Alberta Bow Association Allocation Policy Survey

IronNoggin

IronNoggin

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It appears the ABA has decided they are in the business of managing hunting programs over there :rolleyes:

They have a new survey out, wherein they propose:

- Doing away with Landowner Tags for Mule deer

This program has been effective in keeping gates open for other hunters, rewarding landowners for maintaining wildlife habitat, and helping keep crop depredations down a little. The vast majority of landowners I know over there very much like the program, and will be ticked off if it disappears. On the surface, it would seem the ABA desires the 1200 tags be returned to the general hunting fold.

- Doing away with Non-Resident Canadian access to special draws (LEH)

This one personally effects me, and a lot of other hunters I know. We spend a good chunk of change over there every time we draw, and our impact is not very significant (300 tags overall!). Will 300 tags make any real difference to the success rates for Alberta only? or is this simply sour grapes or greed??

- Create a Special Draw for Archery Seasons

Obviously self serving. This has in fact been done for most western Mule Deer WMU's, leaving those to the east still general tag. That has had the undesirable effect of concentrating increasing numbers of bow hunters into the remaining general season areas. While they suggest this will be a potential solution to increase opportunity for bowhunters while reducing competition in the special license draw, many simply see it as a self-serving mechanism that will direct more tags in the direction of archery hunting (taking them away from rifle hunters).

There follows a series of questions and suggestions focused on the Outfitter Guide operations over there, and how to deal with them.

The survey is open to any one, however their final question will separate out the answers from those who are not an ABA member.

I strongly suggest anyone with an interest in hunting in Alberta give consideration to filling out the survey.
Your future hunting efforts may well be effected by the eventual findings.

Survey can be found on this page under the link Very Important SURVEY: http://www.bowhunters.ca/

Apparently the results will form the draft of an Allocation Policy that will then be put out to the general public for comment, then final review and possible acceptance by the AEP minister. I will try to keep my finger on the pulse, and report back findings as this develops...

Ticked,
Nog
 
I'd like to apply to hunt mule deer in BC with a friend one day. Is this possible?
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Only if your friend is a BC resident or you have friends that are BC resident hunters. They can get permit to accompany which is basically a special guide permit to take you hunting. Most (if not all) draws for mule deer are only for does.

RC
 
Then you have to find a hunter host to take you during an open season. What I was getting at is that you can hunt pretty much any open buck season with a host, I can't (off the top of my head) think of any areas that are on a draw system for bucks- resident or non-resident.

RC
 
Buckmastr said:
I'd like to apply to hunt mule deer in BC with a friend one day. Is this possible?
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Absolutely. Most areas are not Limited Entry (draw).
If you have a buddy who is willing to host you, you can go pretty well any open season.

The ABA have opened a can of worms with this one.
Many who had "no horse" in their other meddlings now do.
Going to be a very interesting next little while methinks...

Cheers,
Nog
 
IronNoggin said:
- Doing away with Landowner Tags for Mule deer

This program should be for does only. Same as with MOST landowner elk tags.

- Doing away with Non-Resident Canadian access to special draws (LEH)

Any draw that requires a resident to wait more than 3 years should not be available to non-residents.

- Create a Special Draw for Archery Seasons

Yes, but should only be allowed to enter archery OR rifle, not both.
Click to expand...


And thanks for the link.
 
guido said:
I agree with all their proposals.
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Some will. Especially those among the protectionist Me First camp. Fits well with the vast majority of the personalities I have met from the ABA...

Regarding the removal of the NR draws - For those that like this idea, all you are doing is taking away the ability to hunt with family and friends, to hunt together, for the sake of scapegoating and greed. NR Hunter Hosted licenses account for less than 2% of special licenses issued.
This will do Nothing to help resident opportunity.

In the case of the recommendation to establish a new archery allocation and archery exclusive draw, this is being done to directly limit hunter participation. The ABA noted in private their concern that there are now too many bowhunters, and that their ranks are swelling every single year.
The recommendation is directly intended to exclude those who are not as serious as others (ABA membership).

The other thing they fail to mention in their proposal is that those tags will have to come from somewhere. The so-called management authority there is apparently not in the business of creating additional habitat nor wildlife numbers. All they do is further restrict access every time a change is being made. The rifle hunters who were hoping to draw that special tag in any zones this is implemented WILL be waiting a few extra years to do so. For the tags the ABA want for their exclusive club draw will come from the general Special License pool, further limiting the possibilities of any individual drawing within a reasonable period of time.

Self serving obviously, guess since they are being duplicitous throughout their "survey" it should not be surprising they are not willing to be truthful regarding their intent in this matter either...

