'Legal immature'

[trevj]

"If it's legal, it's all good!" Yeah great motto Trev...it was legal for grown men to bang 14 year olds in Canada with parental consent until a few years ago. Sure it was legal and worked out nicely for some real creepy old timers I'm sure.

You working for the wildlife department or something? It's precisely hunters like you who just patently support our idiot government without question that make things worse for the few hunters out there that actually want to see healthy, growing wildlife populations with proper age structure.

Our wildlife herds population distributions look like a bloody AIDS infested African country...with many young animals and few older ones.

Why don't we put a cow and calf only season in across the country and see how quickly we can make the odds of being drawn in a big game draw into the tens of millions. We already have far more hunters wanting to shoot moose and elk than there are animals in the population. Don't you think we should start thinking about increasing big game populations with sound policy like "mature bulls only for several years or just close the season...for everyone natives included. This would better reflect the sustainable development mantra that all these dumb governments are blabbing about lately.

There's a reason why outfitters have their clients shoot mature males of the species, and its not just because hunters pay more. If they starting shooting cows and calves in some of these pristine fly in areas they would have few bulls to reach maturity in only a few short years and few cows to breed.

Any outfitter care to chime in? Or you all scared to alienate yourselves?

Time to wake up and become part of the solution. You're not cool shooting baby or mama. Your actually making things harder for wildlife and the people who want to maintain healthy, growing herds.

You were posting a bunch of hooey preaching Quality Deer Management, weren't you?

Nice of you to make the leap from Game Harvest over to screwing kids. That may be how you think, not me.

Stick to the subject. Legal game. I hunt what I am willing to go out and hunt for. I put in my draws, like anyone else with my skin tone (decidedly, NOT Hawaiian looking) and will happily accept the game biologists word over that of some hopeful that wishes to farm the wild deer.

No, I am definitely NOT a Biologist. But I do have contact with the odd one. They are rather better informed than you are, about the state of various populations.

The ones I mentioned, in North/Central Alberta, were in fact, the persons responsible for actually setting the numbers for the harvest allotments. Well worth listening to what they had to say, straight from the source.

If you wish to feel good about yourself because you drew a tag for an animal you did not intend to shoot in the first place, feel free. I just do not think you are actually going to accomplish any net result other than to come off sounding like a twot. oh. Too late for that. You, oh idiot child of some unfortunate genetic donors, strike me as being about as big an oxygen thief as I have had to deal with.

Cheers
Trev

 

[hawk-i]

How much meat do you get off of a calf and a yearling bull? Doesn't anyone else on these forums also think it just makes make sense to pass on shooting cows and immature moose when you have to draw tags. Don't you guys want more animals and healthier big hame populations? Why are we creating our own shortages of wildlife...we know shooting cows and calves result in lower and younger populations?

Passing on shooting cows will increase the herd, passing on a spike fork won't make much of a difference.

 

[hawk-i]

BC's moose LEH rules are a joke... Tri-Palm and 10-point are bull#### based on genetics rather than maturity. I've seen giant moose with two-point fronts that don't make the tri-palm rule and moose with borederline little protuberances around the pans that may or may not make the rules to qualify as a "point" yet all were completely mature animals.

A smarter approach would be to say "antlered moose" and put out a sustainable number of tags. If you're concerned with a high "immature" harvest implement mandatory inspection and base next year's tag numbers on the results thereof. Too many young bulls being killed? Decrease the number of tags. Too many moose in an area? Implement an antlerless LEH. It's really quite simple.

Same for the 4 point Muley rule....lots of bucks will never be more than very large 3 pointers. Are these the genetics we are looking to save?

