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H4831

H4831

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The BC moose population is way down, in all areas of the province, except the Kootenai's.
This is from the BCWF convention, as stated by the BC environmental department.
Suspected reason for the decline, predation by wolves and bears.
LEH permits have been cut away back for moose, and some areas could be cut even below the proposed number of LEH permits.
In case you've never thought of it that way, black bears are deadly on moose calves.
 
H4831 said:
The BC moose population is way down, in all areas of the province, except the Kootenai's.
This is from the BCWF convention, as stated by the BC environmental department.
Suspected reason for the decline, predation by wolves and bears.
In case you've never thought of it that way, black bears are deadly on moose calves.
Click to expand...

Easy, buy a bear tag and get out and cut it.
Tight Groups,
Rob
 
H4831 said:
The BC moose population is way down, in all areas of the province, except the Kootenai's.
This is from the BCWF convention, as stated by the BC environmental department.
Suspected reason for the decline, predation by wolves and bears.
LEH permits have been cut away back for moose, and some areas could be cut even below the proposed number of LEH permits.
In case you've never thought of it that way, black bears are deadly on moose calves.
Click to expand...

So much for game management eh?
I guess it's us hunter's that are to blame.
We've been #####'in bout the increase of
the black bruin's population for quite a while.
Not sure about the wolves, out of my jurisdiction.
Thanks for the post there H.
 
H4831 said:
The BC moose population is way down, in all areas of the province, except the Kootenai's.
This is from the BCWF convention, as stated by the BC environmental department.
Suspected reason for the decline, predation by wolves and bears.
LEH permits have been cut away back for moose, and some areas could be cut even below the proposed number of LEH permits.
In case you've never thought of it that way, black bears are deadly on moose calves.
Click to expand...

Talk to "Track" he is on a campaign to bring baiting back to BC.
 
Hunters need to kill black bears and wolves. It's simple, the predators are not being hunted nearly enough.

Numerous studies in Canada and Alaska have proven there is roughly a 65% mortality rate for moose calves, from bears alone. I've attached some links to check out.

The area where I hunt moose is sad; prime habitat and nearly no moose (relative to the carrying capacity of the land).

Last spring, in an entire week of bear hunting we saw 1 moose. This is in an area where 20 years ago it was normal to see 5 moose each day, and lots of times you'd see more than that.
In that week we saw numerous wolf kills (and I think 1 cougar kill); both deer and moose skeletons.
We saw something like a dozen bears...

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Some moose mortality studies.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19960825&slug=2345763
Moose mortality Alaska North Slope.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.23...2&uid=70&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21100813717501
Yukon moose mortality study. Note the grizzly & wolf predation numbers on calf moose: 58% grizzlies 25% wolves. This is only the spring to fall time period and doesn't factor in winter, when wolves kill a lot more.


https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...aORQpo&sig=AHIEtbSkL7_8EAJVmu96-Xq3_9LzzKQX9g
Alaska calf moose mortality: 97% of all moose mortality due to predation by grizzlies and black bears, particularly in the spring.

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Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JVkaMqD5mI
Black bear kills moose calf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoISDvZkjWI&feature=related
Brown bear breeds sow then kills her... picture sequence, not a video, but it's amazing to see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCDPYgqdLjg&feature=related
Brown bear breeds sow then eats one of her cubs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfAIQGk2Bh8
Black bear hunts then kills elk calf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_cEzNYeQUQ&feature=related
Wolves pursuing elk calf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n8Q1cNr0OA&feature=related
Wolves killing elk...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqkBX2oGWOw&feature=related
More wolves killing elk.
 
Game management has been brought up a time or two. In the great years of shooting and hunting following WW2, game management in BC was a common sense thing. There were no biologists in the game depatment and the game wardens put in their reccommendations for what the game rules should be.
There was no protection, whatsoever, for predators of the game we hunt. Owls, hawks, even eagles, were fair game to shoot, any time and any place where it was legal to shoot. I was once riding with the game inspector, in charge of all the game wardens in the entire north half of BC. We were in his government vehicle and I had my 30-06 on the seat between us, on a back woods road. A big hawk flew up and landed in a tree, over a hundred yards away. The game inspector stopped the vehicle and said, "Get him!" I rested against a tree and was proud of my shot, when the hawk turned into a cloud of feathers.
Even black bears had no regulated protection until, I think it was about the end of the 1970s. There was always some bears around, but no one ever heard of the game department having to "destroy," nuisance bears!
Bears increased after they were termed game, and regulated. But for a few years it was not compulsary to take the meat home. After the rules were changed, making it mandatory to take home the meat, bears increased into what we have today.
We never go back in this world, so never again will we be able to legally shoot bears to protect our moose. And hunters can't even fizz on controlling wolves, just by shooting them.
We'll hear lots of retorect about various ways to control the predators, each method being equally inefficient.
I will predict that nature will prevail. Not in the way our self pofessed naturealists say, by keeping the amounts of each equal, but by the pendulam method, of swinging hard one way, then hard the other way.
The wolves and bears will kill our game until there is not enough left to sustain them. Then they will die off in great numbers, allowing the moose and caribou to stage a huge come back.
Thus, in maybe thirty years or so, there will be great moose and caribou hunting.
What's to complain about?
 
