Hunters are only allowed 1 deer per season no matter what they use to kill it.
If the intent of hunting is to get hunters out without killing animals why would they allow rifles at all?
One?
Has SK gone that far down the outhouse hole? CWD culls? Weather/winterkill?
Was 3 over the counter for white tail, and an Archery mulie, if so inclined, when I was there. Plus any draws that you may have been pulled for.
Nothing compared to the 20 or so tags you are allowed in Alberta, if you are willing to travel, use various harvest methods, etc., but still lots of meat.
On the 'then, it's a Muzzle Loader' comment, yep, it is, but when the separate seasons were put in place initially, a 300 yard capable Muzzle Loader was not something that everyone could buy in the morning and be shooting deer with that afternoon either.
As per the quote of the CO. Thank the scoped inline, for that. So no real need for a separate season any more.
IIRC, someone had raised the issue of a compound bow not being the same as a stick bow. Well, nope. It isn't, but the max effective range of a competent user is still only out to 100 or so yards on a pretty darn good day. Most won't shoot half that distance well, and many not even that far. There are a few guys out ther ethat can reliably shoot farther, but they are essentially freaks, and practice like a concert pianist does, to maintain the skills.
As a case in point for other factors coming in to play, in Strathcona County, the area around Edmonton, the Archers got handed pretty much a freebie, in that the zone was designated for Archery only. But the Archers could not keep the numbers down to levels that the biologists wanted, no matter how many tags they bought. So they opened the area to shotguns and ML's and the Archers howled like they had been branded (some of which went on here on CGN at the time), foretold doom and accidental shootings, etc., none of which came to pass.
It's not always about the technology levels. Differing methods used during each hunt type also need consideration. I recall one year where the Archery and Rifle seasons for Antelope overlapped in SK. When you consider that the normal method to bow hunt antelope was to tuck yourself in behind a decoy, and ambush the incoming Antelope, as a Bow hunter, you could see the concerns when you may have found bullet holes appearing in that same decoy, eh?
Cheers
Trev (Back home in BC where the Archery season is what, a week or less?, And no ML season.)