 

[ratherbefishin]

Same goes for restricting elk to six points,removing those bulls from the genetic pool has resulted in huge 5 point bulls that will die 5 point bulls AND pass on those genetics...but maybe that's what the 'experts' wanted..
It seems to me that some of these restrictions were the result of university taught people who never wore boots and got out in the field and actually hunted

 

[rsp1761]

Same goes for restricting elk to six points,removing those bulls from the genetic pool has resulted in huge 5 point bulls that will die 5 point bulls AND pass on those genetics...but maybe that's what the 'experts' wanted..
It seems to me that some of these restrictions were the result of university taught people who never wore boots and got out in the field and actually hunted

The 6 point rule is crazy as well as noted above. My father has lived in the East Kootenay for years and has never killed an elk there despite seeing numerous large 5 pointers on his property every year. I shudder to think how many big 5's are left to rot...

 

[the spank]

The determination of a legal, immature moose and the curl on mountain sheep, are the stupidest laws on our books, as far as I'm concerned. Under normal hunting conditions it is IMPOSSIBLE to determine if a close one, like being talked about, is legal or not. It is just asking for game to be left in the bush, where it fell, and the hunter will go on and look for another moose.

Truer words were never spoken. To try to make a harvest legal by determination of antler sizes is in my books ludicrous. I am sure better methods could be enacted.

 

[the spank]

"If it's legal, it's all good!" Yeah great motto Trev...it was legal for grown men to bang 14 year olds in Canada with parental consent until a few years ago. Sure it was legal and worked out nicely for some real creepy old timers I'm sure.

You working for the wildlife department or something? It's precisely hunters like you who just patently support our idiot government without question that make things worse for the few hunters out there that actually want to see healthy, growing wildlife populations with proper age structure.

Our wildlife herds population distributions look like a bloody AIDS infested African country...with many young animals and few older ones.

Why don't we put a cow and calf only season in across the country and see how quickly we can make the odds of being drawn in a big game draw into the tens of millions. We already have far more hunters wanting to shoot moose and elk than there are animals in the population. Don't you think we should start thinking about increasing big game populations with sound policy like "mature bulls only for several years or just close the season...for everyone natives included. This would better reflect the sustainable development mantra that all these dumb governments are blabbing about lately.

There's a reason why outfitters have their clients shoot mature males of the species, and its not just because hunters pay more. If they starting shooting cows and calves in some of these pristine fly in areas they would have few bulls to reach maturity in only a few short years and few cows to breed.

Any outfitter care to chime in? Or you all scared to alienate yourselves?

Time to wake up and become part of the solution. You're not cool shooting baby or mama. Your actually making things harder for wildlife and the people who want to maintain healthy, growing herds.

Do you actually hunt or are you a member of PETA posing as a hunter on here for the purpose of trolling? Your comparing harvesting of cows and calves to pedophilia is a classic PETA style argument!!

 

[ratherbefishin]

What these rules likely dreamed up in universities as opposed to field conditions do is put honest careful ethical hunters into the very bad situation of forcing them into self reporting and taking the consequences or leaving the game to rot..not good.I have nothing against shooting 'spike forks' but strongly oppose criminalizing an honest mistake that I defy anyone to avoid in the situation I described....a very small 1'' 'point'that might have been a 'point' or not on a flattened end of an antler that was only viseable at arms length .....not on a live animal moving in the willows...the definition of a 'point' being a projection longer than it is wide.This one could have gone either way...but the CO is the guy who makes the call, not the hunter who harvested the animal and therein lies the dilemna

 

[atr]

The determination of a legal, immature moose and the curl on mountain sheep, are the stupidest laws on our books, as far as I'm concerned. Under normal hunting conditions it is IMPOSSIBLE to determine if a close one, like being talked about, is legal or not. It is just asking for game to be left in the bush, where it fell, and the hunter will go on and look for another moose.
There should be an option whereby if a really close one turns out wrong, the hunter would dress out the moose, report it, the game department would take the meat and the hunters tag would be cancelled.
However, that would be common sense and common sense is virtually non existent in todays world!

