Help explain/understand Ontario Antlerless Deer Tag Quota...

[The ROC]

I'm reading through the Ontario Hunting regulations for 2013/2014 and reading the 2012 Antlerless deer tag results and I see that some WMU areas have a quota starting from 20 tags up to 6000 tags.

Does anyone know how the MNR determine the quota for an area? Say an WMU has a qouta of 500 antlerless deer tags that need to be filled, does that mean MNR detremines that there is approx 1000+ deers in that WMU?

I also noticed some WMU have a qouta of 20 tags and only 1 was given out and some areas none given out... I assume those area show little to no signs of deer activity?

Thanks for you help

 

[jfarrell]

It was usually done by selective grid counts in a WMU. They would fly over pre-determined areas and based on the counts, allocate tags. It may have changed though

 

[waterwheel]

I'm reading through the Ontario Hunting regulations for 2013/2014 and reading the 2012 Antlerless deer tag results and I see that some WMU areas have a quota starting from 20 tags up to 6000 tags.

Does anyone know how the MNR determine the quota for an area? Say an WMU has a qouta of 500 antlerless deer tags that need to be filled, does that mean MNR detremines that there is approx 1000+ deers in that WMU?

I also noticed some WMU have a qouta of 20 tags and only 1 was given out and some areas none given out... I assume those area show little to no signs of deer activity?

Thanks for you help

Not sure how they determine how many deer need to be shot, but I spoke with an MNR scientist about moose tags last year - he set the moose tag limits for one of the WMU's. They arrived at a number of moose they figured they could harvest (don't know how they arrive at this number). Then the figure that only a percentage of the tags will be filled. Then they factor in archery vs. gun tags, stuff like tourism and stuff, and set the number. For example, he said that our archery tags brought a lot of people in the area, but only 1-3% got filled. So they could hand out 500 archery tags resulting in a lot of people like myself having the opportunity to hunt, but only a handful of moose actually being harvested.

 

[Waterfowler]

I don't think there's much flying going on with the MNR anymore. As far as deer tags go I think they go by Deer Hunter questionnaires submitted and word of mouth. I think the weather of the previous winter is considered somewhat, as well as coyote populations and estimates.

 

[tactical870]

I don't think there's much flying going on with the MNR anymore. As far as deer tags go I think they go by Deer Hunter questionnaires submitted and word of mouth. I think the weather of the previous winter is considered somewhat, as well as coyote populations and estimates.

Supposedly deer-car collisions also play a role.

 

[daveg01]

Once upon a time they might have done counts etc. With today's budget short falls I suspect that they use a wet finger and hold it into the wind.

The running joke around here is if they gave out tons of antlerless tags then there are no deer. Same goes for moose tags, lots of tags seems to = no moose there.

They seem to be relying more and more on hunter surveys I hear. Not sure how helpful that is since most guys I talk to put whatever they think will result in more tags being issued.