In the case of landowner tags - taking those away from the very folks that grow and feed wildlife is a fool's errand. Watch just how fast those No Hunting signs come up in response in many many areas.

Eliminating NR hunter host special licenses, making NR use a resident's tag, and removing less "serious" bowhunters hunters from the archery draw are ALL in the direction of exclusion and limiting opportunity. Period. Very poor practices for a supposed management authority to support. Hunter restrictions rather than game / habitat management. Sad. One can hope that there is a level head or two at the table when it comes down to decision time...

Never thought I would live long enough to see such self-centered greed and sour grapes becoming the focus of so called wildlife management in Canada. Sad days...

Nog
 
IronNoggin said:
It appears the ABA has decided they are in the business of managing hunting programs over there :rolleyes:
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Not quite.

The survey is for the Alberta Game Policy Advisory Committee which is an AEP initiative. This survey is to help the AGPAC provide input into the govt allocation policy proposal. ABA, as stakeholders and AGPAC members, are asking for input to feed back into the allocation discussions.
 
kayaker1 said:
... This survey is to help the AGPAC provide input into the govt allocation policy proposal. ABA, as stakeholders and AGPAC members, are asking for input to feed back into the allocation discussions.
Click to expand...

Yep. Having re-worded most of what came down from the AGPAC to suit their own Agenda. ;)

Someone should tell your crew to use spellcheck every now and then when doing so btw..
The survey itself from the ABA suffers serious credibility as it appears drafted by a 10th grade drop-out... :wave:

Cheers,
Nog
 
We get it. You don't like the changes. I'm a resident, I like the proposals. The only thing wrong with the survey is it is open to non-residents. Alberta taxpayers are the only ones that should have any say.
 
Nothing mentioned about APOS? Hell, they have thousands of allocations that resident hunters can use. Time to get rid of APOS and have tags in the hands of resident hunters and non-resident hunters, instead of Americans and other non-Canadians.
 
bbobie said:
I like the proposal changes for us Albertian bow hunters
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I find this response rather predominant among ABA members looking after their own interests, regardless of the cost to anyone else.
See post number nine on this thread...

track said:
Nothing mentioned about APOS? Hell, they have thousands of allocations that resident hunters can use. Time to get rid of APOS and have tags in the hands of resident hunters and non-resident hunters, instead of Americans and other non-Canadians.
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That will never happen. Many do however think that some attention should be paid in this direction, especially in light of some developments in other jurisdictions (BC).

The sections of the "survey" that deal specifically with the matter of the APOS are as follows:

Allocate Hunting as Opportuntity Instead of Harvest

Currently, Alberta Environment and Parks allocates a portion of the allowable big game harvest to the outfitted guide (OG) industry. This harvest is then converted to OG Allocations using harvest success derived from OG activity reports. The remaining allowable harvest is then converted to recreational special license quotas, using harvest success estimates derived from hunter harvest surveys. Given the differences in harvest success between recreational and outfitted hunters, the proportion of allowable harvest can convert to a much different proportion of hunting oppportunity in some WMUs, creating conflict between recreational users and the outfitted hunting industry.

Recreational hunters are primarily concerned with hunting opportunity for those animal classes and WMUs having special license draws. The resulting harvest is more relevant to wildlife managers in achieving population management objectives. Basing our allocation of big game on hunting "opportunity" for those animal classes and WMUs under special license draws is more transparent and easier to defend to Alberta's hunting community.

For animal classes and WMUs under general license seasons, allocation will continue to be calculated as a proportion of harvest.

5. Do you support the recommendation to AEP that big game be allocated as a proportion of hunting opportunity (OG Allocations Held and Special License Quotas available) instaed of harvest, for those animal classes and WMUs on special license draw.

Standardize the proportion of hunting opportunity allocated to the outfitted hunting industry

Currently, Alberta's policy is to allocate up to 10% of the harvest of antlered big game to the outfitted hunting industry and up to 20% of the harvest of Trophy Bighorn Sheep and Trophy Antelope.This allocation is not consistently applied across Alberta's WMUs which, as discussed above, results in conflict between recreational hunters and the outfitted hunting community.

Standardizing the proportion of hunting opportunity allocated to the outfitted hunting industry provides greater transparency and certainty to both recreational hunters and outfitters, and aligns with our need to support a viable outfitted hunting industry.

Outfitted hunting allocations will be reviewed and adjusted at five-year intervals to align with this standard. If significant reductions in harvest are required for conservation purposes (eg - a decline of greater than 25% of available special license quotas) outfitted hunting allocations may be reviewed within the five year allocation period.

Proportions allocated to the outfitted hunting industry shall be as follows:

-- Antlered Moose, Antlered Mule Deer, Antlered Elk, Antlered Whitetail Deer, Trophy Antelope will be 10%.