I know a crew who a few years ago was hunting the pipeline when they spotted a calf , shot it , tagged it and were dressing it when a CO pulled up . He checked them out and everything was fine and off he went . The next day he was back and pulled a 4 foot by 4 foot sheet of plywood out of the back of his truck with about 20 jaws wired to it . He cut the lower jaw off the moose calf and compared it to the ones wired to his board . He then determined that this was not a calf but a small just over a year old cow . So the first day he was there everything was fine and legal and the second day he charged them all . They were facing huge fines and loss of hunting so they pooled their money and hired a lawyer . 3 times to court but they won , sort of as it cost them a fortune . No one i know would self report a mistake around here and no one i know is an outlaw or a poacher . They won because on the first day the CO agreed that it was a calf and was properly tagged .

 

[ratherbefishin]

And that just proves my point,if a CO can't tell on an initial observation,then how can hunters in the field be expected to ?

 

[Gatehouse]

How much meat do you get off of a calf and a yearling bull? Doesn't anyone else on these forums also think it just makes make sense to pass on shooting cows and immature moose when you have to draw tags. Don't you guys want more animals and healthier big hame populations? Why are we creating our own shortages of wildlife...we know shooting cows and calves result in lower and younger populations?

Shooting immature bulls is better for the moose population than shooting a mature bull.

 

[Gatehouse]

I just got back from my moose trip,and saw a couple of nice racks in the campsite,one a very nice big bull,and the other an 'immature'.I stopped to show my boys what a 'legal immature 'looked like, 3 points on one side and 2 on the other.From 25 'away,the rack on the ground,it was perfectly clear this was a 'legal immature'-EXCEPT IT WASN'T.....when I came right up to it,picked it up,one of the points flattened out and there was a 1'' 'point' that DISQUALIFIED it as an 'IMMATURE'.....but from 25 ' away,I would have sworn it was legal and shot it ......

Did you check in the regs and make sure it qualified as a point? Moose points have a clear definition, and if they are wider than long, it's not a point (basically)

This rule also goes both ways in the 4 pt deer season. We all know what a traditional 4 point looks like from the pic in the regs. 4 pt means 4 legal points excluding the brow tine. But some deer have little 1' sticker points right at the base of the antler. So a deer with 2 points up top and 3 1" points at the base would actually (probably) be a legal 4 pt. A CO at first look might say it's illegal, but it's probably legit. I sure wouldn't shoot a deer like that though, as your chance of making a mistake at distance would be very high

 

[BigUglyMan]

Same for the 4 point Muley rule....lots of bucks will never be more than very large 3 pointers. Are these the genetics we are looking to save?

True, but at least you have October to shoot any buck before you're back to "4 Point".

 

[ratherbefishin]

The whole problem here is ambiguity and interpretation of the regs...what APPEARS to be legal may not be....it's all up to the CO,or the judge.Problem is, going to court costs big bucks...you might win the case and avoid the fine and keep your hunting privileges but you still have to pay your lawyer,and you can easily drop $10,000 with no guarantee of winning your case..it's not the clear cases that are the challange,but the ones that aren't clear...I say the laws should be clear, easily understood and 'field friendly' to avoid such situations that potentially criminalize careful and ethical hunters

 

[trevj]

Did you check in the regs and make sure it qualified as a point? Moose points have a clear definition, and if they are wider than long, it's not a point (basically)

This rule also goes both ways in the 4 pt deer season. We all know what a traditional 4 point looks like from the pic in the regs. 4 pt means 4 legal points excluding the brow tine. But some deer have little 1' sticker points right at the base of the antler. So a deer with 2 points up top and 3 1" points at the base would actually (probably) be a legal 4 pt. A CO at first look might say it's illegal, but it's probably legit. I sure wouldn't shoot a deer like that though, as your chance of making a mistake at distance would be very high

I shot a antlerless deer that I was pretty sure was a doe. Man, was I EVER surprised to see a nutsack when I rolled the carcass over to start gutting it.

I hit the regs immediately. Needs (needed) to be 4 inches long to count s an antler! Alberta regs.

For all intents and purposes, I still figure that particular buck had had a very bad encounter with a truck, but he still qualified as antlerless.

I still have that skull. Broken off at the bases. Well worn and dirty, from the wear and tear of life after the breakoff.

Cheers
Trev