All these changes are to…

Numéro du REO

019-0405

Identifiant (ID) du commentaire

34987

Commentaire fait au nom

Individual

Statut du commentaire

Commentaire

All these changes are to help to increase the moose population. To start off with, how can you increase the population when you are still allowing the hunting of cows and calves.This is your breeding stock and you continue to allow it to be killed off. If a hunter shoots a cow, that's one less moose and if that cow is pregnant that takes two moose out of the herd and if she had a calf with her what are the chances of this calf surviving the winter. Very slim. So that makes 3 animals out of the herd. And if the cow had a female calf with her and it doesn't survive the winter that one less in the reproduction chain. You can't increase your herd size if you keep killing off the cows and calves. Solution - eliminate the cow and calf season.
To help the survival rate for the calves, continue with the spring bear hunt and control the wolf population by including them with the small game license as suggested or a bounty as was done in the past.
Surplus tags - how can there be a surplus of tags when the number of (rifle) hunters greatly out weighs the number of tags if the tags have been allocated correctly. Obviously the allocation isn't done correctly. And then you hear of a group of hunters that get at least one or two tags every year???
Group size - suggested 10 hunters max. - pretty had to split up one moose 10 ways. I know that some hunters are just out for the hunt but then there are others who are not. In Northwestern Ontario it's hard to compete with the large group sizes when you have large hunt clubs and a large number of hunters from Southern Ontario competing for the same tags. There has to be some way to make it fair for the the hunters in the North to compete with these large groups.
Types of license - should be bull or cow - no calf season or bulls only or better still, close the moose season completely. If the population is that small that's what has to be done. I know that the government doesn't want to hear that because they'll lose all that money but how are you going to increase the herd size or are they going to wait until it's too late then close it. It's been closed before.
MNRF is all about conservation. So think like a farmer. He doesn't kill off his cows and calves to increase his herd size. So stop trying to fix it with band-aid solutions to keep the big dollars coming in. In our area they are closing off prime moose hunting areas for the caribou or tourist outfitters which are predominantly American owned. It's like when things change over time you gradually change with it. Same as the caribou habitat, it didn't change over night. So they have to change or adapt to the changes to survive. If caribou habitat is in the north, why are they moving southerly. There's no logging way up north. It's been said that the caribou like the cover of evergreens but up north where their preferred food (lichens) grows, there is no cover there, just tundra. I was told that if a native shoots a caribou, they don't even eat it. It's feed to their dogs.
So close the season so our moose population can thrive and be there in the future.