Great strides forward on the…

Great strides forward on the bear hunting issue. Once the MNRF reinstated the spring bear hunt, we closed our fall hunt because too many large females were being harvested. We never liked the fall hunt because of this. Scientifically, the spring hunt is the better hunt to have. As for non-resident land owners no longer being able to hunt and having to go to an outfitter, that was a great decision. Thank you! The big issue now, is resident hunters running hunts for other resident hunters. That has become a huge problem and I am glad to see that you are trying to solve it. I don't know how you are going to do it. I don't think that having them purchase a licence to provide hunts is going to solve the problem because they are doing it under the table and there is no paper trail to follow and they are hunting on outfitter BMAs that we pay for and manage so that we do not over harvest. I think any resident hunter that has a bear hunting licence should not be able to hunt on an existing BMA owned by an outfitter. That might solve the problem. There are BMAs that are vacant and those are the areas that resident hunters could hunt. I know that this next issue is not on the EBR but it deals with harvest levels. I am in the Chapleau district and we were always on a "quota" which I agreed with. We were allowed to harvest 1 bear per 50 square km and I thought that it was great. We had outfitters in the area that were taking way too many bears for the size of their area and this policy put a stop to that. This should be implemented across Ontario. If that means that some outfitters will only be able to harvest a couple of bears, so be it. They shouldn't have been in the system to begin with.