Honorable Minister of…

Honorable Minister of Natural Resources,

I am writing in regards to the newest Ontario black bear hunting regulations, specifically a newly added requirement that all baits be placed at least 200 metres from any public right of way. As per page 75 of the Ontario hunting regulations book.

“During the spring and fall black bear seasons, bait may not be placed for the purpose of bear hunting: within 200 metres of a right of way for public vehicular traffic or a signposted / marked recreational trail that is established and maintained by an organization for the general public.”

From my reading of this new amendment, as well as postings on the OFAH and NOTO websites, this would apply to forestry roads in Northern Ontario, regardless of the level of activity or traffic on these roads.

I can only imagine that this new rule must have been part of the “negotiations” process with anti-hunting lobby groups when proceeding with the re-implementation of the spring bear hunt. There may be some merit to this amendment in areas with high human population density. I can imagine a situation where someone may wish to place a bear bait on a walking trail 20 minutes outside of the core of Toronto, and could potentially endanger those walking on the trail. For this reason, I can understand why MNR possibly saw some merit in this new rule. However, let us not forget that it takes a bear all of 20 seconds to trot 200 metres to the trail if it’s intention is to eat someone casually strolling by for a Sunday walk. As such, in essence the only possible benefit from this rule is essentially moot and useless. I suggest logically that your office resolve these issues on an individual basis under some “unsafe” hunting regulation, as required, instead of a blanket ruling that makes no sense in 99.99% of the area that it is being applied.

There are so many negative drawbacks about this regulation that I can only assume that your office failed in its duty to actually consult with professional hunters about the true effects of this decision.

My families tourism operation is called Air Ivanhoe and we operate fishing and hunting trips out of Foleyet, Ontario. I’m a third generation bush pilot and tourism outfitter. My grandfather started working in this business in the early 30s and started his own business in the early 50s, so I guess you could say that we know what we’re doing and we’ve been at this for a while.

I’ve been leading our bear hunt since the age of 18 (so almost 20 years now) and was trained by our bear guides at the time. My family leases nearly 300,000 ACRES for our bear management area (BMA) from your organization to put on our bear hunts. We were not consulted about this detail, and from what I’m gathering from emails circulating from other tourism outfitters, neither were they. GREAT JOB !!!

Possibly if we were consulted, you would have come to realize the following would be the true impacts of this new restriction on bear baiting.

1) The distance in general places an enormous physical strain on bear baiters, who are often not in prime physical condition and an older age.

I want you to understand that I currently run 50 bear baits to make sure that I have enough active baits for 10 hunters a week for 4 – 6 weeks a year. I try to bait and check trail cams every day if possible. While these baits are all tucked into the woods and hidden from view, very few of them would satisfy a 200 metre setback from a forestry road requirement. Also, in the woods there are obstacles meaning that a 200 metre GPS line will probably take closer to 300 metres to get there. When I run my bait line, I typically have a shotgun in my right hand, a trail camera on my shoulder (in case I need to swap them out), extra batteries, and a 5 gallon pail (or sometimes 2 pails) with on average 20 to 30 pounds of bait mix in the pails.

So essentially I’ll be walking 600 metres X 50 baits (30,000 metres) 30 kms a day with 60 pounds of gear. Ok great, this is a marathon.

To maintain the level of success I’ve accomplished in recent years, I need to do this every day for 4 weeks before the guests arrive plus another 4 – 5 weeks while guests are at camp in order to run an effective and successful bear hunt. I might as well join the Olympics after this year’s bear hunt because me (and all the other guides) will be absolutely ripped and muscular by the fall (or dead of heart attacks.)

Secondly, has anyone in your office ever actually carried a 400 bear out of the woods. It’s difficult enough at 50 to 75 metres, let alone 250 to 300 metres.

This huge physical strain is overwhelming for most guides, and the most obvious result (if guides are going to stay legal) is that baiting will be done less often, there will be less baits set and in lower quality areas (i.e. wide open clear cuts where hunters can still shoot from near the road), and there will be less bait carried in and used.

2) Increased difficulty in baiting will result in a lower quality of baiting, and in turn a lower quality of bear hunting in the province of Ontario.

3) A lower quality of bear hunting in Ontario will result in decreased tourism revenues for the province of Ontario, as these guests will eventually migrate to other provinces with more reasonable baiting requirements.

4) Tourism dollars linked to bear hunting losses will also be linked to future fishing and other types of tourism losses, as groups that come bear hunting most often come on other types of trips with that outfitter (if satisfied) during future years.

5) A lower quality of bear hunting in Ontario will result in a higher bear populations and hence, more bears killing more moose !!!

Now, I know that MNR wants to increase the moose population, and they’re talking about reducing the restraints on wolf hunting to assist in this goal. News flash guys, bears and wolves don’t just eat blue berries and additional restrictions on bear hunting will definitely result in less moose. Lets get this strait, additional restraints on predator hunting results in additional predators, which will result in less moose. Easy to understand, if you want to understand it. Hard to understand if your job depends on not understanding it.