Bears are a large part of the problem with Ontario moose numbers too.

I always have a bear tag when hunting deer/moose/bear. This dumb ass province eliminated the spring hunt for bears though.

I shoot wolves and coyote on sight, if I'm in an area where my license will allow it.
 
IMHO Any person who pointlessly kills a bird of prey let alone takes pride in it should be ashamed of there apparent ignorance. I agree with the control of predators to maintain balance but the pointless killing of an animal really disappoints me. Birds of prey have been proven to have very little impact on game species. It is because of such disgraceful behavior that we seen the decline we did in the population of raptors, to the point of almost losing many wild populations.

Where is the honor in such behavior?
 
I don't think H4831 or anyone else is advocating killing eagles, hawks etc...
He's only referencing a time period when that was considered normal. So don't go shooting birds of prey!!

But bears, coyotes, wolves do need to be thinned out. I suspect H4831 is right about this, eventually, as game numbers drop, there's going to be hardship for the wolves, and they likely will have a dramatic drop off... I'm certainly hoping so.

But that's not gonna happen to bears. They will continue to thrive.
 
Boom and bust is nature's way of controlling wildlife populations. We no longer have "wildlife management" in BC. Management has largely been replaced with enforcement.
This is sad when we realize that management was a hunters initiative originally. Back shortly after the turn of the last century hunters realized that big game species were becoming threatened by over hunting, and lobbied the provincial government to bring in controls to manage ungulate populations to provide more or less stable numbers of desirable species. Circa 1920 a wildlife management act was passed in the province, and it worked quite well until sometime between 1960 and 1975. During those years non hunters began to lobby the government to protect predators. Note the word "protect". There's a vast difference between protecting a species and managing it for well balanced populations of both species and populations.
Genuine hunters can see clearly the benefits of having this benefit. Non hunters never can and and never will, prefering to see "nature" being totally in control. So here we are, back to the historical cycles of boom and bust that have always existed in all prey and predator relationships.

And by the way, even hunters have in the past failed to recognize that management included increasing harvests of ungulates when range capacity is reduced. Many of us have objected to increased harvests that were recommended when, for example, winter range capacities were reduced for one reason or another. Four bucks per season where three had been the limit previously? Shoot more does? No way!
Things were better in the past than now, but never perfect.
 
I have read that the killing of all kinds of raptors was common and accepted 50 or more years ago. Even naturalists regarded them as "brutal killers" which were best eliminated. Of course after you see one tear the guts out of its still squawking prey, you can see what they meant in a way, but that's nature.
 
One of the major limiting factors on black bear harvest in BC was the Government bringing in a regulation requiring the hunter to pack out the meat from harvested bears.Whether you like the regulation or not it cut way back on the number of bears harvested.It made the greenies happy though.Personally I haven't hunted bears for 25 years after finding I had no real liking for bear meat. Mur
 
What I do with bear meat is to leave it in the bush, to feed other bears. I figure I save the life of one calf moose, whenever I leave a bear carcass for the other bears.

I'm pretty sure the BC regs were modified for the exact reason cited; the people behind that knew it would reduce bear hunting.

Btw, bear meat is damn good eating, when it's properly prepared. I've eaten my share.
 
Ol' Smokey said:
Have to chuckle at the notion that biologists are to blame. Let's not allow hard science and data get in the way of "managing" nature. LOL!!!
Click to expand...

If you're referring to this statement by H4831:

"Game management has been brought up a time or two. In the great years of shooting and hunting following WW2, game management in BC was a common sense thing. There were no biologists in the game depatment and the game wardens put in their reccommendations for what the game rules should be".

He is largely correct. The head of the BC fish and wildlife department was a gentleman that ran the department with a wealth of common sense and good practice. He had many ideas, and most were at least somewhat original thinking. For example he would not hire any conservation officer who was not also a hunter. He hired many game biologists too, but first they had to be hunters who understood the need for management.
His name was Dr. James Hatter, and he worked hard to preserve a balance between prey and predator all his working life.

His policies worked very well until the politicians began listening to anti hunters around 1960. The first game warden in BC was Bryan Williams, and from his first day on the job until Dr. Hatter retired things were vastly better for hunters. Populations were never as stable as during that roughly 40 year period, and the really big swings started province wide around 1969. This cannot all be attributed to wildlife management in isolation from other factors. Habitat protection has become secondary to logging and mining practices. Urban sprawl has destroyed winter range. Human population has grown exponentially, but the percentage of devoted hunters has declined since the introduction of the federal firearms act of 1995. Remember, it was hunters that initiated the idea of conservation, and things were better for all wildlife and hunters for a long time.
 
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Lets not blame 20+ years of increased access and the new "mechanized hunter". There was a day when there were places your average hunter would never consider shooting a moose, places that acted like safe haven's, buffer zones. Harvest quota's reached earlier, seasons made shorter.
 
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