-- Trophy Bighorn - will be 20%.

-- Cougar - will be 20%

-- Black Bear - will be no restrictions.

Commercial hunting opportunities and subsequent available allocations will be reviewed and adjusted at five year intervals. This will provide professional stability and allow for business planning by Outfitters.

6. Do you support the recommendation to AEP for the above proportions of big game hunting opportunity allocated to the outfitted hunting industry across Alberta's WMUs?

Standarize the spatial scale at which hunting opportunity is managed

Currently, the big game resource is allocated at the WMU level for recreational hunters, and at the Species Management Area for the outfitted hunting industry. This has resulted in disproportionate hunting opportunity between recreational hunters and outfitted hunters at the WMU level, causing conflict between the user groups.

The WMU is the scale at which species management objectives are developed and at which hunting opportunity is most appropriately managed.

7. Do you support the recommendation to AEP that the spatial scale at which hunting opportunity is managed be standardized as the Wildlife Management Unit for both recreational and outfitted hunters?

Phased Implementation

Given the potentail changes to outfitted hunting allocations resulting from these recommendations, this policy should be phased in over a five year period to minimize disruptions to business operations among commercial hunting operations. For the initial five year review period following the approval of the Big Game Allocation Policy for Alberta, allocations to the outfitted hunting industry will be limited to 150% of the proportions recommended above for each species class at the WMU level and 100% for the corresponding WMU series (100s, 200s, 300s, 400s and 500s).

For subsequent 5 year review periods, outiftted hunting allocations will not exceed 100% of the recommended proportions by species class in any WMU. During the Five Year Outfitter Allocation Review, new opportunities for Commercial Allocations will be made available where new recreational hunting opportunities exceed 10 special licenses for residents in any WMU.

8. Do you support the recommendation to AEP that once an approved policy is in place, that it be implemted in a phased in approach to minimize disruption to affected business operations within the outfitted hunting industry?
...........................................................................................................

I have left the numerous spelling / grammatical mistakes in as they appear in the original.
Reminder to the authors to try and bring your presentation level up to at least high school standards.

Again, for anyone interested, the survey can be found on the page linked here: http://www.bowhunters.ca/

Cheers,
Nog
 
As the deadline for filling out these surveys (yes, there are now two of them I am aware of) I thought I would give a bit of an update...

One of the fellows "in the know" collected the numbers from Alberta F&W. What he discovered was a little startling:

F&W commented that the NR special license numbers are so small that it was not considered worth the time to do a detailed analysis.

2016 NR Special Licenses issued-
Total - 300
Applications - approx. 1000, Average Successful Priority Level - 3.3

WT - 1 out of 361 total licenses = 0.3%
MD - 149/10,188 = 1.5%
Elk - 32/1826 = 1.8%
Moose - 104/11,114 = 0.9%
Pronghorn - 14/678 = 2.1%

Total Licenses = 24,176
Total NR Licenses = 300, 1.2%

In other words, removing the non-resident Canadian (Hunter Hosted) draws would result in NO increase for resident draw success. None of the surveys indicate this, and in fact they openly suggest that such a move is to the benefit of their residents (when it is clearly not). Such exclusion borders on lying directly to their constituents IMHO.

A little further digging resulted in the discovery that it is the APOS (Alberta Professional Outfitter Society) which is driving this suggestion due to their supposed "losing potential revenue with the allowance of Hunter Hosted NRs".

More than a bit of a reach IMO.
Most of those I know who travel to Alberta to hunt these tags certainly are not in any position to engage an outfitter!
Just "normal" hunters, without the deep pockets required to be personally catered to.

So, it appears that the residents are being sold a load of BS suggesting their success rates will get better in order to secure their votes, which translates to direct support for the outfitters cornering the complete market for those from outside Alberta.
Hmmm... Smacks of something their ilk in BC might have dreamed up... :rolleyes:

Surveys will close soon.
Here's the links if anyone is remotely interested:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VZD78H2

http://www.bowhunters.ca/

Many THANKS to any and all who can offer their support.
Pozitive.gif

Takes but a minute in each case...

Cheers,
Nog
 
I have hunted Alberta in the past as a NR hunter. Typically WT OTC tags. I keep paying the HH fee, paying the wildlife stamp and draw fees each year to advance priority. I pay a lot more for my tag than any resident hunter so that line about taxpayers can fly a kite. By the time I am priority 5, which is what I would need to draw where my uncle hunts, my tag will have cost me at least $500 in fees. That's money I am putting into another provinces wildlife management fund.

Why shouldn't I be allowed to draw a tag same as anyone else?
 
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