6) The restriction on bear hunting (i.e. new requirement for a 200 metre buffer from any forestry road) precludes many of my physically disabled guests from even coming on a hunt this year.

One of the most common questions that I get a sport shows is how physically demanding the hunt will be, as this is a primary consideration for many guests with less than perfect health. I’ve worked with folks confined to wheel chairs in the past and unless I blaze an ATV trail to each tree stand (or park them at the road side of an open clear cut), I will have to tell these guests to look to another province. Having to walk hundreds of yards, through the bush, during the daylight (and then during the darkness) is just beyond the level of physical ability for so many of my guests. They (and their groups) will have to bear hunt (and fish) in another province.

7) This requirement ENDANGERS both the hunter and the guide.

The model that we have proven to be the most effective and successful is to place the treestand just out of sight of the forestry road (possibly 50 to 80 yards) and to place the bait another 15 to 80 yards beyond the stand in a direction where the shooter will not be shooting towards the road. I don’t know how much time your consultants have spent in Northern Ontaro, but the woods are thick here and finding a 50 yard opening is a challenge. It can’t be a wide open clear cut, because the bears typically only hit these baits during darkness of night. It has to have a canopy of trees, and a clear line of sight between a tree big enough for the stand and another for the bait.

What this means is the tree stands will have to be moved quite a bit further from the forestry roads to accommodate the increased distances of the baits. The model that we currently use is that the guide arrives by pickup truck, positions the truck so that the headlights of the vehicle light up the path back to the vehicle, and the hunter exits the tree stand when the guide has arrived and walks to the truck. With tree stands being placed further from the roads (to accommodate baits being placed further), there is a significant possibility that the lights from the trucks will not reach most of the tree stands, which leaves several possibilities, none of which are good.

A) The guests may become lost on the trail while returning to the vehicle in the dark. Despite our recommendations, very few of them carry a GPS, and our trails are mainly unmarked to prevent other hunters from finding these locations and reaping the benefits of my hard work / baiting.

B) The guests will come out of the stands before dark and sit on the road. This is typically not done because of concerns about bears and wolves while on the ground, at a bear bait, after dark. Keep in mind guns must legally be unloaded and cased after dark, according to current MNR regulations. Keeping one loaded even for self defense is not permitted.

C) From my experience, the result of this increased distance (where the guests can’t see the lights from the truck) is that is the guide will have to exit the vehicle and walk into the bear bait directly to the tree stand to pick up the hunter and walk him back to the truck. Keep in mind that it is illegal to carry a firearm after dark, and so essentially the MNR is requiring that I’ll be walking into an extremely dangerous situation, without any means of protecting myself (or my clients) where I may encounter a wounded bear or an aggressive bear (or wolf) or multiple animals. GREAT JOB !!!

All of these problems are easily prevented by keeping the treestands close enough to the forestry roads that guests can see the lights of the trucks while remaining in their stands and then walk back to the truck.

8) More bears will be shot and left to spoil

Our current model allows us to use the headlights of the truck to light up the search area and hopefully retrieve the bear while picking up the hunter. I sense that a 200 metre requirement (300 metres by the time you walk around the logs) will result in many more search efforts being postponed until the morning as guides and guests are unwilling to head that far from the vehicle in the pitch black without any firearm to go and search for a potentially dangerous and wounded bear. With the temperatures in May, June, August, and September, leaving the guts inside until the morning will most likely sour the meat. This will result in either the meat being disposed of, or if consumed, could make the hunters sick and at the very least will make bear hunting less appealing for future years believing that all bear meat tastes terrible.

If your organization had simply taken the time to actually consult with folks in the bear hunting industry about this new requirement, you would have already understood these problems and would not have implemented this new regulation. As I mentioned, I understand the benefit that your organization must have perceived (protecting joggers in highly populated areas), but there is not a house within 50 miles of the area that I bear bait. The regulation will not safeguard human life, it will in fact endanger it.

There is some discussion within the tourism industry of hopefully excluding northern Ontario from this regulation, using something like the French River as the boundary. However, I start baiting in about a week, which leaves me in a precarious situation.

Do I cancel my hunters spring and fall? Do I just accept that now I’m going to be a “poacher” because complying with MNRs newest regulations will not allow me to protect my life as well as those of my guests (by either placing the baits too close to the roads or walking into these sites after dark with my shotgun to safely escort out guests from these locations). Or is these some possibility that your office can suspend this one particular aspect of this regulation until the claims that I’m making can be validated by others in the industry, and something that makes sense can be implemented to resolve any identified problems (if any even existed prior to this regulation).

Respectfully yours,

Captain Joel M. Theriault B.A., L.L.B.
Barrister and Solicitor of Ontario, Canada
Law Society of Upper Canada Member ID # 56191K
Pilot / Guide / Owner Air Ivanhoe Ltd – Northern Ontario’s premiere destination for remote fly-in wilderness renewable eco-friendly tourism vacations
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 99, 42 Ivanhoe Lake Road
Foleyet, Ontario Canada P0M1T0
Email: Info@SportsmansLawyer.com
Phone: 705-221-5354
Fax: 705-899-2155