth hormones. Why would I say such a thing? Simple, every time I eat beef, I get tummy troubles for a week. Not with any other red meat including wild game. Just with beef. I am not alone in this. I have talked many others with similar experience.

If you don’t have the stomach to pull the trigger yourself, perhaps you should consider a vegan life style.

Even going to the store to buy your nice beef roast or steak, you have still directly caused the demise or harvesting of a life creature with big, soft, brown eyes and a gentle disposition.

cheese

While there may be some browse in a cut block for the first couple of years, their certainly is very little browse or anything else when the trees get to about 10ft high. In fact I doubt if a rabbit could live in that area.

The tree’s are too close together and all other vegetation seems to disapear. Is this because of the spraying, spacing, or what.

I havent hunted for years, however it would be interesting to hear from the Hunters as how many moose, or other animals they have seen, or killed in a replanted area that has grown for appx 10 years.

It is clear from the factors cited by Ken Child that logging would be the pre-eminent cause of the decline in moose population.

Logging has fragmented the landscape providing less shelter for the moose and opening up vast areas linked by a network of roads to predators like wolves and hunters on ATVs.

Anthony, I don,t think logging is to blame at all, if anything planting trees all over and very close makes new plantations useless for most wild life, there is no grass for even the rabbits other than on the trails thru it, you will see moose in cut blocks but not in 6 year+ stands

When i hunted 5 yrs ago i rarely saw a wolf track. Last yr and this yr when i see a moose or deer track there are almost always wolf tracks. I have seen more wolf tracks this yr than i have seen in last 10 yrs combined. Make no mistake there is a wolf problem and with all the beetle wood clearcutting its a slaughter out there on the moose. Obviously its not the only factor but it is a big one. Calf hunting should be a limited entry hunt to be more manageable number of calves taken each yr but i would be in favour of closing them for a few yrs to allow the next generation of moose to mature and breed. I have no faith in the government properly managing this as they cant seem to manage anything else. Lastly i heard from a friend at CN that they kill 1000 moose a year from prince george to mcbride alone. not sure how accurate that is but its frightening.

Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Moose aren’t “getting it on” often enough. Thus the population decline. Moose pharmaceuticals are the answer.